Optimizing the Selling Process for Staffing and Recruiting with Automation and AI

Economic slowdowns have created ripple effects throughout the global economy, necessitating that staffing and recruiting organizations pivot to stay profitable and achieve success. This is especially true for a firm’s sellers.

Today’s typical seller faces a host of challenges. First and foremost, competition is steep with more firms vying for the same clients. Secondly, there is an increased need for a more in-depth understanding of both the market as well as the individual industries a seller may work with. And lastly, clients have come to expect better, more personal, more curated experiences.

These challenges demand that sellers develop the agility and flexibility to allow them to not only compete in the current market, but also generate growth that works to expand the overall business of their organization.

Achieving success in this ever-changing, competitive landscape is challenging. Furthermore, the understanding that one needs to be agile and a desire to generate growth don't mean anything without infrastructure in place to support meaningful change. In order to truly succeed, staffing and recruiting firms need to support sellers with the tools and technology they need to:

• Better match/connect with the right clients
• Increase placement velocity
• Build personal, scalable, digital-first experiences

The key to a competitive advantage is technology. And not just any technology, but technology that is connected, efficient, and smart. Firms need tools that give them the ability to collect, connect, and activate the data at their disposal. Once they are able to do this they’ll have the ability to both use their data effectively and enhance it by running analytics and AI on top of it. Together, these things will enable them to approach each and every task strategically, holistically, and at scale.

Building these capabilities may seem daunting, but a technology partner can help. The creation of a single, unified platform can connect the entirety of an organization in one central location, providing a single source of truth, instant access, and transparency. This plugs the “leaks” that often occur as a result of manual processes, gives everyone access to the information and data they need, and provides valuable insights at each and every step.

Operating across a single ecosystem allows sellers to replace low value activities with more important work, close deals more efficiently, and gain the ability to adapt quickly so they can take advantage of new innovations like advanced analytics and generative AI. This not only enables them to continually unlock new capabilities and generate new opportunities, but ultimately drive growth for themselves, their clients, and the organization at large.

Today’s sellers are under pressure to do more with less. Despite these increased demands and expectations, most do not have the tools or support to meet this mandate. Many find themselves flipping through multiple applications (email, research tools, prospecting tools, excel sheets, etc) and toggling between screens to do everything from prospecting and finding jobs, to following up, to closing a book of business. This impedes productivity, hampers efficiency, and requires a huge manual effort on the part of the individual. The right technological solutions can help fix these problems.

The ideal solution would be the implementation of a single engagement layer with the ability to incorporate automation and combine AI + Data + CRM throughout the selling lifecycle. These solutions elevate the process and enable sellers to more easily and effectively achieve their goals. Work queues organize a seller's activities into a list of scalable, best practices with intended outcomes in mind, for example: organizing top leads, creating reminders to reach out to webinar attendees, or following up with past clients. Each one of these tasks is then automated and enhanced with AI at every step. So, in the case of a seller trying to find leads:

1. Top leads would be scored and filtered by AI, highlighting clients with the highest likelihood of converting
2. Each lead would have a robust profile that when clicked into would reveal information like where they work, what industry, any past interactions they may have had with the firm, availability, engagement and more
3. Integrated tools directly in the platform would allow the seller to easily reach out to that client at the simple click of a button

Unlike multi-system, manual processes, the workflow described above negates the need for a seller to flip through multiple screens, thus increasing speed and productivity. Furthermore, tools and innovations embedded in the platform (suggested talking points, a dedicated note taking area, etc.) further streamline the process and, perhaps more importantly, document it so that the history is readily apparent to anyone else who might click into the client profile at a later date.

In short, sellers are guided throughout with automated processes and next best actions at every step of the way. Guiding tools bolstered with AI provide a roadmap for success and ensure that sellers are focusing on the right steps and moving through the process as efficiently and effectively as possible. These tools also provide continual insight and recommendations. For example, they could help sellers understand why a specific conversion likelihood might be higher or lower, or use historical and current market data to determine what clients are/are not paying, allowing the seller to change the bill rate (as suggested) while also assuring that they stay within the target pay rate and margins, so that spread goals are met.

Automation also enables sellers to focus on more valuable work, by assuring that the less valuable work happens automatically. For example, rather than a seller needing to manually create job records for each and every opportunity, automation on the platform could automatically create those underlying job records by flowing previously captured information into the system. Sellers could then use generative AI, embedded directly in the platform, to create more elevated, timely, curated, and impactful job descriptions, enabling recruiters to cast a wider net.

We are on the precipice of an evolution of the workforce. Jobs across all industries will change. Knowing this, the question becomes: How can we make sure we are changing too? How can we leverage new technology and quickly incorporate it into day-to-day operations to achieve efficiency, productivity, and business growth? The answer is a technology partner with the ability to innovate and move fast—at scale. The answer is Salesforce.

Salesforce provides customizable, out of the box solutions that enable organizations to reap the benefits and opportunities of new innovations, like generative AI, immediately and without the huge investment. Furthermore, it allows companies to create unique, customized experiences that can easily adapt and scale as needed.

At the end of the day, a partnership with Salesforce enables agility and modernization by enabling staffing and recruiting companies to prioritize sellers and their clients without sacrificing the bottom line.