Without exception, the most important lead indicator for recruiting success is the face-to-face appointment with a viable recruiting prospect.
If you meet with enough recruiting prospects, it will lead to hires.
But that’s not the only reason to focus your efforts on the face-to-face appointment.
It’s also the best way to collect real-time data about what’s going on in your marketplace and how prospects are perceiving your solutions.
Instead of just looking at the recruiting appointment as an opportunity to persuade, rather, view it as an opportunity to become a data collection expert, as well.
What data should you be trying to collect?
Problem Data. Ask open-ended questions about the problems the prospect is experiencing.
What holds you back from being more successful? What’s tripping you up? What has stopped working for you in the last year?
Solution Data. Then ask questions about what IS working for them.
What have you been excited about with your work lately? What changes have you made that seem to be paying off? What do you see others doing that you wish you could do better?
After each meeting, spend a few minutes jotting down the top three problems and the top three solutions the prospect mentioned.
Document these answers over several meetings and look for patterns.
Once you see the patterns, reverse engineer solutions that are likely to solve the problems of the broader set of recruiting prospects in your pipeline.
