Mastering the Sales Game: Tom Erb's Blueprint for Recruiting Success & Future-Proof Strategies

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast.

Tom Erb [00:00:03]:
I work with a lot of organizations on value proposition and what makes them different. And in most cases, what they think makes them different and what actually makes them different are two different things.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:15]:
I know the number one question that you're getting right now is how to get more money across the board. What's the first thing that you're telling people?

Tom Erb [00:00:21]:
Well, the first thing I'm telling them is you should have started this a few years ago, but welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host, Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership, and placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:44]:
I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast because you can completely change your desk in 10 weeks. You can go from zero to hero. You can go for whatever your dreams and goals are. There is a plan and a system to make it work to get your dreams. And I am so excited to have actually an industry legend on the podcast today who's also the author of the Winning the Sales Game book, Tom Erb, to really share what is working with sales, what is working right now, how to get more money across your desk. So welcome to the podcast, Tom.

Tom Erb [00:01:19]:
Thanks, Ben. Thanks for having me.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:21]:
Real quick, before we do a deep dive in your background sales, what's working real quick, 30 second self introduction, Tom Herb.

Tom Erb [00:01:29]:
I am the founder and the primary consultant for Talent Resources. We're a consulting and training firm for the recruiting and staffing industry and been in the industry for 30 years.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:41]:
So I've seen you for years. I've actually, I think like four, five years ago, I picked up your book. I was like, you know what, I need to get some stuff happening on my desk. And it's definitely a game changer. We'll talk about the book in a bit. But before we even start talking about any of that, how did you even end up in recruiting?

Tom Erb [00:01:57]:
So I've had an interesting career. So I started 30 years ago in 94. I came out of college, I stayed for grad school for two reasons. One, because the economy was horrible, and two, because they paid for a graduate assistantship. So I said, okay, well, I'm good with that. I like college. So I stayed, got my MBA and just applied to a bunch of jobs. I thought I was going to go into banking.

Tom Erb [00:02:22]:
I thought I might go into like HR or something. And I ultimately ended up with a job at Olston in Columbus, Ohio, as a not even a recruiter, but as an interviewer. And so all I did was interview all day. And it was in a commercial staffing office, this office that was about half industrial, half clerical. And it was in a. Just a. Not a really good part of town. There was, you know, mass gangland style murder in a shopping center next to us the week that I started.

Tom Erb [00:02:54]:
Or we had all sorts of stuff. But that turned out to be the best thing for me because if you could do light industrial staffing and do it in an environment like that, everything else is easier. So that's how I started out. I worked for Olston for six years and then I went to Sperion for 10 years and then left there and started up Talon. Been doing that for 15 years.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:16]:
That sounds like a crazy first week. I think my first week I was just still smiling and dialing, right?

Tom Erb [00:03:20]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:21]:
So what made you. First of all, why'd you leave that organization to go to Spherion?

Tom Erb [00:03:27]:
So I was there for six years and I worked my way up. You know, it was a on site manager and it was kind of the specialist for starting up on sites with them for a while. I started up multiple ones and then I moved into a branch manager and then into an area director role and just kind of maxed out. It was a franchise. Bolston and kind of was the max. Met this guy through the Ohio Staffing and Search association that was heading up the Spirion market. And we hit it off and we talked for a long time and he said, if you're ever ready for a change, I'll. I'll hire you.

Tom Erb [00:04:01]:
And he did. And I moved into sales and you know, had done sales as part of my other jobs. There were really no dedicated sales and he didn't know how to do sales really. There was no handbook, there was no, it was just like, go sell. So that's, that's what I did. And I found out that I really, really like that Sales was fun. Sales was, was kind of what I was missing and I figured it out on my own. And a lot of the stuff that I started to do became the foundation of, even today of the sales process.

Tom Erb [00:04:32]:
So I just didn't know it at the time.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:34]:
What's kind of funny is you hear about Sphere and all these like other companies, like today they have like robust sales systems and trading. But like then it was just like, hey, can you do it? All right, cool. If not, goodbye.

Tom Erb [00:04:49]:
Yeah. And it was, it was basically. It seems like the dumbest thing when you think about it. Like this whole concept of sink or Swim. It's like, well, you go figure it out. And they do the same thing on the recruiting side too. You'll figure it out, right? You're smart. Go figure it out.

Tom Erb [00:05:03]:
And it's like, well, but if you trained me, I'd figure it out a lot faster and be a lot more productive faster. Right. There were no metrics, there was nothing in place. I actually remember going back to my boss who was fantastic, still friends with him and I said, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to do this many activities with this many appointments. I'm going to go on this many networking events. I'm going to do all this stuff. This is my plan for doing it.

Tom Erb [00:05:29]:
I completely unsolicited what's going. And he goes, yeah, that looks good. And that's what I did. Because I was this shiny object sales personality just like most of us are, right in recruiting and in the industry. And I had to create some structure for myself or I just would have failed miserably. I would have sat around, done nothing. And so I would have thought a lot about doing things but I never would actually executed on them. So I had to create these goals for me which you know, ended up being metrics, but they were self imposed metrics and it worked, worked great.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:01]:
Were you seeing other people in the industry doing like self imposed metrics or like were they just winging it?

Tom Erb [00:06:07]:
No, not then. Even now, I mean you do see people that have, you know, they set their own goals for themselves because they don't have managers or leaders that are really holding them to things or they're not holding them to the right things that are actually going to get them to success. But no, I was completely on my own with that. Know there really was not much of an Internet. There was, you know, it was, it wasn't like you could go out and just Google how to do it. It's, you know, I ended up subscribing to a sales magazine. It was, you know, selling success or something like that. I went to a sales conference actually when I became a sales director for Stereon, I went to a sales conference just to learn how to be a salesperson.

