with Mark Winter of The WinSource Group
Are your prospects ghosting you? Are sales cycles dragging on while “just checking in” emails disappear into the void? Deals take longer, inboxes stay silent, and selling on price feels like a race to the bottom. Staffing sales has shifted, and if you’re still relying on old tactics, you’re already behind. In this episode of Staffing Made Simple, we unpack what it really takes to sell consultatively in today’s market, how to differentiate beyond filling orders, and how aligning sales, marketing, and ops can turn stalled conversations into real momentum.
That’s why we invited Mark Winter, Principal and CEO of The WinSource Group, to join the conversation. With more than 20 years in staffing — from running branches to leading sales enablement for a multi-billion-dollar organization — Mark shares practical strategies for building stronger pipelines, tightening execution, and helping teams sell with confidence in a tougher market.
If you’re tired of being ghosted and competing on price, this episode delivers insights you can put to work right away.
Rob Geist:
Staffing sales is ever evolving, and it’s changed more in the past few years than it ever has before. Prospects don’t pick up the phone; sales cycles are longer; checking in emails might as well go straight to the spam box. In this episode of Staffing Made Simple, we’re talking about what it really means to be a consultative salesperson in this market.
How do you stand out? How do you actually fix client problems instead of just filling orders? Let’s talk about how to get your sales, marketing, and ops all pulling in the same direction. If you’re tired of chasing and being ghosted by prospects and selling on price, not value, this will be a great episode for you.
Casey Wagonfield:
Welcome back to Staffing Made Simple, brought to you, as always, by Simple, the most agency-friendly and agency-preferred VMS on the market. I’m Casey Wagonfield, going on 17 years in the industry. I’ve got the hairline to prove it each year — current Senior Sales Executive at Simple.
Today, we’re talking about what it really looks like to sell consultatively in a market where buyers are harder to reach. Cycles are longer, and just checking in isn’t cutting it. And, as always, joining me is my co-host, Senior Vice President at Simple, and a guy who knows a little about a lot, Mr. Rob Geist. What’s up, Rob?
Rob Geist:
Facts, Casey. Facts.
Our guest is not just a familiar face at every staffing event we’re at; he’s also truly a great friend. He works closely with us at Simple as a trusted advisor and consultant. He’s the principal and CEO of the WinSource Group. He’s spent years driving sales performance while keeping things simple and practical.
Over the last 20 years, he’s pretty much done it all in staffing sales from running branches to leading sales enablement for a multi-billion dollar publicly traded staffing company. Now, he spends his time helping staffing firms build real sales strategies, tighten up their processes, and train their teams to actually execute. Mark, we’re glad that you’re finally on Staffing Made Simple.
Mark Winter:
Yeah, man. Had to try the rest before you get the best. Is that the deal? Thanks for having me.
Casey Wagonfield:
Always a pleasure, Mark. And real quick, for the listeners, I’m sure a lot of people already know who you are.
You’re well known in the industry. But for the folks listening who might not know who you are, can you maybe just tell them a little bit about you, who WinSource is, what you guys do, and the problems you guys solve?
Mark Winter:
Sure. I have been in staffing since Blackberries were cool, and I have no hairline, so it’s been a long time — 26 years. I’ve been in every sales role out there. Still love to sell.
So, WinSource does coaching, training, and consulting in the sales staffing space. That’s our whole bag. Our whole thing is customer-facing. We are all sales all the time.
Casey Wagonfield:
I actually worked with Mark at the staffing firm I was at, and he was an advisor and consultant for us. And, he is just great to work with.
Mark Winter:
We try to have a lot of fun, and much like Simple, our mantra at WinSource is smart sales, simplified. We try to keep things easy and simple. Don’t overcomplicate the system. We’re not in a complicated business.
Rob Geist:
As Mark said, his hairline shows he’s been doing this for a super long time. He has been in the industry forever. Mark, what feels different about selling staffing now versus five or even 10 years ago?
Mark Winter:
I would say, five years ago, we were having customer conversations about how to better utilize staffing. We were having conversations around vendor management and that sort of thing.
Now, we’re having conversations with customers about how to reduce their dependency on staffing. They’re trying to figure out completely new solutions around: How do I do this total workforce management thing? And do I need staffing companies, or do I need to do it myself, or do I need technology?
So, the conversation has shifted a ton.
Casey Wagonfield:
That’s a good point. And we’re talking all about consultative sales and consultative selling. That’s a buzzword to some, probably the ones that aren’t doing it.
But when you say consultative selling and staffing, it really comes down to three things: what they hire for, how it impacts their business, and how they can do it better.
Now, when you say consultative sales or staffing, what do you actually mean by that?
Mark Winter:
So, consultative selling is really about knowing your customer’s business, not knowing your segment of your customer’s business, but knowing your customer’s business in its entirety. So, the first question that you mentioned of the three was: know what they hire for.
