Jan Jedlinski: Hello, everyone who is already here on the session. My name is Jan. I am the CEO and co-founder of Gustav. I'm extremely excited to have you all here today. This is the very first world staffing session. We essentially had a very large event early this year, which we call the World Staffing Summit.

It was a really great success. Everybody really loved it. And now we are essentially kicking off a weekly educational webinars, specifically dedicated for staffing professionals. And I'm really proud to have Hannah as the first sort of session presenter. She's a very in demand coach in the staffing industry.

So I'm very excited. Have her speak today and present. I'll give you a quick introduction to yourself before we get started. And also Weber is interested in learning more about our company and specifically about the new product that we are launching, which is essentially a client portal for staffing and recruiting companies.

Just go to the poll on the chats section and press. Yes, we'll be in touch later with you, or you can also visit the expo. Hannah has a sort of small booth there as well. So if you're interested in Henna Services you can also go in there and express interest to learn more. And, um, yeah, with that, I'll leave you here hand over to Hannah and, uh, I'll be back at the end of the session and I'll meet everybody else afterwards at the networking areas.

So please feel free to go on the left-hand side of your screen. You will see networking. So after Henna session, head over there, so you can stay on and network with all the attendees that are today. Uh, here. Thank you so much for being here and now I'm handing over to Hannah and I'll leave the stage.

Henna Pryor: Awesome. Awesome. Well, welcome everyone. I love the number of people on here and I'm so honored, honored to be the first speaker in this series. I promise you we're going to have a fun action packed hour. I am new to this particular platform as some of you might be. So if I'm fumbling at all, technically I just ask your forgiveness.

Just give me a minute. I'm figuring it out, along with everyone else. I love also just where everyone in the world is. I think this is super cool that we've got people not only in my home country of the US but I saw some other countries as well, so welcome. No matter what time it is and where you're coming in from, I am dropping something into the chat.

It is a document. You don't need it, but it's a workbook for the session today. So if you are fortunate enough to have a printer nearby and you want to just quickly. Shoot that off. Take notes in there. Feel free. Otherwise just feel free to open a fresh Google doc or grab a piece of paper. But I do want to encourage you to take notes.

This is not a just learning, listening type of training. This is an action taking. I want you to do things afterwards type of training. So please do have some means of writing things down, taking notes, cataloging. Hopefully you're gonna learn a few new things today and we're going to go ahead and get started.

So welcome. Welcome. I love that we've got people, you know, with two years of experience and 40 years of experience, and I hope that you all learn something. Some, some K force alum too. I love it. I love it. So let me share my screen properly here. I'm sort of doing it, but let me do it in the the full screen format.

There we go. Okay, awesome. Just as a heads up, I am not going to have full visibility into the chat the whole time. So I do want you to drop questions in there. This please know that I am going to go visit them at the end and go through them one by one. If you don't hear me answer it in real time. That is why.

So let's get going. We're going to jump into this. We are talking messaging mistakes. So five messaging mistakes you must fix today in your recruiting and staffing business. So again, I dropped a link into the chat, go ahead and grab it. It's a workbook for this webinar training. You don't need it. Feel free to use a notebook or a Google doc instead, but it will help you follow along and take notes.

So maybe just have it open and we'll go ahead and get started in earnest in just a minute, but just some other housekeeping. Leave your questions in the chat. I will go back and look at them later and I know Yan is going to help me keep an eye on them at the end as well. And also if you're on with me through until the end, and I can see that you're committed to improving this, I've got a really powerful bonus guide that I'd love to share with you on follow up emails that get a reply.

Every single time. So stay with me and I'll share how to grab that as well. So before we get rolling, not everyone knows me. Let me take a second to introduce myself properly. So hello. My name is Hannah Pryor. I am an executive coach and sales and recruitment trainer and founder of a company called priority group.

And I'm also the creator of the recruiters. Copy clinic. I used to say was the leading sales messaging and copywriting training program for recruiting and staffing professionals. But I think I've come to find out I'm the only person who teaches this. So I'm really honored to have learned how to do this over the years.

And now bring this to the broader audience. I'll tell you a little bit more about it, but if you looked me up on LinkedIn before this, here's a bunch of stuff you might already know about me. I'm a textbook overachiever, quite frankly, I'm a Delaware grad, which is kind of cold this year. Go blue hens. I earned my master's degree from UVA.

I'm a certified executive coach with an ACC Prudential, and I did my coach certification at American university down in DC. I've also been at a bunch of publications in the last two years. Forums was definitely a real highlight for me. And I'm actively partnered with a number of global Fortune 500 on their coaching initiatives, as well as you know, small, mid large staffing firms on their performance, growth and sales training.

Here's what you might not know about me and why I'm really excited to spend this time with you all and share this information with you. All. I was in staffing for 14 years. Some former coworkers are on this call and I was consistently one of my firm's top performers. I was at K force $2 billion staffing firm, but unlike a lot of my peers, it kind of boggled people's minds that I didn't kill myself to do it.

You know, I worked hard of course, but I also did sort of crack the code on the working smart thing. I was the top performer in my entire line of business nationally in 2017, I build almost a million dollars in revenue that year. And I did it while raising two young kids and taking six weeks of international vacation that year.

All of these photos are from the same year. And I can say without a doubt that one of the things that made me so successful year after year was that my message response rates and my engagement rates were off the chart. Other people would send a hundred emails and maybe get three to five responses. I would send 20 and get 10 to 15.

We all know that this business is partially a numbers game. Yet, somehow we focus so much on the second part of our sales process that we forget that we can drastically do something about the first part sales messaging sales writing is the great amplifier in this decade and beyond. So before we dive in just one couple last housekeeping thing, I have to say your audio is off.

Obviously we want to avoid accidental background noise, including mine. I have a puppy. Who's probably going to bark at the ups man, anytime soon. So please do use the chat for questions. Also. I'm going to hold you to the flame. Now I know how this business works. I was in it for a decade and a half. We have a finite amount of attention I'm competing against your email box.

I'm competing against 20 open tabs that you have on LinkedIn right now. Please take a look around right now and just do your best to eliminate distractions closed down the million open tabs. Just minimize them, put away your phone, some general good advice to be more successful. You can train yourself to be scattered, or you can train yourself to be focused.

