Latest / Recruiting Evolution / Industry Spotlight | Jeff Staats - Partner at Forest City Digital: The Future of Staffing: AI, Automation, and Authenticity
Transcript
- Jeff Staats [00:00:00]: And the biggest thing that I've always been taught, which is true, is time kills all deals. And so you can use automation, maybe for a two week check in after you have a meeting with them or a proposal is sent or an agreement. Let automation handle some of that with the classic is it over? Email. Do that. That's number one. Performing sales emails. When the subject line says, is it over? And so you can say, all right, you know what? I follow up for two weeks and then I'm done. Well, then, you know what? 30 days after that, do a check in. Jeff Staats [00:00:28]: Hey, don't know if this is still important. I just want to close my books. If not, and because I just see it. Kortney Harmon [00:00:34]: Hi, I'm Kortney Harmon, director of industry relations at Crelate. This is the industry spotlight, a series of the full desk experience, a curlate original podcast. In this series, we will talk with top leaders and influencers who are shaping the talent industry, shining a light on popular trends, the latest news, and the stories that laid the groundwork for their success. Welcome back to another episode of the full desk experience industry spotlight. Welcome to the full desk experience, where we're taking a deep dive into the world of sales, marketing and technology for your recruiting and staffing firms. I'm your host, Kortney Harmon, and today I'm super excited to be joined by Jeff Staats. He's the partner of Forest City Digital. I personally have known Jess for years, and I am super excited to have him on our show. Kortney Harmon [00:01:27]: Jeff, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, you've have an over a decade of experience working with staffing and recruiting firms, really trying to work with their sales, marketing, optimization, the whole nine yards. Am I wrong? Jeff Staats [00:01:38]: No, it's about there. It's just like anything in staffing. Like, if you're there for two years, you're there for about 20. So it's like dog years. So, like, yeah, it sounds good. It's good there. Kortney Harmon [00:01:49]: I love it. I love it. Dog years, then I better multiply my years then, at that rate. Thank you for joining us today. I'm really excited. I know you and I have had multiple conversations in the industry, previously worked together. Jeff Staats [00:02:02]: Yeah. Kortney Harmon [00:02:03]: Tell us about your journey. Kind of what you're doing now at four city digital and maybe how you got there. Jeff Staats [00:02:09]: So, yeah. So right now for city Digital, it actually is a cool story. So I also do, like, adjunct teaching, and I've been really big in the Cleveland community for marketing. And there's the whole thing around. There's no training in marketing, and so I always try to give back. And actually for city Digital was founded by my business partner who actually, I spoke to his class when he was at John Carroll about eleven years ago and he, super smart guy, loved marketing. He's like, I want to stay in touch with you. I want you to help me with my career. Jeff Staats [00:02:42]: And I'm like, yes, uh huh, whatever. Like you'll never talk to me. And sure as anything, like, he contacted me and we stayed in touch almost every six months. He went through his journey with e commerce and kind of doing it like with some big brands, Toyota, Sherwin Williams, doing a lot of that stuff. And then we would talk and I'd ask him how he was doing and I actually forced him to kind of do this. It was a side gig for about three, four years and I forced him to kind of go on in his own. And so he's like, well hey, if I may ever get big enough, I want you to come on and it'd be great. And I'm like, sure, uh huh, yeah. Jeff Staats [00:03:16]: And you have those conversations and it's, you're like wow. And so a little bit scary. You know, when you've got kids, you have to feed them legally and they have to go to school and all that stuff, so you got to deal with that. But yeah, it's, you know, we're a performance marketing shop. So really my thought was my whole expertise is strategy automation. And then I've worked in multiple industries, staffing being one of them. So for what Forest City can do, we focus on the e commerce side. But staffing is very much like e commerce in terms of how you should have those conversations, those processes, those flows. Jeff Staats [00:03:52]: So really just combining before Forest City and combining that experience, I was at Haley, chief marketing officer for Haley for a while and really built out the automation side, the fractional marketing side of things. Before that, you and I were best friends at the talent launch. And then I actually started my journey. I was a consultant and I ended up through a friend of a friend, got hooked up with Able, which is now bullhorn onboarding. And so I ended up going there and starting, they needed some help with lead Gen. So all of this staffing started with lead Gen, which is interesting that that's what we're going to talk about. But it started as, hey, I know a guy who is working with a guy who needs some help with lead Gen marketing. They're trying to drive more business with staffing firms. Jeff Staats [00:04:39]: You seem like a guy that knows what's going on and you know, automation, can you help? So yeah, it's kind of full circle, weird type of stuff, but that's really where I started, and I've been doing b two b marketing for so long. And so it was kind of a natural fit to add staffing firms and some of that into it. Kortney Harmon [00:04:56]: I love it. And we're lucky enough to be working with you in your firm right now through Crelate. So you're one of our partners. We're super excited with everything that you guys have been doing with us as well. So thank you for that. Jeff Staats [00:05:08]: Yeah, no problem. Kortney Harmon [00:05:09]: So obviously we're going to talk sales today. Lead gen. Jeff Staats [00:05:13]: Yes. Kortney Harmon [00:05:14]: Sales funnels look a little different with the rise of digital, with the rise of