So I was phone coaching with a new recruiter recently (which involves me listening into his calls and providing written prompts to help overcome obstacles on the call). This consultant is building a new desk in a niche industry with mainland Europe being his focus area geographically.

He skilfully navigates his way past the receptionist and starts talking to a senior individual. Whilst a director it turns out this individual isn’t exactly who the consultant should be talking to so he networks from this director and gets put through to the actual decision maker.

The normal process then unfolds with the decision maker attempting to rebuff the consultant. To counter that the consultant brings in the earlier conversation with the other director. This helps a bit but the turning point comes when the consultant mentions specifics about two roles that he understands the company are recruiting for.

He goes further than that though because he continues talking and mentions that not only does his recruitment specialism match those roles but also that his experience covers similar companies who have the same aspirations as the decision makers company.

He points out that he’s read that the company is planning to produce certain products and enter certain markets and that he’s had experience of other companies doing the same thing AND that it seems to be the way that this particular industry sector is moving.

The response from the decision maker was

“Thank you for doing your homework.”

The consultant was a little surprised and said “Ah ... you’re welcome. It’s just the research I do. Don’t most people do it?”

“No, not in my experience” was the decision makers reply.

The conversation then progressed from there and resulted in agreement for the consultant to work on the two roles.

This ties back into the point that I made in the second of the How To Be Successful In Recruitment Articles when I discussed preparation and it’s importance.

Doing your homework is about proper preparation for your calls. It doesn’t have to take long but reading through the target company website, checking the News and Careers pages and having a quick look through the decision makers LinkedIn profile can provide you with really powerful information to use on the call.

Also it’s the kind of research that can be done ahead of core phone sales time … as it was in the case of the consultant I was sitting with. Yes it takes some time but consider it an investment of time.

As a senior managing director in the recruitment industry said to me this morning

“Better to make fewer good quality calls than more bad quality ones.”

He’s completely right and as was evidenced on the call I listened, to our clients respond well to us doing our homework, and that can result in some favourable outcomes and results!

Until next time; be successful

Stephen Hart

Development Specialist, Edenchanges.com

This article originally appeared on the edenchanges website and is part of an ongoing series of advice articles for recruiters.