We could ask that at a staffing conference and say: “Do you know what your customers hire for?” And the answer we’ll get most likely is, “Yeah. They hire forklift drivers or administrative staff, or IT help, or help-desk help.
No, that’s not what they hire for. They hire to get a job done, and you knowing what job they’re trying to get done. That’s the thing that makes you consultative. Not knowing the roles that they have open, that they post on Indeed. Those are two very different things.
So, you have to know and understand not just the impact on staffing of your customer, but the impact on staff management. On your customer’s customer. What does that mean for productivity, throughput, and customer satisfaction on their end, not just our end? Not just fill rates.
Casey Wagonfield:
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen, in the past, you’re filling the same job for a client, and they have no idea you can fill other jobs, right?
Well, it’s hard to call yourself a consultant when you don’t even know the jobs that your clients are hiring for, or they’re using your competitors for other jobs that they didn’t know you could even staff for.
Mark Winter:
Or you didn’t know that they had a similar business in the town next door, or the building out back, or that they were connected to a logistics company that was owned by their parent company.
You know what I mean? There’s so much to dig for that could produce additional opportunity for us, but also, if you’re a true consultant, help you understand the inner workings of their business.
Rob Geist:
I interviewed a guy. I was like, “Why are you looking to move out of staffing? What interests you about moving into selling a VMS?”
And he said, “Man, I just feel like everything’s so transactional. It was a red flag to me because that person. should be making it more consultative. So, if I’m a rep for a staffing company, listening to this, and I think, “Yeah, I’m a consultative salesperson.” What are some signs that I’m consultative, and not transactional?
Mark Winter:
So, let me start with the flip side of that. What would be signs that you are not consultative? Because there are some people out there, let’s just call them out, right? Make them feel really guilty.
If you bring an agreement or quote to your first or second meeting, you’re not being consultative. If you are thinking that you are going to close business on your first or second meeting, chances are you’re not being consultative. If your primary entry point into an organization is calling companies that have a job posting on Indeed, you’re probably not being consultative.
So, consultative selling is not just about asking questions. It’s about asking questions that are relevant to the success of your client’s business. That’s the true consultant.
So, if that’s the case, then before I’m proposing solutions, or before I’m bringing an agreement to the table, I have to know what success looks like. I have to know that my client’s actually doing something that is working, or it’s not working.
I have to understand what the impact of my help is on that whole thing. Really, at the heart of a staffing sale, what we’re really saying is when you engage with a new staffing client, you’re saying, “Hey, you’re likely already using staffing, or you’re trying to fulfill your staffing needs by yourself.”
“I’m going to knock on your door, and I’m going to tell you all about Mark Incorporated, this new staffing company that you may or may not have heard of. And I’m going to try to get you to change what you’re doing today.”
So, first order of business is I’m selling change because I know that they’re either going to change vendors, or they’re going to change process, or they’re going to change something if they bring me in, right?
So, that’s the first thing I have to know. Well, I have to understand what the impact of that change is on their business. And so few staffing salespeople really know. So, what they end up with is this crappy approach of, “Well, we can do that too. How much are you paying now? Tell me about your current vendor. Let me hear a little bit about your pain.”
That’s not consultative. That’s just hoping. That reeks of desperation.
Rob Geist:
It’s funny, the things you mentioned about being transactional, the only reason sales reps do them is because leadership says, “Take a contract to the first meeting. Why haven’t you closed this deal after the second meeting? Why are you going back out there?”
It’s really eye-opening for the people in leadership that they need to be teaching these people how to be consultative and not have unrealistic expectations of their reps. Because it’s all pressure coming on them, and it goes down to them, and it’s making the people that have feet on the street, it’s making them more transactional.
Mark Winter:
Yep. It’s making them more transactional.
Casey Wagonfield:
And they can smell your commission breath from a mile away, right? And that was the one thing that always drove me crazy. And something that I did when I first got into staffing is, you’re making your 31st call that day, and finally somebody picks up, and you just instantly go into pitching, rather than trying to learn about them and what their problems are. You just go into pitch mode and instantly turn them off.
Mark Winter:
Yeah, for sure. And you sound like a salesperson. There’s a theater voice that comes out with some salespeople. They’re like, “Well, good morning.” (In theatrical voice)
And you’re like, “Oh my gosh, here it comes.” And when you hear that, you immediately put the defenses up. You immediately put the blockers up as a client. And the salespeople don’t even see it.
There’s a book that I promote called Win-Win Selling that’s part of our core sales training. One of my favorite lines of all time in there says, “Salespeople without good, thorough discovery skills often find too late that they’ve been shadowboxing with prospects, rather than truly engaging.” I think how embarrassing it is to walk into a prospect’s office and shuck and jive and throw some punches, and you’re the only one engaged.
The prospect’s got to be looking at you like, “What are you doing right now? What’s happening?” But that’s what happens. We walk in, and we think, “Oh man, we just did a great job. Did you see those moves?” And really, we didn’t engage at all.