AI automations. And it's honestly a muscle that we haven't flexed in a long time because of COVID because things were coming through the door and people are realizing I'm behind the eight ball crap. So talk to me about how the evolution or the concept of the sales funnel has really evolved with the rise of digital marketing. Jeff Staats [00:05:38]: So the sales funnel, the true sales funnel method, or whatever you want to do, is really started as like started for the SaaS companies. So the software as a service companies. And the whole thought was you've got this top of funnel that goes to a middle funnel, that goes to a bottom of funnel. And so the bottom of funnel becomes the customers. So you may have a thousand people you're trying to target that are suspects. You're trying to bring those thousand people to maybe 200 qualified prospects. You're trying to make them really excited about you, to get down to maybe 50 sales prospects, like these guys are going to close or whatever. And then of that, maybe you close five of them, ten of them. Jeff Staats [00:06:18]: So that concept is very similar. It's a b, two b. Obviously, concept of it really started getting acceleration probably about, I'd say, like 25 years ago with the rise of automation and really focusing a lot on how do you accelerate touch points, how do you get people down the funnel faster? And software companies use that. It didn't really get into professional services until probably about ten years ago. And so the whole professional services, everything like that, staffing, being included is a people game, staffing. And it was funny, like at talent launch, we would try to translate some of the sales activities of the donut drop off and the tchotchke drop off and the sell sheet drop off. That was sales funnel. I'm going to drop all these things off to prospects and then hopefully somebody calls me up with a job order. Jeff Staats [00:07:08]: Well, now that you've got digital and you've got automation. And really it's still new. And staffing, the concept of the sales funnel has really only been around for about three years and at least in how we're selling it. And it's, ironically enough, is because of COVID And so now sales has been the focus for the last, what, two, three years? Something like that. And as we were talking to staffing firms and working with them, it was kind of a common phrase that they almost had to relearn sales again. And how do we do this? Like, holy cow, people would come to us with job orders. They would come to us with job orders. Now we have to actually go and, and prospect. Jeff Staats [00:07:48]: And it's hard. And so because of that, because it's hard, you have to learn it. And staffing, I firmly believe, I don't know if anybody else believes it, but I firmly believe is a timing game. You're not going to hire people every day. I mean, some companies do especially like manufacturing companies and stuff, maybe that happens, but for the majority of it, you don't know when you're going to hire somebody because you don't know when they're going to leave. And so you've got to stay in front of them and stay top of mind a ton and the usual method of drop offs and all this other stuff, it's hard to predict that timing. So enter sales funnel. And it's funny, I did a whole, like, I was with Dan Maury for the NISA, I think it was NISA event or whatever, and we walked the staffing firms through the sales funnel from like your ideal customer profile to all these pieces, parts of the sales funnel. Jeff Staats [00:08:38]: And it was a mixed reaction of I love it and holy crap, was that hard. And it took me forever to figure this out. And we didn't even do the technology, the automation side. And how do we have a human digital sort of handoff and what does that look like? But just the concept of preparing was difficult. That's why a lot of staffing firms don't do it, because speed is part of it. But I think sales funneling with digital, it can make it so much easier. And you're seeing automation. I mean, it's making its way through staffing firms. Jeff Staats [00:09:09]: I mean, there's probably, there's got to be, I think the last time I heard, and this was probably about six months ago or something like that, I think there was a couple thousand staffing firms that are using automation now. So I mean, there's got to be three, four, something like that by now. Kortney Harmon [00:09:25]: Yeah, absolutely. I agree. You mentioned with Dan Maury and you sat down and you did this hands on. Why do you think that was so difficult for staffing firms? I know that's not a way that they've thought about how to get their brain to work around that. But when I've trained people over the last 15 years, that's really a struggle. We're so used in ingrained to just picking up the phone and calling. But if we're not calling the right people and we're not doing the right activities to the right people, we're speaking to the wrong audience. And that's really a muscle that we've seen over the years that not a lot of people are great at. Jeff Staats [00:09:57]: Right. Well, I think there's two reasons why. I think, number one, I think it's hard to step off of a moving thing and that's kind of that working on the business thing. This is working on the business. And I get, unless you're going to a conference or you've got a half day or whatever, and which I really honestly suggest, and I just did an audit, an automation audit for a staffing firm and it was all around workflows and it was in HubSpot and what they were doing. And I said, guys, you just need to do a whiteboarding session. You just need to do a whiteboarding session for a half day and just get everything that you want. Because sales is saying they want to do something, marketing saying they want to do something. Jeff Staats [00:10:37]: The business is dictating this. And to your point, the easiest way is, well, I'm just going to call a bunch of people and see what happens. And it's like, well, maybe take the impulsive app that you're going to do and mix it with some methodical touch points of like, because you're going to call. So you're going to have to introduce your staffing firm, you're