The more focused you can be during this. I promise you'll learn something new. You'll get something out of it. But if you try to multitask and do other things, you're not going to get the maximum benefit. So please do that for me. I will actually ask you to put something in the chat real quick.

Distraction is a deal killer amongst other things. So tell me right now in the chat on a scale of one to seven, one being I'm out seven is I'm all in. How focused do you plan to be today? You know, one is I'm barely paying attention. Seven is I'm 100% with you and dialed in for that in the chat for me.

And I'm going to stop sharing real quick, just so I can see the chat for a moment. Awesome. All right. I've got sixes that I need to turn into sevens. Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay. Thank you guys. Thank you for the honesty. So I'm not your mother. I am your new friend, but I'm not your mother. So I'm going to ask you to please set an intention and hold yourself to it.

I'm going to bring a hundred percent of my energy and everything. I've got to this. If you do so hold yourself to it. Jay, always the comedian, always one. I love it. Awesome. Okay. So let's do this. Let's go. I'm assuming, but you signed up to take this webinar because you want to grow your business, right? Of course you do.

You also recognize that times have changed and people are not picking up this bad boy. They're not picking up their phone as much as they used to. So first of all, if you're someone who recognizes this change acknowledges this change, thank you because you'd be amazed at the number of leaders in our industry and in this business that are anchoring back to the past and refusing to adjust to this.

It's 2021. It's time to accept this shift. Here's a fact, the latest data says 90% of people screen their phone calls and don't pick up an unknown phone number anymore 90%. Okay. So we can dig in our heels about smiling and dialing all you want. And while I am here to tell you that the phone is important, okay, it is, I'm not letting you off the hook for that.

The phone is important, but your team is behind the ball immensely. If you don't think that your sales messaging matters and that it doesn't matter a lot, it does, you don't need to be a novelist, but your writing and the writing of those on your team play a huge role. And the sooner that we all accept that the better off we'll be words, tell people what you as a staffing professional stand for words, tell people what you are like as a team, what your personality is like, what your vibe is like words are often your first line of communication on how you express who you are to someone.

Okay. Here's something that might be hard to hear. For every unique proprietary system that we think our team or our firm has, according to your prospect, there's at least five others that are close enough. Five of your competitors are close enough. You perform just about the same or similar to them. The only way to stand out in a noisy marketplace is through the experience that you and your team create for your prospects.

It's the only thing we have left that's truly proprietary anymore. And like it or not, most people don't like it. People will instantly judge you and whether or not they want to work with you based in very large part by those words that you use. Okay. Why else are you here? You're probably also here because you want more sales.

You want more responses to your messages. You're already sending them. You just want more people to reply. You want more loyal candidates, more loyal clients who come back to you over and over again. You want the same thing for your team. I bet you also want to make a bigger impact with the messages that you send and that you post.

Again, I'm not asking you to pick up a new activity. You're already doing this. So you want each one to carry more capacity than they do right now. And then lastly, of course you want some business for us that goes with all of that. You want some financial results, some bottom line difference, more deals closed, and ideally you want them now not 2022 or 2023.

You want to see that start happening sooner versus later. So here's the good news. The good news is that sales messaging or sales copywriting is the key to unlocking all three of those amazing outcomes. So what is this in our world? What is copywriting? Ultimately, sales copywriting is anything intended to persuade.

The right reader, viewer, or listener. This all works in audio and video too. So reader, viewer, or listener to take a specific action. We're not saying hello. We're not just doing a, how was your weekend after they read your message? You want someone to do something? We want someone to do something. So for the way we talk in staffing, copy is writing messaging or words.

Katie, these are all the same thing. So copy or copywriting is sales messaging. In other words, any words that we're using day to day in staffing recruiting side sales side, even marketing side. So we're talking subject lines, email messages, cold messages on LinkedIn InMails sales presentations to a client candidate write-ups job advertisements that you post on behalf of your clients.

Follow up messages. Any words that you post on social media and I mean any, because your comments are typically visible as well. So all of those words that you use on your computer, on your laptop, on your phone, they in and day out, those are copy. Anything that has to do with your business and your career.

Those are copy the words that you use to get people's attention. The words you use to get people to know, like, and trust you, the words that you use to influence and sell. Those are copy to, and in an attention deficit attention starved world, which welcome to 2021, right? Your sales messaging, most of the time is the only thing that determines whether or not people pay attention to you.

Let that sink in for a second. The only thing that determines whether or not people pay attention to you. So I will also put a stake in the ground right now and say that good sales messaging is not a nice to have in staff. I would argue it used to be. I started my staffing career in 2005. Used to be good sales messaging is no longer a nice to have in staffing.

It's a, non-negotiable the recruiting and sales process cannot start without it. It just can't people aren't checking your voicemail exclusively. They're reading your voicemail, they're reading their email or reading the message. Okay. So the last thing I'll say is if revenue growth is your objective, which I hope it is for all of us, to some degree you can't do it live all the time.

Even if you want it to you. Can't, if you spent 30 to 60 minutes on the phone with all of your best candidates and your best clients every day, it would eat your whole day. Your day is gone. Yeah. You need to develop this skill in order to scale, the more your business grows, the more you need to write and write effectively.

Not only has this helped me in my own book of business, succeed beyond my wildest dreams and staffing. It's still, what's most important to me to this day. It's how in less than two years, I've built a multi six-figure business since leaving. I still do it this way. I'm super passionate about this. So writing powerful sales messages is the single most important skill you'll ever develop in this business.

It didn't use to be, it is now, and it's not impossible. I promise even if you're thinking, man, Hannah doesn't know what a terrible writer I really am. I promise you can write much better sales messages with the proper training. Okay. So let's jump into this. Now you can get better at this, but most staffing professional tasks, some blocks around this, and we're going to address these.

People don't enter the staffing industry because they're great writers, right? I think in the last two years, I've met two who were journalism majors or English majors, but most of us, we didn't get into this for that reason over the years have discovered that there's actually three common and very frustrating writing blocks that hold us back in this industry.

So let's talk about these first writing block. Number one, see if this sounds familiar to you at all, or resonates with you at all. My message never sounds as good as it does in my head. You know what you want to say? You know what you need to say, but somewhere between your head and your fingers on the keys, everything seems to get lost.

