The Recruiter's Go-To-Market Plan

Welcome back to Part 4 of our Go-To-Market series!

Today, we'll explore how to craft compelling content, engage in direct outreach, and leverage nearbound strategies.

This article brings everything we worked for in parts 1-3 together and is going to be the most action oriented part of the series.

After today, you should understand what it takes to build a world-class GTM effort that’s specific to recruiting. Obviously there is much more to this, but I have done my best to lay out the basics. If you want to get more guidance on this as we approach Q4, then let’s book a call.

But before we dive in, I want to be sure everyone reading is RSVP’d and joining this Thursday’s call with the one and only Benjamin Mena, host of The Elite Recruiter Podcast. Really excited about this one. Tune in live and have questions ready because we are going to be diving into how to turn podcasting to profit.

Next we have Dani Hao, the former Community and Events Lead at Mutiny, who is teaching us how to leverage communities as a value proposition & differentiator.

Also, if you missed last week’s call, I announced our line up for October. Boy do we have some heavy hitters.

• October 5th - Stuart Mitchell who turned his agency into a $2.5M machine in 2 years with only 2 reps. He’s showing us how to convert your clients and candidate into advocates for your business and fuel lead gen.

• October 12th - Joel Lalgee who is a social media king in the recruiting world & has built a following of over 400k people across LinkedIn, TikTok, IG and Twitter (yeah I’m still calling it Twitter). He’s going to be showing us how to build that brand!

• October 19 - Break

• October 26th - closing out the month with Christina Le. She’s a community building powerhouse who’s showing us how to build one that converts to revenue.

You don’t want to miss out and you can only RSVP in the BoomLab. 

With that out of the way, let's get into today’s episode!

Angles and Messaging: The 5 Stages of Awareness

Every prospect is on a journey. Specifically, they are on an awareness journey and you are the guide. Like every great guide, it’s your job to move them through the trail, answer questions and show them things they didn’t even know were possible.

Understanding where they are on this path is crucial to crafting the right message. Ultimately, there are 5 stages of awareness which I’ve hinted at in past articles. A quick visual describing each of the stages is below.

Initially, our messaging targets a broader audience, but as prospects move through the stages, our communication becomes more direct and personalized.

Using the pains and ideal outcomes of our Keystone clients, we can craft "angles" or pillars in our messaging for each of these stages. Personally, I have found focusing on pains and how to solve them is the best way to start creating content for the masses. As you get more direct/move through the awareness journey, you start heavily focusing on ideal outcomes and aspirations.

A good way to think of the early stages is looking at it in the angle of the Cost of Inaction (COI). Highlight the consequences of sticking to the status quo or how things are currently being done. The goal isn't to pitch but to shift their perspective, making them hungry for more information. A good COI message doesn’t even mention you, your solution or your candidates. It simply forces the prospect to question what they are doing. Jen Allen-Knuth breaks this concept down wonderfully here.

If you want to get good at the content thing, you have to start communicating in stories. Those stories should highlight the problems your prospects are facing every day.

The best way to create stories is through frameworks. Here are a few for you to consider trying.

• The Attention Interest Desire Action (AIDA) Framework

• The Awareness-Comprehension-Conviction-Action (ACCA) Framework

• The Before After Bridge (BAB) Framework

• The Consistent Contrasting (CC) Framework

• The Features-Advantages-Benefits (FAB) Framework

• The Friend-Expert (FE) Framework

• The Past-Present-Future (PPF) Framework

• The Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS) Framework

• The Problem-Amplify-Story-Transformation-Offer-Response (PASTOR) Framework

• The Picture-Promise-Prove-Push (PPPP) Framework

Warm Outreach

I’d like to start this part by saying most of you will completely skip everything I just lined up for you across the 3.5 episode of the GTM series. 90% of you will go directly to this part and wonder why you aren’t getting the results. I’d highly encourage you to do the groundwork before jumping in. Yes, even if you feel like you know your audience and targets really well. It’s a great exercise to do often in your business. People aren’t stagnant creatures; they evolve.

Moving on.

Alex Hormozi is one of my favorite mentors. He’s exceptional at taking seemingly complex concepts and making it really simple to grasp.

In his latest trainings (which are free), he introduced the concept of the Core 4 Quadrant, which revolves around two forms of communication (1-to-1 and 1-to-many) and two types of audiences (those who know you and those who don't).

The beginning of this article talks to the 1-to-many approach through the use of content. Its a pretty basic overview but hopefully you get the picture.

Now, let's delve into the 1-to-1 outreach, which is ideal for prospects in the later stages of awareness.

As you know, there is warm and cold outreach. I’m personally a big fan of the warm kind but we can’t build thriving multifaceted businesses with just that.