going to have to introduce the pain point. You're going to have to introduce you, you're going to have to introduce what you do. And so let automation and marketing do some of that stuff because then you call and you're like, hey, sent you a couple emails. That's the first step of that. But it's hard to stop your business to work on the business. Kortney Harmon [00:11:12]: No, I agree with you. You kind of talked about stepping off that moving train. Talk to me about some other common mistakes that you see staffing firms making when it comes to their lead gen efforts overall. Jeff Staats [00:11:24]: So I think there's a couple of things, I think with taking the time, number one is what we talked about, taking the time to understand the audience and then to understand the pain points. And this could turn into a matrix. Like there's all these ways. Like it's not just manufacturing firms, it could be HR, the CFO, the COO, a hiring manager that has a common title or whatever. Like you could do a bunch of those different sales funnels, but you don't know until you kind of do all of this. So that's usually like a good mistake. The second one, I think is doing these lead gen efforts is a mixture of things. It's a mixture of automation, which is automated emails. Jeff Staats [00:12:06]: I wouldn't suggest texting. I think that's a little bit intrusive on the b two B side, but it's automated emails mixed with maybe a LinkedIn request, mixed with maybe a phone call or a voicemail drop or something like that, back to an email. So there's whole methodical step process. And Tom erb has that ten week process that he does, which is an example, because I just know a lot of staffing firms that do that and there's other ones that do all the different types of things. But the whole point of that is it's multiple touch points, multiple tactics. The biggest issue is when you don't follow that process. That is honestly, when you look at failure in conversion rates, a lot of it is just, hey, I tried to and I'm done, I'm good. And emails alone aren't going to do anything. Jeff Staats [00:12:51]: They're not going to pick up the phone because like, oh my God, you sent me the best email in the world. It was awesome. They're not doing that. So that's another one. And I think from how the company's presented, I think that the novel email is like, don't have 55 paragraphs. I call it like menu marketing. Don't talk about you and your email. That's another reason why lead Gen doesn't work, is like, we're awesome because of this and we do this and here's our clients, and there's a time and a place for some of that, but you want to talk about them. Jeff Staats [00:13:23]: Who's your audience? What are their issues? How are they currently solving it now? How can they solve it better with you? And then the sense of urgency play in there. A lot of them do menu marketing. This is who we are. Here's our sell sheet. We work with these types of firms and nobody cares. Just don't care. Kortney Harmon [00:13:42]: Well, first off, I'm going to say we're going to put the touch plan strategy in the show notes. We have one, it's twelve touch points, same kind of concept. So I'm going to, we're going to put that in the show notes. I love that. Jeff Staats [00:13:51]: Do it. Kortney Harmon [00:13:52]: But number two is I can't tell you even from the times that we work together and beyond and way before, people are like, well, my value prop is we've been in business for 25 years. I'm like, no one cares that you've been in business for 25 years. You're only talking about you. Is it about you or is it about them? So I love that you said that and it's definitely something that I've seen as well. Okay, you talked automation. Let's get into it. I know that's your bread and butter. Talk to me about what role automation plays when it comes to lead gen for recruiting companies and what that looks like. Jeff Staats [00:14:26]: So I think automation can play a lot of great roles both in the marketing side of the funnel and the sales side of the funnel. I think when you're talking prospecting, that's getting the job order. So like that's not getting the second job order third. But if we just talk about from suspect to getting a job order, it's a touchpoint game. And so again, typically what happens in sales is that people are feeding the top of the funnel. And so you get your list of 25 companies you want to call, 50 companies, 75, whatever it is. You make a call, you make an email, you wait a week, maybe that's sometimes that's a cluster in terms of your follow up process because life gets in the way, business gets in the way. So you're trying to follow up, you're trying to follow up, you do a couple follow ups and you're like, all right, nobody answered, nobody responded my email, I'm done. Jeff Staats [00:15:15]: And then you go back to the top of funnel. Well, the problem is maybe that was three touch points and you gave up. You need, I mean, from what I've read, 15 to 17 touch points are the thing to get a prospect to basically convert. Convert. Could be respond to an email, get a meeting, have a Zoom meeting, whatever that is. You need something. So because you need all those touch points and because top of funnel seems to be the focus, let automation do some of that welcome series type stuff. Let automation introduce. Jeff Staats [00:15:48]: And so I always say, you know what, use automation. Don't just grab somebody from Zoom info or Daxter or Apollo or seamless or wherever, put them into your funnel and then call them right away, put them into a warming welcome series. Let automation run through, figure out who's engaging, then make those phone calls. The other side that I see automation doing a lot of good is after your initial sales process. So maybe that's ten touch points, 1215 whatever. Maybe it's three because you tap out and you're like, screw it, I'm done. I don't even want to follow the process anymore. Put them into an ongoing, this is the one that I see work the best right now. Jeff Staats [00:16:25]: For prospects, it's like a passive prospect. Put them in something into basically a one year plan, or once a month you're sending