Tom Erb [00:06:48]:
I bought sales manager books. So that's, that's just how you did it and just tried to figure it out.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:55]:
What spurred you to finally make the jump into the consulting and like the coaching. Was it just like not seeing structure where you're at and everywhere else?

Tom Erb [00:07:04]:
Yeah, you know, so it was at Spherion for 10 years and I rose up to the level of regional vice president at the time had about 35 offices, about a hundred, 100, 110 people reporting up to me and loved what I was doing with that. Prior to that, I was a sales director and I built up the sales division for the northeast region. Got it up to 13 sales reps and that was a lot of fun. But you know, Spherion was going through some different stuff and unbeknownst to us, we're getting ready to be bought. And so there were some different things and it was just had an itch to go do something on my own and had a lot of friends that were doing stuff on their own. Had a lot of friends that were, you know, that were professional full time speakers and others that were consultants. And so I talked to a lot of people because I was trying to kind of figure out what was missing there, why I wasn't as happy as I thought I should be. And that's when I just, over the time I go, you know, I think I want to do this on my own and I think I want to use the experience that I've gotten to this point to help other organizations.

Tom Erb [00:08:04]:
So that's how it happened. And thankfully I had a wife that was extremely understanding, more than she probably should have been. To where I'm going, hey, listen, know I got this great job as this rvp. I'm in line to be promoted up to a senior vp. I think I'm going to quit. Is that okay? Is it okay if I quit? Start from nothing. And she's an HR director by trade. She has staffing experience too.

Tom Erb [00:08:28]:
But you know, HR director personalities are pretty risk averse. That's why you're in that job. And so you're looking back the fact that she, she probably was absolutely hating it while I was doing it, you know. Probably. Yeah. But put on a face to me that, yeah, yeah, sure. Okay. That's fine.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:46]:
It's okay. You got this, sweetie.

Tom Erb [00:08:47]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Worked out. I think the first year it from a revenue standpoint, not, you know, earnings, profit or whatever, but just from a pure revenue standpoint. I made about 10% of what I had made the previous year in the RVP role. Probably less than that actually. So it was, it was a bumpy start.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:08]:
So I mean, a bumpy start, but a good start, right?

Tom Erb [00:09:11]:
It was still a good start. Yeah. Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:13]:
At that point in time, was it just like unhappiness and things were changing or is it just like that? It was truly that itch like I want to go do Something on my own.

Tom Erb [00:09:21]:
So it was a little bit of when large companies are trying to position themselves to be sold, they. They don't do the things that you would do to grow your business as much there. You know, it's a lot of cost cutting. It's even cost cutting at the expense of growth. Right. And that became frustrating. And that was probably the first thing. And that caused me to say, you know, what would I like to do? What would I, if I could go do something else? And that's when I started to reach out to friends of mine.

Tom Erb [00:09:55]:
Like I said that I spent time with a good friend of mine. His name's Brian Blasco, and he's a professional speaker to this day. And he gave me great advice. I had another friend that had his own business and was kind of a serial entrepreneur, and I took him to lunch and picked his brain. And the more I talked to them, the more I go, yeah, this is. This is what I want to do. I think it was mismatched to be in a large, more bureaucratic organization, and I just haven't looked back. So it's not for everybody, you know, everybody likes different stuff.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:27]:
But those early days when you were doing consulting and coaching, were you focused on the sales side, or was that something that just like, evolved in a combination of like, oh, wait, I was really good at this. I had to build out my own structure.

Tom Erb [00:10:39]:
Yeah. The funny thing is what you think you're going to do and what you do a lot of times are totally different things. I thought that I was going to go out there and sell to corporate talent acquisition departments how to be more flexible, how to have a better recruiting strategy that had more flexibility, more scalability. I'd never sold any of those, so that didn't work. What happened was, was I met with a friend of mine that I was on the Ohio staffing board with and went to lunch with him. He was the owner of a staffing company, and I was telling him, I said, hey, listen, I'm going to be making this change here. You're the first one I'm telling this. And he goes, I'll be your first client.

Tom Erb [00:11:19]:
I need you. I need your help. He goes, I'm excited that I have your expertise. And he was a smaller staffing company, so he didn't have the exposure that I did. And now you thought, huh, maybe there's some value there. And then I started to talk to other staffing companies and they go, yep, I need your help. I need your help. And so that's when I shifted to that.

Tom Erb [00:11:41]:
I mean I've worked with a few talent acquisition departments over the years. Corporate talent acquisition, but maybe five or six in 15 years. And I've worked with about a thousand staffing and recruiting firms. So it's. Yeah, big difference.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:56]:
That's kind of funny. Like where you think the path and journey is going to go is so different than where you actually ended up.

Tom Erb [00:12:03]:
You got to understand that sometimes I got to take the opportunity, even if it's not what I thought I was going to have and just go with that. So that's a lesson that I had early on.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:15]:
Well, let's fast forward a thousand staffing companies you've supported and you've helped grow mostly on the sales side of the house. You've written a book on sales for the recruiting and the staffing industry.

Tom Erb [00:12:25]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:26]:
Focus on sales. Like I know the number one question that you're getting right now is how to get more money across the board. Where is the first thing that you're telling people?

Tom Erb [00:12:32]:
Well, the first thing I'm telling them is you should have started this a few years ago, but since you didn't, let's, you know, while the orders were flowing in freely, we stopped selling as a profession. But that being said, you know, I tell them, listen, it's going to take some time. There are different levels of sales. There's the low hanging fruit that you go after. You go back to your existing clients and see what other opportunities you can have. Go back to past clients, see if you can start those back up. Skill marketing, you know, mpcing candidates is always a great way to get quicker hits than other ways. But then you've got to take a multi pronged approach.