Rob Geist:
Very early on in Simple’s history, Jason and I would be out at sales calls, and we’d be getting ready to walk into a prospect’s door that we had a demo scheduled with, and we’d look at each other. It’s like, “Alright, we’ve got to listen. We can’t just show up and throw up. Right? I know we’re excited about this stuff, and we’re really passionate about it, but we’ve got to let them do the talking and then respond to them.”
And it’s so easy to fall into those traps.
Mark Winter:
Yeah. Speaking about listening, Rob, I use a tool called Fireflies. So, Fireflies records the meeting.
One of the cool things that I get for reports is that it tells me in every meeting how much time each person spent talking. And I have a little game that I play, like my ratio, I want to be at least 60/40. I want them talking 60%; me talking 40%. So, I actually have a measurement every time I do a Zoom meeting: how much I talk to keep me in check, because of what you just described.
I want to be the listener. By the way, my all-time record is 97 and 3. We got to the end of that call, and the guy that I was talking to was like, “I feel like I’m in a therapy session, and I don’t know anything about you.”
Casey Wagonfield:
Great. So, what about a salesperson who finally gets somebody on the phone, and they finally get that first meeting? Rather than, to your point earlier, just going through the check boxes: What are your pains? What do you like, what do you dislike? Without turning into an interrogation, what does a good discovery conversation look like?
Mark Winter:
That’s the question of the day, right? What do we actually ask? What do we say? So, I have a framework that I use. We call it the Business Needs Identification Framework. So, I’ll give it to you. It’s five things. Super easy. It goes like this: strategy, structure, people, business metrics, and market. That’s it.
So, on my first, second, sometimes even third conversation with a potential staffing client, I’m systematically making my way through those five things. I might start with business metrics. It doesn’t matter what order you go in, frankly. And it does change based on who you’re talking to in an organization. But I might start with business metrics, and I might ask a question like, so how’s it going? Are you guys doing well this year? How do you measure yourself?
How do you know if you’re doing a good job? Tell me a little bit about your competition in this market. What’s got you guys looking for positions now, or what do you think might be some of the triggers this year that would open up some positions that could be mission-critical?
So, I’m asking questions. Yes, I’m getting to the heart of the employee base. Yes, I’m ultimately going to lead them down the road of what positions are you opening for? But I’m trying to ask them through the lens of the businesses in its entirety. I want to know who their competition is. I want to know what their expansion plans are.
And hear what’s driving that. Here’s what gets me on that framework. People absolutely love to talk about their business, and they love to talk about their business winning. They love to talk about their business succeeding.
So many salespeople out there are on this hunt for pain, and I’ve never understood that. Nobody wants to talk about their last dental appointment. You wouldn’t go asking people, “Tell me about your last breakup. Or “Hey, are you in a happy marriage?”
We would never approach personal relationships that way, but we’ll do it on the business front. What people want to talk about are the good things. So, tell me about your business. Tell me about where you thought you’d be at this point in the year. Tell me about what hopes you have for success this year. Tell me about how you’re kicking your competition’s butt. That’s the stuff they want to talk about.
And if you’re hitting those triggers, you’ll be able to just let them talk for 60% of the time. You won’t have to have a ton of questions. They will divulge information that you never thought you’d get.
Casey Wagonfield:
And you’ve probably immediately differentiated yourself from all the competition, right? Because I guarantee most staffing agencies aren’t doing those things in the meetings or on calls.
Mark Winter:
They’re not. And they’re so consistent about it that they’ve actually trained staffing buyers. Trained staffing buyers see us coming a mile away. And as soon as you give them a trigger question, like, “Hey, do you guys use a staffing agency today?”
They go into gear. They’re like, “I know what I’m supposed to say. Yes, we use multiple agencies right now. But all agencies are the same. You guys get all your people from the same place, don’t you?” And so now I have a response for that because I’ve been trained by my leadership to respond to that question.
And then question number three from my staffing buyer is, “Well, what’s your markup? What do you guys run for a markup?” And that’s the whole staffing conversation. And that’s not how it should be. But that’s a result of staffing companies asking crappy questions and inadvertently training buyers to know what’s coming.
So, if you want to capture their interest, you’ve got to change the game.
Rob Geist:
I was talking to someone from a staffing firm, and I was looking at their workers and Simple, and the clients they support, and their markups were 5, 7, 10 points higher than everybody else in those clients.
It just shows you who’s selling on price and who’s selling the value of what they actually have. So, I love having that conversation because it really just hurts the whole sales world when you go in and sell on price, because then it just lowers the standard for everyone else.
Mark Winter:
That business isn’t going to stay long. The next guy that comes in with a plate of cupcakes and quotes, you’re going to get knocked down again. You went down to 30% markup. Someone’s going to come in with a 28 and a plate of cupcakes, and you’re out.
So, even if you get that business, it’s temporary. It’s going to go away.
