202: Tactical Tuesday - Taking Account-Based Prospecting to the Next Level ft. Vivien Maron

Feel like an Account-Based Prospecting expert yet? If not, you'll get there in no time.In this Tactical Tuesday episode, Sam and Vivien are back to dive a bit deeper on ABP — this time getting into advanced strategies like job-based prospecting tactics, tapping into niche markets, and leveraging CRM systems effectively in your bizdev efforts.

Like in most things recruitment-wise, the conversation really comes back to just how important it is to build — and maintain — a warm approach. Building relationships > pitch-slapping, every time.

Transcript

Sam (00:00.846)
Hey everyone, it's Sam Keenly. Welcome back to Becoming a Hiring Machine. This is the show dedicated to fixing recruitment by going beyond saying what needs to change and instead teaches you how to make that change. Today, we've got another great Tactical Tuesday episode ahead of us, but before we get into that, I want to tell you a little bit about the show. Essentially, we have shows within the show here. Some days we have interviews with industry thought leaders and others who are shaking up the space, while other days we cover trending topics. Stop by every Tuesday like today for a Tactical Tuesday episode where we go deep on how to do something that's going to help you draw better results in your day to day.

And occasionally you get a mic drop episode from our founder, Matt, where he shares something that he's been thinking about within the recruitment space and wants you to know. As a reminder, like the content that we share here on the show, make sure that you are subscribing for more. So, all right. As promised last week, today is part two in the account-based prospecting tactical series. So you have to do business development. We all know this. It doesn't have to be daunting though.

So when we do get into account-based prospecting last week, we were talking about how do you bridge that gap between MPC, something that you know, something that you're comfortable with, to this larger, broader, but more, what I'll say, it's what I use as a marketer. Like it's more applicable, it's better, more efficient account-based prospecting strategy. So here we've got part two. Vivian is joining us to unpack this one as part of our, we've done a mini-series now on this. We've had part one and part two with you.

Lex and I had a deep dive episode on what is account-based prospecting. And then I think it's going to be right after this episode later this week, an episode with Dante Nino, where we talk about getting into niche's, it's so impactful and all of that feeds from this exact type of strategy. So Viv, welcome back.

Vivien (01:41.476)
Hello, hello.

Sam (01:43.054)
All right. Account based prospecting ABP makes me want to think like that. Um, what was that? Michael Jackson. I want to love you. PYT. It's like, uh, that might have to be the new thing, but, um, yeah. So as we get into ABP last week, you covered the angles coming in from like, okay, you're used to MPC, but now we're starting to go a little bit broader where it's like, there is so much more power in account based prospecting when you take it from a slightly.

Vivien (01:52.965)
You

Sam (02:11.757)
broader lens. So you have two additional plays that you're going to walk us through today. And then I'll bring it back around with one, one final one that anyone who's listened to the episode that Lex and I covered, won't be anything new to them, but we'll share it into here as well. So you want to kick us off with the first one?

Vivien (02:27.916)
Let's do it. So the first one is actually job based. So if you know that one of your existing clients is hiring for a specific role that is within your dig or niche, or you are actively perusing job sites to see the companies that are in your niche in your industry, what kind of jobs they have that they're actually looking candidates for. That's another kind of like way to sneak in. So if you

C1 where you have candidates you've recently spoken to and things like that, you can actually broaden this up even more. And we kind of touched on this from the candidate perspective last time that if you have candidates that got really far into the process, but just didn't make it, you can repurpose those for similar jobs because you already have that insider knowledge. And that's essentially what it is that you're doing. So

You're just basically looking for, okay, I know that these other companies are looking for other jobs. So this is actually something that one of my coworkers back when I was a recruiter did is he literally was working with chicken, with one chicken manufacturer and they were actively looking for a recruiter. And so he looked for other chicken manufacturers like, and like the processing plants in that area.

that were because that's kind of like the area. This is what companies usually do. If there are similar companies in the area, they kind of like congregate there just because the talent with that skillset lives there. So it's in their best interest to kind of like be next to each other. So what he ended up doing is he looked up all the other ones that were in the area. Surprise, surprise, all of them were hiring one. And so this is actually where I learned to use very creative subject lines because in the subject line, he...

Sam (03:54.594)
Mm-hmm.

Vivien (04:09.392)
pinged to the HR manager at all of those companies and said, hey, why did the chicken cross the road? And then he had to open it to say, to get to the interview, I have chicken recruiters for you. And so the way that he did it is he literally had like, he knew of one chicken processing plane looking for a recruiter. He had a couple of chicken recruiters lined up ready to go. And so he just looked within the radius.

Where are the other chicken processing plans to send over the chicken recruiters in the rest of history?