Right? If I was on the phone, if I was meeting with someone in person, this would be fine. I'd have this down pat. But to put this into words feels hard, right? Can anyone relate to that? I've been talking to staffing folks for over 15 years about this, and here's what I hear the most around this particular writing block.

I'm great on the phone. Why do I sound so different when I write. Or am I messages aren't organized and I ramble. I don't know what to include or what to take out. I struggled to find the persuasive words to get my point across effectively, but professionally I could go on and on. But if you can relate to any of these thoughts, you're not alone.

This is a super common block and I promise you we can move past it. We're going to learn a few ways. How in today's training, let's continue with writing block number two. Again, this one is super common in staffing. It takes me so long to write anything. Many of us struggle with this one because the pace of our business is so fast that the idea of sitting down to write a powerful invented email feels like it's an all consuming time suck.

We don't have time for this. Here's what staffing firms have told me over the years on this. It literally takes me 30 minutes to write out a simple email reply, or I'm constantly second guessing what to say. So I play it safe and it ends up sounding generic. Or I don't have a process. So my process is messaging and high volume and praying.

It works by the way, I feel like a lot of people are sharing this as a strategy. Now I struggle with this one. Okay. If you have a gut response of I'm such a slow writer, believe me, I get it. You know, it affects all of us, even those of us to do it. Professionally, even professional writers aren't necessarily naturally fast writers.

Every successful sales writer, I know has some form of this block too. So if you struggle with this too, we're going to learn some great techniques in this training class today. This last writing block can be really tough on our morale and really tough on our spirits. And here's what it sounds like.

Yeah. Crickets, right? Nothing. You know, this one right? Where we're all feeling like we're wasting our time royally. No, one's getting back to us. It's so quiet. So on this, I hear from staffing firms all the time. I send hundreds of messages that only a few people answer, or I try to be patient, but this slow growth is stressful.

I can't stand out amongst the competitor noise or I'm great at what I do. And I just need to get in front of people, but no one hears me guys. This one is tough because it's hard and thankless spending hours, sending emails and in-mails, and only getting a handful of responses. And honestly, if there's any leaders on the call, this is some tough love for me.

If people on your team are consistently doing this and not getting any responses, this can be the end of someone's career. There's nothing less rewarding than doing the same thing over and over and having nothing happen. But the good news is, again, you can fix all of these things. So before I jump into the five mistakes to fix, there's just one more writing block that holds all of us back.

All of us, the biggest one of all, and that's perfectionism. Right. Even if you think I'm a pretty decent writer already, you put so much effort into getting it perfect that you either decide I'm not going to write it all. And you keep trying to old smile and dial technique in hopes that someone in 2021 might actually pick up this phone, right.

Or you write something stale and generic, same thing you've been writing for 20 years because it's what you know, and it feels safe and it feels good enough. And I'm sure you've heard the expression. Good is the enemy of great, good enough has never grown someone's business, not once. Okay. So if you can relate to any of these writing blocks or anyone on your team can relate.

I want you to hear me loud and clear on this. It's not your fault, not even a little, it's not your fault. Seriously. Historically, our industry recruitment and staffing has been so focused on in-person meetings and phone conversations, exclusively that we're behind the times on training on how important this is.

Yes. Relationships still happen over the phone? Yes. It's still great to meet people, either in person or on zoom, but no people don't want to pick up your unknown phone number anymore. Think about it when somebody actually picks it up. Now we're surprised. They're like, oh, I didn't expect that. Right. I had a bite in my mouth.

I didn't think you were going to pick up the phone. So again, it's not your fault. If sales messaging has felt tough, if it's been a struggle, it doesn't mean that you're destined to stink at this. And it definitely doesn't mean you're not a good writer messaging matters, but if you haven't been trained on it ever, and no one ever taught you how you can't possibly expect to be great at a skill that no one taught you how to.

No one has taught recruiters and staffing professionals, how to write in a persuasive and influential way. Even if you took writing back in high school, you learned a bunch of grammar rules and a bunch of big words, but no one ever showed you how to emotionally connect with your prospects and inspire them to take action through your messaging.

And by the way, it's not with the big words and the grammar rules you can't possibly expect to be good at something that no one has taught you how to do or train you on how to do it. Doesn't work like that. The best analogy I can make is if you hire someone new to the firm and you expect them to hop on the phone with an old client and close a deal right away, even if he watched you do it a few times, you'd never think he was a lost cause or destined for failure because he didn't nail it.

The first few times it takes practice, right? Sales messaging is the same way. It's a skill. It's a 100% learnable skill and it's something you can become good at and get great results from once you learn. So the last thing I'll say on this, and I'm going to jump in, you don't need to be a good writer to write strong, effective sales messages.

I promise you, I graduated with a degree in finance, not English, not journalism. I invested in myself. I taught myself how to do this, and I've now taught hundreds of other people how to do this too. The truth is you just need to learn some foundational techniques and master a few key practices. And I promise you'll be leaps and bounds ahead of where you are right now.

So let's dive into this. Let's dive into the five messaging mistakes you can't afford to make in your recruiting and staffing business. And more importantly, How to fix them. Okay.

Messaging mistake. Number one, you sound like a robot. You sound like a robot. This is probably one of the biggest challenges I hear from recruiters or BD folks who are trying to write their own sales messages.

They worry that they are either trying too hard and dripping with salesy language or that they sound like a boring and stiff corporate robot. And that's not surprising because I mentioned most of us are basing our writing based on the grammar rules we learned in eighth grade English class at school.

So we think using big words and packed sentences makes us sound intelligent and professional and sophisticated and credible it doesn't. Okay. So here's what a robotic recruiter might look and sound like. And I don't even have any big words or packed sentences in here in this training. I will show you why you do not need to sound like you are a recruiter, right?

Okay. Or I will tell you more about our services over lunch. No, of course I'm exaggerating a little for emphasis here, but it does feel stiff and unnatural, right? Yes, it does. Because no one talks like that. No one talks like that. Not you, not your candidates, not your most high end elite client. No one does.

Which brings me to the fix on this and it couldn't be simpler. Right? Like you talk, please write like you talk and the way you talk is like a human, like a normal, not trying to impress someone human. When you do this, I promise your sales messaging. Won't just sound like you, but it connects better with people and it converts at a higher rate and it will get you way better results.