Tom Erb [00:13:10]:
You got to have the prospecting piece where you're going out and quite frankly, you're cold calling and you're picking up the phone and calling strangers and trying to get them to talk to you. That's one piece of that. You gotta get into networking, you gotta get into leveraging your relationships and building those relationships. Being seen on social media, being seen on podcasts like this, all those different things. It's a snowball effect. Yeah, you gotta start today and it's gonna take time, you know, can't build a house tomorrow. So it takes you time. And same thing with sales.

Tom Erb [00:13:43]:
You have to build, you have to build on it.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:46]:
Are you seeing a lot of companies and agencies that really took their foot off the gas on the sales side?

Tom Erb [00:13:51]:
Oh yeah, overwhelming majority. I mean, I speak a lot on this and you know, one of the Slides that I have is kind of a joke. It's like 2022 was, you know, why should I sell? I can't fill the jobs I have. And now fast forward to today. Why would I recruit? I don't have any jobs to fill, you know, so it's just this pendulum that swings all the time and it's been swinging for the 30 years that I've been in the industry. And it'll always be that way. I've talked a lot recently about the concept of a three legged stool for growth. And the three legged stool is new business development.

Tom Erb [00:14:24]:
It is maximizing the relationships you have with your existing clients. And then it's order fulfillment. It's filling the most jobs that you possibly can. That's whether you're talking about search or contract staffing. The problem with it, and it seems very simple. 99% of recruiting and staffing firms only focus on one or two areas at any given time. And so all of a sudden it's, I'm just, oh, I don't have any jobs, I need to go focus on new business development. Oh, all of a sudden, oh, I've got a bunch of jobs.

Tom Erb [00:14:54]:
I going to stop new business development and I'm going to just focus on order fulfillment. And usually we don't put nearly enough focus towards optimizing and maximizing client relationships. There's so much more that we can get with our clients. You know, they're typically not just using one provider or typically, you know, a lot of times, particularly in recruiting, you're trying to get in at a hiring manager level in a large organization where there could be 30 or 40 hiring managers that you could be working with. So what am I doing to leverage that relationship to get into other areas or go up to a corporate level that I can get access to the entire organization because I can prove what I've done at this department. So you know, if we think about that concept of the three legged stool and we're always focused on all three areas, you're going to be successful. Otherwise you just go through that roller coaster of up and down, you know.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:48]:
So if you have a team and you're looking at that three legged stool, do you have parts of your team handle each leg or do you have everybody handle all three legs?

Tom Erb [00:15:58]:
Yeah, boy, that's the, that's the hundred million dollar question nowadays on the search side because traditionally so much as search has run full desk, but we're seeing more and more that are going to more split desk models. And I get search firms that Reach out to me pretty regularly that talk about, hey, I want to have dedicated salespeople. I can't just rely on my recruiters to bring in the business. I need more than that and how do I do that? And so that's something that we do talk about quite a bit. I'm a much bigger believer in the split desk model. I would rather have specialists in addition to the consulting. I had my own recruiting firm that recruited for the staffing and recruiting industry for about eight years. So we ran a split desk model.

Tom Erb [00:16:46]:
I was the primary salesperson, I had a director of recruiting that was the client service person. And then I had recruiters that did nothing but recruit and we all specialized in those. It didn't mean that some people weren't doing multiple things, but primarily and at one point we also brought in a full time salesperson to do sales as well. So I'm a big believer in that model because it's hard enough to find a salesperson that's good. It's a lot harder to find a salesperson that's good at new business development. Oh, and by the way, I'm good at account management and by the way, I'm good at recruiting and I like to do that stuff.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:20]:
What about the person, the solo desk, like the solopreneur, like what's the advice on that three legged prong for them?

Tom Erb [00:17:29]:
You've got to segment out time. It's a time management and it's a prioritization issue. And the natural tendency for a sole proprietor or somebody who's got a small team, you know, is to focus on one or two of those legs at a time, whatever's the most urgent. But what you really have to do is be disciplined and say I'm going to spend this much time on new business development, this much time on developing those client relationships and building those which by the way should be happening over the course of just doing your job mostly anyways, right. It's about changing the conversations and looking for opportunities that to how can I expand into that area? And then you've got the fulfillment side obviously and there's different things you can do to help scale yourself in all those areas. I know Ben, you're you know, big proponent of technology and being able to leverage that to help you scale. But leveraging AI, leveraging automations on both the candidate and the client side and for that matter on the new business development side and the existing client side, creating automations to help you scale virtual assistants, looking at virtual researchers or researchers in the U.S. wherever you go, but there's different ways that you can scale those different areas, but you gotta be purposeful about it.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:47]:
So why don't like focus on the sales side and really getting that, that engine moving again? Like, you know, you're sitting there listening to Tom, you're like, oh crap, like I've actually let my foot off the gas. I need to put my foot on the gas. Now should we like put together your 10 week program or what's the first few things that we should do?

Tom Erb [00:19:05]:
Yeah, I mean whether you, whether you use our 10 week process or you do something else, there needs to be structure to it so that it can be done over and over and over again. You got to get into the habit of, of doing it. And if you can use technology to help automate those things and drive some of those activities to you, we found that that works a lot better. So if you use an automation tool, like let's say like HubSpot, Sales Hub, their sequences, okay. You can create a whole automation in there. Whether it's our 10 week process or some other multi step process, it doesn't really matter. But to be able to set it up where there's an automated email that goes out, you throw somebody into the workflow, there's an automated email, it creates a task to make a phone call on a certain day. Then you just go into your phone call list and you make those calls.

Tom Erb [00:19:53]:
And that then moves to the next step in the process. That helps in so many different ways. It keeps you on task, it keeps you focused, structured. The other thing too is that we gotta have really good messaging that we keep focusing on. I find that too many recruiters, salespeople, that we, we water down our messaging by not having consistent messaging. And what is it that really makes us better? Why should they talk to us? If I'm reaching out to a department head that is getting called on by recruiters all the time, how do I sound any different than them? And how do I sound different in a way that resonates with that person, that gets them to actually talk to us and actually maybe give us an opportunity.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:39]:
We all think that we're different, right?