Sam (04:43.565)
That's the best story I've ever heard from a recruiter. Like I don't think one can top that. Okay. Yeah. Okay. But yeah, aside from the hilarity of it, like, yeah, that's a killer use case for that exact type of approach. Like, okay, all the companies exactly like this within this region that we know are going to be hiring for that slides right in. Okay.

Vivien (04:48.364)
It's the best. Yeah, it's I learned a lot from that interaction. I think that was that shaped me as a recruiter.

Vivien (05:07.268)
Yeah, you just go into our account based prospecting page. You plug in the location. You plug in that you're looking for like chicken processing and whatnot. You can use it as a Boolean in the keyword search box and you find all the ones that are in your area. Lockshel's going to give you the decision makers right there. And you just say, hello, are you looking for a chicken recruiter?

Sam (05:29.099)
Why'd the chicken cross the road? Which is also the cool part is like it literally, you can add people straight to a campaign from it. You can add them to a list. It is that simple within the workflow. So, okay. So that's one tactic. What's another tactic?

Vivien (05:38.991)
Yeah.

Vivien (05:44.913)
Another tactic is you want to know your niche essentially. And I think this is kind of like taking a little bit of your thunder away from your third one. And it's once you know, okay, I'm looking for all these chicken processing plants and they're right there locally in that area. Where else can you go? Because now you know all about chicken processing plants, what they're looking for, kind of like the obstacles to that and things like that. I guess it's very similar to...

what should I call it? Like defense contractors when they need a very specific set of people that are okay with working for a company that does what they do. And so I know that there is a couple that literally say, are you okay with working for a company that kills people? And but it's a reality, you know, some people don't want to do that for a living. Others are don't care. They're totally fine with it. But that's something that is an obstacle when you're recruiting for talent and that everybody is okay with that. And so

Sam (06:29.483)
Mm-hmm.

Vivien (06:40.756)
no matter where you are, whether it is for chicken processing, whether it is for healthcare, whether it is for defense contractors, there are always some kind of obstacles that are very specific to that niche, to that company, to that profession. And once you have that insider knowledge, you can build on that, you can expand on it, and you can basically repurpose it. That way you don't have to learn about the industry, the role, the obstacles, and things like that, because ultimately,

Sam (07:03.629)
Mm-hmm.

Vivien (07:06.028)
As you are talking to hiring managers and candidates, you're going to get objections from both sides. And how you handle those objections is what will either make you a great recruiter that is going to thrive or you're going to keep having to kind of grab the low-hanging fruit. And I'm sorry to say it this way. The easy SS, ultimately a really good recruiter knows what the common objections are and he knows how to overcome them or she, you know, and you essentially want to be an expert in that area so that you can.

Sam (07:29.421)
Mm-hmm.

Vivien (07:34.97)
go over all of those objections and you can even leverage those for business development purposes. If you know that one big struggle in the industry is ABC, then you can get ahead of it and be like, hey, I know this is a thing, here's how I've gotten around that, you know?

Sam (07:49.102)
Or helped others do it like that is one of the best ways with the kind of like when people aren't actively feeling something to start that relationship share that knowledge develop that trust. Yes

Vivien (07:53.882)
Yeah.

Exactly. Because by the time that you, by the time that some, by the time that somebody needs something from you, they don't necessarily want to be reached out right then and there. Right. And I feel like you talked about this, on LinkedIn at some point is that you can't just plop down on one knee on the first date and do a marriage proposal. You kind of have to work for it a little bit. And even beyond that, you still have to do things to maintain the relationship and things like that. And the same thing as with business development.

You can't just plop down on one knee and send over a proposal and think you're gonna get a yes. You have to do a little bit of work for that. And the easiest way to do it is if you have nuggets of wisdom that you could share and yeah.

Sam (08:40.503)
about that way. Yeah. So true. So true. All right. So you did, you did team up nicely for this last one where it's, know, keeping, keeping an eye on the different companies and everything else. But the easiest way I would explain it for recruiters is you use the best recruiters use the recruiting CRM to map their candidate market. Like these are the best candidates for the types of roles that I fill in my niche.

So now you're doing the same thing. Most recruiting agencies don't leverage your sales serum, but this is what this ultimately is. As you're now viewing your sales serum, how do I map all of the potential prospective clients? And it's the same type of thing. I want to know every potential client that I could be working with and start the conversations with them. It is like parallel thing. You just have to think, okay, like candidate workflow, biz dev workflow. That's what it is. So really using your sales serum to say, okay, it's, want to focus in on like, I shared an example video the other day. It's like, if you were to focus on nursing home and elderly care, like with specialties in,

and memory care and Alzheimer's, you could go in, you plug that into account-based prospecting, you have a list of 500 possible locations, companies across the United States. You could drill in if you wanted to do Iowa only, Washington, wherever it was to be. Get those into your CRM, your sales CRM, and start nurturing them. That's all you have to do. But when you know exactly who to go after, there's no surprises. You can start those relationships. So again, this is like...