Rob Geist:
And then you’ve got to go have the conversation with your recruiter that, “Hey, by the way, I sold this at 28%,” and they’re not going to want to fill it.
Mark Winter:
Yeah, for sure.
Casey Wagonfield:
Mark, you told me you can get two out of the three: good service, good people, or good… what was it?
Rob Geist:
The triangle.
Mark Winter:
Yeah. So, it’s three things. When we engage with a customer, we talk price, we talk service expectations, and we talk quality expectations of the people we place. The customer can ask for any two of those three. So, if they want the lowest possible price and the best possible service, they’re going to get who they get.
If they want the best possible people and the lowest possible price, then it’s going to take us a while. So, service is off the table. We may not be able to fill it. If they want the best people and the best service, then price is off the table. You get two out of three, that’s it. You can’t have all three.
Rob Geist:
I hear you talking about evaluating the client’s process and not just being an order taker when I’ve sat in on your speaking engagements at the events we’ve been to. So, when you go into a new prospect, what are you looking at in the hiring process, Mark?
Mark Winter:
I’m looking to see what we do differently than what they do currently. It’s not a viable business model for us to offer our customers something that they’re already doing on their own. That’s just redundancy. So, what I’m kind of mining for is how can I create an efficiency? How can I do something better?
How can I take weight off their shoulders? How can I add value to the organization and shorten the hiring cycle? Any of those things. That’s what I’m mining for.
So, I’ve joked in some of these presentations that the typical recruiting cycle goes like this: we decide on a role, we place an ad, we do some interviews, and we do some one-up interviews with the actual hiring manager. We make an offer. We do a placement. That’s a typical recruiting cycle.
So, we suck at that recruiting cycle as a company, right? I’m talking as a company that’s looking for employees. So, we decide, all right, well, that’s not going very well for us. We can’t find the people we need, so I’m going to reach out to a staffing company.
Staffing company comes in. They say, “Hey, here’s what we’re going to do. You decide on a role. We’re going to place an ad. We’re going to do some interviews. We’re going to let you do the one-up interviews. We’re going to let you make the decision. We’re going to let you make the offer. We’re going to let you start people.
It’s the same process, and we already know they stink at it. So, why would we ask them to do that? We’ve got to be looking for ways to make the process better, to make the process different, to skip steps, speed it up…
Casey Wagonfield:
And I think a lot of clients know some of the problems they have, but there are probably a lot of problems they don’t know.
And if you’re truly consultative selling, you’re going to identify what those problems are, but can you give us maybe just a real example, without names, of course, where a team that went from: We just send resumes to actually fixing a process or problem for a client?
Mark Winter:
So, there are a couple of organizations that I’ve worked with where, as part of the sales process, we push the clients to interview the final candidate, not all the candidates.
And this doesn’t work in every industry. There are some technical roles where the client has to be by your side during the interviews. But think about the weight that that takes off the shoulders of the client.
So, the client was on their own, sifting through a hundred or more resumes. So they said, “That’s not sustainable. We’re going to hire a staffing company.” The staffing company whittles that down, but was still sending them a dozen resumes at a time that they still had to weed through.
So, we looked at the process and said, “Hey, there’s got to be a better way. Why don’t we just draw a line in the sand? You tell us exactly what your hiring managers are looking for. We’re going to only send you candidates that exactly meet that criteria. But we want you to know that when we send you a candidate, they’re work-ready. They are ready to go. You interview them one time, and then you could bring them onto your own roles.
That shortens the hiring cycle by half, gets so many fewer people involved, and makes it so much easier on the candidates.
And, for some reason, staffing companies are really hesitant to have that conversation with their client because they’re like, “Well, the client really wants to weigh in. The only reason they want to is that they’ve been doing it that way forever, and they don’t know any better. And so, it takes a consultant to show them that there’s a better way.
That may not work for every scenario, but that is one example.
Rob Geist:
So, for someone who’s never dug into process before, what’s a simple framework or set of questions that they can start with in their next meeting?
Mark Winter:
Start with that. “Hey, Mr. Client, or Mr. Prospect, tell me about your current hiring process. Walk me through what you guys do. What are the internal expectations of an employee, and how do you know if you have a good one?”
Start there and map it out. Actually take notes or have some sort of recording device. You should be able to show it to them. Hey, here’s your process. Here’s what we are going to do to make sure that all your process steps are met. That visual will get you margin points.
That’s what a consultant does to say, “Hey, we’re mapping this out. We’ve given this thought. We see your intent and your process, and we’re going to make sure that the best parts of your process are kept and that we’re making that process even better and faster.”
Casey Wagonfield:
Good stuff. We’re going to transition to standing out and getting the meeting. I still think that’s probably the hardest part of staffing sales right now, in my opinion. A lot of agencies sound the same. From what you are seeing, what actually gets attention today?
Mark Winter:
If you want to get someone’s interest, you’ve got to be interesting. And I’ll tell you what they’re interested in. Brace yourself. It’s not staffing. I know that probably hurts your feelings. What they’re interested in is their business.