Why? Because people feel like they can trust you because you're being real with them. Okay. There's a few different ways to learn, to write like you talk, but one teeny tiny, immediate trick to go instantly from robotic recruiter to writing, like you talk is literally just using one tiny keystroke, the apostrophe, okay.

Use apostrophe, also known as using contractions. So quick reminder on what contractions are there. Just the little combo words that we use all the time in everyday speech. So for example, we are becomes we're. It is becomes it's do not becomes don't write why does this help so much this tiny little fix?

Because it matches the way we speak in real life, contractions mirror, the normal tone of daily conversations, and they immediately put us at ease and you want your prospects to be at ease. If you want to be persuasive and sell to them, you don't want their defenses up. You wouldn't walk into a classroom today and say, excuse me, could you point me to the trainer from whom I will learn the most?

No, of course that you'd say, Hey, who's the best trainer for what I'm trying to learn. That's how we talk. Right? So back to our original example, this is all I changed, but listen to how much better this sounds than the first version in this training. I'll show you why you don't need to sound like you're a recruiter robot.

Super simple makes a huge difference. Okay. That's just one tiny little trick to combat robotic recruiter, voice. I share tons more tools inside the recruiters copy clinic, but if you're at all worried even a little bit that using casual speak might make it so that you don't sound as professional or a serious.

I need you to please listen to me on this, please. Don't confuse warm and friendly with unprofessional. Please don't confuse those two things. Writing in a warm, easy to understand voice won't make people think that you are unintelligent, less professional or less qualified to work with. Actually to the contrary.

Okay. But I do hear your concerns and yes, there are still some rules that you should follow on this such as you should still aim to spell things correctly and use spell check. Yes. You should aim to use proper grammar. Grammarly helps with this a little. It over-indexes a bit, but it helps with this a little, but no, you should not write like you're a robot, especially if you want more sales and a better emotional connection with your prospect.

Okay. Moving on to sales messages, messaging mistake. Number two, your writing is too self-centered okay. Your writing is too. Self-centered. I'm going to call this the doozy of today. If you guys take nothing else away from today, but this one, please let it be this. What do I mean by this? So I'm gonna show you an example to illustrate and I'm sorry, this is going to be your trigger warning.

Some of you aren't going to like me for this, but I will guess that 90 plus percent of staffing emails that I see, start with something like that.

Hi, Maya. I hope all is well. My name is John Smith and I work for XYZ staffing firm. I have been here for five years and I specialize in finance and accounting, permanent placement.

My firm is different because

ouch, right? Sorry. Here's the problem. This is all about the recruiter or the sales person, John Smith, and has no clear benefits from Maya, the reader. So you're hoping Maya is interested in either making a job change or partnering with us for a potential hire. Correct. We're trying to make a connection with Maya quickly so that she keeps reading what we have to say.

Correct. The beginning of the year message is not only generic, but it's also entirely about John Smith. Not about the reader. You see that, sorry. So you can tell them about your background later. But you can't start this way. You are making a giant misstep. If you start this way also quick spoiler, that subject line, new opportunity, also new bed, but we're going to talk about that in a little bit.

So let's talk about the fixed on this. It's to flip the perspective to you flip the perspective to you. Okay. Here's how it works at any given time. The attention can either be on you or it can be on your potential prospect. Now, if the attention is on you, the focus is on your words, your experience, your credentials, your goals, you, you, you more, you.

However, the moment you shift that attention over to your prospect, boom, guess what happens? The focus of your words and your energy shifts to your prospect, meaning the people that you serve, their problems, their aspirations, their dreams, their goals. Now in staffing, most of us get this wrong. We put way too much of that attention on ourselves to try to appear credible and not nearly enough of that attention on our candidates and clients.

And here's the truth, your prospects, once you feel seen and heard and acknowledged and understood. And it's our job as staffing professionals to make that happen in our writing, they want to feel emotionally invested emotions, drive sales, okay. Emotions drive sales. So how do you do this in your messaging?

Well, step one is that you really have to understand who exactly your prospect is, what they're struggling with. What are the emotions that they're feeling right now as they're reading your message. So we go through an entire proven step-by-step process to do this and the recruiter's copy clinic. But for now, I just want you to know this, putting the attention on your prospect, not you.

We'll give you a way stronger response rates to your messaging. Okay. So let's go through an example just to show you what, I mean, let's put a bit of meat on this. Let's pretend in this case that Maya is a finance manager at one of John Smith's ideal potential clients. And John heard that Maya's company recently went through a major expansion.

So we have to imagine what could Maya be thinking or feeling or going through? Why would she even respond to someone like John Smith in the first place? So maybe what John has researched and learned about the company and the industry. He found out that she is probably desperately in need of hiring some help.

She needs some good financial analysts because she's been working 60 hours a week lately. The whole department has, and she wants to do something about it. So maybe she's saying to herself, I need some strong talent to help me with this workload. So what if we started our email from that perspective? Hi, Maya, tired of eating dinner at work.

I'm sure the recent expansion has been tough on the whole team. I'd love to show you a killer financial analyst to help get some of that workload off of your desk. Instantly. We've shifted the attention on to Maya and off of John Smith. It's a much more powerful way to start the message. I'm sure you agree.

Okay. Let's keep going. Let's keep thinking about all the other things that Maya might be thinking or feeling. Maybe she's thinking about what she wants, like her old schedule and her old work-life balance. Back back when she felt like everything was in control. You know, I want my old schedule back, so let's try starting the email from that perspective.

Hi, Maya has the expansion thrown your routine off? I have several impressive financial analysts that can jump in and help you reclaim your time and jumpstart the return of a more manageable schedule. Okay. Again, these words, whoop. Sorry. I had a little software update here. Okay. These are powerful because in these words, the reader sees the exact word she says to herself in her own head, she sees the things she's thinking and feeling the words she's saying to herself in her own head, in our writing.

Okay. So let's look at these side-by-side to really drive that point home. When the attention is on the recruiter or the BD person, John Smith, it's all about him. Right? We can really see that. We can really feel that when the attention is on my area, it feels really different, right? You're speaking directly to your client's emotion and people buy on emotion.

First, they justify with logic second. Okay. People buy on emotion. First. They justify with logic second. So hopefully you can see how powerful this is. This one little shift will help you write better, more prospect centric messages starting right now. So to summarize this fix the most effective sales message starts in your reader's head.