Tom Erb [00:20:42]:
Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:43]:
But in reality we're not. How do you actually be different?

Tom Erb [00:20:48]:
It's so funny because I work with a lot of organizations on value proposition and what makes them different. And in most cases what they think makes them different and what actually makes them different are two different things. And in a lot of cases what they're talking about is, you know, quality of placements or hey, you're going to get me, you know, I'm, I'm going to be the person that helps you with that, which is great, you're a great person. But, but you know, that's not necessarily the selling point. It's more of why does it matter to them that they're going to get you as the person that's going to fill their jobs. So when we take a look at what really makes people different in the industry, whether it's search, whether it's contract staffing is, it comes down to a few things. One is expertise. Expertise and specialization.

Tom Erb [00:21:35]:
I say go hand in hand. The more specialized we are, the more value that we can show people and the more value that they will perceive in us. I tell people all the time, if I didn't specialize in staffing and recruiting, I certainly wouldn't be on this podcast right now talking about sales. Right? So the fact that I've got this specialization matters. And if I'm personally talking to a recruiting firm that specializes in engineering, I'm going to be talking about my experience working with recruiting firms that specialize in engineering. I'm not going to be talking about, well, I work with over a thousand staffing and recruiting firms because that's not as important. So the more I can, you know, drill down into specialization, the more that's likely to resonate with the person on the other line. Right.

Tom Erb [00:22:25]:
So that's the first thing, you know, track record, that's the other piece to this is that it's not just about our differentiators. It's how do we prove that we're different and how do we prove that that provides more value than others. And we do that through things like data. You know, hey, I've placed X number of these types of positions in the last few years within that industry. Name dropping companies, being able to say, yes, we specialize in that industry filling those types of positions. In fact, we just did a search for XYZ company and they go, oh, xyz, that's credible. Okay, that, that perks up my attention. It's the celebrity endorsement, right? You know, Michael Jordan's name is on the shoes.

Tom Erb [00:23:08]:
I'm going to buy those shoes. Oh, so and so works with Ben in my industry, I respect them fill in the same types of jobs. That by default is kind of an endorsement. So those are the different things that we would do. If we can talk about process, a lot of people talk about the generic stuff around process and they talk about stuff that everybody does, right? But then they say, but we do it better. Well, we gotta make it easily digestible to this prospect to go, okay, why do I care about that? And so the way we do it a lot of times is to productize processes. And what we're doing is taking this intangible service that a lot of times we do every day. A lot of times over the course of time, if I've been doing this for years, I've come up with best practices and I do this pretty well.

Tom Erb [00:23:58]:
We'll take that and put it into what we call a productized service. So it seems more like a process. We're packaging it basically, and then have things to reinforce that. And so we found that that works really well with a lot of people because it gives them kind of a. First of all, it can spark a conversation. And I'll give you a good example. Going years back when I was at Spherion and I was doing sales, you know, Spherion at the time. And for the people that are listening to this, that don't know who Sverion is, Spherion was a top five staffing company in the US Got bought by Ronstadt shortly after I left.

Tom Erb [00:24:36]:
But with big company, big generalist company, did everything. But one of the things that we did really well was we sold call centers. They had this productized service called Call Source Plus. And it was all the stuff we did anyways, it was just packaged. And it was packaged in a way where you could say, you know, the big difference between us and all the other staffing companies that are calling you is that we have this process called Call Source plus that does this, this, this and this. And it perks their ears up. And then I would say, wait a second, can you tell me more about that? Yes, I can. And then you get into that.

Tom Erb [00:25:11]:
So if you could productize things, you know, make it a play on your name or whatever that might be, that's another way to differentiate yourself. Technology. Are you really leveraging technology better than others? Everybody says they are, but are you really doing it in a way that you can demonstrate to that prospect that quickly shows them that there's value and that you really are doing it as opposed to everybody else? I got all sorts of clients saying that they use technology. Well, yeah, they got a database, they got an applicant tracking system. They use indeed, to post jobs. So they're using technology, but they don't really have it as a competitive and strategic advantage. So those are just a few ways to differentiate yourself.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:54]:
Okay, let's take a step back. Like to be able to Differentiate ourselves. First of all, we have to get in front of people, right? And that's sometimes one of the hardest things to do. Like in 2025, how do we actually get in front of people?

Tom Erb [00:26:05]:
The main reason why I wrote the book is because I have read a ton of sales books over the years and every single one of them focuses. Yep, great. You got the, the OG copy there. This is the, the more updated one. But. But yes, that's a good copy too. I was reading these sales books and all of them talked about what do you do once you get the appointment? It was all about the process. After the fact.

Tom Erb [00:26:36]:
99% of sales reps struggle with is getting them to talk to you. Whether it is an appointment in person or whether it's just talking to them over the phone. If you sell nationally and recruit nationally. So I wrote the book about how do you get your foot in the door? And over the course of time, you know, we just came up with the sales process. I make it 10 weeks just because it was at the time that I wrote the book, which was about seven years ago, there was a survey or study that came out that said on average it takes 10 to 12 touches to be able to get somebody's attention and convert that to a sale. So we had a 10 week 12 touch process. I've expanded that. I've included some LinkedIn steps and now it's 10 week, 15 step.

Tom Erb [00:27:19]:
But I've got clients that have it, you know, they got 50 plus steps at this point. And we will do that 10 week process, get them through all of that and then we'll move them into another workflow. And so it's not as important that it's 10 weeks. 10 weeks isn't the magic number. 10 weeks is kind of the minimum number right now. And now we're seeing, you know, studies are saying it's 17 to 20 touches or whatever. Well, that's fine. So we'll keep increasing them.

Tom Erb [00:27:45]:
But it's just important to have a structured process with really good messaging. And if you can have technology that helps you scale it, it makes you successful.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:55]:
How long does it like take for somebody to like set up the structure and the system before they can get going attacking the prospect list.