So, know their business, talk about their business, be where they are. Go to their networking events. Go to their website, go to the About Us page, and find out where they spend their time. See what organizations they belong to, what they subscribe to, where they exhibit, and spend your time there. That’ll help you get to know their business.
And who knows, you might even rub elbows with some of the people that you’ve been trying desperately to get the attention of. But if you were bringing stuff like that to the table, then you might find that you’re more interesting.
The other thing is that the sales cycle is longer now. It takes more chops at the tree to get the tree to fall. And so, you’ve got to make some of those swings of the axe relevant to the people you’re talking to.
So, as a general rule, when I touch a prospect, I want to give twice before there’s an ask. So, it could be something like, “Hey, I saw this article and thought of you. Hey, I saw this networking event that you should go to with me. I saw this thing that I thought might be relevant to your business.” And then there’s an ask. “Hey, can we get some time together so that we can talk about your business?”
So, think about a give, ask type approach.
Rob Geist:
As a sales leader, the one thing I really try to do for my team is cut the busy work out. Give automation as much as possible. Make sure our systems talk, because even the best salespeople have the tendency to squirrel.
So, where do you see reps wasting the most time?
Mark Winter:
Research. Just go get in your car, and go pick up the phone and dial. As a salesperson, you have a quantity lever and a quality lever. And too many of them are yanking down on that quality lever. Like, I’m not leaving the office until I get everything that I could possibly learn about all of these prospects, because I don’t want to look foolish, or I want to make sure I have the leverage.
Just go. You’ll shorten the sales cycle by just showing up. That’s where they waste the most time. Do a little bit of research. But if you have to choose between Googling something and going to visit or picking up the phone, pick up the phone.
Casey Wagonfield:
What’s an appropriate amount of time for somebody to research? Because I think, to your point earlier about just being interesting, right, if I’m not looking at webinars that my prospect’s on or reading their post or researching things like that, you know, I can’t be interesting.
What do you suggest? And I’ve always found that’s something that’s helped me is find something that they’ve posted on, find something that they’ve been a guest on, and just bring that into the conversation so you don’t just look like some other salesperson that’s writing a book to them.
Mark Winter:
Yeah. So, as a general rule, and this is a made-up number on my part, but I want a salesperson to be selling 60 to 70% of their time. So, let’s say it’s 60. Now, you’ve got some internal meetings you’ve got to attend. Let’s call that 10% of your time.
Drive time or busy work is another 10% of your time. That leaves you 20%. So, 20% of your time for research and marketing and development, and all that stuff, all the side work of sales. There’s no science behind that. That’s just my gut.
Casey Wagonfield:
And I don’t think you need to do a lot of research. When I’m making a cold call, I want to know a little bit about the company. So that way, if I get them on the call, it’s not all the way cold. I have done a little bit of research on your company, but that way, when the conversation starts, “Hey, I know you have six sites across the US. I know you’re already using multiple staffing agencies or using any type of tool.”
But just knowing that information might set you apart from somebody who’s just calling blind. How many sites do you have? Well, you should know that. You’re calling me. It’s on my website.
Mark Winter:
So, to your point, that’s a rule of thumb right there, Casey, is don’t ask questions in your discovery that are available on the website. But don’t overanalyze. You’ve got to strike a balance between that quantity lever and the quality lever.
Rob Geist:
Totally agree. And I’ve heard you say selling works best when sales and marketing are aligned. Where do you see staffing firms fail at this?
Mark Winter:
So, they put them in silos. Marketing’s doing its own thing, and sales is expected to do its own thing. That’s not the case anymore.
Now this is the ongoing debate with my partner Jim and me: What’s the tip of the spear – sales or marketing? And I always say sales, but mostly just because it gets his goat a little bit. The reality is, now, sales is enveloped in marketing. They’re one unit moving forward.
You’ve got to have marketing leading the way with branding and market presence. You’ve got to have a good website out there. You’ve got to have a really good foothold in the marketplace with your marketing.
You’ve got to have a sales team that’s saying the things that are on your website, that are reinforcing the promises that your brand makes. And then that sales team has to have materials in their backpack to say, “Hey, here’s how you tell the story about this conversation internally.”
So, you’ve got marketing leading the charge with a good website, good presence, good brand promise, brand commitments, all that stuff. Credibility is basically what it comes down to. You’ve got the salesperson who’s showing up to guide the customer through the buying process, and then you’ve got the salesperson leaving good marketing behind to say, “Hey, here’s what we talked about. Here’s how the implementation works. Here’s what it looks like.”
So, you’ve got to have your marketing surrounding and supporting your sales. That’s where that term enablement comes from. Sales enablement is the bringing together of sales and marketing. They have to be brought together.
In fact, one of the exercises that I ask my clients to do, and any one of the podcast listeners would do really well to do this, take your sales process and draw it up on a whiteboard somewhere, and then put a table up under that whiteboard, and then go get all of the marketing material that’s all dusty in the back closet of your branch, and lay out the pieces of marketing material that are supposed to reinforce your sales process.
