Redefine Your Value. Yeah, You Are In Tough Times. Buckle Up and Negotiate!
How to Navigate the Down Market and Stand Out as a Value Creator. Why Selling Makes You Worth Less. How to Unleash Your True Worth and Move Beyond Price And Why Creativity is Your Greatest Asset.
The Weekly Walkaway highlights negotiation in its ‘good’, ‘bad’ and sometimes ‘downright ugly’ forms. Issue No. 84 (5th July 2024).
Contents
Summary
Value as a Recruiter: A Myth or a Misunderstanding?
Value 101
Power Dynamics: Understanding Value Equals Choices
The Creativity Crisis: Squeezing Out Value
The Procurement Predicament
Selling Under Pressure: The Erosion of Value
Cold Calling Is Dead!
The Experience Gap: Navigating a Down Market
The Solution: Valuing Your Value
Conclusion: Stand Your Ground, Creatively
Summary
This week's edition of "The Weekly Walkaway" delves into the intricate concept of value and self-value for recruiters and suppliers of professional services, emphasising that true worth goes beyond mere numbers.
Recently Neil Carberry, CEO of The Recruitment & Employment Confederation, provided foundational insights on understanding and appreciating one's value, highlighting that without self-recognition, others won't perceive it either.
Imagine your value as a sugar cube, made up of many variables like payment terms, data, AI, quality, SLAs, KPIs, exclusivity, contract terms, stakeholder contact, and testimonials. Price is just one tiny part of this complex whole.
Focusing solely on price stifles creativity and reduces your ability to create those sugar cubes, mutually beneficial deals. Negotiating on price alone hands power to procurement, turning negotiations into a race to the bottom. This relentless focus on cost erodes your margins and leaves you vulnerable.
Most lack the experience of navigating past economic downturns. The absence of seasoned veterans leaves the new generation without guidance, leading to less favourable outcomes.
Cold calling, once a staple, is now seen as ineffective and intrusive. Instead, personalised engagement, social selling, and content marketing are more effective strategies.
Management pressure to sell in this economic climate weakens your value. Desperation leads to giving away too much, allowing procurement to exploit these weaknesses. The result is a continual erosion of your worth.
The solution? Understand and communicate your value. Engage in reflective thought and brainstorming with your team to identify what makes up your "sugar cube." Involve your clients in the process, exploring new ideas and strategies together. Develop multiple package options that cut costs and create value without eroding your margins. By doing so, you control the conversation and demonstrate how you can save costs while maintaining your value.
Read on for more…
Redefine Your Value. Yeah, You Are In Tough Times. Buckle Up and Negotiate!
Hello you Walkawayers and welcome to this week’s edition of The Weekly Walk Away. Let's dive right into the murky waters of value, specifically, your value.
Value as a Recruiter: A Myth or a Misunderstanding?
Neil Carberry, the ever-insightful voice at The REC, dropped some knowledge bombs recently. At the recent REC2024 conference Neil reminded us of three crucial points for surviving this market: understand your value, appreciate your value, and negotiate more value. Simple, right? Well, for some, it’s as straightforward as assembling IKEA furniture without the instructions. We look at value as a sugar cube, a package of sugar crystals bonded together into a valuable product. Each individual variable within your service package makes up your value, everything from; payment terms, data, AI, quality, SLA, KPI, exclusivity, contract terms, stakeholder contact, testimonials.. and we haven’t even touched price yet.. its just a tiny part, a sugar crystal, that makes up the whole, the package, the cube.
Value 101
John Brooks, of Added Value, emphasises the need to value ourselves. And why not? After all, every recruiter is a unique snowflake, right? Except when you’re not. Some of you are in saturated markets, essentially commodities, barely distinguishable from the next recruiter on LinkedIn. It’s harsh, but if you don’t recognise your own value, don’t expect anyone else to. But it is here that the ability to negotiate your value makes the difference between you and, well, them.
Power Dynamics: Understanding Value Equals Choices
Once you do an honest and reflective competitive analysis and truly grasp your place in the market, you gain power. You might not like it but that information alone will give you power to change or adapt. Those who do will survive and in today’s economic climate, everyone’s obsessed with price. It is all about cost savings. Your clients want the moon, and they want it at a discount. The more you negotiate on price alone, the more you chip away at your sugar cube, your own value, think of it as trying to keep build your sugar cube while its sitting in a lovely cup of earl grey.