them a short email. It can be from whomever, it can be from your CEO, from the VP, from yourself that just stays in touch with them and let them know, hey, you know what, it doesn't seem like now is the right time. Totally understand. We know staffing is a timing game, but I'm going to stay in front of you periodically just to give you great information, give you good articles, tell you more about us, whatever. Make those emails three sentences. Point them to a blog post, point them here. But it's all about staying top of mind. Jeff Staats [00:17:00]: And obviously you're not doing that manually because you don't have time and you're not going to remember. So that's another part of it. The last part of it is when they're in the sales funnel, you talk to them, you have a client meeting, you do something. Inevitably what happens is they get maybe to an agreement or proposal, whatever you use to deem that they are ready to roll. Sometimes it's agreements, sometimes it's not. But you have a meeting with them and then you follow up with them and then you forget. And so every time I look in a deal structure, there's deals that are seven, eight months old. And the biggest thing that I've always been taught, which is true, is time kills all deals. Jeff Staats [00:17:36]: And so you can use automation, maybe for a two week check in after you have a meeting with them or a proposal is sent or an agreement. Let automation handle some of that with the classic is it over? Email, do that. That's the number one performing sales. Email is when the subject line says is it over? And so you can say, all right, you know what, I follow up for two weeks and then I'm done. Well then you know what, 30 days after that, do a check in. Hey, don't know if this is still important. I just want to close my books, if not, and because I just see it so those are the three ways that I would use automation. Kortney Harmon [00:18:08]: I love it. And you just kind of gave us some tips and tricks. I'm going to pull your brain a little bit more. You said that title line of that email. Any other effective things like, okay, the message from the CEO, but any other effective things that you've seen firms do that have worked when it comes to lead Gen, whether it's a title of an email, a structure of an automation, anything. Jeff Staats [00:18:29]: So I have a client that crushes it. He's super smart. It recruiting firm does a lot of cybersecurity stuff as well. So obviously that's hot and there's a lot of people there. But what he does is he actually does loom videos and he'll do, sometimes he'll do generic ones, a lot of times what he does, and this is actually, so this is kind of legion in a way, but like if he's working with a client and he has an MSA with them or some sort of agreement with them, but he wants to get into other departments, he does basically a video that explains who he is, why he's talking to them. And video email is, I mean, it is something that does get response. It gets better responses than normal text because people don't want to read, they're lazy, they want to see people. It's a people business. Kortney Harmon [00:19:17]: Yeah. Jeff Staats [00:19:18]: So video in sales, emails, one or two of them that it's great, you can tie to a landing page or whatever you want to do. The second thing that I've seen work real well is they call it like mobile email. So to my point around, like, don't make it a novel in your email, what I've seen perform really well, and this is kind of the trend is that people are reading their email on their phone. So keep it to three sentences. And what they say is, why, what and when? And so why are you contacting me? Or why is there a pain point or whatever? What are you offering? And then the when is kind of that CTA. So it's like the sense of urgency. You want me to schedule a meeting, you want me to call you, you want something. And so we do a lot of that. Jeff Staats [00:20:00]: When we do just kind of like passive prospect because people are reading on their phone, they're in a meeting, and they're like, who is this guy? Why is he sending me this email? And it's simple. It's not this laundry list of things with paragraphs and bullets and all this stuff. It's a simple email that gets to the point it needs to be aggressive. So whether it's a data point or something like that, but it gets there and it gets the attention. Kortney Harmon [00:20:24]: I love that. I'm going to combine your last two things because even whenever Covid initially started, I was having training and I was working with people to try to get leads. And I love the loom video. I love that. But also, if you're already putting the effort into social and if you're connected with the person, send them a LinkedIn video. Oh, yeah. That was what was getting the most traction on my end whenever we were teaching. Jeff Staats [00:20:46]: Yep. Kortney Harmon [00:20:47]: Because again, whenever you sit down at night, you put the kids down, you have a minute to relax, you check this bad boy out. Unless you're me and shut it in the car door for five days. Jeff Staats [00:20:56]: Yeah, that's not good. Wouldn't recommend that one. Kortney Harmon [00:21:01]: No, no. It's the way that you're able to get in touch with the people off hours when they're not crazy, they're not busy. I love that. Jeff Staats [00:21:08]: Well, it's to your point around, it's all, it's marketing 101 for my training is like, be where your customer's at. And so if your customer is always on LinkedIn, well then be there. And not just be there as like I'm going to send a stupid post or do something or chat GPT a post or something. Like, it's like, you know what? I'm going to actually be authentic and send you a video and tell you about me, tell you why you want to talk to me. And I think authenticity is probably one of the most key things in general with social and all that. But I think in lead Gen, having the tone and the personality and aligning the messaging to that person's tone, which that's a great use for. Aih is when AI could learn your voice and then say, all right, based on my voice and what I've written, put out emails that would be from me to my prospect