Not yours. Okay. Actually starts in your reader's heart, but eventually it gets to their head either way. It doesn't start with you. So now that you're clear on this, let's quickly move this from insight into action. Here's what I want you to do next today. I want you to find one place in your messaging today, where the attention is on you instead of on your prospect.

And then flip the perspective, flip the perspective, especially at the beginning, by the way, in the recruiter's copy clinic, we go through a very specific process to help you understand your prospects better than they might even know themselves. It's a huge shift for folks with how it works, but for today, let's keep on moving to messaging.

Mistake. Number three, messaging mistake. Number three is that you focus on features, not benefits. Okay? Features not benefits too often in staffing. We focus far too heavily on the features of something in our right. Yeah. Our own services that we offer the feature of a job that we have a feature of a candidate that we're presenting, and we completely overlook the benefits.

So let's quickly talk about the differences between them. A feature is what something is the factual details of your service or of your job or of your candidate, whatever it is we're offering the person, the benefit is what something does for you. So the benefits are the end results that what you're offering helps your candidate or client experience or get it answers.

So what, why should I care? Hey, features are more factual and informational benefits are more emotional. Probably no surprise people buy the benefits. People don't buy features, people buy the benefits. Okay. So let's go through one example of this. Feature might be, Hey, this position has a true 40 hour work week.

Great. That's the feature and example of a benefit. So what, why should I care? Could be a schedule so predictable that you can play in that adult soccer league and be home for dinner with the kids every night. Okay. By the way, even if you don't know if they have a son who plays soccer, it doesn't matter.

Everyone will substitute the thing that they'd rather go do. So let's talk about the fixed here. Focus on benefits, add benefits. I'm not saying don't mention the feature, but I'm saying that it's extremely important for your prospect to understand the end result of why this would help it help them.

What's in it for them. So why, why should I care in order to bring the meaning home for them? So features plus benefits when you put it together, it creates meaning. What it means to the person reading it. I said before you want your prospects to react with emotion, to your writing because emotion is what drives sales, meaning creates emotion.

Okay. Hence the importance of outlining features and benefits in your messaging. So again, moving this from insight into action. Here's what I want you to do next. Find one place in your messaging today, where you could include at least one benefit with the feature in order to create meaning for the person who's reading it.

Okay. At least one place today. By the way in the copy clinic, we do go through a bunch of formulas on how to come up with great benefits to accompany the features, but just know that ultimately in any kind of sales, but especially in recruiting and staffing, the fact is always this people buy on emotion, then justify with logic.

It's how the brain works. So you should stray. You should really strive to make that emotional connection with your prospects first. And one way to do that amongst others is to sell on benefits versus features alone.

So let's move on to messaging mistake, number four, messaging mistake. Number four is that your subject lines are an afterthought.

Hopefully, you know how important these are, but in case you don't subject lines are how someone decides whether or not you're worth their time. I'm gonna say that again, subject lines are how someone decides whether or not you're worth their time. Hey, now, even if you already know the power of a good subject line, my guess is you're probably not putting in the time or energy, you need to make yours really compelling and really great sad fact is most stopping folks treat theirs as an afterthought, or they forget to even use one at all.

So here's what I need. Right? We use these throwaway subject lines all the time. Things like new opportunity, just checking in, looking to connect new tax role, great candidate, right. Or we share something on LinkedIn that says, great, read, check this out. Do any of these make you jump to open anything when you see them?

Of course not. There's nothing enticing or compelling about these at all, but here's why ignoring subject lines is so dangerous. The average professional who works in an office gets at least probably higher now 121 emails per day. But most of those end up deleted or ignored before they even get open.

Okay. The average attention span of folks anymore is seconds. And that's just reality. Your message. Subject line is competing with a ton of distractions and you need to make sure that yours is worthy of them stopping and taking notice. Take a look at your own inbox today. You're going to see some boring subject lines.

And my guess is you're going to see them in your trash folder or in your I'll read it later pile, but I guarantee you didn't read it right away. So I promise you this writing good subject lines can absolutely make or break your book of business. It's how someone decides. If it's worth opening the email to read more or opening the LinkedIn mail or opening the message to read it.

Before you get totally overwhelmed by this idea, please don't because I have some good news. The good news is that you have not one, but two legs up. Now, when it comes to subject lines, first 90% of recruiters and sales folks stink at writing subject lines. Terrible. You might feel like you're drowning in competition when it comes to standing out in this noisy market.

But like you saw in those throwaway subject lines, most people don't focus their time or energy. She here, even though they should. So you already now just have an edge by being aware of this. Hey second, you don't have to stink at this anymore because guess what? It's not some magic talent that people are born with.

It's learnable. It's about using formulas. It's also about volume. I'm going to talk about the volume part in just a second, but first here's the fix on this become the best subject line writer that you can be. And I swear it's a thousand times easier than you think. It's not rocket science. You don't have to have a creative bone in your body.

I promise just requires following directions and a little bit of effort upfront. You have to stop writing your email subject lines in two seconds and calling it a day. I promise you this one sentence determines whether or not anyone reads the rest of your message that you put so much time, energy, and effort into.

So you have to put in the effort when it comes to subject lines. Let me explain what I mean about volume, because that's also a big key here. Even great sales writers. Don't write great subject lines on the first pass. Hey, really internalize that. In fact, some of the most highly paid sales writers spend at least 20 to 50% of their time on subject lines and headlines 20 to 50% of their time.

So if they can't write great ones quickly, why would you be able to you can't it's just not possible. So understand this great subject lines do not have to take you hours and hours to write, but there is a huge difference between taking two seconds on a subject line and taking five minutes on a well thought out strategic subject line, that extra four minutes and 58 seconds is a million times worth it for the results you're going to see in your response rates.

Okay. So how exactly do you do this? Well, here's one way how I want you to throw out some volume. I want you to write at least 10 to 20 subject lines, especially for any big blast email you send before you choose one to go out with. I know that sounds like a lot, but believe me, it's not, especially if you have formulas and strategies to choose from.

Okay. For inspiration though, look at your own inbox. Look at your own LinkedIn. Look at business journals. Look at headlines, look outside of the industry. Places like Buzzfeed or magazines that you read, pay attention to which subject lines and headlines are catching your attention. Take those plug in your topic, your subject matter, and then play around with it until something clicks.

