Staffing Made Simple – Episode 4 with Dan Mori

Staffing Made Simple – Dan Mori on 5 Fundamental Requirements for a Successful Sales Strategy

With Guest Dan Mori, Director of NISA

Casey Wagonfield: If you’re constantly chasing down clients that never close, if your sales team isn’t sure how to explain what makes your agency different, if you’re burning time and energy on business, that doesn’t move the needle, you’re not broken. Your system is, and that’s what today’s episode’s all about, because when you can’t have clarity around who your ideal clients are, what makes your agency uniquely valuable, and how to connect those dots, everything feels harder and it puts your agency at risk.

Marketing gets messy. Sales feel forced and growth becomes inconsistent at best. But the good news is there’s a better way, and our guest today has helped a lot of staffing firms build it.

Casey Wagonfield: Welcome back to Staffing Made Simple, brought to you by SimpleVMS, the preferred VMS partner of staffing agencies. This is a podcast for staffing and recruiting professionals who want clear, practical insights that help them grow. Each episode, we sit down with industry leaders, experts, and professionals to talk through strategies, challenges, and ideas that make a real difference in how staffing firms sell, serve, and scale.

I’m Casey, 16 years in staffing and accounting with a sales and operations background. And as always, I’m joined by my co-host, my buddy, and our Senior Vice President at Simple VMS, Rob Geist.

Rob Geist: Hey, Casey, excited, one of my favorite people in the industry and one of my favorite topics, sales.

Casey Wagonfield: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Let’s get to the episode. It’s gonna be a good one because when this guy talks, people listen. We’re joined by Dan Mori. Dan’s a seasoned staffing industry leader, nearly two decades of experience in organizational leadership, recruiting, and business development, the founder of Staffing Mastery, a strategic advisory firm that helps staffing firms and owners and leaders implement systems for predictable growth.

Also runs staffing dashboard, a data analytics, foresight, and forecasting tool. In addition to all that, he’s also the president of Employment Solutions based outta New York with multiple locations throughout the country. And Dan is also the founder of the Staffing Sales Summit. An annual event focused exclusively on sales training and workshops for staffing pros.

I can personally say that that event has become a must attend for sales leaders and producers and staffing. Dan’s helping us break down his five foundational requirements that every staffing firm needs to define today, from identifying your ideal client to clearly communicating your value and building a system around that clarity.

Dan, welcome to the pod.

Dan Mori: Oh man, Casey, Rob, so good to be here. I always, enjoy talking staffing shop with you guys ’cause you just, you’re in the industry. You get it, man. So I’m grateful to be here. Thanks for having me.

Rob Geist: We’re glad to have you, Dan, and before we jump into the topic, want to talk about something that Casey already mentioned, the Staffing Sales Summit.

If you haven’t heard of it, attended our second year this year, and I tell you what, this event has grown so much from year one to year two, and it’s becoming a go-to event for, sales, professionals and staffing.

Casey Wagonfield: Yeah. I think what makes it stand out is it’s intimate, super focused and it’s, purely built around sales.

So there’s no fluff, just real strategies from top producers and trainers and leaders.

Rob Geist: You want to tell the listeners what they can expect in, 2025?

Dan Mori: So when we’ve actually putting together next year’s agenda, which is gonna be in February, 2026, in Orlando, we’re gonna build on what we already experienced the past couple of years.

The main takeaways that we got from this is they want to have. Deep drill down tactical topics around sales, but more specifically around really the modern staffing sales system. So what are the things that our agencies still hanging onto but don’t really work? And how do we break free and replace those, tactics and techniques with things that work for the modern day buyer and really the environment that staffing is in today?

So, we have a minimum requirement that everything has to be actionable and it has to be relevant. So, they’re gonna be talking about those things like social selling.

How do you actually run a social selling campaign that drives inbound leads and creates enough brand equity in the marketplace? So when you actually do make a cold call that you still need to do when you do send a prospecting email. People know who you are and they’re gonna be more receptive to listening to you.

And then some of what we’re gonna talk about today about defining the ICP and UVP and that kind of stuff. We’re actually gonna workshop that at next year’s summit. So people are better aligned with their sales, their marketing, and they know how to better manage a sales meeting. To not just convince, but demonstrate to the prospect why.

You are the agency of choice and why they should choose to work with you, opposed to all your competitors. So we have a lot of workshops that we’re actually building on and we’re gonna be announcing our ticket opening here, coming up in July, just a month away.

Rob Geist: Awesome. Alright, Dan, let’s kick it off with your five key requirements with the first one, the ICP – Ideal Client Profile.

Can you quickly define, what that is for those who don’t know?

Dan Mori: Absolutely. So ICP, or Ideal client Profile, is an absolute must. This is a foundational thing that every agency should do, and if you’re not familiar with this concept, simply put what it is, is it’s just knowing exactly what type of industry and company that you are best equipped at servicing.

 And then what specific challenges are they facing as it relates to human capital contingent workforce. Employment or staffing, in those particular areas that we’re in, what are the challenges that they’re specifically facing? How do those challenges show up in symptoms? What are common ways that your client or ideal client tends to try to solve these?