or whatever. And so it's using some of those keys because I think they're going to smell the marketing email. Jeff Staats [00:22:04]: They're going to be like, what is this? Or like, I hope this email finds you. Well, I still see the issues with that one. Like, I'm like, guys, come on, man, delete that before you go. But yeah, I. It's just authenticity. Kortney Harmon [00:22:16]: Yeah, I love it. All right. From my training perspective, there's a lot of leaders that run teams that are listening to this and metrics is their key. Right? Jeff Staats [00:22:29]: Yep. Kortney Harmon [00:22:29]: I personally, it's like a love to hate relationship that the KPI hamster wheel, we have the do more mentality. So what metrics should recruiting leaders be tracking to measure the success of their lead gen efforts? Jeff Staats [00:22:42]: So you start back at the result of the result and that's job order. So like how many, it's marketing attribution. What did marketing do to drive that job order? Or you look at the job orders you get, you say, where was marketing in the process? It's probably not super easy or scientific because I know there's a lot of things that happen throughout that time, especially when, you know, if you don't have a real good relationship with sales or like it's kind of this, especially around like qualified leads, you may not get the attribution you need. The ultimate goal is that job wreck and the value of that job order or that job rec after that, it's how many get down to actual proposal. And so those are the other things is like what are those things and how many of my marketing. So you bring a bunch of contacts in that you put this whole marketing series together, you drive them to be a sales qualified lead and then they actually take it to proposal. I would say, hey, you know what? That marketing worked. Got them from a marketing qualified lead to a sales qualified lead and then it got them into proposal. Jeff Staats [00:23:44]: There's some conversion rates around that I don't like to look at vanity, the click rates and the open rates. Meeting schedule is fine, but I know a lot of people aren't going to schedule a meeting. It's not like SAS where it's like they're scheduling meetings right away and they're clicking and doing all that. I mean, some of them still, especially smaller owners that are looking at staffing services, they still want to talk. They still want to be like, hey, yeah, you know what, I am looking for this person. Like what can you do for me? They're not going to sit there and schedule a meeting and then get on a Zoom call. I mean it's not going to work. So open and click. Jeff Staats [00:24:17]: Plus there's a lot of bot clicks. There's a lot of bot opens that happen. That's hard to figure out. So if you got nothing else opens and clicks are good directional things, are you getting the open rates? Are they getting delivered? So a lot of times on email, are they even getting delivered? Are they passing through firewalls or whatever? That's sort of the vanity side. But the quicker and the more aggressive you are with aligning with sales to say, hey, we got to get them down to a qualified lead that I can pass off to you. That's the value of marketing. So that's what I would look at in this whole thing. And then obviously, when they're in the sales funnel and they get down, okay, fair. Kortney Harmon [00:24:54]: That's good advice and direction for people that are trying to think through this. The term AI is second nature right now. Jeff Staats [00:25:02]: Oh, yeah. Kortney Harmon [00:25:03]: Has AI created any innovative lead gen techniques that you seen working well in our industry? Jeff Staats [00:25:11]: So I think AI, and I'll just give you the marketing side of this. I mean, I think AI is great for ideation. AI is great for give me from a lead gen perspective, you can use it to say, okay, send this email or analyze this reply. And how should I respond? That's a great way. So it's that sales kind of sales, marketing focus, whatever. I think AI, the way that I would use it, and I think you see a lot of this in some of the software platforms, is that tone and personality change. So I used to do this manually where I would do a generational email. So Gen X, what motivates Gen X is different than what motivates millennials, which is different than what motivates Gen Z and baby boomers. Jeff Staats [00:25:57]: Baby boomers trust. Gen X is data. Millennial is, I'd say, probably what other people are doing. It's more that referral kind of group. And then Gen Z is really the cultural, do I align, do my values align with this company? So you can use all of those things in your emails, and AI can generate that quickly. So you say, hey, here's just a general marketing I spoke about, like the stupid marketing language. And sometimes we get marketing eased if we're talking to this person as part of my customer profile. They are 35 to 45 years old. Jeff Staats [00:26:30]: You can align your messaging using AI. Of course you want to tweak it, but it is what it is around that, because you don't want to just send it out there. But there's a world of possibilities with using AI for the right way. And I think a lot of it is just even tweaking a whole touchpoint plan. You can basically, it can be your BDR to say, hey, I sent this out. I didn't get the responses I need. How would you change it if I'm trying to go after this type of customer? And you'd be amazed at, like, just the tweaks of the emails and the voicemails and all that stuff. Powerful. Kortney Harmon [00:27:04]: No, I think you're absolutely right. I don't know if Katie's going to yell at me if I talk about this at all or not. We're launching AI in September. We've been very diligent on the back end. But I think between what you're focusing on in automation and being able to have AI built into a platform like ours is built in, it's able to say, well, Jeff, you haven't talked to this person in a long time. They've been at a job, you haven't celebrated their birthday, or it's giving you ideas to help you stay top of mind with them. I think the term that we're using is real recruiter intelligence, but it's in your data, in