This exercise will train your brain to start thinking in headlines and subject lines. So let me just show you a few quick examples of how this might look before post pandemic return strategies boring. Right? How about this? Don't make this major mistake when you returned to the office post COVID curiosity inducing, right?

Here's the before top resume suggestions. How about this one are smart words making you look dumb, kind of love that one, right? Let's do one more new opportunity. How about this? This company won't be hiring again until 2022 at this point makes you wonder which company it is. Right? Who is it? Now before you start saying, had, I can't possibly do this.

These people have pro copywriters. How could I write things like this? You can, and you will trust me. Most of these publications require their writers to send out at least a couple possible different subject lines and headlines for every important piece of content or email that goes out. So with practice and with the formulas that I share, you can write great subject lines and headlines, and you can do it very quickly, but just know that even professionals have to pump out a little bit of volume before they get to the golden winners.

This is what it takes for your sales messages to get results. So in case you're asking do better subject lines really create that much change in results. Excuse my language. Hell yes. Like big hell. Yes. I've now had like dozens of teams. Thousands of people take this recruiters copy clinic program where we taught them the exact strategies for how to write subject lines that consistently get open.

The ones who apply what they learn have reported minimum, double, triple, quadruple, the number of opens and responses on their sales messages. We all know this business is partially a numbers game. Okay. Has to be. So if you had 20 responses to an email instead of five, what does that do for your chances of closing the deal downstream?

I don't need to tell you that it's significant. So trust me on this. All right. Let's move on to our last messaging. Mistake messaging mistake. Number five is that you don't begin with the end in mind. Don't begin with the end in mind. Here's what this means. Every email that you send, every email that you write, every single page of your website, every piece of social media content that you create is a chance to get your prospect to do something that benefits them and benefits you.

So think about this. If you put all this work into writing this great email, and then you don't tell your reader what to do next, what's the point. Okay. Here's an example. Let's say you have a really great candidate that you're trying to market to a new client that you're trying to break into. So you write to this client and you tell them all about this amazing candidate.

And then you say, I'd love to connect, right? Then you just wrap up with your signature and just, I hope they call me back going to be honest, even your most loyal clients might not write you back. Why? Because you didn't tell them exactly what to do. You have to come out and say what you want. We are all busy professionals.

We are all super overwhelmed. We're all drowning and distractions we need and want to be told exactly what to do. And if you don't tell us exactly what you want us to do in your message, you're wasting your time. Okay? So here's the fix. I want you to use CTA and work backwards. CTA is and work backwards.

CTA stands for call to action. Call to action. These are a must have for everything that you write. In other words, I want you to start with the end of your message in mind, ask yourself what is the action that I want my reader to take? What is it? Action that I want someone to take at the end of this email at the end of this LinkedIn message, this post on social media.

Yeah. You know, what's the end goal. So you can be explicit about it. If you're not familiar with calls to action or CTA, is there just the little bits of writing towards the end that tell people what to do? So you see versions of this all the time, you know, click here, sign up buy now in staffing.

It's usually, you know, please reply call me at this time. If it's a warm lead, maybe book a time on my calendar, right. Something along those lines. But if you feel like you're never seeing enough responses to your messages or nothing engagement on your social media posts, I'll bet. It's probably because you're not being explicit enough about what you want someone to do, the action that you hope they're going to take.

So in our example, when we were trying to market that candidate to break into that new client, instead of saying, I'd love to connect it convenience, which is by the way, never, okay. Instead we can say something like, Hey, this candidate won't be on the market long. What time today? Can I call you to discuss her?

I'm telling you this isn't difficult. It's not even aggressive or pushy. I'm not like that. It's not aggressive or pushy. It's just clear and direct. Again, other versions could be hit reply. Let me know, by replying to this email, you know, click here, whatever it may be. So yeah, a few tips on what makes a good CTA, a good call to action uses words and phrases that your prospects are used to seeing.

So familiar language and is successful. CTA is also to the point because even the smartest among us can get easily confused when it comes to electronic request, especially when we're busy and we're moving fast. So you want to be clear and direct as much as possible. So before you hit send on one more message.

Remember to ask, ask yourself, what action do I want my reader to take after they've read this, whatever it is say that that's your call to action. Okay. With that. Okay. I want to say congrats. We just made it through all five fixes. Thank you for sticking with me. So let's quickly just review what we just learned.

So we covered the five biggest sales messaging mistakes and how to fix that. Number one, right? Like you talk, right? Like a human. Hey, number two, you want to flip the perspective to you? The attention should always be on your prospect. At first. Number three, you want to focus on the benefits, not the features alone.

Number four, you want to become the best subject line writer that you can be. You want to really prioritize these and number five, use calls to action and work backwards. Reverse engineer, what action you want your prospect to take? So in case you're asking yourself, okay, great. I'm going to take these five fixes.

I'm going to run with them and I hope you do what's next. So from my standpoint, you have three options when it comes to your sales messaging, option. Number one, pop off this webinar, tell these five things to your team members apply them. But outside of that, keep doing what you have been doing, you know, settle for the high volume.

Good enough. And just cross your fingers and pray for a different result. Spoiler, you're unlikely to get one option. Number two, you can hire a really expensive sales copywriter for your team to dial up your messaging, which by the way, isn't just expensive. It's like wildly expensive, even if you stay at the freelancer level.

So honestly, unless you have super deep pockets for this, this option is usually unsustainable for 99% of staffing firms. Which brings me to option number three, which is of course the one I'm passionate about, which is to learn the easy steps to write powerful sales messages, which is a skill that pays you and your team members for life.

Okay? Whether you use me or someone else, here's why I love this option and what I want to encourage because in a business that moves lightening fast, you can write high converting sales messages on a moment's notice, and you can increase your response rates and your engagement exponentially to multiply revenue.

And it's not hard to do. And it's not your fault if no one's ever taught you how okay. It's killed me to watch really high potential recruiters and sales folks struggle with this because it's a skill set that no one ever trained them on. So it's why I drew upon 14 years and created a comprehensive sales messaging training program that I'm very proud of that you can either take live or you can take digitally step-by-step that teaches you how to do this.

It's called the recruiters copy clinic. Not going to be a sales pitch, but I will tell you that it's not a motivational sales training. It's pure skills, training, useful, actionable results, oriented thing that you'll ever do. And if it is something that you'd like to talk about, I'd love to tell you more.