And most importantly, what is the ideal outcome? What are they really looking to achieve when it comes to addressing these challenges? And you should have this clearly defined not just for the ideal client, but also the different potential buyers or influencers of the buyer decision, or maybe users of your service within that organization.

So that helps you understand really who it is you’re working for and what services you’re providing to solve the problems they have and really how they want to see them solved.

Rob Geist: It’s like looking for win-win business is how I have spoken about that in the past. So what’s the biggest mistake you see when agencies try to define their ICP?

Dan Mori: So there’s three. The first one is they don’t, if you were to take a poll of every single staffing and recruiting firm out there in North America, what their ICP was, they wouldn’t have it clearly defined. And that’s the first mistake. If you’re not defining it, you’re gonna get left behind with this latest shift in the industry.

You need this. The second mistake that happens if people have defined it the last time they defined it, is when they opened business. And they typically defined it as in, I’m gonna be a staffing agency that provides healthcare workers, or I’m going to service the IT industry, or I’m gonna service companies that do warehousing.

 And they think that’s what their ICP is. And they might even go so far to say, I’m gonna service warehouses that struggle with turnover. Okay, that’s a problem and that is an industry. But that leads me to my third problem, or I guess mistake that people make with the ICP is they don’t define it detailed enough.

They don’t really go deep enough to say, this is the specific type of company that I want to work with. Here are the very specific and real world challenges that this type of company faces. Here’s the symptoms of these things, of how they’re showing up in the organization that’s causing, the decision makers to wanna take action.

Here’s how. These challenges impact the specific decision makers on a business level, and maybe even on a personal level. And then ultimately, what are the ways that these decision makers have tried to solve this problem, or ideally would like to solve this problem, to add value to their organization?

And what are they trying to achieve through those solutions? And I know it sounds, like a lot. It’s really not. It’s a really straightforward process, but that’s the third one is just companies are not going deep enough into defining what their ICP is. And the challenge from that is if you don’t know what you’re looking for, it’s hard to find it because you’re gonna find a lot of things that might fit it and you’re gonna waste a lot of time and resources.

Really sorting for that ICP and sort of hoping you know what it is when you see it. And that is just a practice that no longer works and it’s really bad business.

Casey Wagonfield: Yeah. You mentioned they have it set in place when they start business and maybe that fades out. Is that something then agencies should be continually evaluating is their ICP?

It’s not just, you said it once and it’s good, right? It’s something you have to monitor.

Dan Mori: 100%. You do need to monitor it. I recommend looking at it annually. It should be part of your strategic planning process. When you’re getting into Q4 and you’re taking a look at how you’re doing against this year’s plan and you’re starting to lay the groundwork for next year’s plan.

You should analyze your ICP. And the main reason why is because markets shift and staffing agencies evolve. And sometimes those two things go together and sometimes they drift apart. And if your market is shifting, if the companies that you’re servicing maybe having different staffing challenges, or maybe they’re being super disrupted by ai.

Your solution is no longer relevant to them. Or maybe it’s not a solution that they’re willing to entertain or invest in solving their problem, but you keep trying to do it. Then you get that square peg round hole situation, right? Other times your market might stay on course. Maybe they’re not hit with that structural shift that we’ve all been hit with over the post pandemic years here, but maybe you evolved.

Maybe you decided to do some things differently in business and the way that you provide your value, which we’ll talk about in a little bit here. But the way that you provide it is different and it’s no longer the best solution for your ICP. And maybe you need a different ICP. So I recommend, you gotta look at this once a year.

You’ve really gotta say, Hey, who are we? What are we trying to do? How do we best solve this? And then you keep those things aligned year to year, and you’re gonna continue to grow.

Rob Geist: So what about those agencies who are moving into multiple verticals, like and admin, clerical? Is it okay to have more than one ICP?

Dan Mori: Absolutely. And you, it’s not okay. It’s a mandatory thing. If you are gonna service more than one industry vertical, then you need an ICP profile. Like create a documented with your people that you can train to for every single one. So just to give a real life example, If I’m an agency and I’m in three verticals, let’s say I do some general clerical call center type stuff.

I do some light industrial distribution, maybe three PL type stuff, and maybe I got a professional division that does technical it. I’m gonna wanna have an ICP for each one of those. And actually I’m gonna have like multiple tiers of it because the ICP that runs a three PL warehouse.

That is gonna actually be maybe a decision maker in operations, but maybe the CFO is gonna have a say in it and maybe the staffing shortages that show up in their organization present differently to the CFO versus the operations manager or even hr. So you’re gonna have a few of these profiles build out specifically for that industry type that you want to go after.

But yeah, not only is it okay to have different ICPs for the verticals you serve. You need to have ’em for all of ’em, and you really need to have a detailed ICP for every person that’s involved with the staffing decision or uses the staffing service. And that’s what it takes to really be a best in class agency today.

Casey Wagonfield: You talk about pain points when you’re clearly defining what your ICP is.

