Almost every CEO I meet complains that finding staff is hard. And those that they can attract don’t perform well and don’t stay. Every leader understands how important great employees are to the success of their team, but many are doing it backwards.
Companies spend huge amounts of money on websites, lead generation, sales funnels, pipeline software and so on. So, what would happen if we also focused that sales and marketing energy on recruiting the best people – treating your employees like customers. The employee has skills, creativity and knowledge that they are willing to ‘sell’, and they will select the company that can offer them the best value in exchange.
Certainly, the right sales ‘pitch’ is important to win new employees, but any product manager will tell you that sometimes you need to modify the product as well. That may mean re-pricing or re-packaging it and sometimes, in the face of strong competition, reinventing the whole company. Just as it is possible for a company fail by becoming irrelevant to buyers, it can also fail by becoming irrelevant to potential employees.
A tool we use to help develop market strategy is a Positioning Statement. Have you developed a target profile for the people you want to sell a job to? Have you identified the preferred demographics and psychographics? Have you looked at what other companies you are competing with – can you provide a better offering than them?
You can amend a standard product positioning statement to help guide you:
In a similar way to product marketing, the tool can be used to adjust the various elements so that you arrive at a competitive offering for the target employee.
Talk to you next time
Andrew
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