What’s Your Client Success Profile? Because Everyone’s in Sales, Marketing AND Recruiting in Business and at Work

Whether I’m sharing my hiring process experience, strength and hope with business owners and hiring authorities during a workshop presentation, or in my earlier post Everyone’s Recruiter in Business and at Work, I unequivocally believe that everyone in an organization, from the CEO to the college intern, works in Recruiting, Sales and Marketing.

In that earlier post, I outlined how critical it is for an organization to not only develop their Candidate Success Profile, but also to share that profile with everyone in the organization, effectively deputizing everyone as an organization Recruiter.  As stated in that earlier post, here are some ways that Candidate Success Profile(s) (and your deputized organization Recruiters) can support the success of your organization:

  • Is everyone from the CEO to the Receptionist officially deputized to recruit great candidates who fit your employee success profile?  (And for that matter:  does every employee in your organization understand that they work in Sales and Recruiting?  Do you?  Another blog post topic for another Sunday.)
  • Do you know what your employee success profile is (e.g., what are the success factors of the right candidate, so you’ll recognize them when they apply)?
  • Does your employee success profile meet the needs of the organization?  Or are you pining for a purple squirrel?
  • Do your employees know what your employee success profile is?
  • Do you have a Candidate Referral bonus program for your employees to encourage the referral of great candidates?
  • Are your Marketing and Recruitment teams working together to integrate your Product / Service Branding and your Recruitment Branding?
  • Do you have Recruitment Branding?
  • Do you have a Recruitment Strategy that you periodically update, share and implement with your organization’s Recruiting Evangelists (e.g., every one of your employees)?
  • Are your business cards ready to catch a great candidate doing a great job?
  • Are you all actively playing out your role as organizational Evangelists on all of the Social Media channels, at minimum on LinkedIn, promoting your great organization and your great job opportunities?
  • Are you all on LinkedIn, currently the hottest resource for passive candidates?
  • Are your hiring managers measured on both the recruitment and retention of their teams?  (If this is not shared between your HR / Corporate Recruitment Team and your Hiring Executives and  Managers and merely delegated as the sole responsibility of your HR / Corporate Recruitment team, you’re severely limiting your best internal recruiting resource:  the hiring managers.)

In that earlier post, I hinted at the Client Success Profile concept:

  • Is everyone from the CEO to the Receptionist officially deputized to recruit great candidates who fit your employee success profile?  (And for that matter:  does every employee in your organization understand that they work in Sales and Recruiting?  Do you?  Another blog post topic for another Sunday.)

Well, it is that Sunday.  During my Hiring workshop presentations, as a precursor to asking if they have Candidate Success Profile(s), I ask business owners and hiring authorities attending my workshops what their Client Success Profile is.  Most of them don’t know what their Client Success Profile is; or, they don’t have one.

A Client Success Profile, like a Candidate Success Profile, is easy enough to develop, document and communicate for everyone in the organization to utilize as deputies of your Sales and Marketing teams.  When you all know what your Client Success Profile is, you definitively know your prospective clients when you meet them, especially in non-client / non-prospecting encounters.  Having my Client Success Profile at the ready helped me land a wonderful and long-term client at a party, where I had tired of the main activity of the party and was just chatting with my soon-to-be client, who was equally tired.

Here’s a snapshot of my own Client Success Profile, as an example:

  • Business owners or senior hiring authorities employing from 5 to over 1, 000 employees, who don’t have a senior internal  HR / Recruiting / Strategic Planning / Coaching professional at my experience level, requiring (including but not limited to):
    • Outsourced Corporate Recruiting / Recruitment Branding and/or hiring process implementation support that in turn supports the organization’s Strategic Plan;
    • If there is no Strategic Plan; Strategic Plan facilitation and development (it really does help focus the Recruitment Strategy and Branding to in turn support successful hiring);
    • Outsourced Human Resources support / process development (e.g., compliant Employee Relations, for the entire employment life-cycle);
    • Outsourced HR 911 support (or, as I like to call it, Stump-the-HR-Chump, a la NPR’s Car Talk), for answers to those tough HR questions and issues, just a phone call away; and
    • Knowledge Transfer / Apprenticeship Services for an organization’s entry-level HR folks.

Baked into my Client Success Profile are common client prospect needs that usually come up, which aids my listening for those needs, in order to effectively meet / exceed those needs. As is my practice:  I never ask my clients and colleagues to use tools that I don’t utilize myself. And once you have your Client Success Profile, the steps to effectively deputize every member of the organization in Sales and Marketing activities is virtually the same as the first set of bullets I outlined for Recruiter Deputy success.

Everyone works in Sales, Marketing and Recruiting in business and at work. Happy hunting this week, y’all.

Success Jigsaw Shows Achievement Of Solution