What’s the best way to uncover the real pain points clients are feeling so they can align with them better?

Dan Mori: So, simply put questions, just have to ask. And the best way to get this information is go back and look at your best clients today. If you’re in staffing and you’ve been in staffing for a little while and you’ve got revenue coming in, you’re successful to some degree.

So if you wanna be more successful, go look at your best clients. And when I say best clients, I’m gonna keep it super simple. The ones that you’re the most successful at filling their orders and they create the best margins, That’s kind of one category. And then two, the ones you actually enjoy working with.

Like who do you have a positive working relationship with? Just find all the clients that check those two boxes and then go to them and just say, Hey, I wanna just talk about what was life like before us? what were some of the business challenges that you were facing as IT related employment, you know, staffing, those kinds of things, And what were some things that you tried? What worked? What didn’t work? What’s the end outcome that you were hoping to achieve? How was working with us achieve that? Just go talk to your actual clients and then learn that, and that’s gonna be the foundation of your ICP because I guarantee you every market is competitive.

Your clients have competitors. You’ll have to go find other similar clients that face those similar issues, that want those similar outcomes. And you’ll know that because you’ve got a good relationship and you can ask those questions. So that’s. honestly what we do on a pretty regular basis, and that helps us keep a beat on if the market is shifting or if our ICP is shifting or if our value is not hitting the way that it used to. So it’s just a good way to align account management with refining your ICP over time.

Rob Geist: And the final, question about ICP, for someone who hasn’t yet defined it, what’s a good starting point and where could they begin?

Dan Mori: So I love this question. I would say, it’s a pretty simple process, step-by-step instruction of to do this.

I’m gonna run through it really quickly, but if anybody wants the actual template for this, just shoot me a message on LinkedIn and say, Hey, I heard you talking to Casey and Rob and, I’d happy to send it to you. But super quickly, on the ICP, the first thing you gotta look at your target industry and roles.

You have to take a look at what you’re most successful at filling, look at those industries. Look at specifically the roles that you’re best equipped to service within those industries. And that’s gonna give you the basic framework, the structure of it.

And then from in there, you’re gonna start to define those target roles even further. Look at the markets they’re in. Where do you get these people from? What are competitive pay rates? All that kind of stuff. You’re gonna start to look at the role performance against your own past successes, right? And say, how do I do with each of these roles?

And that’s gonna tell you where you are best equipped to service this. And then once you know where you’re best equipped to fill these roles, you can do a market map and identify these prospects. Then you’ll be able to identify those decision makers and then you’ll start to layer in all of the individual pain points that we talked about to these decision makers.

And then, you can actually start to build that into a prospecting campaign as well as a sales meeting management campaign. There’s a lot that goes into it, but it really is a straightforward process. So, anyone that wants to see the step-by-step detailed breakdown, just shoot me a message on LinkedIn and I’ll send you the document, for free to you.

Rob Geist: Love it. How willing you are to, share just with the community at large. So let’s jump over to Unique Value Proposition or UVP now that, we’ve defined who we wanna work with and we know who we want to work with us.

Can you quickly define UVP for listeners that may not truly understand what it is?

Dan Mori: Absolutely. This one it’s not external, like the ICP. The UVP is internal. This is really what you do and more specifically how you do it. To provides value to solve those problems for your ICP. So that’s really is simply put, and I know we’re gonna dissect this a little bit more, but UVP is what you do and how you do it that makes you unique, that provides value to your client. And we can dig into it further than that, but I want to keep it very simple at this point.

Casey Wagonfield: And I’ve noticed, Dan, that, there’s a lot of agencies that often claim the same things, right? We have fast feed, we have great service, we’re reliable, or we have quality candidates, some of the same things that you hear. Which of those things, they think are value propositions but aren’t quantifiable and it’s hard to really. Turn those into a UVP. So how do they create a UVP that truly stands out?

Dan Mori: So ultimately the way to do it is you wanna get specific, so you are right Casey.

And one of my most fun exercises that I do with salespeople is I first ask them, Hey, tell me all about your agency and why I should work with you. It’s gonna sound just like what you just said. And frankly, if I go to their websites, it’s gonna repeat just that very generic, full of platitudes, superlatives, that kind of stuff.

And I say, okay, let’s pretend for a second that you got back to the office today and you got fired, and then you got hired by a competitor. And then tomorrow I run into you at a networking event, tell me why I should work with you. And it’s gonna sound exactly the same. And once they realize that, they’re like, holy cow, we’re all sounding the same out there.

It’s no wonder that the only distinguishable point that the prospect has to just choose which one is better is price. And that’s why agencies are typically left competing on prices because they don’t do enough to create the apple and orange scenario, which is what you want when you’re trying to differentiate yourself.

So what I tend to do is I encourage people to be specific. Now, it’s a lot easier to be specific if you have a clearly defined ICP. That’s why that’s such an important one. If you know exactly the type of industry that you serve and you know what problems they face, and you know how they want them solved and what their desired outcomes are.