It pays for itself in less than like a fraction of a deal closed. So it's honestly a steal and I've got now probably in the thousands of people who have taken it, who can give you testimonials and how it's transformed their business. But I will say this, whether it's me or whether it's someone else, this is where things are going in this business in 2021 and beyond.

So 12 months from now, are you going to say to yourself, oh, thank goodness. I was on top of this and I worked on my writing or I trained my team on their sales writing. Or will you think I train my team on their sales writing, but honestly it wasn't worth. Newsflash we've been writing for decades. It's never the second one.

It's not the second one. So please, please do consider shoot me an email, you know, head onto the website, link up with me on LinkedIn. I'd love to chat with you about it, but whether it's me or someone else, I'd love to make sure this is something you guys work on and at a minimum. And if we don't speak again, if you go to that website, you can go ahead and grab the link to grab my followup emails guide.

It's how to write a follow-up email. That gets a reply every time between these five fixes that we talked about today, and this followup guide, these alone will give you a vast improvement in the quality of your messaging. Okay. So please, please link up with me on LinkedIn, reach out with any questions or feedback.

So appreciative that you guys spent this time with me today, and I'm going to stop sharing quickly and jump in to see. What is in the chat.

Jan Jedlinski: That was great. Maybe there was some time for questions now. So if anybody has questions, feel free to put them into the sessions. And I think you'll still have a few more minutes, right?

To answer some questions.

Henna Pryor: Yeah, sure. I did see one. How, how casual do you recommend we speak in email and on social media? I struggle trying not to be too chatty or familiar, but then can swing way too formal too. So Christina casual is different than warm and friendly, right? So you don't want to be so casual that you do veer into unprofessional territory.

But you do want to be human. So here's my general rules, no cursing, right? Like you don't want to go that, that level of casual you certainly don't want to, you know, veer into like teenager territory where you're throwing in like a thousand emojis and too many exclamation points, but largely I would say most staffing folks over index it's too way too professional or way too bottled up and way too stiff.

So if your concern is, can I be a bit more human? I would say allow yourself to be 99% of people prefer that or over the generic stiff kind of archaic style that we've gotten used to. I'd also add this, that 50% of the labor market is now millennial and gen Z. And by 2025, 64- 74% of the market is going to be millennial and gen Z.

So our buyers have changed. So just know your audience, if you know somebody that's, you know, baby boomer generation and up, you can adjust your language a little bit, but the majority of the market is starting to become folks who prefer to communicate a bit more authentically and a bit more human. So most of the time I would say lean a bit more warm and friendly versus the bottled up that we got accustomed to.

Hopefully that helps.

Let's see. Is there a way to get a copy of today's presentation? Omar, I let's see, Jan is there anywhere we can post the PDF or no?

Jan Jedlinski: What we'll do is we will send out the recording, including the PDF. And I think Jacob just posted the the drive link again or you can see on the, on the chats, there is the link to the

Henna Pryor: sure.

And if anyone wants the PDF slides, feel free to just link up with me on LinkedIn and I'm happy to send them over to directly. And then, so I see a question from Tyler. Should we completely remove I from our messaging if possible and replaced with we? No, I would. I don't think so. So let me make a distinction.

The I, and we sometimes, especially if someone's new, they don't have a lot of I experience to draw from. So they want to talk about the successes of their team. I'm not entirely against the words "I", or "we", but it needs to be in the spirit of relating to your client and candidate. If you're going to use those words, the problem is most people start their messaging.

It in the "I" or "we" perspective that has nothing to do with the prospect. It's the I'm. So and so from such and such firm, this is what we do. This is how many people are on my team. This is what color we painted our office. Right? Like I'm exaggerating, but it has nothing to do with the prospect. It's just us wanting to share our soliloquy of who we are and what we do.

It's not that the words inherently are bad. It's the perspective. So I want you to think of it less from the words themselves and more about where is the spotlight right out of the gate. Is the spotlight on me, us week or is the spotlight on my prospect at first? So we talk about it in the training, but you aren't going to tell them about you later.

You just don't want to start that way. You want to start from the other, your perspective. Mistake number five. Did you say don't begin? No. Do begin. John Evans do begin with the end in mind, meaning you want to know what you're going to ask of the person before you even start writing is the objective that I want them to reply.

Is the objective that I want them to get on a phone call is the objective that I want them to click this link, right? What is the specific action that I want this person to take? So you want to think about that before you even start composing the rest of it. Favorite subject line for a salesperson it's pitching their staffing agency for the first time to accompany.

So asking me to pick a favorite subject line is like asking me to pick my favorite child. It's too hard, too hard to do. Emily, I'm sorry to give you a non-answer, but I don't know anything about your company. So that's really challenging to answer. In general, the rule of thumb for subject lines, as we started to talk about, and you kind of noticed is create curiosity, make people curious, you know, the subject line should not be information about our staffing agency.

No, that doesn't make anyone curious or compelled. You want to make it something compelling where the person who gets this will say. What's inside of this email, you know, I want to know more, the subject lines job is to get them to open the email. That's it? That's it. So whatever it is, it's going to do that effectively.

And usually that starts with curiosity. So I can't give you a specific Elena, what do I think about emojis? I like one emoji. That's my, that's my role. I don't know what the rules are. I think more than one emoji and a sales message. Unfortunately, in, in a professional environment, it depends what industry you work in.

If you're in a professional industry, I think more than one emoji can lean teenager ish. Like it gets a little bit too informal, but I am a fan. The occasional smiley face. I just think that you know, you have to be judicious with it and I, and I'll you didn't ask, but I also would feel the same about exclamation points.

I love exclamation points, but it's also the way I talk. But I have to be very mindful after I write an email. I do have to often go back and edit because I'm exclaiming everything and it's unnecessary. So occasional exclamation points are good. You don't want to go overboard with those either.

What do I think of emails that include meme photos?

Ruben. I think it depends on your audience. I think that, you know, millennial, gen Z love it. I think they think it's fantastic. I think they're going to love you for it. I think if you send it to a 40 years, CEO of a fortune 500 it depends on their personality, right? Maybe they'll love it. Maybe they won't.

But what I will say is we tend to dehumanize our prospects. You know, I had a client that took my program that was working on subject lines and we did something about Tik TOK and she thought, okay, this is only going to go to millennials and gen Z. And then she said, you know what, I'm going to try it with this one.