Tom Erb [00:28:04]:
So I mean, it's, it depends. It depends on if you're having a sales rep or recruiter doing it or if you're having an administrative person doing it. Take you four times as long if it's a sales rep or a recruiter. So my advice is, you know, get somebody really organized in the process involved. So the first thing you do is really, you have to know what makes you different and what's the proof.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:29]:
Okay.

Tom Erb [00:28:30]:
And so that's the first thing that you're thinking about. And then what you're doing is you're creating those 15 steps, creating scripts for those. This is how my process is. And you go through and you customize those scripts for what makes you different and what's the compelling value prop that you have. Then you can upload it into a system whether you know, whether you're using HubSpot. Apollo has nice sequencing, even like Mailchimp has good sequencing now, Bullhorn Automation, Loxo, there's lots of, lots of different ones. That's not an exhaustive list by any means. Oh, don't be writing in the comments section about.

Tom Erb [00:29:09]:
I left something out. But. But it has become so mainstream now. It has become democratized. You know, 10 years ago you had to go and pay a maximum amount for HubSpot's marketing suite, and only the largest companies could do that. Well, nowadays there's lots of different options for that, but then to actually get it automated in the system usually takes a couple hours, few hours maybe. And then you gotta go and find the people. And I recommend that people, you know, that you use a contact database like ZoomInfo or Apollo or.

Tom Erb [00:29:43]:
Yeah, there's lots of different ones that are out there as well. Don't go through all the process of trying to manually find this information on your own. Your time's better spent doing other things, more important things.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:57]:
I think that's a lot of things that recruiters and firm owners do. Is they, I hate to say this, like, overthink how much they need to get done to set up a system.

Tom Erb [00:30:06]:
Yeah, I mean, if you added all that stuff up together that I'm talking about, it's coming up with your value prop, your differentiators, putting that into scripts, uploading scripts into automation, running searches on who you're going to reach out to. All that stuff combined should take less than 10 hours.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:24]:
Out of curiosity, you wrote the book seven years ago. What has changed since then?

Tom Erb [00:30:28]:
You know, it's funny. So I spoke at Staffing World a couple years ago. They asked me to do an author corner. It was the first year they'd done this author corner. And so you sit up there and you talk about your book. Okay. And I go, okay, I wrote the book seven years ago. I probably should read the book again.

Tom Erb [00:30:45]:
And so on the flight from Columbus, Ohio to Charlotte, I read my book. It's 94 pages. It's not a long book. So I thank myself for that, that it wasn't a long book when I was reading and what I was struck by was a couple of things. One was that I was really happy that the book was still fresh and still relevant. There are two very minor references to. One was reference to a company that changed their name and another is a reference to a website that doesn't exist anymore. But other than that, everything was relevant.

Tom Erb [00:31:15]:
But what really struck me was that it's more relevant now than ever and having this process because when I wrote the book again, HubSpot was kind of the only automation tool that really you could automate it. So everybody was doing it manually for years. And over the course of time it's become more automated and that means more scalable. But it also is with COVID people are harder to communicate with. You can't necessarily get them at their desk because they may not be at their desk. They may be hybrid. People are not answering the phone. The call to live connect ratio since I started doing sales in 2000, I know that's a really long time ago, but in 2000 I had about a 6 to 1 ratio.

Tom Erb [00:31:58]:
We're now seeing about a 25 to 1 ratio. And so if you just do enough about pounding calls and making generic phone calls, you're going to have a really hard time having success. So having multiple steps, having the snail mail letter that I talk about in the 10 week process, having the emails, adding LinkedIn reach outs, different types of reach outs, adding video, adding all these different things has only helped enhance it. So I think it's more relevant now than ever. But the biggest changes we've done is we've added three LinkedIn steps to bring it from 12 steps to 15 plus. I wanted to get away from 12 steps because it has bad connotations, you know, to being a 12 step program. So now I don't have to, you know, backpedal every time that I have a 12 step program. So it's 15 step program.

Tom Erb [00:32:50]:
But you know, doing the LinkedIn and we ease into LinkedIn, we don't just immediately hit them with an invite to connect. You know, we hit do a follow and then we do a share or a comment and then we hit them towards the end of it with a connect because we found that they are much more likely to accept that connection later in the process than earlier in the process when they have no idea who we are.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:10]:
Okay, you said snail mail. Snail mail relevant.

Tom Erb [00:33:14]:
So I would say that's the number one question that I get is, you know, hey, people are working remote, they're working hybrid, do they even get their mail? And my response is always the same. I go, if you're reaching out to a company that hasn't figured out how to route mail to their key executives at this point because of COVID then that organization's got bigger problems. So it's. Yes, not only is it relevant, I think it's more relevant than ever. And it's relevant because of that question, Because I get that question so many times, which is a nice way of going, I don't think that snail mail is a relevant way to do this anymore. And so for every person that asked me that question, you got a hundred people that don't ask me a question. They just go, oh, yeah, no snail mail, no. Think of the people we're reaching out to, how many phone calls they get a day.

Tom Erb [00:34:05]:
Think of how many emails they get a day. And then think about how many hand addressed letters they get a week or a month. In many cases we have prospects that go, that is the only piece of actual mail I got all week. And so now they get, you know, you get all sorts of, you know, jump mail and stuff like that. But to get an actual hand addressed letter in an envelope, they just don't get that anymore. That communication method, there's just no competition for it. And again, it also takes our service, which is intangible and makes it more tangible. They can actually hold it, hold it in their hands.

Tom Erb [00:34:44]:
And so it's something, and we've seen it over and over again where somebody will hold up the letter. If they're talking to them on a zoom call, or if they're in person with a meeting, they'll have it sitting on their desk. So it's more relevant than ever. We've also have a lot of data because we've had so many people go through this process of, you know, people who do it with the letter versus without the letter. And with the letter always has more success.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:10]:
All right, so moving from a letter to AI, like, what's working right now with AI.