You know exactly how to build your company, the value that you’re gonna provide to solve those. And then you can speak very specifically about it. So the more specific you get with the ICP, the more detailed and specific that you can get with communicating your unique value proposition. And it’s always great to use data if you have it, ’cause data don’t lie.

And then if you can also weave in some testimonials or case studies to support that, adding in some social proof, that’s a really big step to communicating your UVP.

Rob Geist: Can you give an example of a weak, unique value prop a versus a strong client focused one in the staffing industry?

Dan Mori: So I’ll rehash this in a second, but Casey obviously just showed what most staffing agencies say, and that’s a perfect example of a weak value prop. But what that sounds like is, hey. I’m an independent agency and we are unique. You’re not just a number to us. We have access to the best recruiters.

We have access to all of the candidates out there. We use all of the job boards available to you, and we’re gonna give you extra special customer service. We focus on relationships, we prioritize quality. We’re gonna give you speed and it’s gonna be competitively priced, I say it facetiously, but that’s an example of a weak UVP, but it doesn’t sound that far off from what most salespeople are saying in a roundabout way. So what a good UVP would sound like is something to this effect. It would be like, if you wanna unlock superior talent faster.

Where 80% of staffing agencies rely on job boards, which really that accounts for 77% of candidate placements according to staffing industry analysts. Our approach transforms the hiring process by integrating cutting edge talent, mapping automated referral programs, and a strategic website retargeting, as well as expert recruiters.

We’re gonna build a dynamic exclusive talent network for you. This unique combination delivers hires up to 48% faster, and it actually boosts retention by 300% compared to traditional sourcing methods. So really where our competitive edge comes in is we perfectly blend expert recruiters with technology.

And our technology is innovative. We utilize AI and this creates a seamless blend of automation with personalized outreach to access passive candidates that competitors simply cannot reach. We also combine that with expert vetting from some of the best recruiters, most skilled recruiters in the market.

And then we layer on these recruiters to create a high best in class quality assurance that ensures each candidate is not just a fit on paper, but prime for long-term success with your organization. And then our process is actually designed to work in concert, providing you with a continuously engaged and organized talent network, reducing time to fill and mitigating the risks of high turnover.

So if you’re looking to elevate your workforce, you should choose a staffing partner that redefines recruitment by delivering higher quality candidate quicker than any conventional method currently does experience the difference of innovation, precision, and personalized service that drives operational financial success by working with me. Does that hit different?

Casey Wagonfield: Where do I sign? Take my money.

You’re right. you’ve gotta sound different. I do have a question you know, when they have a UVP, how do they test whether it’s resonating or falling flat, or is it just, well, you’re getting meetings or you’re not?

Dan Mori: I love that question ’cause you do need to make sure that it’s landing once you actually have a really well done UVP and one kind of asterisk that I’ll mention is. I was just saying that about a generic company. If we can actually get specific to an agency, then you can actually even make it more dialed in and even tighter.

But once you have a clear UVP, you can actually start using it in your marketing. You can start to actually use the elements of it into your marketing channels, and you can measure the level of engagement, that you get from your emails, from how well your cold calls are hitting if you’re putting it in your prospecting language.

Once you actually get into your sales meetings and you start weaving the UVP into the process, which there’s a method to do this, you’re gonna get different questions from your prospect. And the best way to measure the efficacy of a strong UVP is two areas. Does your meetings, to proposals, to contracts, does those conversion rates improve?

Because if they do, that tells you that your UVP is landing and that they’re choosing you. They’re seeing value in it. And are they willing to pay you more if you get out of the compete on price phase and you realize they’re actually talking about how do I buy a solution from you versus how do I buy a price from you?

You know that it’s working. And over time, if your average markups or bill rates are increasing, you know that that UVP is landing. If you see that those things don’t have an impact, then you probably gotta refine your UVPA little bit more. Yeah, that’s great.

Casey Wagonfield: And I’ve always been a believer in your best salespeople or your clients, right?

Get your clients to say something good about you, write a testimonial, be a reference for you. and I think you already kind of touched on this, but would you consider a testimonial a value proposition, or is that just something that bolsters your actual value proposition?

Dan Mori: So a testimonial is not the value proposition, but it supports it and it proves it, right?

And I’ve said this for years, there’s no such thing as B2B sales. It’s all human to human. At the end of the day, whether somebody is buying something for themselves or they’re buying it on behalf of their company, they’re still using a very human psychological buying process, so we like social proof. Nobody wants to be sold. People like to buy, but no one wants to be sold. So if you can convince them to this and they’re like, wow, that sounds really good. I feel good about this. What’s gonna happen is because of all the bad salespeople out there, people are gonna feel like, okay, I need some proof.

I don’t wanna be sold on this. I don’t want to have this, bad experience again that I’ve had in the past. So if you start to get those testimonials in there that validate your UVP, if you’re like, Hey, we do 48% faster, hires and we improve retention by 300%, and then you have some testimonials to say, Hey, once we started working with a BC agency our time to hire dropped significantly, and people were lasting longer. They’re like, wow, that’s exactly what he said over here, and I’ve got all these client testimonials and reviews that back it up. It’s an amazing sales tool called Social Proof that supports the UVP, and those things should be aligned.

