On Wednesday March 14th, I will be presenting at the SIA Executive Forum on aligning your recruiting organization with your client buying patterns to improve profitability. The impact of effective alignment can be quickly realized in the bottom line results and are typically of a substantial scale.

Why is the impact of improving operations so significant? Well, because delivery issues are oftentimes driven by self imposed process inefficiencies. Yes, the talent pool may be tightening, but don’t fool yourself that the lack of productivity is out of your control. Spend the time to drill down into your delivery organization and honestly evaluate whether it is truly aligned with your current client base. I have worked with client’s who are married to old processes because they worked in the past. However, this is an expensive mistake.

Managers must look at their processes in relation to their account base and customize their delivery accordingly. The good news is that these types of improvements can lead to stunning results. I have seen results increase by over 40% and will present these case studies during my presentation at the SIA Executive Forum.

In contrast, addressing bottlenecks in the sales strategy takes longer and typically requires more investment. Sales simply doesn’t benefit as much from repeatable and scalable processes. Instead, sales processes must be joined with marketing efforts and extensive training of sales personnel which takes both time as well as additional expertise. In addition, clients will often wait months or years before agreeing to work with a new staffing firm. Keep in mind that the sales strategy must be continually improved and evaluated, but be prepared to wait at least six to nine months before you see a return.

For the quickest return, it may make sense for you to focus on aligning your operations versus improving your sales strategy, especially if you see the following trends:

• Declining Job Order Close Rates
• Increasing Submittal to Hire Ratios
• Large Fluctuations in Job Order Volume
• Increases in Time to First Submit
• Large Variance of Close Rates Between Client Types

If you are short on job orders, then you should definitely focus on shoring up your sales strategy. But if you believe you are leaving business on the table because of poor alignment, then I encourage you evaluate closely the three key processes that define delivery:

• Job Order Management
• Sourcing
• Submittal Management

I will go into greater detail of the roles of each process and how they must interact with one another during the presentation. If you are not able to attend or would like to discuss these concepts in further detail, please email me at mcleland@chartedpath.com to schedule a time to discuss.