The Creativity Crisis: Squeezing Out Value
Here’s the kicker: focusing on price negotiations stifles creativity. Creativity is the secret sauce that lets us mould and exchange value, turning basic deals into mutually beneficial masterpieces. But if we reduce ourselves to haggling over pennies, we end up in a rigid, unimaginative tussle where you will lose. You’re trying to win a game of chess by only moving your pawns. It aint gonna happen is it!?
The Procurement Predicament
Negotiate solely on price, and you hand over all the power to procurement. They’ll turn the process into a beauty pageant, where the cheapest offer wins. And let’s face it, no one wants to be the cheapest date at the prom. This relentless focus on cost erodes your margins and empowers procurement to keep squeezing until there’s nothing left but individual sugar crystals.
Selling Under Pressure: The Erosion of Value
Add to all the above and in this economic climate, the more management puts pressure on their teams to sell, the weaker their value becomes. Constantly pushing to close deals makes you appear desperate and needy, eroding your perceived value. This desperation often leads to giving away too much value just to stay competitive, enabling procurement to exploit these weaknesses with old but highly affective tactics. Instead of gaining ground, you lose it, as your worth gets chipped away each time you concede too easily, crystal by crystal.
Cold Calling Is Dead!
Cold calling, once a staple of sales strategy, is now considered dead. In an era where digital communication and data-driven insights reign supreme, cold calling is seen as intrusive and ineffective. Instead, building relationships through personalised, value driven engagement is key. Social selling, leveraging platforms to connect and engage with potential clients, and content marketing, which positions you as a thought leader, are proving far more effective. Conferences, innovation days, lunchnLearn’s and other opportunities to meet stakeholders and move through the room, networking, listening and sharing ideas are more valuable. These methods foster trust and demonstrate value, replacing the outdated and often resented practice of cold calling.
The Experience Gap: Navigating a Down Market
Most recruiters on the sales floor today are new to a down market. The seasoned veterans who successfully navigated the emerging market crash, the dot-com bubble, the credit crunch, and other economic downturns are no longer in the trenches. Their invaluable experience is missing, leaving the new generation without the guidance needed to steer through these rough waters. This lack of seasoned negotiation skills means many are unprepared to handle the pressures and complexities of the current market, leading to less favourable outcomes.
The Solution: Valuing Your Value
So, what’s the grand solution?
stop selling, understand what makes up your sugar cube, what makes you valuable. Have an adult conversation with your team, allow for reflective thought. Brainstorm, discuss, gain alignment and agree with them what are the individual sugar crystals that make up your sugar cube. Explore all of those variables that you need or want and consider all of those variables they, your clients, need or want. You, your team, have got to believe. You can not ‘TELL’ them what it is, they have to be involved. Only when you and your team believe can you then communicate your value to clients;
now show your clients the sugar cube. Brainstorm with your clients. Create value together. Leave yourself open to explore new ideas. Ask lots of questions. Make lots of assumptions and challenge those assumptions.
with this information go back to your brainstormer and consider these new ideas and from that link the crystals together but now your sugar cube is being created by yours and your clients needs. It might now even be candy floss. Value all these individual crystals and then develop and propose multiple linked package options that look to cut their costs, make them look amazing. You’ve got to be in control to demonstrate how you can help them save costs whilst not eroding your margin and ultimately your EBITDA! So, don’t sell it.. Negotiate it!
Conclusion: Stand Your Ground, Creatively
In conclusion, navigating today's economic climate demands more than just selling and price negotiation. It's about truly understanding and appreciating your unique value, much like the many facets of a sugar cube. As we've discussed, focusing solely on price undermines creativity, hands power to procurement, and ultimately erodes your worth.
Instead, shift your focus to understanding what makes you valuable. Engage in reflective discussions with your team, involve your clients in brainstorming sessions, and explore innovative strategies that demonstrate how you can add value without simply cutting prices. The seasoned veterans who once guided us through economic downturns may be gone, but by adopting a more thoughtful and strategic approach, you can navigate these rough waters successfully.
Remember, cold calling is outdated. Building relationships through personalised engagement, social selling, and content marketing are the keys to fostering trust and demonstrating value in today's market.
So, the next time you find yourself in a price negotiation, recall that your value is more than just a number. It's a blend of your expertise, creativity, and the unique solutions you bring to the table. Step out of the commodity corner, embrace your worth, and negotiate from a position of strength.
That’s all for this week's edition of The Weekly Walkaway. Remember, you’re not just another recruiter. You’re a value creator, so go negotiate like one.
Until next time, stay valuable.
Cheers for reading.