Tom Erb [00:35:17]:
A letter to AI, that's, that's, yeah, that's a big shift. What's working with AI? You know, AI can help you with the value prop. If you take your differentiators and you really come up with, okay, I think these are really solid differentiators. You can throw them into like a ChatGPT or a Gemini or something and have it help you with that process. It can help you create the scripts, it helps you with a lot of those things. AI can help you with some of the emails. What we're really seeing from a sales standpoint are some cool things around AI that are helping increase probabilities of closing deals. And so there's AI out there.

Tom Erb [00:35:53]:
So I speak on the technology panel at Staffing World every year and we've done it for the last like 13, 14 years. And I always take the sales piece and there are some years where it's a struggle to come up with seven minutes worth of content of new stuff, new technology in sales. This year it was hard to squeeze it into my 7 minute slot or however much time I had. And it's because all that stuff that people have been talking about forever as this kind of beta, okay, yeah, it kind of works. Maybe it's. AI has really gotten here now and we saw some stuff on the recruiting side, but this year we've seen a lot of sales stuff. There's all sorts of data out there or all sorts of systems out there that help with predictive analytics that go out and determine if people are in the market for recruiting services. We've had that for a long time.

Tom Erb [00:36:47]:
But it's getting really good with AI now. There are different software systems that will go in and look at your database and tell you these are the companies that you should be reaching out to based on past conversations, all that. And then also we'll take a look at your pipeline and we'll give you real predictive probability of closing, not just, hey, it's in negotiate and close stage. So I'm at 80%. It'll go in and say you're at 57% based on the email conversations, the phone call notes that you have in here, you know, going out and looking at what this company's doing, all those things, and then it'll say these should be your next steps. So it's helping you with those different things. There's a lot of cool stuff that's going on with AI and it's just, it's improving by the week with saying.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:36]:
That like in the staffing and the recruiting side, where do you see the next six to 12 months going?

Tom Erb [00:37:43]:
So I'm constantly optimistic. And first of all, it's not, it's not because I'm delusionally optimistic. It's because if you really take a look at what the data is showing out there, we don't have enough people. The talent pool continues to shrink and yet the economy continues to grow. And that has been artificially masked over the last couple of years with a variety of things. One of the biggest things is just we've had a stagnant economy for a couple years and so many people that are listening to this have had down years for a couple of years. The talent pool has opened up a bit. There's more available talent there.

Tom Erb [00:38:21]:
That's not going to last when the economy starts to get going again. And there's every reason to believe it'll get going again this year and probably will get going again at a pretty rapid pace. But when it gets going again, we're going to find that we've had 10,000 baby boomers a day retiring for the last several years. We're going to find that we've got more and more Gen Xers that are semi retiring and early retiring leaving the workforce. We have this aging workforce where many of the skill sets and the professions that we're recruiting in, the average age of the person in that profession is in their mid to late 50s. So we're seeing more and more people. We've got less and less people coming into the workforce because people are having less and less children and have been for 50 years. We've been below replacement rate for 50 years.

Tom Erb [00:39:15]:
Replacement rate is families replacing themselves with kids. We've been below replacement rate and we're seeing smaller groups of people enter the workforce than ever, even though our economy continues to increase. So that's great news for all of us because I would much rather be on a demand economy in the recruiting industry than a supply economy. Right. The other reason why it's great is because most of your competitors aren't paying attention to that. They're just doing the same stuff they were always doing. And so if we can approach our jobs understanding what this macro issue is, then we can have a competitive advantage over all of our competition. 99% of recruiters are not paying attention to that to any great extent, especially right now, because people are struggling to have jobs right.

Tom Erb [00:40:06]:
To get orders to work on. So that's what I see coming up. The average slowdown over the course of the last hundred or so years in the US has been somewhere between 12 to 18 months. We're now approaching almost two years of a stagnant, maybe not a downturn, but at least a stagnant economy, which means that sooner rather than later we're going to come out of it. And I do think once the administration, you know, they've been fast and furious. This is not political. I'm not going to turn everybody off or worry. Ben that I'm going to say something political, but the administration has been fast and furious with a lot of stuff, and everybody's kind of going, okay, where's this? Where does this go? Everybody's kind of waiting and seeing how that plays out.

Tom Erb [00:40:47]:
And once, once we figure out how that plays out, then people are going to be. They're going to be going full steam ahead. So I'm very bullish about our industry, not just for the next year or two or five years, but really for the next 15 plus years just because of all those things I talked about.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:05]:
Awesome. Well, before we jump over to the quickfire questions, I know we covered a lot on the sales system structure, reaching out, prospecting. Is there anything else you want to kind of go a little deeper on?

Tom Erb [00:41:15]:
No, I say let's go for the quick fire.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:17]:
All right, so you got a recruiter that's like coming up to you at an association meeting. They're like, I actually just started in the industry this year. What advice would you give to me to be successful?

Tom Erb [00:41:27]:
Go in the office as much as you can. That's the first thing. If you're virtual, but you have the ability to go in the office, go in the office. It's not because I'm old school. It's because that's where you're going to be seen. That's where your efforts are going to be seen. That's where you're going to pick stuff up. That's where you're going to learn from other people.

Tom Erb [00:41:46]:
So that's the first thing. The other thing I would say is be purposeful about your career. I know I didn't think about this. It's hard to think about where do I want to be 5 years, 10 years, 20 years from now? But if you can think about that, and of course you can pivot all the time, you should pivot when you need to. But if we can at least have kind of a bit of an idea of where we're going, then we can be more purposeful about it. If you decide early on that this is what you want to do, that this is the career you want to have, stick with it and be really good at it, don't go bounce around from one industry to another one. Now if you don't like the industry you're in, go to another one. But we see that over and over again that people that really commit to this being my profession, my vocation, my career, as opposed to a job, that they are more successful.

