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When a candidate or client decides to work with you, they understand exactly what you can do for them as opposed to someone else.
Important at this time of year when we have a major push towards making placements. So in today’s podcast, I am resharing a popular post of ours to help.
Let’s get going.
Let’s talk about: Features, advantages, and benefits.
You probably remember from your sales training when you first became a recruiter that you needed to profile your recruiting service and that it had a feature that could be linked to a benefit for a candidate or client, and that’s how you sold.
Well, let me tell you that this works as well today as it’s ever done, and it also works when it comes to your website copy and how you communicate all about you and your brand, which when you think about it is quite logical, because there’s a famous guy called Claude Hopkins, and you can download his report, it is here on the website on our blog, and it’s Scientific Advertising click the link, and you will be able to download to your hard drive with no email required 👍.
This is a classic work from years ago; Claude always mentions that writing content of any description is like being a salesman in print.
If you think about it, if you have a potential client in front of you or a potential candidate and you are selling your recruiting service to that person, then if you can outline the features, what it will mean for that person, the advantages of working with you and the benefits to them, you’re more likely to convert them.
Imagine if you did this in your website copy.
It’s fascinating that a lot of people forget to do that.
What they will do is they’ll talk all about their wonderful recruitment service. However, what they seem to forget to do is make the connection for people.
There’s a real gap here for you, and it will make a huge difference if you can answer the question that’s in your prospect’s head, and an easy way to do that is to explain what a feature of your service means for the individual concerned and what benefit that will give them.
Features
Using a very practical example, let me talk about how features and benefits work. Going back to your selling skill days, you will remember that a feature is basically a fact about your product. Very straightforward, so this car is a four-wheel-drive car, so that will be an example.
Advantages
The next thing is the advantage of your product for your customer, so the reasons that a customer or a prospect might buy your product or service. If you think about it, it’s the so what moment.
That’s what advantage is. Using a recruiting service saves you time and can probably save you a lot of money, so that’s where the advantage comes in.
Benefits
The next part is the benefit. What is the benefit for your potential prospect in using your service? Now, for those of you who are real scholars of sales and sales training, which both Sharon and I are, you will know that if you look at anything like Spin Selling or any of the major selling programmes, benefits are all about a specific need that a customer might have, so a particular need that your avatar might have.
For many of you listening to this, I’m sure the penny is dropping. The more targeted your avatar, the better you can make your copy and the more explicit you can make your copy that speaks to their particular needs.
Let me give you a practical experience of how this works, and I’ll talk about buying a car. We purchased a new car when I first shared this post.
We had some criteria for our car, certain features, and one of the things was we wanted a car with a large boot because though we live in Cumbria, lots of our friends and family live all over the country, so an advantage to us in having a large boot was that we could transport many items at once.
The very clever salesperson who sold us the car also asked us some other questions. Then through his skilful questioning, he managed to figure out the real benefit of having the large boot: the ability to have a boot large enough for a dog crate. Therefore the dog’s all nice and safe because we do a lot of travelling, and there’s still room to put suitcases, so that was the benefit.
Imagine if you knew as much about your avatar; what sort of copy could you write? It would make a huge difference because you are making the connexions for that individual concerned.
A question for you?
Are you making connections for your particular candidates and clients?
Let’s say you are a very experienced recruitment company in your particular sector.
You’re a specialist recruiter, so okay, you’re a specialist. What does that mean?
What is the advantage of that for your customers, candidates and clients?
There is so much you can share; “Well, because I’m a specialist in this market, I know where all the jobs are. I know the key people because I do my market mapping, and I could provide you with A, B, C, D, E.”
You can see the difference in sometimes saying what appears to be obvious to you, but it will not be obvious to your candidate and certainly won’t be obvious to your client.
Let’s say that you have a large database. What exactly does that mean?
Well, that would mean something, a real benefit for your clients or candidates. Let’s say it’s a large database, and the difference that can make is; therefore, you have a huge choice of people that you could provide for interview if you’ve already told them things about your recruitment agency or search consultancies that you’ve been around a long time, what a difference that might make for them.
It’s making those connections for them. You may well do this face-to-face with people, and the question is, are you doing it on your website?
How We Can Help
We have many clients who are on for their best quarter because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we provide.
Book your call and demonstration here if you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you.
Thanks,
Denise
P.S. If you want to join Superfast Circle and learn more, call us on 01524 920 700.
