Running a consistently successful recruitment team is not easy at the best of times. When it comes to running any business today, data is hailed as king (or queen).
However, it is not the data alone that’s important, but rather, the insights gained from it. These insights give us the ability to make smart decisions that have a positive impact on our people, processes and outcomes.
Ultimately, our goal is to enhance performance, increase productivity, and grow our bottom line. To achieve this, we must collect and present data in an understandable way.
People get buried in collecting lots of data from their website, CRM or telephone system. The problem is, they do not find a way for the individuals concerned to easily digest it all. This negatively impacts the visibility they were originally hoping for.
Spotting the Trends
The secret behind a successful business is understanding what works and what doesn’t; thus allowing the ‘Stop, Start, Continue’ approach to be applied.
Put simply, once we identify a behavioural pattern that has previously led to success, we can look to repeat this behaviour over and over again, routinely optimising for success.
We can also root out patterns which have not been working well and avoid repeating those in the future. For example, did you know that it takes double the number of calls to close a placement in December compared to the start of the year?
The question you may be asking is: “How do I identify these patterns?”
Looking at a dashboard of KPI’s is an excellent way to understand, at a glance, how you, your team, or your company are doing.
However, when it comes to analysing patterns and answering the deeper level questions, we’re often left amiss by simply looking at the surface level data in a standard CRM view.
Informed Behaviour
Which recruiter has the highest average billing amount? Who is producing the activity needed, early in the quarter, to deliver the outcomes? How do team members compare on key activity metrics that we know lead to sales (solid calls, demos, CV’s sent, etc.) Are clients getting the required care and touch points?
Often, we witness businesses who are lost in their data, using spreadsheets to try and attain periodic understanding and checkpoints.
It is stated that sales is a numbers game, but many in the industry drive activity for the sake of activity. The real focus should be on productivity, and encouraging the correct activities to drive the desired outcomes.
Statistics show that 80% of sales require five follow up calls, whereas in reality, 44% of salespeople throw in the towel after just one. The question is, how do you pinpoint whether your team are hitting the appropriate level of activity and whether those activities are really moving the needle?
The phrase, ‘I cannot see the wood for the trees’, has never been more true. Everyone talks about big data and its value, when in reality, it’s NOT big data that you want.
Clear and simple insights, from quality data, can inform smart decisions and informed action. Your first challenge is to drive consistent CRM data entry.
If data is not thoroughly populated, it will not provide accurate insight. Having a simple way to interpret your data and thus take the action required, is also paramount.
The Journey to Success
There are parallels between running a business and navigating a ship. You have a goal – to reach your destination. You know roughly how you’re going to get there – by crossing the ocean. But how will you plot a safe voyage? To do this, you need information such as weather reports and traffic routes; insights and updates that allow you to adjust accordingly throughout the journey.
Similarly, running a successful recruitment team is much like successfully navigating this ship. You know where you need to get to – your north star is revenue. You know roughly how you’re going to get there; in recruitment this is adding jobs to the system, sending CV’s and placing candidates. In a product business this may be adding new SQL’s (Sales Qualified Leads), removing whitespace via qualification calls and conducting a demo.
But how are you going to ensure a safe and predictable voyage that gets you to the destination on time?
It’s essential that you gain a deeper level of understanding than just your face value KPIs. For example, understanding which customer yields the highest return allows you to make informed decisions about where to direct the majority of your resource.
We’ve Got You Covered
At OneUp Sales we understand the desire to dig below those top-level KPI figures. With the aim of empowering successful sales teams, we’ve recently released new Analytics features to equip you with the answers you need. No more fumbling around in your CRM, we empower you to get insights fast and understand the patterns behind your numbers.
With Analytics, you’re able to:
- Explore your data graphically using Charts in a quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily format with quick clicks
- Break down your data into a table using Data Insights with powerful filtering and grouping capabilities in seconds
- Access any metrics pulled from your data source (CRM, VOIP etc).
- Choose exactly how you'd like to display it inside the Data Insights table.
All too often we hear stories of companies recreating the wheel over and over again - custom spreadsheets and fighting with their CRM and VOiP systems to extract the information that matters to them.
When it comes to managing a recruitment team, you shouldn’t have to be wasting your time with manual, laborious and time-consuming tasks such as this.
OneUp Sales makes this simple: set up a Data Insights view and gain ongoing, real-time insights, into how your team are performing against all key metrics.
Find out more about our platform's analytical capabilities, and the insights we gained into the recruitment industry over the last two years: The Hiring Hustle: Recruitment Productivity Roundup 2023
OneUp Sales - building high performance sales teams by increasing productivity, retaining talent, and empowering management across your organisation.
