Sid Barnes, CEO of Mastermind Consulting, told an APSCo-sponsored Zoom-cast event for recruiters on Thursday [14 May 2020], that recruiters should find out how clients are, rebuild connections and ultimately restore the lapsed clients to active status.

For Barnes, there are four streams of clients: new, repeat, cross-sell and lapsed, with ‘lapsed’ clients meaning those whom the recruiter has not billed in 12 months. The best performing companies that Barnes has seen have the fewest clients in the ‘lapsed’ category, he said. On the other hand, for so many organisations, he said, “the big majority of their book is ‘lapsed’ ”. 

While now is not the best time to send a CV or push for business, Barnes said: “I’d be trying to arrange a Zoom conversation with every client that you ever had just to see how they are. 

“[Ask them] ‘Are you ok, is there anything we can do for you, is there any information that you need us to shoot from our industry, just reaching out to see how you are’, rather than the hard sell because no one needs that right now – just reaching out and reviving that relationship.”

Barnes and co-presenter Wendy Merricks, CEO and founder of Jumar Solutions, spoke on the theme of ‘Survive, Thrive and Revive – Business Modelling Post Covid-19’. 

See recruiter.co.uk next week for a report on more of the conversation.

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