You don’t wanna be giving out testimonials that don’t directly align and support with your UVP or don’t reflect that of your ICP.

Casey Wagonfield: So Rob and I and the simple team really, we talk to a lot of agencies and they all say they want to be a partner to their clients, right?

And, and all companies want that. We want a partner, not a transaction, not a vendor, we want partners. But not all agencies can follow through with that. Can you add that as unique value proposition and quantify it being a partner?

Dan Mori: So you can, I will say that, yes, of course every staffing agency wants that because what that means when we say that is we wanna be valued and respected because we believe in what we’re doing and we want our counterpoint on the other side of the client to view it the same way, but it also creates stability.

When we’re partners, we feel like we have greater stability. We feel like there’s less threat to competitors, things like that. So that’s why we want partners ideally, most clients are suspect they’re like, I don’t really know if I want a partner just yet. So you can’t just state right out of the gate with your UVP that you create these amazing partnerships, right?

So it has to be, a goal that you’re gonna work towards. So what I would recommend is say, Hey, we’re gonna come on and we’re gonna be an amazing provider of staffing services. And we’re gonna become such a valuable resource to you that we aspire to forge a strong partnership with you to help provide insights and value to your contingent workforce management, or to your staffing management or recruiting management, needs at your company.

So I hate to say it, but I think partner is a little bit of a platitude. I think it skews more that way and trying to weave that in saying, “Hey, we’re excellent partners.” I don’t know that that’s what clients really want out of the gate. I think there’s a trust recession that we’re in and they don’t necessarily want to be partners yet.

They want you to solve the problem for them. And if you solve the problem for them consistently, then they’ll explore the partnership piece. And that’s just my own kind of hot take on that topic.

Rob Geist: Looking back, you’ve been in the industry for, a good amount of time now, but any examples of UVP that you’ve seen over the years that really stood out?

Dan Mori: Companies that really focus on, a niche, if you’re only in the locum space, like you’ll know exactly what the challenges are and you can build your company specifically around that. So you’ll be able to speak to unique solutions to actually better get locums into a healthcare facility.

Right? Or there’s some companies that only do 3pl, third party logistics, staffing.

So if you talk about people that actually do three PL staffing, one of the biggest challenges they have is there’s a revolving door of talent. Because in order to really service the biggest three PL providers, you have to be very competitively priced. The margins are thin all the way through the process because three PL is in fact a middleman. So, you gotta be quick and you gotta have a good price. That’s really where the value prop comes in on this business. So if you can have a tool. Like a VMS that can actually plug in and gives the client a good interface, portal where they can actually go in and they can see their people on assignment.

They can actually see the reporting and they can actually put their jobs in and it connected directly to the database. It’s gonna scrub time off the process, so it actually goes faster. And the reason I’m sitting here laughing is because the example that popped in my head was actually a user of ante and SimpleVMS, and that’s one of their UVPS.

As they’re like, hey, we actually rolled out the integration with this because it allows us to get orders in the system easier and quicker by our client. The whole automation process on the back end of the software becomes faster. They can review candidates and start candidates faster, and that gets them in.

And while it doesn’t always solve the attrition issue. It basically solves the gap, the attrition issue creates, and they like that. So like that’s a really good example of doing something that’s unique to the staffing agency that provides value to the client, is using a tool and technology that really speaks to what they need out of the partnership.

Casey Wagonfield: So we’ve talked about ICP and UVP, let’s talk about connecting that, connecting those dots as I think that’s where folks can get stuck. How do they bridge that gap?

Dan Mori: So this is a big one and this is why it’s step three of the five, is that once you’ve clearly defined these two things.

You have to point out internally first and train your team on this, how the specific values that you provide and the what you do and the how you do it, how it specifically addresses the pain points of your ICP and how it will deliver the desired outcome. So you gotta connect this. So if it’s like. Hey, I’m just gonna go back to that last example.

If you have your ideal client profile and you’ve identified that time to fill orders is a big deal for them. Meaning that they’re a high fast production facility and they need to get people in really quickly. And this could be a warehouse. This could be a healthcare facility, this could be an IT help desk shop, it could be a call center.

If you’re dealing with a lot of, fast-paced environment where you need people almost on demand, right? But you don’t wanna deal with your typical, day labor type situation. Getting access to that talent pool in an on-demand fashion is gonna be really important.

So if that was my ICP. If time to fill was one of their biggest pain points, and a slow time to fill was causing gaps in people on the floor doing the production. And those gaps in production was actually showing up as, poor customer service, putting their customer base at risk of leaving or shopping them around to some other provider, and also having a negative impact on the finances.

And that’s how it was showing up. And it was actually decreasing the morale. So now I’ve hit how the CFO sees it, how the ops manager sees it, and how the HR person sees it. If I see that, and my unique value is a connected tool. And quick pause for a second for the audience. I’m not here promoting Simple.