Tom Erb [00:42:38]:
And then the last thing I would say too is Learn from others, be a sponge. It's amazing how many times that I am coaching a new recruiter or salesperson or somebody in the industry and their response to me is, huh, yep, yep, yep. As if they already know everything. As opposed to, tell me more about this, I have questions about this. You know, it's the more we can be a sponge, we find that those are the most successful people.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:03]:
I just got done chatting with someone who's built over like 20 million average years, like 750k. I think he learns more about recruiting than anybody else I've ever met.

Tom Erb [00:43:12]:
It's not coincidental. The people who are the most open to learning tend to be the most successful. And by nature, you may not be open to learning, but you gotta force yourself to be. If it doesn't come naturally to you, most people, it doesn't come naturally. So you gotta force yourself to do it.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:27]:
Same question, but for somebody that's been in the industry for a while, five, 25 years, but they're chatting with you like, hey, I want to go back to crushing, or I want to crush it. What do I do?

Tom Erb [00:43:36]:
You know, I look back on my career and I think that there was, there was a lot of experience that I gained in the first 20ish years, but a lot of that is not as applicable now. And I find that a lot of people that have had a lot of success over the years but are struggling as of recent years are still trying to do the same stuff that they were doing 15 years ago. And it doesn't mean that you don't still have best practices. And I mean, I just talked earlier about my book was written seven years ago and we still do it, but we are constantly evolving it. We're constantly trying to find ways to be better. And that's what I would look at doing is, first of all, if I've been doing this as a recruiter for 15, 20, 25 years and I'm struggling right now, number one thing is go back to your whole network, just revisit everybody and go back and just start to reach out to people. And one of the things that I try and do, and I've always tried to do this, I would say I have to be more purposeful now because I'm busy, is just randomly reach out to people I haven't talked to for a while. You know, go on LinkedIn and just take a look and go, who have I not talked to in a long time and don't have any kind of preconceived notions about trying to get orders or anything like that.

Tom Erb [00:44:51]:
Just reach out and go, hey, I saw your profile on LinkedIn, realized we hadn't talked in a long time. I would love 15 minutes to catch up with you. You know, I've done that probably three times this week where I've had conversations with people I haven't talked to in years. And every time you go, geez, I wish we had talked sooner. But hey, we talk now and do more and more of that. You got 20, 25 years of network build up. Go back and leverage it and reinvest it. Love that.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:17]:
Do you have like a favorite tech tool that you personally love?

Tom Erb [00:45:22]:
My number one tech tool is, well, I love ChatGPT and I keep learning more and more about it. But I would say my number one tech tool right now is my note taking app. I use Fireflies, but there's tons of them out. All of them, you know, read AI and Fathom and there's a bunch of them out there. Fireflies is what I've used now for a couple years. It has changed the way that I work. I don't have to take notes now. Shiny Object Sales personality.

Tom Erb [00:45:47]:
If I'm taking notes, I'm not listening to you and I'm not taking very good notes. And it's taken me a long time to do it. So to be able to have something summarize and do it really well and it keeps getting better and better. You know, even Zoom info or not Zoom Info. Zoom's AI note taking tool. It just started doing that automatically for me. A little bugo. I like having both.

Tom Erb [00:46:08]:
I got Fireflies now and then I'll look at Zoom.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:10]:
Awesome. You've mentioned a few times about associations. How important is it for a recruiter to get around other recruiters?

Tom Erb [00:46:17]:
Oh, I think it's absolutely critical to get around other recruiters and learn. I mean, I've learned more from NAPS than anything. I came from the contract staffing side and was doing more and more recruiting. And you know, when I first started out doing consulting, I didn't have a lot of consulting. So I was also taking on recruiting. I was recruiting for VPs of sales and sales teams and other types of positions that ultimately grew into my own recruiting division that I had for eight years and I had that team. I learned so much from naps. I learned just from going to that event.

Tom Erb [00:46:53]:
I've been on the board forever. That's one organization. I've been on the board for the Ohio Staffing and Search association for an embarrassingly long time. It tells You. I can't quit anything. But the reason why I haven't gotten away from that association is because it's just so valuable. You learn so much from what others are doing. You build these networks.

Tom Erb [00:47:11]:
It just pays off over the course of time.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:14]:
Awesome. Has there been a book that's had a huge impact on your own personal career success?

Tom Erb [00:47:20]:
I was just looking because I've got several. Jeffrey Gitter's Little Black Book of Selling and Little Red Book Is Selling. Both were big on me when I became a sales manager. I actually bought this book, the Ultimate Sales Manager's Guide. I keep it with me here. This is not for, you know, prop reasons. It is because I still will reference it. The Four Hour Work Week is one I read a long time ago that isn't specific to recruiting or sales, but it talks about just how to scale yourself and how to be more efficient.

Tom Erb [00:47:54]:
There's a lot of them that I've read. I also am a huge. You talk about another technology. I love Blinkist, and I've really gotten into Masterclass recently. So Blinkist, it basically is Cliff's notes for all these business books. And I get people that are constantly saying, oh, you should read this book. So I'll do the blink. It summarizes it in about 15 to 20 minutes.

Tom Erb [00:48:17]:
And then if I really like what I heard, then I can go read the whole book if I want to. But I get through a lot of books. I'm always looking at stuff around productivity and time management and stuff. You know, just because you naturally struggle with that stuff doesn't mean you can't get better. And so that's what I'm constantly trying to do. So, yeah, a lot of different books, but those will be the ones.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:35]:
Awesome. And like, you've got a chance to, like, advise over a thousand companies in the recruiting space, which is a ton. So you've got a chance to, like, see the ins and outs of what's working, what's not working, how to improve, where the improvements actually happen.