Very serious CFO, CFO loved it, loved it because he has a daughter who is a teenager who does Tik TOK all the time. So he thought it was fantastic. So let's not dehumanize our prospects. Most human beings are dying for smile. You know, it's not about cracking jokes. It's not about being unprofessional. It's about cultivating joy in our partnerships.

That's what, that's what we're trying to do.

How concerned are you about sending the same subject message to too many people in one organization? Not really. I mean, I don't think most people are sharing their emails with each other. I can't tell you the last time that I forwarded an email to my coworker, unless it's something that's relevant to them.

So, I mean, yeah, I'm not, I'm not overly concerned. I think if you really are worried about it, if you think that this is an organization where people are sharing, then you can slightly tweak or at least, you know, send it in buckets rather than everybody on the same team. But I'm not overly worried. I don't know that there's that many people that share these things Padma and my messages with CTA.

Can we connect over call to discuss this further? Can you let me know what time and date suits your calendar? Yes. So we do spend an entire lesson on this and the training, but largely I would say that the reason that call to action is not landing is because it's too high pressure. So when you read that, when I read that, all I hear is I don't have 30 minutes to talk to Padma right now.

Like that, that sounds like something I'm too busy to do. So what I would suggest is a, something more clear, you know, when might you have five minutes this week and be part of that strategy of asking something more clear is also something more low pressure. When might you have five minutes is less societaly pressury then, you know, when do you have time to discuss this in detail?

Or when do we have time to connect? You know, I'm, I'm busy. So was everyone else? My, what I share in my training is this is true of my own mother. Like my mom will text me and say, henna, can you call me. And I don't call because I don't have 30 minutes. My mother, I love her. We're very close, but she's a chatterbox.

I don't have 30 minutes versus if she says, now she's figured out Henna, can you call me? I'll be two minutes or less. What's up mom? Right? Immediately. I call her our clients and candidates are going through the same thing. We cannot ask them for what date and time suits them. When do they have 30 minutes?

We can't do that stuff anymore. It doesn't work. Okay. Create the curiosity. Good enough. I think I answered the subject line one. I can't pick a favorite. Really depends on the circumstance, the person who is who's getting it. Yeah, Christina, most people are dying for a smile, especially now, especially now vendor opportunity with so-and-so company.

I mean, if I'm not looking for a vendor, Neha, I'm pretty much instantly deleting before I even open it. So unless I'm actively looking for a vendor. Then I'll open it up, but if you're trying to get anyone to open this, that they more passive candidate, that's pretty much an instant delete because they know already what's in it and they have no reason to open it.

Think I got through all the questions. They're great questions guys.

Jan Jedlinski: It's uh, it's very interesting. Thanks so much, Anna, for answering all of the questions and thanks everybody for being so engaging. Are we good off how helping, it's so easy to use, so everybody's engaged in asking questions.

Thanks so much.

Henna Pryor: Yeah. And please, you know, link up with me on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect with some of you. I do have to jump into another training right after this. So I apologize that I can't hang out in the networking sessions, but I'd love to know some of you I'd be honored if some of you were interested in this subject, I'd be happy to tell you more.

But it lets it come back sometime. Jan, thank you for having me as your inaugural inaugural person.

Jan Jedlinski: That was, that was perfect. Thank you so much. And I really appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for taking the time for the for the session. I'll let you go now for your training. And, uh, we'll be in touch with everybody who is still here.

I'll be, uh, on the networking session. I'll stay on here for another two to three minutes. If somebody wants to jump on and have a quick conversation, I will also share my screen and talk a little bit about the new product that we are launching. So if anybody's interested in learning more about that and then otherwise please follow the World Staffing, Sessions next week, we have a great one with Hannah's colleague, actually.

And, uh, he'll be he'll be around the same time on Wednesday. I will be sending out the recording of the session as well as invitations to new sessions shortly. So thanks Anna for being here. Really appreciate it and see you soon,

Henna Pryor: Thanks everyone.

Jan Jedlinski: So I'll stay on here, everyone. Thank you so much for those who are still around I'm going to share my screen briefly with you. We have Gustav, we essentially focused on building technology for staffing and recruiting companies, and we have a new product which we call the client portal.

It should essentially help staffing and recruiting companies to be more accessible online and help recruiters and account managers with candidate presentation. So I quickly shared my screen with you and, you know, going to show you for a second, what the product does. If you're interested in learning more about it and actually getting early access, you can just message us.

We are just building out a group of early access customers and we still have a few spots open. So if you're interested in getting onboarded to the new product and have a new and best better way to present talent to your customers feel free to ping us. So basically. The product is super simple.

You can hook it up to your applicant tracking system, like Bullhorn or drop diva. You can import candidates in here. We automatically key the candidates data. And then we'll be we'll do is give you a shareable link. Think about like a Calendly or like a Google drive for your candidates that you can share with your customers.

You can simply take the link and now share your candidates for candidate presentation or building talent pipelines directly to your customers. So what do your customers get instead of a PDF attachment in an email, they get a nice branded link hosted on your URL with your logo, with your color codes, and they can simply see all the candidates that you share with them.

Give you quick feedback, check with your team and now have a much, much easier way to access your services and your available candidates. We see great use cases for this right now specifically for candidates submission on certain requirements for candidate redeployment and candidate presentation to customers, or even building talent pipelines or embedding this link, as well as your candidates on your website.

So you have an easier way to sell. If you're thinking about new ways to present talent to your customers, if you're thinking about building a talent pipelines or essentially being more accessible online, please ping us. We still have a few spots open for the early access phase, if you're interested.

And I'll be more than happy to show you around in person for the new product. And also talk about it's Uh, on a individual demo. Again, thank you so much for joining the session today. You can also just message me or cook me up on LinkedIn. If you go to the session chats, you can drop your email or go to the polls section where you can indicate interest in Gustav or in Henna services.

She'll be more than happy to reach out to you as well. Please make sure to follow the world staffing sessions on LinkedIn, we'll be hosting weekly sessions from now on until the end of the year until we have the next world staffing summit, which is in January, 2022. I'm super excited about that.

Thanks again, everybody for being here, I'll be hanging around in the networking session. So if somebody wants to quickly chat or chat about the new product I'll be more than happy to do that. Thanks for being here and see you soon.

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