Last week I discussed my thoughts about why you should spend time, energy and resources on letting your world of customers and prospects know you exist. This week let's dig a little deeper and discuss what you should be communicating to your clients and prospects.

We are definitely in a recession, and according to some, have been in a recession for over a year now. That being said, business hasn't stopped completely. This country is still producing, manufacturing, building, selling and hiring. So what has changed?

Businesses, your customers, are reviewing their expenses and making sure that the services they are paying for provide real value and are not considered "discretionary." What does this mean for you as a recruiter? It means that you need to position your service as a "must have" part of your customer's business plan - and it is even more critical that you set yourself apart now, during a recession, than ever.

The level of competition for the decreased number of job orders is becoming - to use the word of a mentor of mine - ferocious. So the question becomes, what can your recruiting business do to succeed in times like these? In my opinion, the answer is twofold:

1. It is paramount you must positively differentiate and define your value offering to your customers.
2. While you're at it, you should review your own business expenditures the same way your customers are reviewing theirs.

Point One
In addition to my last article about increasing your marketing and advertising costs, you need to focus on how you position your service offering. Your customers are reviewing the choices for each one of their expenditures and are looking at everything with the same formula. They are asking themselves, "Is this a necessary cost? Can I get more (value) out of this vendor? Can I get more for the same (or less) cost from someone else? Do I need to pay this cost now, or can I put it off until things become better? Can I structure this cost creatively?"

The good news for you, is that when companies are hiring, a certain cost is considered necessary. The weight that rests on your shoulders is to convince the client that:

1. They need to use a recruitment firm rather than a staffing firm; or a staffing firm rather than a recruitment firm (in the case of a recession, arguments regarding the necessary longevity of a new employee can be made for both sides)
2. They need to use YOU.

How can the services you provide demonstrably suggest YOU are providing the best bang for the buck, YOU are a necessary cost now, and YOU might be the easiest to work with?

I know I am putting forth a lot of questions, but as the keepers of your own businesses, these are the questions you need to be asking yourself. (and if you don't have answers to them, imagine how your clients might perceive your business)

Point Two
If you are going through the exercise of putting yourself in your customers shoes to figure out how to position your business, you should review your own costs too. When reviewing your expenses, ask the same questions your customers are asking of you: "Is this a necessary cost? Can I get more (value) out of this vendor? Can I get more for the same (or less) cost from someone else? Do I need to pay this cost now, or can I put it off until things become better? Can I structure this cost creatively?"

From my experience talking with recruiters in the field, there are tools like certain job boards that recruiters have traditionally used, but in 2009 will likely ask "is this a necessary cost?" Why? Because there are many new tools available just in the past few years that are differentiating, productive, powerful and inexpensive. When you review your business, are the tools you use unproductive and expensive or efficient and differentiating?

Back to the title of the article: Increase your quality of service or wither away

You might be asking yourself why I titled this article "Increase your quality of service or wither away" considering I haven't really made any suggestions for how to do so. Well I chose this title because communicating what you do is just as important as the service you provide. There are a lot of organizations that are attacking the recession simply by becoming busy, which I don't believe is a good thing. You don't need to add little bells and whistles to your service offering in an attempt to "increase the quality of your service." That will make you busy but won't make you successful.

I'm simply suggesting a review of how you communicate what it is you do so that when you are selling your services, they come across as valuable as possible and as relevant to the times as possible. The way your communicate the value of your recruitment business will directly affect the perception of the quality of your service. With some of the new tools made available with the widespread acceptance of Web 2.0, you can even leverage technology in how you communicate with your clients and prospects.

So ACT NOW. Take the time to review the content and delivery mechanism used when communicating your value proposition to your world. Because the bottom line is that if you don't bring your positioning up to speed with what your clients and prospects are looking for, prepare to wither away.

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Adam is the CEO of Vipe (www.vipepower.com). Vipe provides a B2B video marketing solution to the recruiting industry enabling recruiters to easily create, manage and distribute high-impact, short, video mail messages to enhance customer communications and drive increased sales.