They’re an amazing company. This is a real life example that I’m explaining so, back to the story is that if you say, Hey, the reason that we’re gonna introduce this tool to where you can log into this interface, you can post your job anytime, whether we’re open or not, it does not matter.

You go here and you post this job and it will trigger automations through the entire workflow. It will basically get you all of the people you need teed up. So our recruiters as soon as they can get to it, they can do their QC and then actually release those candidates back to your portal for your final approval.

That shows them that you’re addressing the time to fill. And if you can do that a lot quicker and solve that problem for them, that’s solving a real problem, which is gonna increase production. So money goes up, ops manager solves CFO is solved, and it’s gonna increase morale because they’re not gonna have as much overtime or spreading people too thin, or people not getting their work done on time because they’re relying on someone that might not be there.

So your HR person is gonna be satisfied. So that’s an example of how you would connect, the UVP of what you do and how you do it. Two, a pain point that they might have, and then you can do that final connection of the desired outcome of all those things that I just kind of threw out there really quickly.

So that’s an example of one area that you would connect all of these things.

Rob Geist: So for a staffing agency who’s taking these concepts and trying to enact them, do you recommend that they have a formal playbook or guide that links a company’s UVP to ICP pain point?

Dan Mori: Yeah, 100% should be a training document, and you should train all of your producers on this, all of your managers on this, because ultimately. When you start to see this and everyone in your organization knows who your ideal client is and who it isn’t, they’re gonna know exactly what type of businesses they should pursue and say yes to, and what type of business that they should not pursue or say no to.

So this needs to be a formal training document. They can see it. And how that plays out is, if a salesperson gets misguided and they bring in a client that’s, not an ICP, the recruiter knows and they say, Hey, that’s not really our ideal fit. We’re not gonna work on that business. Okay, yeah, we’re good.

So it keeps that piece that everyone is aware of it ’cause that alignment within the organization. So that should be a training document. They should also know how every piece of the UVP of the agency connects to that ICP. Because what’s gonna happen is you’ll start to show every producer in your organization how they contribute to the mission.

How does the work that the sourcer does contribute to the organizational success? How does the work that the recruiter does, or the account manager or the salesperson, or the back office team and payroll, like how does all of their work create that value that we provide to the client that keeps them happy and solves their problems?

So it’s a great internal tool for that. The next piece that I would highly recommend if you’re gonna create this, playbook is you should also highlight what do the symptoms look like and what are typical questions that prospects might ask you to try to uncover something different.

Like those masked questions that we get in sales interviews, what are they gonna be saying that salespeople need to be on the lookout for so they know how to respond to it, so. if a prospect says, let’s just say their symptom is, yeah, we have a hard time getting people into the facility, right?

That can mean like that. That says something. Without saying anything, it doesn’t really mean anything. Most untrained salespeople would be like, okay, well yeah, we can help you with that. We’ve got lots of people, we can get ’em here. Without really understanding what it means here, we would take something like that.

Like, okay, that sounds like it might be a symptom. We gotta take a step back and figure out, let’s clarify this. What do you mean you’re having a hard time getting people into the facility? We’re actually an FDA regulated facility. We’ve got a lot of screening and clearance and it just seems like most agencies we work with just can’t get enough candidates through that, vetting process to deliver us good people.

This sounds like it might be a time to fill problem, Like, okay, that’s interesting. What’s the problem here? Is it not getting candidates fast enough or you’re just not getting enough candidates at all? So where’s the challenge? Now it’s just we’re not getting ’em fast enough.

It just takes us three weeks where we really only have about three days. Now I recognize this is the symptom of time to fill. And if this is in your playbook and they know that yes, this is a time to fill thing, what they can do is they, they can start to dig into that and there should be a set of training questions that teach them how to uncover that or flesh that out.

These are the questions I need to ask. Once I get to a certain point of understanding, then I can actually explain our UVP in a way that connects.

That’s why you should actually create that formal playbook of how to connect your UVP to your ICP, so you can deploy it in marketing, so you can better manage sales meetings and ultimately better qualify your customers before you bring them in. And then when you have a great qualified customer, the salesperson can actually explain the situation better to management and the production team to make sure they’re better equipped to service that customer.

Casey Wagonfield: I love that, and I like how you mentioned how when you’re connecting your ICP with your UVP, how it’s the foundation of your marketing and your prospecting and your sales process. So what’s the best way an agency can tie that value prop into the actual sales messaging and outreach that they’re doing?

And should it be consistent across all things like emails, sales calls, and even recruiting messaging?

Dan Mori: So I’ll go backwards on this one. Yes, it should be consistent. You should have a core UVP that connects to a specific ICP that you are gonna be running a campaign against, So if we think about what the modern staffing sales system is, it involves an element of upstream marketing.

Social selling, the traditional prospecting that we’re all used to, and then it goes into the sales meeting, the proposal process, and eventually account management, so you should be consistent in your marketing. You should have separate campaigns that target your clearly defined ICPs. If you wanna know why marketing hasn’t worked very well for staffing in the past, it’s because they generally run one marketing campaign, that’s a brand awareness campaign, which doesn’t do much to get stuff into the prospecting funnel.