your system, but it's learning the way you speak. I'm with you. Kortney Harmon [00:27:41]: I use it for tonality. If you ask my husband, I'm not a funny person, I'm too type a. So I will ask it to change my tonality. On a lot of times I'll be like, hey, this is what I want to say, but put it in a professional, witty tone because that doesn't come natural to me. So there's a lot of ways to use that to open up those conversations. Much easier than what you're doing that's taking you much longer to do than what it would take you to do. Jeff Staats [00:28:06]: I mean, I don't write good. So, like, I am terrible writer. I've always been a terrible writer, and also I'm full of ideas. So halfway through the email I'm trying to write, I'm focused on 700 other things, and I never finish it. Then it turns out like crap. And like, what's so crazy is when I was consulting, it was what, maybe almost ten years ago, something like that. I was a marketing consultant, so I was the execution arm because I was a one person shop. So trying to write blog posts, trying to write emails, trying to write social media posts for me, I would stare at that blank page and it would take me 5 hours to get started. Jeff Staats [00:28:44]: Now. I mean, AI is my best friend because I'm like, hey, this is what I'm trying to say. This is what I want to do. This is my sense of urgency. Prompting is obviously the most important. This is what I want to do. Send an email. And it is amazing because it's kind of that person, you know what you don't want by seeing it, and then you know what you do want by seeing what you don't want. Jeff Staats [00:29:05]: And so, like, that whole process, I can write a great email series in like an hour based off of the right prompts, where it would take me 10 hours and potentially one or two beers. Because I'm like, I just need some sort of, like, idea. Like, oh, my headache. You're doing it at night because you're like, I'm done. I'm done. I'm going to do some other work. And so it's just, it's amazing how it accelerates the process. Kortney Harmon [00:29:27]: Yeah, well, they pay me to speak, not to write, so hallelujah. I have to. It's my proofreader every day, so I. Jeff Staats [00:29:34]: Don'T speak good either. So you win. Kortney Harmon [00:29:37]: You talked previously, you talked sales teams, and you talk marketing teams. Jeff Staats [00:29:42]: Yep. Kortney Harmon [00:29:43]: Staffing firms. Sometimes, you know, we lack alignment. So talk to me how those firms can better align their marketing and sales teams for more effective lead gen, because there's sometimes some disparity between those two teams. Jeff Staats [00:29:56]: Yeah, I think that's the biggest issue. I mean, I think I talked in a previous, I don't even know what it was, podcast or webinar or something about handoff. The ultimate goal here with marketing and sales is that, and I mean, you played softball, so it's the, you pitch it, you knock it out of the park, and that's what you want is the marketing is teeing up great leads where sales is like, yup, wow, that's a good lead. Yeah, there's always going to be some duds in there, but, like, that's what you want. That only happens when you really come together prior to the lead gen campaign even being written. And it's about setting expectations, and it's like, hey, sales team, what do you need? What's your example of a lead? And this is another stepping off a moving train or whatever, where it's like, I got to take an hour to talk about, okay, what are the types of leads you need? Who are the people? What do you want to know? Just do all of that. Being a marketer, we fail at that. I've done it early in my career. Jeff Staats [00:30:54]: I know a lot of marketers that do it where we just kind of do a marketing campaign based off of what we think and based off of the type of lead we think sales wants. And it ultimately is a dumpster fire. When we send 100 leads and they're like, actually 98 of these were junk. Two of them aren't even in this, not even close to what we need. And so it's about building trust. Sales doesn't want to waste time on crappy leads. Marketing cannot just serve up. It's not a quantity game. Jeff Staats [00:31:21]: So somehow you've got to come to an alignment through expectations, through strategy and building, through even having sales being a part of the email process and being a part, like, take a look at the emails I'm sending. Take a look at what we're talking about. Take a look. I always ask sales, what are the three reasons why you win a sale? What are the three reasons why you lose a sale? Those are emails. What do you say that you always win? Or what are the objections that, like, no, it's not going to work. Come up front with those. And it's just being smart as a marketer because you're probably going to be quarterbacking this a lot, is just being smart as a marketer to say, all right, let's get together. This is what we're trying to do. Jeff Staats [00:32:00]: Let's agree on metrics, agree on messaging, agree on goals, agree on handoff. When do we hand the lead off to you? And as long as you do that, you can't fault anything. If it stinks, if the campaign stinks, then, like, I mean, there's nothing you can do. Kortney Harmon [00:32:16]: Yeah. Jeff Staats [00:32:17]: So it's just about talking and then doing the post mortem afterwards. Like, okay, we sent this out. You know, what, did it work? Did it not, what do we need to do better? Or what do we need to expand if it did work? Kortney Harmon [00:32:27]: And take that conversation open and honest to say, it's not a fault, but how do we make it better? Come up with a solution. Jeff Staats [00:32:34]: Right? Kortney Harmon [00:32:34]: Love it. Jeff Staats [00:32:35]: I'll tell you, marketers tend to be really fearful of sales when it comes to, like, getting the feedback. I mean, you know, sales is going to yell at me, you gotta have a thick skin. I mean, it's probably my old age coming out, but like, I mean, just tell me, what didn't you like? Honestly, I don't care. We're gonna fix it and we're gonna send it back out. Kortney Harmon [00:32:53]: I love it. We had a live podcast yesterday, prompted a