Track Your Recruiting Efforts For Better Results
The Hit or Miss Approach To Recruiting
It’s easy to use a hit-and-miss approach when you begin working to build your direct sales team. But knowing what works and what doesn’t work when recruiting new consultants will get you better results. Tracking your recruiting will help you focus on the most successful and profitable strategies for growing your business and adding recruits.
A lot of things happen when you track your direct sales recruiting efforts. To begin, tracking lets you see a realistic picture of how many prospecting conversations you have every week. It’s easy to say, “I talked to a lot of people about my business this week,” when in reality, you may have talked to a lot fewer than you think.
When you write down the details of your prospecting conversations you will see exactly how many people you spoke with, how many you planned to speak to, or how many you called that you never connected with. Now, you have a clear picture of what you intended to do versus what actually got done.
Tracking gives you a visual reminder of your accomplishments. You know when you create a to-do list and check off items done, you feel like you’ve accomplished more in a day. Tracking your recruiting results works the same way. You know exactly how much you’ve accomplished and whether or not it’s enough to help you reach your goals.
In addition, tracking is a tremendous tool to help ensure you follow up with every contact made. Relying on your memory can fail you, but having contacts listed with follow-up dates recorded in black and white will let you see at a glance who you need to follow-up with.
As to what kind of tracking system to use, go for something simple. A spreadsheet on the computer that lists the information you want to track will work just fine. If you prefer writing by hand, you can record the same information in a columnar pad or notebook. The system isn’t important. What’s important is that you use it consistently to track your contacts and the results of each call.
Basic information about your contacts you’ll want to record include:
1. Full name
2. Phone number
3. Email
4. Address (if available)
5. Date of contact
6. Their response
7. Follow up date
You may also want to record special observances like birthdays or anniversaries on the same list so you can send out greeting cards or make a phone call. This is always a good way to stay in touch with prospects as well as your recruits.
At the beginning of each week, or month, set a goal of how many recruits you would like to join your team for that period. If you figure you have to talk to ten people for every one who joins, and your goal is five new recruits every month, then you know you need to talk to at least fifty people each month to reach your goal. Your tracking system will help you focus so you can reach that number more easily.
Once you have your tracking system in place, use it religiously. Write down at least the name, phone number, and contact date of every single person you talk to about your business opportunity. And once they join your team, put a star beside their name to remind yourself how well your recruiting efforts are working.
Tracking your direct sales recruiting efforts can be as simple or complex as you make it.
But it’s important that you use some kind of system to ensure you’re contacting as many people as you need to meet your recruiting efforts. This is a concrete way to make sure you are doing everything you can do when recruiting to grow your business.