So, you got your sales process on the whiteboard. Then, you’ll have all of the pieces of marketing material, pens and paper, or whatever. You’ll have all that crap laid out under the steps of your sales process so that everybody in your organization knows what marketing tools should be enabling what steps of the sales process.
That’s one of the best and fastest ways you can bring sales and marketing to life in your organization.
Casey Wagonfield:
What about some of those agencies that are smaller? They don’t have some huge marketing team. Is there anything that they could do differently to help drive those conversations?
Mark Winter:
Yeah, get a marketing team. And there are so many of them out there that are willing to work on a fractional basis.
I mean, there’s a ton of really reputable marketing companies in our space that will help with everything from just the flyer production to full-blown CMO fractional services. So go get one. You can’t afford not to have one. Your customers are looking at your website as a point of credibility for your business.
Your materials reflect your brand. So, if you’re pumping out crap at Kinko’s and thinking that’s it, well, that speaks to what your brand quality is, and that’s probably why you’re struggling. So, go get some marketing help, and there are tons of people out there. I’m happy to make referrals.
Rob Geist:
It’s funny. That was probably, in hindsight, the thing that Simple took too long to do was get a true marketing presence. And once we finally brought somebody in-house and got somebody who knew us, was protective of our brand and our product, it was a game-changer.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, what does good communication between sales and marketing look like to you? Any simple rhythms or touch points that you like?
Mark Winter:
Yeah, like I said, the two should be connected. Marketing, if it’s doing its job really well, should be guiding the sales team to specific places in the market.
And that could be a vertical; that could be areas of opportunity. And that could be everything from helping produce lists of prospects to helping them with trade shows or engagement. Or they could help with marketing automation — setting up campaigns so that salespeople don’t have to do that.
We haven’t even touched on any of that. I mean, there are so many tools out there right now for marketing automation. So, the marketing team can jump in there and help support sales. Obviously, communication is going to be a big part. So many organizations now are making the move to have one centralized leadership role over both sales and marketing.
And that’s a pretty smart move. That helps make sure there’s alignment and reduces a lot of friction and communication issues. But that may not work for everybody. That may fall on the shoulders of the CEO in some smaller organizations.
But that’s what you got to do to make sure that it clicks.
Rob Geist:
Yeah. It’s something that you just mentioned, trying to look at verticals and go after those. So, we’ve determined our most successful verticals where we have the most clients in our portfolio: food production and logistics.
So, we’ve gotten products from all of our food production clients, and we’re building baskets. This was our marketing team’s idea. And we’re sending all these baskets to other food production companies that we want to get in.
So, just a great example of how sales and marketing can work together to differentiate ourselves. And really get past the hardest thing, which is getting people’s attention, as we talked about earlier in the episode.
Mark Winter:
Yep. And you’re honing in on specific verticals, Rob. One of the best things that people can do for themselves is create a very specific ideal customer profile, because that’s how people are going to be attracted to you. They see themselves in your website.
I see so many generic websites, because staffing companies don’t want to leave something out. They don’t want to miss an opportunity. So, they make their websites so vanilla that potential prospects look at the website, and they say, “I don’t know if that applies to me or not. I mean, it could be medical, it could be IT, it could be industrial.”
You got to be specific. You want people being like, “Oh, that’s the company for me.” So, the more specific your ideal customer profile, the more likely you’re going to attract and get the interest of potential prospects.
Casey Wagonfield:
The buyer’s a lot smarter now. They can go research you and your company, and if you’ve got some janky website, that’s where it’s going to end.
I want to talk real quick about how companies are structuring their sales teams and roles and comp. There was actually an episode that we did on that, but you called it out pretty directly with us when we chatted a couple of weeks ago. A lot of agencies are just not paying their salespeople enough. They’re below market, and then they’re surprised they can’t land top talent.
What are you seeing in comp plans now, and how is that hurting sales?
Mark Winter:
Well, here’s the deal. One size does not fit all. There are multiple sales roles out there. Sometimes you need people who are very front of the funnel. Sometimes you need people who are closers.
Sometimes you need people who are account managers. Sometimes you need trade show people. Well, each of those comes with its own comp plan. And it’s not that I see organizations paying people less. It’s that they’ve got the wrong comp structure for the role they hired.
So, they want someone who they think, if they hire a quality person, that person can manage all segments of the sales cycle. And then they bring them in, and they say, “Hey, I need you to make a hundred dials a day.” Well, those two things don’t match, right?
I’m a 15-year sales veteran. I feel like I’m past the point where I shouldn’t have to make a hundred dials a day. I thought you had marketing here that would get me leads. I didn’t realize that I was driving the leads. Now, I feel like I’m not getting paid enough to do that. I want more money.