question in my head. Jeff Staats [00:32:57]: Sure. Kortney Harmon [00:32:58]: When it comes to different types of staffing, recruiting. Right. How do we approach lead gen differently for temporary staffing than we do for executive search? Any thoughts? Jeff Staats [00:33:10]: I think it's a lot in so, temporary staffing, I think it's a numbers game, it's a touchpoint game. I shouldn't say numbers game, but it's a touch point game with temporary staffing, with talking to companies who may or may not use staffing services. I think a lot of it is around the fear of productivity loss liabilities, like always needing to have good people. And a lot of it is just filling the role. So you don't lose productivity. So I think the marketing is really around that. Whether it's the CFO, the HR person, the CEO, whatever. I think in executive recruiting it is about finding the right talent, the culture fit. Jeff Staats [00:33:50]: Not that that's not important in the light industrial type of temp staffing way, but I think it's just around like if you're doing executive recruiting, you're about finding a, a rock star, you're about finding somebody who wants to better their career. It's more about that. It's funny, I see this in some lead gen campaigns is they're talking about basically working with companies that give people a better life. And I've got great people here that are looking for their dream job. Well a lot of times those aren't dream jobs. They're looking for $0.50 more. Let's get it what it is. You don't want to lose productivity because you don't have enough people on the line. Jeff Staats [00:34:30]: So talk about those things. Executive recruitment is about how do you go farther. You've got somebody at the C level or VP level or whatever and it's about man and you almost have to do a little bit more understanding. Plus the volume is lower because you're not hiring your hope you're not hiring an executive level person every twelve months. It's really about hey, if you ever need somebody who's a rock star, if you ever need somebody that could transform your organization like this is why we're here. And so it's a more of a personalized touch one to one type of thing versus more high volume kind of filling the holes or filling the gaps. Kortney Harmon [00:35:05]: Yeah. A body versus hey, go back to NPC and I know it's oldest time but you're showing the types of people you have access to and that speaks volumes more than hey, you need a really good person. Like let me show you who I actually have and who I work with today. Jeff Staats [00:35:20]: Best performing email sales. Email right now is MPC skill marketing. Yep, I've seen it with I've got a number of clients doing skill marketing. Best performing from a conversion rate perspective. Meaning like oh you have those, those three, I'd love to talk to one of them. Kortney Harmon [00:35:35]: Yeah. Jeff Staats [00:35:36]: And it's funny because it kind of died for a little bit. Kortney Harmon [00:35:38]: It did. Jeff Staats [00:35:38]: That wasn't as important. And you're seeing the tide turn from sales into a little bit of recruitment marketing and some things there. And I mean it's going to take some time till the rates go down probably and some other things but best performing is skill marketing emails right now. Kortney Harmon [00:35:52]: I love it. That makes my heart happy because that's like, one of my favorite things to do. I got two more questions for you. Jeff Staats [00:35:57]: Sure. Kortney Harmon [00:35:58]: Common bottlenecks in sales funnels for staffing and recruiting firms and how can they be addressed? Jeff Staats [00:36:04]: So the most common one is starting and how can they be addressed? Start. So that's usually like, I mean, that's a lot of work. I don't want to do this. Like, this sucks. So in building sales funnels or like a legion campaign, it doesn't have to be the nerdy sales funnel name, but in putting a lead gen campaign together, starting is the biggest bottleneck. I don't know where to start, how to start, what to do. So sometimes you don't have the right marketing person. Sales doesn't have time, whatever. Jeff Staats [00:36:33]: Usually what I see the most, I mean, and that was funny, but honestly, real. The biggest bottleneck, I think, is in the process around approvals and it's approving the list or approving the emails. Like, if you're doing the right things as a marketer, I mean, I don't know if this is the right, is it the right message? Like, I want to have sales kind of sign off on this, and a lot of times there's a bottleneck around just launching the campaign. So it's like, is the list right? Are you good with the process? Are you good with the follow ups? And so the bottleneck tended. Like, you never launch a campaign because of it. I mean, that's the result of that. How do you overcome it? I mean, as a marketer, because I'm probably doing these campaigns and driving this is, I got to be more vocal. I got to have expiration dates. Jeff Staats [00:37:22]: I got to have deadlines. I got to quarterback the process because otherwise it won't launch. And my big thing is, hey, you know what? And I've done this with salespeople. Like, if we don't want to do a campaign or I need to do a one to one type of thing with a salesperson, I say, I'm going to give you, this is going to be a win win for you. I'm going to put the campaign out and it's going to stink, and you're going to blame me, and you get to blame me for that. And so that's cool, right? Because you get to blame me. So you win. I put the campaign out, it works, and you make a lot of money, so you win. Jeff Staats [00:37:53]: So, like, this is a win win. So let's just do this and get it out there and see what happens. Kortney Harmon [00:37:59]: Just take the step forward. Jeff Staats [00:38:00]: What's that? Launch. I do that meme sometimes, or that Jif. Gif. Whatever you say. Like, it's that launch button. Just get it into the market, man. Like, just get it into the market. Kortney Harmon [00:38:11]: You're now officially showing your age. Whenever you're like, gif, Jif. What? Jeff Staats [00:38:14]: Yeah. I don't even know what it means. I don't know. I don't have