Tom Erb [00:48:47]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:48]:
If you got a chance to go back in time and chat with yourself and have a conversation with yourself early in your recruiting career, what would you actually tell yourself now that you know all this?

Tom Erb [00:48:58]:
You know, I. I look back and I go, I think I did things pretty well in that I realized that I want, I needed to have diversity of experiences. Even though I only work for two companies, they were two large companies, so I was able to do a lot of different things. And so I was, you know, I was, I was a recruiter I was a sales rep. I managed multiple offices, I managed a single office. I, I did a lot of different things that gave me a really broad experience. If I did something different, maybe I would have intentionally gotten into some different verticals. You know, over the course of 15 years, I've been able to learn a lot of verticals because I have so many clients that are in areas like IT and healthcare and some very, very niche verticals as well.

Tom Erb [00:49:45]:
Niche specializations. But most of my background in the 15 years that I was in the industry was clerical, light industrial, a little bit of accounting and finance, some legal, some things like that. So I would have probably branched out into maybe some areas that were, I would have given myself maybe a little bit of time to branch out in some areas. That was probably the biggest thing, just being more purposeful about that. And maybe even within those large organizations I probably could have moved into another vertical because both of those organizations had most, if not all verticals. So it could have still stayed within the organization. That's the biggest thing, probably.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:25]:
Well, and this is kind of a fun one. You've, you've talked to thousands of recruiters and thousands of salespeople within our space and I'm sure like everybody asks you, like, you know, how do I set up my 10 week structure? What's the perfect email that I need to write or what do I need to write on that postcard to actually make it work and worthwhile? But is there a question that you wish they would actually ask you that they never do?

Tom Erb [00:50:46]:
I think just what's the, how's the best way for me to be successful? And it's a general question, but a lot of times I do get those tactical questions as opposed to what's the path, what should I do to be successful and whether it's a recruiter, whether it's a salesperson. You can never do too much activity. So it starts with activity and it really starts with activity with human beings as opposed to emails, social media, all that, all that stuff's important and all that stuff supports everything else. But at the end of the day, I want to have as many conversations as I can with people, have better messaging, be able to engage people. Practice before you make a cold call, right? Hey, don't practice on your prospects. Don't wing it. That's what most sales reps and recruiters do is they completely wing it. They have no idea what they're going to say.

Tom Erb [00:51:45]:
I had one sales rep who had been doing sales for 20 years and I said, what do you Say when you finally get somebody live on the phone. And she blurted out, and she didn't mean to, but it was genuine. She goes, I hope they don't answer. And she said it honestly, she didn't want to. She actually covered her mouth go. But she's saying what most people think they get lulled into this, you know, just leaving voicemails or not leaving voicemails, and they don't really have any idea what they're going to say when somebody gets live on the phone. So I wish they would ask me more of what's the path to success. And it's really about having activities.

Tom Erb [00:52:24]:
Give yourself enough swings at the plate when you do connect, then make those as meaningful as possible. Have good conversations. I always tell people, I go, listen, when you finally get somebody live on the phone, make that the last time you cold call them ever. And what I mean by that is we need to establish at least a little bit of rapport, a little bit of credibility, maybe a little bit of interest in our service. And then we have to do stuff after so that we keep them warm. So the next time we call them, we're not saying, hi, this is Tom with Talend Resources. I don't know if you remember me, but we talked a couple months ago and you said you might have a need in a couple months, so call you. So here I am.

Tom Erb [00:53:02]:
And that's how we almost always do it because we didn't make that our last cold call ever. So we essentially cold call them again.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:10]:
That is great, man. This has been a fun conversation. So real quick for somebody that wants to go buy your book, where can they find it?

Tom Erb [00:53:18]:
It's. I've got one copy here. No, Amazon's the best, easiest place to get it. So if you just go on Amazon, it's called winning the staffing sales game. Yes, it says staffing, but it's absolutely relevant to recruiting to search as well. It's like 15 bucks. So.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:35]:
And if somebody wants to follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Tom Erb [00:53:39]:
Yeah, so that you can follow me on LinkedIn. You can go to talendresources.com We've got a blog. You can also sign up through a contact form. We got lots of different resources for free on our website. If you download any of those, you'll get on our email list. So if you want to get emails from us, we usually email once or twice a month. We don't hit people with hard stuff. We're not hard selling either.

Tom Erb [00:54:01]:
It's all kind of informational. We've got a blog, like I said, a lot of resources out there, pretty active on LinkedIn, so that's an easy way to follow me or connect with me.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:11]:
Awesome. And I know we cover a lot today, and I know there's a lot in your book too, but is there anything else that you want to leave with the listeners?

Tom Erb [00:54:19]:
I think that the big thing I want to leave with is there is a general rising tide lifts all boats mentality in our industry right now, which is I get a lot of questions around, how are others doing? And oh, how much is the industry down? How much is this vertical down or up? And I go, you know, don't settle for that because that's the average. Those are the people that aren't doing things well or they're doing them okay. So don't compare yourself to that benchmark. The better question probably to ask is, how are the best firms doing? How are the best companies doing and what are they doing? Don't compare ourselves to the, to the middle. If we're growing by 5%, if the industry is, that means everybody's growing by 5% just by showing up. So don't compare yourself to the average. Don't compare yourself to the mediocre. Compare yourself to the top and strive to emulate them.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:18]:
I just want to say thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You've invested in, like, your time, energy and knowledge into a thousand different recruiting organizations. And for that question, if you want to find out what the best are actually doing, probably give Tom a call, hit him up on LinkedIn. But I just want to say thank you for sharing. Like, you're definitely an industry legend. You've been around sharing your knowledge, helping so many recruiters win. So excited to have you on. And for the listeners, this is the year.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:43]:
Just as Tom said, get out in the water, grab the surfboard and start surfing. Because as soon as things get figured out, take advantage of the opportunity that 2025 is going to give you. Go crush it.