Attracting your next Super Canvasser starts with the message you advertise. This is where it all starts.
You’ve heard me say it before, canvassing is like selling, to sell effectively you must identify your target market, recognize what their needs and wants are, develop a message that will deliver to those needs and wants, and then choose a medium through which it will be delivered.
The message you develop for recruiting canvassers, or what I call “canvassing for canvassers” is to first identify your audience. Your recruiting message can have only one objective, motivate that target person to call and inquire about the job. Now, motivation comes from within and everyone’s motivation for calling you will be different, though there are commonalities behind everyone’s motivation when it comes to work and earnings. When crafted correctly your recruiting message will guide a candidate’s motivation to call. I say candidate because not every person will be qualified to canvass, or canvass for you. Your recruiting message also will do the job of qualifying people for you.
What Motivates People?
The basic motivators everyone wants to know when he or she’re looking for a job is
- How much will I get paid on the job?
- What is the job?
- What will I be doing?
- And what will the hours be?
Developing a message targeting these four motivators will ensure you a higher response rate than you would get from traditional methods.
Don’t Make it Complicated!
There are 3 components to a good recruiting ad.
- An attention getter for the job
- Pay on the job (hourly plus bonuses)
- The benefits of the job
Don’t waste time trying to sell people on what the job is; you want them to call. Canvassing is not like working for McDonalds. If you tell them in the ad they will be canvassing you’ll lose them… what’s canvassing, canvassing for what? Canvassing has to be seen, felt and experienced. They have to come in and talk with you to truly understand what the real benefits of the job can be. So don’t try to sell them in the ad, that’s your job once they come in for the interview.
These components are equally effective regardless of which medium you choose. Here’s an example of an ad you can run on a flier for distribution on cars in a parking lot; a message you could send through My Space or Face book; or a business card or flier you keep with you when you’re at a department store or restaurant and you meet someone you think should come in for an interview. If you’re a recruiter you should always have them on hand, just like a business card.
When developing the ad look through the eyes of target canvasser, not through the eyes of a businessperson or manager. The message must match its intended target audience. Let’s dissect this ad and identify its core components and motivators.
The Components Of An Effective Recruiting Ad
Here are the three components in action. Don’t mistake the order in which they appear in the ad as accidental… they’re not. The order is critical.
The Attention Getter: its primary job is to get the reader to read the rest of the ad. In the mind of the reader it must answer:
- So What?
- Who cares?
- What’s in it for ME?
- Why are you bothering ME?
These are the four “gate-keepers” in the reader’s mind.
People are busy. It’s not likely they’ll be thinking about a job in canvassing the moment they see your ad. No, they’ll be in the middle of something else. You need to grab their attention snapping them out of their ‘moment’ and get them focused on what you have to offer.
If it gets the reader to read the next sentence, it has done its job. Another measure is could it stand-alone? If you were to run the line and just a telephone number would it get a response?
Next is the money: whether someone is looking for a job or a product, the first thing they want to know is “how much”, how much will the product cost, or how much will I be paid. Specifics aren’t important at this point. People are only interested in a ballpark; they want to know if it’s worth their time and effort. If the attention getter gets them to here and they feel the pay is good enough they’ll want to know “what’s in the job for me ”, and that leads them to the benefits.
Job benefits: they don’t sell the job, rather the benefits for working this job, which leaves them only one question, “what is the job”. And to get that answer they have to call, which is the last piece of information contained in the ad.
This design follows the natural thought process of your prospect canvasser. You’re answering their general questions, stimulating their motivations and comfortably guiding them to take the next natural step… to contact you.
Consider your target audience’s job options. With young people it’s restaurants, landscaping, retail or a warehouse laborer… not a very promising career builder, let alone a noteworthy addition to a job resume.
This is a choreographed, engineered process. Just with every step in your selling process, your recruiting system is planned and scripted. Next month I’ll discuss how to handle the calls your ads will generate.
Do I Have To Spend A Lot To Recruit?
Absolutely not! You can spend as much or as little as you’d like. The key is doing it!
When I started in the business I was 24 years old, my partner and I developed the business enough to move into a run-down office in downtown Cleveland. We decided to make up some fliers (much like the one I’ve shown you) and go door to door through the dorms at Cleveland State University canvassing for canvassers with nothing more than a flier and a clipboard. As fate would have it we struck up a casual conversation with a student in the elevator, asked where he worked and he told us he was looking for a job and that he had an interview that day with Sunglass Hut (a retail chain of stores selling sunglasses) after class. We told him about the job we had available, he was so interested in our position that he skipped his interview at the Sunglass Hut and came to our office that same day.
After canvassing for a while he went on to manage canvassing crews for us for over 4 years. He was recruited, interviewed and hired all in the same day with nothing more than a flier and a clipboard.
Recruiting for canvassers is not a “throw it against the wall and see if it sticks” process. A lot of people are interested in canvassing, but like anything else it takes commitment. I’ve heard all too often, “we’ve tried advertising for canvassers but haven’t gotten a good response”. It also takes the will to get out of the office and go into the field and recruit canvassers.
Here’s an example of a client I worked with who thought that, but found out very quickly it does work… all too well!
Canvassing For Canvassers Works!
One client with whom I worked directly with was starting in canvassing from scratch. They wanted to put a crew of canvassers together fast. We placed 3000 fliers on cars at the area state university. Out of those fliers they received 75 phone call responses inquiring about the job (a 2 ½% response). Of the 75 canvassing prospects who called in trickled down through the following steps:
- Qualified on the phone
- Showed up for an in-person interview
- A percentage were interested and actively pursued the job
- Those were re-interviewed
- Hired
- And trained
3000 fliers generated 75 responses and out of those 75 calls 8 or 9 completed training and were out in the field producing; all within three weeks time from placing the fliers. Within less than two months those 8 or 9 canvassers ultimately generated over 25 new sales for the company. The company would have closed more sales had they had enough sales people to cover the leads. They literally had more leads than their sales staff could handle.
These results are a classic example of what canvassing can generate, though it starts with finding the right people for the job; and that begins with the message you produce to generate them.
The formula is simple:
4 Key motivators
- How much will I get paid on the job?
- What is the job?
- What will I be doing?
- And what will the hours be?
And 4 components to the Recruiting Ad
- The Attention Getter
- The Money
- Benefits
- Contact Information
Follow this and you’ll make the phone ring. But you’ll need to read next month’s issue of Canvassing Insider because I’ll talk about how to handle those calls. It will do you no good to make the phone ring if you’re not properly handling the call to get them in for an interview.