instagram, so I don't even know, like, no way. I'm the get off the lawn guy. Kortney Harmon [00:38:23]: Oh, you're so funny. All right, last question. Sure. Looking ahead, what trends do you see shaping the future of Legion in the staffing and recruiting industry specifically? Jeff Staats [00:38:33]: I think there's going to be a so for years, like, what, seven years in a row of the year of automation and now we're like four years in a row of the year of AI. So I think there's still room to grow. Staffing is notoriously behind 1015 years. So I think there's going to be room to grow in automation. There's room to grow in AI. I think that's kind of a given. I think from a lead gen perspective and how this is done, I think you're going to see video email be more prevalent. I also think you're going to see. Jeff Staats [00:39:04]: I think it's probably texting. I really feel like. I hate it, but I feel like so many salespeople are asking about it, and when they ask about it, they know it's wrong, they know it's not good, but they're like, I mean, have you seen others do texting? And texting has a 98% conversion rate versus email, especially cold email has a 10% conversion rate. So, like, you can't argue with it. But are you cold texting a COO about their staffing services or their workforce services? Like, probably not, but I see more people asking about it and I feel like there's that immediate gratification. That's the whole point of it, and that's the age we're in right now, is we want immediate gratification. So I want to text you. I want you to tell me either to pound salt or I want to talk to you, and I want to know right now. Jeff Staats [00:39:55]: So I think you're going to see it. Kortney Harmon [00:39:57]: And, you know, that person's real, too. I think what we're seeing with AI, I don't know about you. I opened my email and as you know, I live in a very, very small town, but someone will tell me, oh, my parents met in Bolivar at this restaurant that doesn't exist. And, oh, it's all of this fictitious story that it's makeup and the people are sending because they don't know any validation. You don't know if those people are real anymore. But this thing, this immediate gratification thing and video, you're like, okay, I get a feel for who they are, what they are, how I can relate to them. So I think authenticity is true. Jeff Staats [00:40:30]: Did you see the AI? So, like, if you look, and I don't know, I'm fascinated by it, but the AI, that changes your face, like how, you know, you do those personal video outreaches. Kortney Harmon [00:40:40]: Yeah. Jeff Staats [00:40:40]: And so the AI, you record your voice, so it gets your voice sound, but then they do something like you move your head or something like that, and it changes the name of the person you're talking to, to your prospect list. So when I was at able, we would do video email, and we had our sales guy. Basically we did 25 and he recorded like, hi, John, hi, Steve, hi, Sally. But the rest was the same. But you had. That was time. And so you inevitably would do it different every time. You'd say hi, or you'd go, hi, or you'd go, hi. Jeff Staats [00:41:12]: But, like, there's AI software that basically you can put a list of 1000 people in and do a personalized video that says their name. And then you could also like, say to your point, like, hey, I saw is your dad, Mark Harmon? He's always there. Kortney Harmon [00:41:29]: Wow. Jeff Staats [00:41:30]: I think AI from that point of view and replicating an actual person is the scary future that I don't even want to talk about. Because honestly, like, you could have a conversation with somebody and it's not even them. Kortney Harmon [00:41:44]: You don't even know. Jeff Staats [00:41:45]: Crazy. Kortney Harmon [00:41:46]: Oh, that gives my heart palpitations. Jeff Staats [00:41:48]: Okay, Terminator two, Skynet. It's coming. Kortney Harmon [00:41:53]: All right, so for those of our listeners that are listening to, say, all right, Jeff's full of information, I need to work with him. What are the things that you work most with people with? So what are people reaching out to you about? What do you work with? Whenever we're talking staffing and recruiting industry so they know how and when to reach out to you. We'll put your information in the show notes. Jeff Staats [00:42:12]: Yeah, that's cool. No, I mean, honestly, it's what I talked about. I mean, usually it's around sales. Even if this changes to a candidate driven market, sales, it would behoove you to, like, still do some sales stuff. So, like, I usually work on lead gen campaigns, I work on, I mean, I work in all the automation platforms. So even like client campaigns, automation, former clients win backs, basically full cycle of that. Also on the candidate side as well. So the candidate lifecycle, but usually automation and how to use automation, AI and automation and then doing just typical outreach campaigns, marketing campaigns. Jeff Staats [00:42:46]: I mean, that's typically what I do. And I also really love doing marketing strategies and really getting everybody on the right page between sales and marketing and just because those cohesive campaigns are so much better. So usually those are things that I'm working with staffing and recruiting firms on and just getting things out into the market, pressing the launch button because you can't benchmark unless it's out in the market. Kortney Harmon [00:43:09]: I love it. Thank you for your insights and your brain. There was a lot of information for our listeners and we'll put your information in the show notes and we'll be able to share all of your information with the world. So thank you very much, Jeff. I appreciate your time. Jeff Staats [00:43:21]: Thank you, Kortney. Appreciate it. Thanks, guys. Kortney Harmon [00:43:26]: I'm Kortney Harmon with Crelate. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Industry Spotlight, a new series from the full desk experience. New episodes will be dropping monthly. Be sure you're subscribed to our podcast so you can catch the next industry spotlight episode and all episodes of the full desk experience here or wherever you listen.