Warm outreach is simply reaching out to folks who know you. That doesn’t mean you have to know them. An example of this is me reaching out to one of you directly. I don’t know many of you, but if you are reading this then you know me.

The key to warm outreach is don’t kill the equity you have built by only reaching out to sell them something. This is also true in cold outreach, but the stakes are much higher on the warm side because of the work and time built into cultivating relationships both personally and digitally.

So go into the conversation seeking understanding, with a focus to serve and not to sell. If you’ve ever booked a call with me or engaged with me you have probably felt the difference in our calls and interactions. I’m genuinely interested in getting to know you and helping you in any way I can.

That’s the energy you want to bring to the table as you write emails and make calls.

Cold Outreach

The key to cold outreach is the same as warm outreach. Come in genuinely curious, seek understanding and with an aim to serve not sell.

Even when people don’t know you (cold outreach), it’s important to still engage them based on where they are in the awareness journey. There are indicators in most cases and some will even have what is called intent signals. Platforms like Apollo are great for searching and alerting you about these kinds of prospects.

For example, an indicator for tech companies that might be ramping up hiring soon is a VC round.

Instead of the standard ole “congrats on funding, want to hire this candidate?” line, try this Honeypot framework instead.

Let’s break it down.

Context is everything and we start with that. You can use this context guide for all of your messaging.

There is also have an Avatar Canvas from Digital Marketer you can use that has even more detail. Happy to share it with you and go over how to use it in a consultation call. 

Once you have the context there are 6 rows you need to fill out.

• Observation - What is an observation or trigger you can use?

• Poke the bear - This is a concept introduced by Josh Braun’s cold calling course. Basically its a curious question that bridges the gap from where they might be to where they want to be.

• Solution - Remember if you are working on a standard placement recruiting model, your candidates are the solution, not you.

• Differentiation/proof - Since your candidates are the solution use their experience as differentiators and proof of work. But notice I’m not just listing a bunch of experience. I’m focusing on what they have done for similar companies with similar goals.

• Ask or offer - Most of you will dub this as a call to action. However, data shows calls to action that request time or actual action from the prospect results in a massive drop off in replies. Instead focus on yes or no questions that either ask for more clarity or offer more data. That’s why you see the “OR” in the middle of the 2 questions. You pick one.

• Lastly the subject line - I write the subject line last because its the thing that ties it all together. Notice its 3 words and reads like something you’d get from someone familiar to you.

Bonus tips.

• Write at a 5th-7th grade level

• Make your paragraphs 1-2 short choppy sentences (think how Linkedin posts are written)

• Bullet point experience

• Excluding your bullet points, the message should be no more than 60 words.

• Use 2x more “you”s than “I”s, “our”s or “we”s.

• Stop guessing and spend the money on Lavender and aim for a 90+ rating.

Here is a link to even more frameworks from Lavender if you don’t like mine.

Nearbound: The Power of Partnerships

Lastly, we have nearbound strategy. Nearbound is about leveraging partnerships and borrowed audiences. I built a lot of Atalent on nearbound efforts and Recruiting With Dynamite’s core offerings will have a massive nearbound aspect to it.

What is nearbound?

Isaac Morehouse of nearbound.com, defines it as “the Go-To-Market strategy that taps into those buyers trust at every stage of the journey for intel, intros, and influence.”

If you found RWD due to an interview I did for a Podcast, that is an example of a nearbound strategy. I essentially borrowed trust from the podcast.

Here are a few examples of how recruiters can use it.

• Complementary Collaborations: Partner with brands offering complementary products or services to similar targets. Together, you can provide a comprehensive solution, enhancing value for clients.

• Recruiter Alliances: Team up with recruiters in similar spaces. Share networks, split commissions, and expand your reach.

• Influencer Engagements: Collaborate with influencers and creators. Be a guest on podcasts, write for their blogs, and co-create content. It's a win-win, expanding both your audiences.

I can go into more details about nearbound GTM strategies if you like, just let me know.

Effective marketing, outreach and strategic partnerships are invaluable in today's competitive landscape. This all may seem daunting and exhausting, but this is how great businesses are built. Its how you stay relevant in bad times and thrive to new heights in boom time.

The landscape has changed drastically and the ones who know how to do this are cashing your checks right now. The thing is, none of this is new or innovative. Its just mastering the basics.

If you want deeper guidance doing this in your business or desk, I have a few options for you. You can join BoomLab and freely engage me and the community there, book a 45-75 min consultation or I can coach you. Coaching is limited as I can only take on about 10 at a time so there is an application process.

Stay tuned for the final part of our series, where we'll bring everything together and look at ways to automate for more human interaction.

Till then, happy hunting!