Authored by Phil Cohen
Whether your staffing agency is steadily growing or in a bit of a rut, it is wise to always be pursuing new clients. If you have this goal in mind, at some point you have asked: “How can my staffing company get new clients?” In order to answer that question, it can help to narrow its focus, also asking yourself: “What do clients look for when hiring a staffing recruitment firm?” Here are eight suggestions for your staffing agency to find and get new clients.
8 Tips for Temp Agencies to Get New Clients
1.) Know Your Employees
When looking to adjust your methods to ensure your agency’s success, you should focus first on securing your foundation: your workers. Understanding the abilities of your workers is important both in maintaining their well-being and in retaining new clients. Knowing your workers’ strengths and weaknesses will allow you to put them in situations where they will thrive. This matchmaking process is even better when you know your workers’ intangibles, or “soft skills.”
Making sure that workers are in their best environments and that clients do not ignore any of their skills will make it more likely that your workers will gel with the company’s culture. This mutually beneficial relationship will make your workers happy and allow you to build long-term relationships with your new clients.
2.) Understand Company Culture
The other side of the matchmaking coin is understanding the culture of a potential client’s company for your relationship with your workers and your ability to obtain new clients.
On one hand, companies are looking for knowledgeable staffing agencies. If a company sees that you do not understand their culture, they will question your commitment and your ability to find the right workers for them, so they will be wary of contracting you. On the other hand, a company’s culture is also an indicator of whether or not your firm should work with them.
3.) Be Meticulous
Clients love reliability, and nothing gives them more confidence in your recruitment agency than extremely thorough work. This work ethic and precision are especially important during the recruitment process. The cardinal rule is this: Go beyond Google. Anyone can do a Google search to find employees, so clients are looking to see if you have really done your homework. If you cut corners during the recruitment process, your clients will see you as untrustworthy and disposable, and will be less likely to hire you. It will also give you a huge leg up on your competition if your staffing agency understands all of the specifics of a client’s industry, so invest yourself fully in learning these details.
4.) Communicate Often and Transparently
There are several reasons why you should be completely upfront with your clients. The first involves your recruitment process. You want to walk clients through your agency’s exact methodology in finding workers, not only to dispel any doubts about bad practices (see Google above) but also to answer the question: “what makes your agency special?” A client will be more likely to give you a contract if you can explicitly state how your agency can be a difference-maker for them.
Here, again, you help your workers while also gaining new clients. Part of being clear with a client is holding them to a realistic idea of what kinds of workers exist. It is not uncommon for a client’s ideal worker to be a fantasy, and giving your clients a reasonable idea of what they can expect will leave them more satisfied with the workers they are provided.
5.) Cultivate Your Niche
Another way to strengthen your staffing agency’s reputation is to develop a strong focus in one specific field. Sticking to one staffing niche makes you more knowledgeable about it, which is something that clients often look for. The increased familiarity provided by this consistency makes your firm’s recruitment and matchmaking more reliable, so clients have much higher confidence when you understand their field’s demands. This confidence will also be seen by other clients in that same niche, generating new leads for your agency.
Also consider a client’s long-term interests; are their positions temporary or temp-to-hire? Knowing the answer to this question is essential for both your client and your workers. If a client is looking for an employee and is matched with a temp-minded worker, they will lose trust in your staffing agency. Similarly, if you put a job-focused worker into a temporary-only position, they will also be upset.
6.) Market Diligently
While all of the above suggestions are very helpful when working with new clients, you need to find these clients first. Effective marketing is an invaluable tool for your staffing agency. It generates leads as clients discover your agency, and the superior name recognition provided by effective marketing will increase confidence amongst both new clients and existing ones.
As far as specific marketing practices go, a strong online presence is the best way to reach new clients. Social media is a major player in a staffing firm marketing strategy, as it can generate leads and keep current clients interested. It is essential that your content be of the highest quality possible, and frequent, consistent publishing makes your online marketing much more effective.
Learn more: How to use Facebook as a recruitment tool
Learn more: How to use LinkedIn for recruiting
7.) Know your Differentiating Qualities… and Show Them!
To get new clients, you need to show your true differentiating factors. Businesses can always find candidates themselves if they really want to, so not only do you need to sell yourself as a great agency, you need to sell the concept of using a staffing agency as well. What is the value that you add to the hiring process? What is the depth of your recruiting process? What do you ask and what do you do that goes above and beyond other agencies? Tell potential clients why they should trust you in order to secure their business.
Showcase these wonderful qualities with numbers and logical reasoning. How many candidates have you placed? How many other clients have you had in the past year and what is your success rate? Have you worked with other companies in this industry before? Numbers talk, so use them to prove why you’re the right staffing agency for a particular client.
8.) Don’t Neglect Existing Customers
Last but not least, it is important to continue trying to build more fruitful relationships with your existing client base. With current clients, your company can skip most of the marketing process and instead focus all of its energy on delivering great services and pleasing online content. If clients have extra business and are delighted by your efforts, this is the fastest way for your agency to expand.
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