For most small businesses this year, it will not be who gets the most leads or customers. It will be who can find and employ the most people. They're the ones who will win the game. And this article is going to show you exactly the process you need to follow in order to find great employees and keep them for a very long time.
If you're hiring process in the past has been very willy-nilly, you just have someone show up, you ask them a couple questions, you hire them on the spot, you try them out, and there's no thought-out process to it, then I hope this helps. Over the past several years, most of your marketing budget has probably gone towards finding new customers, advertising online, doing print marketing, door hangers, door-to-door, knocking... Whatever it is, you've been trying to find new customers.
But for most small businesses, the constraint to their growth now is going to become who can they find and how many people can they find they actually do the labor and the work that's required to get their services done. So the framework I want to show you today is simply looking at your hiring process the same way that you would your sales process.
Because for so many of us, as we grow our businesses, we have focused so much of our time on finding new customers and we create systems and procedures around the sales process. But now, the constraint is going to be, “Can we find employees?” You just need to look at the sales process and compare that to your hiring process.
Sales Process
Direct Marketing
Become Lead
Sales Meeting
Price Proposal
Follow Up
Onboarding
Retention
Upsell
Direct marketing - Someone calls in, you're doing door hangers like I said, or you're doing online marketing, Facebook, Google, etc.
They become a lead - They call you, then you start a form on your website.
Sales meeting - You maybe go out and do an estimate their house or whatever sort of estimate proposal that you're going to give them.
Price proposal - You're going to give them an offer for the price. This is what I'm willing to do the job for. And you accept it, may you send over email, maybe sent via CRM, whatever it might be.
Follow up - You might have automations, you might do it over the phone, you might go back to their house, whatever it is you're following up to try to make the sale.
Then once a customer accept your estimate proposal, you're not going to...
Onboard them - Maybe get their credit card information, get their email address, get them set up inside of your portal. That's onboarding.
Then the goal is to...
Retain and then upsell them - That is the sales process, that vicious cycle. We want our customers to stay and buy over and over and over again from us.
Sure, you could put some ads out so people will call me, then maybe you'll call a reference or two, and you'll see if they work out or not. This is because you don't have any step-by-step process or guide to be able to find, train, and retain great employees. So, here it is. All I'm going to do is look at the sales process and draw a direct line over to my hiring process and draw a quarterly.
So, for example, in the sales process, we talk about direct marketing. This is literally the equivalent of doing ads on Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Craigslist, Facebook, whatever it is. You're basically running an ad for employees, right? Now, the same way that you have looked at a video or article and tried to figure out the right headline, you need to spend the same time and focus on trying to create a very engaging ad to get employees to come work for you.
What are the highlights? What makes working for you different compared to your competition? Work on the pictures and the video and the titles. These are all things you should be testing and figuring out. Does it make sense to put management in training? Does it make sense to put that I offer health benefits? What does that do to the performance of my job ad?
What Does Your Hiring Process Look Like?
It's going to be good for you to have a hiring process. This can truly you get “good” leads, which brings us the next point. The next part of the sales process is you get leads. Well, when it comes to the hiring process, that's the equivalent of someone submitting an application. How do you submit the application?
This is another thing that you need to think about when it comes to your hiring process. Is it something that's digital and on your website, or is it a matter of filling out a form and bringing it back? That's not going to work in the digital age, especially if you're going after a younger audience and especially if they're good. They're going to get five other job offers within 24 hours. What questions you ask on that application and the ease of being able to submit that application are all very important to whether or not the application even gets submitted.
Now, the next step of the sales process is the sales meeting. When you go meet the customer, you maybe meet them at their house, you schedule a time that you're going to go visit with them. This is the equivalent of in the hiring process, having an interview. Now for most people when they're doing businesses interviews, they don't think much of it. You just show up, you expect the person to come, you ask them a few questions. There's no preparation, there's no setup. There is no real thought process that goes into how am I going to interview and make a good impression on this employee? So what do you want to do? Make a good impression the same way that in the past you would have thought about making a good impression on the customer. You know, you combed your hair or wore a nice shirt, you have ironed your pants, etc.
That is the same sort of mentality and process that needs to be thought about when you are now interviewing for employees. The same way that you try to look good and have a great presentation for the customer is the same way that you should be thinking about your presentation and what the overall experience of having an interview will be like for a potential applicant.
The next step of the sales process is the price proposal. That's going to be when you actually submit what your prices are going to be to the customer. Typically, in the email, maybe print it off, maybe call them whatever it is... you're going to present your price to them. The same thing goes for the hiring process.