This is how you get ahead of that engagement. So when you send them the proposal, they say yes, because they know you, they trust you. You're not a creep. You're not stalking them. Like you've added value. And so that's, that's the value that comes with just like knowing and mapping your TAM ahead of time. There's no surprises. You're not waiting for people to somehow find you to show up on Google. You know, everyone, they know you. That's how you get ahead of like all of your competitors. So it's a fundamental, but easy, like data used to be the hindrance to that. was really hard to find out who are the, who are the companies that fit the criteria.

Now you can do it in literally a minute.

Vivien (10:31.664)
Exactly, and that way you literally have the whole market and you've already reached out to them. You have them in your database. And I know that recruiters are sometimes hesitant to go through all of that because they're like, oh, the data, it ages, it becomes out of date. does have an auto refresh feature.

Sam (10:48.109)
It does. And data with companies is a lot, takes a lot longer to become out of date than candidate data as they move roles. Like companies aren't just shifting industries.

Vivien (10:54.668)
Exactly. Exactly. And so once you have that data, this is where then you can start nurturing and you can basically expand your circle. You want to start as a sniper, establish yourself in one specific place, and then start kind of like building outwards and expanding your circle, so to speak, quite literally, actually. And once you have all of that data in your database, you don't have to keep going out and doing research. You can do...

just look within your CRM, you have all of the data right there. And that way you always have a very strong starting point because really external tools should be an add-on. But because people change jobs so quickly, people stopped looking at their CRMs because it's usually outdated by the time that they're looking. And they prefer to go to social networks or job posting sites where people upload their most recent resumes and you have filters by most recent activity when it was updated.

All that fun stuff. it makes sense that the market kind of shifted to that way. But with the email deliverability changes, the way that the market changes, how overall job searches are, how hiring managers and companies are looking, how candidates are looking, there is a fundamental disconnect where you basically are slowly by the market. And by the way that the recruiting world is working, you're getting nudged back into nurturing your internal database and really making that your starting point. You're really leveraging that, especially with all the

incredible AI tools that Lockso is in the middle of developing and Matt already teed some of them up on LinkedIn. You want to leverage your database for this as much as possible because no other tool can do what we're about to deploy.

Sam (12:32.811)
Yeah, you... As you say this, it reminds me, you've said this about candidates before, I think a little bit of is that, but like you should never have a cold conversation. Like these are like, when you know all this, every conversation is a warm conversation.

Vivien (12:44.216)
Exactly. And the most successful recruitment agencies, the reason why they're successful is because they're known within one specific niche. Whenever you, anybody that we have on, the podcast, they're always usually well known within the industry. And it's because they are well known in a very specific area. They had, that is their area of expertise. And this is where they thrive, where they live. And it's also a lot easier to do business development when you are in a household name.

Sam (12:52.013)
Mm-hmm.

Vivien (13:11.844)
within that industry that if there is a company that is looking for somebody as people are moving around, they're gonna remember that they have worked with you as a recruitment agency. It's gonna be a lot easier to get into doors once you're well established. Like for example, with sales, Coca-Cola doesn't have to do convincing to get in a room. It's Coca-Cola, it's, you know.

Sam (13:25.036)
Yep.

Sam (13:31.531)
Yeah, it's not our Z Cola. If that's still around, I don't know. Anyway, well Viv, this was fun. This was part two. I'm sure we'll be coming back to this at some point. Yeah, I'm excited. This is big. There's a lot of excitement, not just internally, the watching how many people have been coming inbound to us and conversations from sales, BDRs, customers that are just like, holy cow, this is amazing. The lights that just like.

Vivien (13:34.115)
you

Sam (13:58.177)
turn on the Isaac it big. This is a huge value add on the business front. it's fun to see. Hopefully some people get some cool stories out of it. And before long, I bet love some customers on here sharing their success stories and playbooks for how it's going for them.

Vivien (14:12.152)
Yeah, I'm excited to see it.

Sam (14:13.965)
Oh yeah. All right. Well, as we wrap becoming a hiring machine is a production of Loxo. If you like this episode, but you're not sure where to go next. We have a link to a similar one and you can find that within the show notes of the description of your favorite podcast streaming platform. Full video episodes are available on YouTube. If you have questions on their way podcast at Loxo.co. And lastly, if you did enjoy this episode, please make sure to leave us a quick rating in your podcast streaming platform. It takes you three seconds, but it's going to help other recruiters like you to find this. So, all right, everyone, that's a show. That was another great tactical Tuesday with Vivian. Till next time.

Bye y'all.

‍