 So we gotta stop doing that, and then you’re gonna say, Hey, I’m gonna have my UVP be the center of this and I’m gonna use my ICP data to target the campaign. So if you’re targeting, healthcare facilities, maybe you’re only doing clinics. Maybe that’s your thing. Then you’ll actually target that and you’ll put your messaging to the clinics and you’ll speak specifically about the problems they’re facing, how those problems show up in their organization, and then how your company uniquely solves that problem.

And then you’ll also have in some testimonials, right? So that’ll be kind of your awareness for that ICP. Then when you do your social selling, you’re gonna create content around that. I’ll just give it another real example. Are you a chief administrator of a healthcare organization that feels like you’re under pressure?

To provide better services, but you have limited financial resources because your reimbursements are going down, the insurance payouts are going down. Maybe it’s a result of your Press Ganey scores not being where they need to be, and you think it’s an efficiency issue because of your providers. They need to be more efficient.

And maybe you’re considering, adding new tools and technology to get more efficiency gains out of your healthcare providers. Before you do that, think again, this could actually be an underlying staffing issue. You might be understaffed with your medical assistants, with some of your nurses that do a lot of the support work for those providers, and you don’t see that data because it rolls up to the provider production.

So before you do that, consider assessing your workforce levels in those MA and, LPN areas to see are they adequate? Can they your actual providers, your PAs, doctors, doing enough of that work to actually hit their productivity goals.

Something like that would be messaging that you would put out there. When you work with us, we give you this access to this talent that’s not available anywhere. You know, and you can access this on demand. We can fill positions really quickly. Whatever your data is, you can insert that, that’s gonna speak to that person, right?

So that’s how you do it through a marketing channel. That’s how you do the social selling piece. When you’re doing your cold calls, you should have a script not to read, but to follow along with. You should know what are the pain points that’s gonna get that person’s attention. Hey, are you struggling with, a workforce that’s not getting your product outta the warehouse on time?

Is that costing you money and customers? That’s a big one that’s gonna get a hook. If that is, lemme tell you how we solve this problem. So you’re gonna do that in your cold calls, your email messaging. There’s gonna be a sequence. You should have eight to 12 emails tied up in a campaign over whatever your prospecting campaign cycle is.

And they should all be connected to each other, but they should hit specific pain points. Write your subject line three to five word that’s gonna kind of tease a pain point that’s gonna get their attention, get them to take the next step of opening the email. And then you gotta hook ’em and then provide some example of why you can solve that problem for them differently than what they’re used to and deliver that outcome that they’re gonna be looking for.

So you should absolutely weave all of these things in and it should be consistent.

Rob Geist: We’re gonna actually pivot here and talk about defining what good business actually means. Why is it so important to an agency to get this clear?

Dan Mori: So this is, if you’ve done all those three things really well, this part becomes super easy. Good business is good business, and if it’s not good, it’s bad business.

And bad business is a recipe for poor morale, stalled growth, losing money. So if you’re an agency that feels like you’re struggling to grow or hit your goals, or you feel like your recruiters are not producing where they should be, or maybe they’re burnout, or your salespeople aren’t hitting targets.

There’s a better than 80% chance that you have some bad business in your client makeup, and you need to look at this. So good business is clients that you’re best likely to succeed at servicing that actually has good margins for you. That’s that win-win business that you talked about earlier. Rob, when I take people through this, this is a super simple exercise.

I just say, what are the top three industries that you’re best equipped to service? Success leaves clues. Go look at where you’ve been the most successful. What orders have you filled the fastest? The best fill percentages, the best time to fill the best conversion rates, the best margins for you.

That’s where you wanna live. Those are your industries. Then go look at those three roles under each one of those. Now you’ve got the top three roles in the top three industries that you’re best servicing. That’s nine roles that you’re probably the best at filling. You’re the best in your market at right there.

Make sure that you define what a good pay rate is and what it’s not. What a good bill rate or markup is, and what it’s not. What a good client payment term is, and what it’s not. What good contracts are, what they’re not. Define all of those things for those nine roles, and then just make a commitment to your organization that you’re gonna say no to everything else.

And if you live right there, I guarantee you, you’ll become known as the best at those roles and your business will grow. There’s enough business in those nine positions to grow any agency in the country.

Casey Wagonfield: What are some signs though, that an agency might be chasing the wrong clients or keeping clients they probably shouldn’t?

Dan Mori: The big one is actually, clients calling and saying, “Hey, we’re considering other business”, or “We need you to lower your rates”. if you’re getting that sort of thing, that means they no longer see the value in what you provide.

And if they no longer see the value, it probably means that you’re not operating in the right area. Or maybe you need to tighten up your own operation. But that’s a big one, job order fill percentages. You know, if you see low fill percentages are declining, fill percentages, there’s a chance that maybe either you’re not aligned with the ICP or maybe the talent for that particular role is drying up.

