Randstad - advisory sales

Marije van Pijkeren, HRD Training Advisor

A step forward in your own development

With 350 locations in the Netherlands and 3,500 permanent staff members, Randstad is the market leader in delivering temporary personnel. In the Randstad Academy, Randstad provides a range of study and training programs for its permanent staff members. InContext facilitates the sales training ‘Sharper Sales’ for the target group of senior recruiters.
“In late 2004, we went looking for a supplement to the training programs on offer for our senior recruiters. We wanted to develop senior recruiters into full-fledged and strong discussion partners for our clients”, says Marije van Pijkeren, HRD Training Advisor at Randstad Nederland.

“The requests that clients submit to a recruiter can vary widely. For example, a client can be looking for five strong laborers to work temporarily in a warehouse. A client like that has to be helped as quickly and efficiently as possible. Recruiters are very result-oriented people”, says Petra van Tol, trainer at InContext Training and Consultancy. “But a client request can also be much more complex. The result-oriented nature of the recruiter can mean that he/she runs the risk of missing the underlying request the client is making. With the result that the client does not receive the advice he/she needs and the recruiter loses out on that revenue. They learn how to deal with this problem in the training.”

Build a lasting relationship

Van Pijkeren: “A senior recruiter may be expected to have perfected the process of selecting and placing temporary staff. The added-value a senior recruiter has is the manner in which they advise a client. They must be capable of making real contact with the client and over the course of a conversation know how to discover what the situation is. Sharp and to the point. Only in this way can they build a lasting relationship with their clients, set themselves apart from the competition and advertise the wide range of services offered by Randstad.”

Van Tol: “A senior recruiter really has to take a step forward in his or her development. Instinctively, they have to go from ‘small supplier’ to ‘full-fledged and strong discussion partner’ for their client. This takes courage and lots of practice and that is what we provide in the training program.”

Randstad approached multiple organizations to provide the sales training for senior recruiters. “After one pilot run, InContext was selected, because they effectively focused a lot of attention on interview and retention techniques”, according to Van Pijkeren. Both clients have pooled their expertise in giving form to this training.

Role-playing games with actors which were specially written for Randstad

“The developed training is based on an existing approach to Advisory Sales by InContext” says Petra van Tol. In intensive collaboration with Randstad, the definitive training was filled out and ‘Sharper Sales’ came into being. “The custom aspect can be seen in the practical examples used in the role-playing games with actors which were specially written for Randstad. We spent a lot of time getting to know the organization and the target group. I even spent a whole day going to client interviews with a recruiter.” The result is a three-day, two-block training, supervised by two trainers and accompanied by two actors.

“The first day, the students are thrown in the deep end with the actors”, says Van Tol. “With recognizable practical examples, they see the effect their behavior has on various situations. It is a sort of zero-measurement which address all the subjects covered in 'Sharper Sales' and clarifies the goals for learning.”

The kick-off for the training is done by someone in the top management at Randstad. This entails bringing across the expectations Randstad has for its senior recruiters. Subsequently, over the course of the training the whole sales process is addressed step by step and at each stage, participants practice the necessary interview skills. What can you do to get your client to the next phase? A number of principles are important during the entire sales process; including ‘earn the right to the next step’ and ‘put yourself in the other person’s shoes’. Which is always easier said than done. After a six week intermission in which the students have had a chance to apply their knowledge on a daily basis, they return for the second block, in which they go through the last phase of the sales process.

The training ‘Sharper Sales’ is followed by everyone at Randstad who moves from recruiter to senior recruiter. Annually that is about forty to fifty people.