It shouldn't just be a quick text or email. Maybe you call them? Maybe you make sure that the presentation of your job offer is legitimate? Maybe you use DocuSign or some way of digitally signing it? These are things that are important and make you look professional. And for so long, we've thought about that in terms of the customer. But what about the applicants and the employees that potentially might work at your place of business? They too should get a great presentation and thought about what that process looks like in front of them. Now, in the sales process, we would never give up if we submitted a price proposal and never heard back to the customer. We would do what we would follow up.
Maybe you have automated ways of texting and emailing and calling and trying to get a hold of customers that have not accepted a price proposal? The same thing should go for an applicant. You shouldn't just have them come to an interview, you send them a job, offer this, cross your fingers and hope that they accept.
You would never do that for a customer that you spent time and energy on and formed a price proposal for - all of that to do just what? Follow up with them! You're going to ask them if they have questions. You're going to ask them if they have price objections in the sales process.
Well, in the hiring process, you're going to ask maybe potentially about their salary. Is that something you want to negotiate? Are there any questions you have? Did you even get my price proposal or did it go to your spam? Maybe this is the wrong number? We don't even think like that. We just send the job offer out and just cross our fingers and hope that people will sign it or accept on or show up the day that we tell them to.
What are you doing in this phase? You are nurturing the applicant. So even after you give a job offer, that's not the end of it. It's not like, “Well, it's back in their court now!” You should never do that to an applicant that you've submitted a job offer to and extended the hand to come work at your place of business.
You'd follow up with them and see if they have any questions, if they got it, if there's any negotiations that need to happen. Now, you might be thinking like, “This is crazy. There's so many steps!” No, that's why you're not successful. That's why people are not staying with you. And this is not the end of the hiring process because once someone accepts in the sales process, you're going to make sure that when a customer accepts an estimate, they're going to get set up with their credit card information, have a log in for your portal, etc. Be ready to send them a welcome email and say welcome to the family!
What Does Your Onboarding Process Look Like?
What about when an employee accepts the job offer and now they've started their first day of work with you? What's your onboarding process look like? What do those first few days of being an employee at your business look like? And I'm not saying that we're perfect.
I've messed up the onboarding process for some great employees. We weren't organized, didn't have the manpower, and didn't have the systems in place. We had a bad onboarding experience that didn't allow someone to get up to speed, learn how things worked, and they didn't feel welcome in those first few days of doing business.
Now, we've thought about doing business with customers for so long, but now it's what is the experience like for an employee? The first few days of work, you can't just tell someone to sit down,“Here's your computer, watch these videos for 10 hours and here's 50 pages of the employee handbook.” That's not going to work very well.
You would ideally have some sort of system to onboard them. You help them get to know other coworkers and understand how the business works, how everything operates, and what the vision of the company is. But we're still not done because even if you get a customer in the sales process and you've onboarded them, what are you trying to do the next? You're trying to RETAIN them.
You don't want them to go and leave after a couple of years or a couple of months or even a couple of weeks. You want to keep that customer, you want to retain them. And the same thing goes for the employee. We are going to train and retain our employees.
“What Happens if I Train my Employees And They Leave?”
Well, what happens if you don't train them and they stay? You're going to have a whole bunch of untrained employees, not doing anything right. So you want to spend time and energy and money training to help retain your employees. Now to customers. We're going to send them monthly newsletters. We're going to send them thank-you's. We're going to send them gift cards around Thanksgiving and Christmas and all the rest of it.
Why wouldn't you do the same thing for your employees? Communicate with them, make sure they know how their performance ranks, and how they can improve. These are all things that an employee wants and that's what's going to allow them to stay retained inside of your business. The same way that you would stay in touch with customers to keep those leads warm, you stay in touch with your employees.
And that might mean spending some money initially - and throughout the rest of their employee journey - on training and development. Now, the last step of the sales process is we try to upsell customers. You know, if we're selling them bush trimming, we're now going to try to sell them mowing. If you are selling them window cleaning, try to sell them gutter cleaning.
There are always ways to upsell in every single business and the same thing goes for the hiring process. What does that mean? Well, that means you need to constantly be reselling them on the vision and the idea of working for your business.
Why does your company exist? Why should they come work for you instead? Why should they refuse the opportunity to move across the country and work in a much fancier office? These are things that are going to be put in front of them and it's your job to resell them on the idea that working for you and working with your business is the best thing for them their career. In this very hard labor economy, you want to make sure that they enjoy coming to work every single day.
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