So, you’ve got to make sure that what you’re hiring for, the role you’re hiring for, comes with a certain set of qualifications to it; it comes with a certain set of job expectations to it. Then, it comes with compensation expectations on top of it. And those things have to be in alignment.
Rob Geist:
So, talk about that more. The teams that are winning, how are they structuring the roles? It’s obviously not all full cycle, like you talked about. Salespeople, hunters, farmers, hybrids, account managers? Talk about that a little bit more.
Mark Winter:
So, we’re seeing more division in sales roles now than I’ve seen in a long time. It’s common for a midsize staffing company to have a few inside salespeople managing lead gen and pulling together appointments, or early-stage sales process.
Then you’ve got a couple local salespeople in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, who are out, feet on the street. So, they’re going to go meet salespeople. And then you’ve got a team, maybe a branch manager, that’s got account management responsibilities, and they’re responsible for growing and retaining accounts within the branch or the branch network.
So that’s a three-level distribution of the sales role among three different roles. Each one of those gets paid very differently. The branch manager might be paid on NOI or commission. The selling person might be paid on straight commission, and then the front-end person might be paid on appointments.
But, if I were a small company, so a regional company with just a couple of branches, I would say that you can accomplish the same thing by being really clear with the salespeople you hire about the different segments of the job and maybe breaking it up over time.
So, you might say, “Hey, I’m going to bring on a new salesperson in January, and for the first four months, I’m just going to have them do the front end of the sales process. They’re just going to drum up business and get as much prospecting going so that when we get into the summer selling season, they’re able to actually focus on sit-down appointments or something.
So, you can break those functions up, but you’ve got to be super clear that that’s what you’re doing.
Rob Geist:
Real quick aside, and I wonder this, because when you’re hiring successful salespeople who already are making commission but might not be happy at the role, do you see giving a ramp for those people?
So, paying them a little more upfront until it gives them time to start earning commission.
Mark Winter:
Yeah. I don’t see that a ton, and I’m kind of glad I don’t. That’s really hard to recover from, because if you misjudge and your ramp expires before your true sales process kicks in, you’re going to have a gap.
And that gap hurts the heart of your salespeople. I see a lot of people quit or leave during that period. So, if you’re going to do that, be realistic. If it’s going to take them six months to get to a point where they’re getting enough commission to make up for what you’ve given them, then make it six months.
Don’t try to shortchange it in hopes of getting them to produce faster.
Rob Geist:
Let’s switch gears a little bit here. I’ve heard you talk about internal alignment of sales, recruiting, and ops. What does that mean in plain English?
Mark Winter:
Fastest way to get sales, recruiting, and ops aligned is having an ideal customer profile. Align your ideal customer profile to your ideal candidate profile and have some buying personas. So, marketing companies can help you with that.
By having the expectations of who we’re trying to chase from a sales perspective and the candidates that will match those ideal customers together, shared, now you have some alignment, and everybody knows when you’re going outside the guardrails of that alignment.
So, if I’m in industrial staffing and I know exactly what I need: I need forklift drivers, and I need picker packers, and my recruiting team is on board, and I’ve got my ideal customer profile and buying personas, and they’ve got their ideal candidate profile, and they’ve got recruiting arms that they recruit from.
If, all of a sudden, I try to lob a job order for an underwater basket weaver over the fence, it seems odd, right? They’re like, what are you doing? That’s not what we do. And that’s how you get misalignment. But salespeople don’t do that intentionally. They’re doing it because they’re desperate, because they’re like, “Oh man, I just got to do something.”
Well, better to go back and revise your ideal customer and candidate profile than to try to fill something that isn’t good for the organization. So, start with the ideal customer and candidate profile. That in itself will get you so much alignment.
Casey Wagonfield:
There’s nothing that would drive me crazier than a sales rep who goes out and brings these job orders back, and the office is like, “We can’t fill that.”
I used to require, if there was a good branch manager, the salesperson would take them to that initial in-person meeting, because, at the end of the day, your internal office are going to be the ones filling the jobs and maintaining that relationship once it’s sold.
Rob Geist:
Hey Mark, real quick, let’s talk tech. There are so many tools now: CRMs, marketing, sequencing tools, and sourcing dashboards. In your mind, how should that help the team?
Mark Winter:
There are so many tools out there, as far as ZoomInfo, Apollo, and Rocket Reach, for getting names and information of companies. So, I would be using that if I was a salesperson. I already shared with you that I use Fireflies to record my meetings.
If you are doing meetings in person, then you might invest in a good note taker. A CRM obviously is going to keep you on point and make sure that you don’t miss appointments and things don’t slip through the cracks.
So, you’ve got to have a great CRM. Ideally, your CRM is something like, we’ll put a little plug in here for Avionté, one that’s connected with your ATS and operating system. So, all the data is coming into the same source. That’s the best-case scenario. I hate it when I see CRMs; they’re completely disconnected or siloed.
