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The DRIP System · The Talent Trade

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Talent Trade.
• 0:01
  I am your host, Stephanie Maas, partner with Thinking Ahead, executive Search.
• 0:09
  Super excited to be here.
• 0:10
  Wanna talk about a practice that we have used consistently through the years that has resulted in helping us achieve part of our mission, if you will, at thinking ahead.
• 0:22
  Today I wanna talk about how we build relationships here at thinking ahead with potential prospects in our niche.
• 0:32
  One of the hardest things about being with a search firm in our industries is quite frankly, they're inundated with search firms, meaning we're here because they're industries that need and use search firms on a regular basis.
• 0:46
  So.
• 0:46
  Part of our challenge is, hey, how do we differentiate?
• 0:49
  How do we stand out?
• 0:50
  The other thing is, being a boutique search firm, we like to approach business development or marketing.
• 0:56
  I'll use those interchangeably in a way that not only gives us business today, but also sets us up for long-term success with business.
• 1:07
  Three months, six months, five years, 10 years down the road, and specifically.
• 1:12
  How we accomplish the ladder of those two is through something that we call our drip marketing system.
• 1:20
  This is a marketing system that was based on some research.
• 1:24
  It's actually a really cool research study that was done probably, gosh, at this point, 25 years or more ago.
• 1:32
  And it was a group of psychologists, psychiatrists, and this group of mental experts basically wanted to try and understand the psychology behind when you have to buy a complex product, how do you decide who to partner with?
• 1:49
  And at the time they were thinking about like your financial advisor, how do you decide who to choose for your financial advisor?
• 1:55
  Who at the time it was, you know, your realtor, the things that, life insurance policies, these type of things.
• 2:01
  Now some of those markets have changed.
• 2:02
  They're not, they're a lot more transactional than they used to be, but back in the day it was different.
• 2:06
  The psychology of it though remains the same, and this is what's so interesting.
• 2:11
  What they found was that there was a pattern of psychology that in order to partner with these folks and ultimately buy products from them, there needed to be a certain level of trust established with the person before they felt comfortable buying that product or service.
• 2:31
  And that it took, this is super cool.
• 2:35
  It took on average seven different attempts of some form of communication to get to the place of trust where a decision could be made.
• 2:47
  Basically, it took seven touches before somebody could establish a foundation of trust in order to make a decision.
• 2:54
  So the psychologist or mental health expert thought that was really cool and interesting.
• 2:58
  What it led to next was a follow-up study and they took it one step further.
• 3:04
  This is where I think it gets super cool.
• 3:06
  Then they went to study the people that actually sell those products and learned about their sales process and what was fascinating.
• 3:17
  Is they found that, again, we know the psychology now, that it takes seven steps to establish trust before making a decision.
• 3:26
  Only 50% of sales folks in those industries made more than one attempt to make a sale, meaning they called on you if you didn't buy right then you never heard from 'em again.
• 3:38
  They took it one step further and found that less than 10% of sales folks in those industries.
• 3:47
  Made three or more attempts with those same folks.
• 3:51
  So what became so interesting from this was you had this huge, I think dichotomy is the right word, that the way people like to buy and felt comfortable buying, the sales folks of those products and services weren't providing an opportunity for that.
• 4:05
  And the folks that were tremendously successful in those industries, their key to success is they just kept showing up.
• 4:12
  So.
• 4:13
  Based on this, thinking ahead again, along with some additional training from other folks, came up with this idea of the seven step drip business development or marketing system.
• 4:23
  And again, that's the psychology, the seven steps.
• 4:26
  The whole idea is familiarity breeds trust.
• 4:31
  So our seven step process is incredibly simple, but when executed consistently and in an organized, timely way.
• 4:43
  Incredible business opportunities for us, both in the short term, but especially in the long term.
• 4:50
  So here it is, the seven steps.
• 4:51
  Now, what I'm not gonna give a lot of coaching on is the timeframe of these steps.
• 4:55
  Depending on your niche, depending on a variety of different things.
• 4:59
  It depends on the time between each of the different steps.