And that happens. These things need to be reviewed on a regular basis. So if you start to see your fill performance metrics drop, if your margins are dropping or getting compressed. that is a really good indication that, you’re working with some bad business.

Rob Geist: Okay. And then the last topic. Great service. None of what we talked about works today if you can’t deliver. But is it even enough to just give great service?

Dan Mori: It is, and when I say great service, I don’t necessarily mean great customer service. That’s part of it, right? You have to have great relational skills, great relationship building skills, be attentive to the needs you should have, world-class customer service skills.

But when I say great service. I mean consistently delivering on that value proposition to the ICP, so they understand and they get the value, when I say deliver great service, just do that consistently. And if you do that over and over and over again, your customers will become your best salespeople.

They will refer you to other people because all of your customers, they’re in associations. They’ve got friends that work at other similar organizations, and they will say, “Hey, this is who I work with”, so yeah, you need to provide good service. This is the number one thing if your agency provides great service, meaning delivering on that UVP consistently, as well as great relational service and customer service.

That’s the best tip I can give any agency to grow sales. If you’re great in this area, sales is easy. You know?

Casey Wagonfield:

Testimonials can come into factor there, right? If you claim you have great service, but have the testimonials to prove it. See what their peers are saying about you.

And I, would probably agree with this, but I think all salespeople are shy about asking for that client feedback, things are going well, ask for a testimonial, ask for them to be a reference and start flaunting those wins.

Dan Mori: Absolutely. Your clients will do it if they’re happy with your service, they’re happy to tell people about it. And that’s probably another indicator of good business versus not, is if you ask them “Hey, would you do a testimonial for us?”

And they’re like, “no.” Interesting. What is going on that would cause you not to wanna tell the world about it, that’s a good indicator that, you might need to look at but yeah, you hit it on the head. Casey, testimonials are just, gonna validate that you provide great service that’s social proof and everybody prefers social proof. That’s why we have sites like Yelp and Google reviews and Facebook reviews,

So absolutely if you can provide great service and get your customers to back you up on it. I don’t wanna say growth is gonna be inevitable, man. It’s gonna be a lot easier to grow.

Casey Wagonfield: Right. And last question on delivering great service. How can agencies turn great feedback into something that actually brings in new clients?

Dan Mori: So the big part is anytime you get great feedback, and this is a super simple technique that costs nothing to implement, you just gotta train your people on it.

This is on the level of the, would you like fries with that transformative statement that McDonald’s used to scale their revenue incredibly? Every time a customer gives you good feedback, whether it’s solicited or unsolicited, in that moment, you need to do two things first. We’ll say three things. First, thank them for it.

Reinforce that positive behavior. Let them know that you like receiving feedback. So that’s one. The second one, ask for a referral. In that moment, the emotional currency is gonna be the highest it’s ever gonna be. Say, “Hey, I really appreciate you saying that. We really pride ourselves on providing great service to our clients and really offering value, do you know anybody else in your network that might work in these types of industries, Insert ICP language, that you might introduce me to?” Ask for the referral. That’s the second thing to do. And the third thing, “Hey, regardless of if you have anyone to refer me to or not, would you be willing to write a testimonial, validating this, that we might be able to use in our sales and marketing, because we really pride ourselves on, getting most of our business based on word of mouth or the recommendations or the testimony of the current clients that we’re successful with.

We think that’s a better way to grow, a more authentic way to grow. Would you be okay doing that? So if you do those three things anytime you get solicited or unsolicited, good feedback, you’re gonna get referrals, you’re gonna get testimonials, and all those things turn into a flywheel of growth that will help you grow beyond your current capacity of sales.

Rob Geist: Dan, you always bring great insight and strategy to the staffing world. where can people get ahold of you to learn more about this, directly.

Dan Mori: LinkedIn, that’s where I live. That’s my social media of choice. So just find me on LinkedIn, shoot me a direct message, connect, follow, and again, if there’s anything I mention on this podcast today that you’re like, “Hey, I’d like to learn more about that.”

I probably have a worksheet, a template, a playbook or something that if you just shoot me a message. I’ll just shoot it over to you

Rob Geist: What about the staffing Sales summit? Where can people find out more about that?

Dan Mori: So, go to staffingmastery.com.

You’ll see it in the header menu, you’ll see Staffing Sales Summit. There’s a page right there that you can click. right now we’re currently wait listing people for tickets. Go ahead and join the RSVP list. You’ll see more information about it, and we’re gonna open up registration in one month.

Casey Wagonfield: Dan, that was awesome. And we covered everything from defining your dream clients to proving you’re actually as good as you say you are. And if you’re out there listener and you’re trying to grow your book of business or get more out of your sales team, this episode is truly a playbook.

Just hit repeat and start making moves.

If this episode helped pass it along to your crew, we’ll be back next episode with more ideas to help you win in staffing. If you wanna learn more about how you can partner with SimpleVMS to add to your unique value propositions, message us on LinkedIn or go to SimpleVMS.com and we’ll see you next time on Staffing Made Simple, where we keep it real, keep it practical, and always keep it simple.