So, those are the basics. But here’s the thing. Before I went and spent a ton of money on tech or automation, I’d rather see you put money into your marketing dollars. Before you go spend 20 grand on ZoomInfo, that buys a lot of trade show booth time. So be careful where you spend that money, because those leads are super valuable.
And I guess the last thing that I’ll say about tech before I get off this soapbox is make sure that whatever tech you’re using is aligned to your organization. Make sure that it represents your brand well. Make sure that people have access to it. Make sure that it’s aligned to the way your organization operates so you don’t find yourself out there in a silo doing some renegade thing that isn’t supported by the brand or the organization.
Casey Wagonfield:
Yeah. I think truly the best technology that everyone has access to is LinkedIn. Most of the people you’re going after are HR. And what do they use to recruit: LinkedIn. Most of them are on LinkedIn already.
And then, of course, I think it is super important to have something like a ZoomInfo or an Apollo where you can quickly grab a cell phone number, an email address, or whatever type of information that you need on them.
And real quick, Mark, since we’re talking about technology, shameless plug here because I feel like it fits this topic, but our staffing partners at Simple are using us as a differentiator in the sales process.
So, instead of saying, “We’ll fill your orders,” they come with, “Well, we can help you streamline how you manage your multiple staffing agencies, timekeeping, and reporting all through a vendor-neutral VMS.”
From your perspective, how can a salesperson use a tool like that? A real solution to get a prospect’s attention and open up a more strategic and consultative conversation.
Mark Winter:
Yeah, so we started this conversation talking about how staffing has changed. And one of the things that I said was, there are companies out there that are trying to either diversify or trying to figure out how to reduce their dependency on staffing or whatever. So, there’s a segment that just wants to get out of the staffing game.
There’s a segment that will continue to do business the way they always have. And then there’s a segment that really wants a technology-first solution. And what a great tool to have to be able to say, “Hey, I’ve got that. I know the easiest-to-use VMS out there. I know people who can help with an implementation.”
So, why wouldn’t you want to bring that to the table? And there’s a whole segment of customers who are out there trying to do this right now. They want a technology-first solution for their entire workforce. Not just their temporary workforce, but their entire workforce. Why wouldn’t I want to be the guy who provides it or points them in the right direction?
And one of the things that we’re seeing in the VMS space is the ideal customer, or the ideal VMS user, is changing. So, it used to be just relegated to big companies. It’s now more medium-sized companies.
And so, there are a ton of companies that know about it and aren’t using it, or know about it and have considered it, and wouldn’t it be smart of me to be the guy that engages them in that conversation, rather than just be a victim to the decision when they finally make it, and I haven’t had that conversation yet?
Casey Wagonfield:
Right. So, Mark, for the people listening now, what are some things that they could do to be more consultative? So, whether they’re a staffing salesperson, owner, or sales leader, they want to shift their team towards consultative selling, asking better questions, and alignment.
What are the first couple moves that you’d tell them to make?
Mark Winter:
Find a narrow focus within your space. Really get good at one particular industry or customer segment, start to research it, and understand it. Spend time in those spaces, not just in those companies, but where those companies hang out.
Then change the way that you ask questions. So, remember that BNI model? Spend time in your customer’s business. Discovery is all about understanding your customer’s business, and their business is not staffing. So, if you’re talking about people and fill rates and all that crap, you’re not talking about your customer’s business.
If you’re talking about output and productivity, you’re talking about your customers’ business. So, change the questions that you’re asking, be interesting, and make sure that your expectations are realistic. You’re probably not going to close things on your first or second visit. You’ve got some touches ahead of you.
So, think about what you want those touches to be, and how you want them to reflect on your brand and company. So, make them interesting. Align yourself to marketing. Aligning your sales process to your marketing steps. That’s huge.
And, when you get to that point, give me a call.
Rob Geist:
That tees me up nicely, Mark. If someone’s listening and thinking, “Man, I really liked what Mark said.” How can they find you and WinSource?
Mark Winter:
So, winsourcegroup.com is the website. I’m on Facebook, LinkedIn, you name it. Wherever you’re hanging out, I’m probably there.
But feel free to reach out to me anytime. Glad to help and give some advice. Phone calls are free, unless you get too chatty. But feel free to hit me up.
Rob Geist:
Mark, I really can’t thank you enough. And, like I said at the beginning, this was long overdue. I really appreciate you hanging out with us and sharing the playbook into consultative selling.
For everyone listening, don’t try to overhaul everything at once. Tighten up your process. Look at your comp plan, get sales and recruiting in one room together, and do something with it. And if you’re a staffing firm looking for a way to stand out, have a more strategic conversation with prospects, check out Simple.
Our partners use Simple as a differentiator to help clients get control over multiple vendors, timekeeping, invoicing, and reporting. So, if you want to bring a real solution to help manage your contingent workforce, talk to Simple about partnership.
If you got value from this episode, please hit like and subscribe, share with somebody on your team, and we’ll see you on the next episode of Staffing Made Simple.
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