In the retail market, the run-up to Black Friday and the subsequential Cyber Monday equates to 19.5% of annual sales! For some retailers, holiday sales represent as much as 40% of annual revenue.
Can you imagine if 20% of your sales and your entire year was virtually determined by a single day of selling?
In the recruitment industry, seasonality and a peak period is definitely a factor, but thankfully nothing like it is in retail. However, while our industry doesn’t live or die by the holidays, we can learn some good lessons from Black Friday & Cyber Monday.
Everyone loves a deal, especially our clients, so you’d think Recruitment & Black Friday would be like two peas in a pod. While you might not think about “recruitment sales”. You might want to think about creative uses of discounts to drive greater use of your services during certain times of the year.
Some Ideas & Examples
- Create bundles – discounts for purchasing multiple services together.
- Offer volume discounts.
- Create incentives to use recruitment during your “off” season.
- Offer discounts for pre-purchasing services.
- Create a discount on perm fees when recruiters have excess time.
- Offer a discount for first-time clients.
- Offer reduced fees for hiring a candidate out of your database.
Make buying an event
For hardcore shoppers, Black Friday is nearly a religious experience. They love the thrill of getting the best deal, the excitement of the crowds. And the social aspect of shopping with friends and family – online during the pandemic obviously. Retailers have very successfully transformed holiday shopping into a highly anticipated event.
In recruitment, creating a Black Friday-style event might not be feasible. However, you can create events that your clients will love. The key is to make your events into something special… Something fun, exciting, and highly useful. Consult with clients on their staffing strategies. Constantly show them new and better ways to use temps to get work done more efficiently and effectively.
The downside of Black Friday is that it has trained consumers to only make purchases when they get a deal. And since the last thing you want to do is lower your margins, focusing on deals is NOT the way to go. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from retail. Recruitment companies need to find ways to make the buying experience more enjoyable (prospects hate all our cold calls).
Get Creative
You need to find ways to create excitement for the services you sell.
Speak to customers and also temporary workers to see what they like to see and hear from the business they work for.
Get the message across that working with your agency is a better experience than working with anyone else.
Do that, and every Friday will become Black Friday for your recruitment agency just like at Kenect Recruitment 🙂
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