• 5:02
  I'll share with you what we hear at Thinking Ahead most commonly used, but just know that the timing could be different.
• 5:08
  So the first step, this is gonna be shocking if you know anything about Thinking Ahead, the first step in our seven step drip marketing system is we call you.
• 5:18
  I know.
• 5:19
  Wow.
• 5:19
  Really thinking ahead as a calling firm and we actually call people.
• 5:22
  It's true.
• 5:23
  We call, we make an introduction.
• 5:24
  Stephanie Maas, thinking ahead, search, specialize in your field, wanna get to know you, wanna get to know your team, and just talk about to what extent it makes, if any, to stay in touch.
• 5:33
  Step one, you make a phone call, step two.
• 5:36
  Now, for me personally, this is about three to five days later.
• 5:41
  Three feels soon.
• 5:42
  Five sometimes feels a smidge long, but just depending on what mood I'm in, it's three to five days later.
• 5:48
  Second step, you call 'em back.
• 5:51
  This is earth shattering stuff.
• 5:53
  Here.
• 5:53
  You call him back.
• 5:54
  Stephanie Maas, thinking ahead.
• 5:55
  Search.
• 5:56
  Wanted to follow up on my previous voicemail, hoping we can connect.
• 5:59
  Then I do wait a week.
• 6:00
  I call him back a third time.
• 6:02
  My voicemails all sound the same, trying to dowse you with my persistence.
• 6:06
  I know I've left you a few messages.
• 6:07
  I wanna remind you who I am, why I am calling.
• 6:09
  I also then at the end, let them know that I'm gonna follow up with an email.
• 6:13
  Now that email says basically the same thing.
• 6:16
  Hey, it's me, Stephanie Maas.
• 6:17
  Wanna try and connect?
• 6:18
  Sometimes it's easier to respond via email than an outbound call.
• 6:21
  Feel free to respond here.
• 6:23
  Let's set up a time to talk for 10 or 15 minutes.
• 6:26
  Now I get a ton of questions, sometimes pushback on why aren't I initiating contact with an email or a text or something of that nature.
• 6:37
  And the reality of it is because people are inundated.
• 6:39
  They are inundated with offers that are coming through electronic communication.
• 6:46
  And quite frankly, we have found that folks right now are programmed to ignore that they're actually a little bit more surprised to get a phone call than an email.
• 6:56
  So most of the emails.
• 6:58
  Go unread.
• 7:00
  It's kind of like back in the day, if any of y'all remember this, when you used to get advertisement in the mail and like that was the mass marketing of its time, is you would get a flyer in the mail, advertising, whatever they were selling, and they considered a 1% response rate from those mailers.
• 7:18
  It was a success 1%.
• 7:21
  That's insane.
• 7:22
  Now also, keep in mind, if you send out 10,000 mailers, 1% not that great at math, but I'm thinking that's enough to be like, oh, okay.
• 7:29
  Now suddenly it seems a little bit better.
• 7:31
  Well, we've kind of found that with email right now and electronic communication, if you do it enough and you get a 1% response rate, it could be okay, but for us.
• 7:41
  We're looking at somewhere between a 35 and a 50% response rate.
• 7:46
  So we use the good old fashioned phone call.
• 7:48
  Now again, if I have not heard back after that third voicemail, I do follow up with an email sometimes too.
• 7:54
  If I'm really trying to get in touch with them, I'll follow up with a text and I always send a LinkedIn invite as well, and I love referencing that in my voicemail.
• 8:05
  Hey, I also sent you an invite on LinkedIn just so you know more about who I am.
• 8:09
  So those are the first three steps.
• 8:11
  Call, call, call, email, text, whatever.
• 8:14
  Then I wait a month, one month later.
• 8:18
  This time I do send them something electronic and only electronic.
• 8:22
  It can be, we do newsletters here at our firm.
• 8:25
  You can send them an article from LinkedIn, send it to their private message, Hey, saw this article, thought of you.
• 8:30
  Hope you're doing well.
• 8:31
  Look forward to connecting whatever the case may be.
• 8:33
  But that fourth step is just some type.
• 8:36
  Of an electronic communication, and again, people get caught up in this and they wanna overthink it.
• 8:42
  They want to overanalyze it.
• 8:44
  The whole point isn't to show that you know everything about anything and all the things.
• 8:49
  It is just to bring familiarity to you and your name and what you do and why you should be in their world.
• 8:58
  I. That's it.
• 8:58
  Now, don't send something stupid.
• 9:00
  I mean, let's not be an idiot, but something's thoughtful.
• 9:03
  That's all we need.
• 9:04
  Just super simple.
• 9:05
  Solve this thought of you.
• 9:06
  Hope you're well.
• 9:07
  That's step four.
• 9:08
  Then I wait another month, step five.
• 9:11
  I call him again.
• 9:12
  I. Yeah, I know, and I love this voicemail.
• 9:15
  It sounds something to the effect of like, Hey, Tom, Stephanie Maas was thinking I had search.
• 9:20
  Hey, we tried to connect a couple months ago to no avail.
• 9:22
  I wanna try again as a refresher, I work with a search firm.
• 9:25
  This is what I do.
• 9:26
  This is why I'm calling.
• 9:27
  You should call me back.
• 9:28
  Yep.
• 9:29
  Super simple.
• 9:30
  Then I wait three to five days.
• 9:31
  I call him again.
• 9:33
  That is step six.
• 9:35
  I call him back now, this time I don't make a third call.
• 9:40
  By now, I've reached out to 'em somehow, some way five times.
• 9:43
  Over the course of roughly three months, they're starting to understand who I am.
• 9:48
  They're starting to get a sense that I'm probably gonna keep showing up for a while, so I don't need that third voicemail that time.
• 9:53
  So two phone calls.
• 9:55
  Then again, I wait another month and I send them something different electronically this time.
• 10:00
  So if the first time I send a newsletter, this time I see send a LinkedIn article.
• 10:04
  If I send a LinkedIn article the first time, this time I do a newsletter, doesn't matter then.
• 10:09
  Literally wash, rinse, repeat.
• 10:13
  You do the same thing over and over and over.
• 10:15
  What this starts to do is it gets you showing up in front of your target audience, your potential clients on a regular, consistent, organized basis that allows them to start getting to know you at a high level.
• 10:35
  And one, they start developing some familiarity.
• 10:38
  They start to breed trust.
• 10:41
  Now, at the end of the day, it's your job to be one heck of a recruiter and not violate that trust, but this is how we do it.
• 10:48
  It's super simple.
• 10:50
  Familiarity breeds trust.
• 10:52
  Then what is so great is once you get this system going, you literally just keep it going and you can tailor your voicemails to the season that you're in, the cycles that you know your niche that you're calling on, and when you do finally get them live or when they call you back, it's awesome.
• 11:08
  They feel like they know you.
• 11:10
  And by the way, if part of your repertoire of an electronic touch is a newsletter, and I do make mine somewhat personal, a lot of work stuff in there, but personal too.
• 11:18
  I hear people say it all the time, oh, I'm so glad we're finally able to connect.
• 11:22
  I feel like I know you.
• 11:23
  How are the kids?
• 11:24
  How was football season?
• 11:25
  How was this?
• 11:26
  How was that?
• 11:27
  It makes for a super warm call.
• 11:29
  Folks want to sometimes get discouraged when we don't get immediate callbacks, but what we have to understand about our business.
• 11:37
  As much as our business is about service, it's also about timing.
• 11:41
  People usually will call us when they need us.
• 11:46
  Now they have to remember us.
• 11:47
  That's why we keep showing up so they become familiar and they remember, but it's a need-based.
• 11:52
  So oftentimes they don't call until they do need you, and that's absolutely okay.
• 11:58
  Nothing to be discouraged about with that.
• 12:01
  It's the nature of our business.
• 12:03
  What I am gonna do is my part though.
• 12:05
  I'm gonna keep showing up.
• 12:06
  Keep letting you know I'm here, so when and if you do need me, you know who I am.
• 12:12
  You're comfortable calling and we can decide, hey, does it make sense to work together now, that's the magic of our drip business development or marketing plan.