The Recruiting and Retention Pipeline

Recruiting and retention pipeline

This pipeline is a mirror image of your sales pipeline, used on your internal people.

You should be selling people on coming to work with you and then providing the product and support to keep them on your team.

Sales Pipeline

• Prospecting
• The Pitch
• Close the Sale
• Delivery of Product 
• Customer Service

Internal Personal Pipeline

• Prospecting (Interview Process)  
• The Pitch (Contract for the Position) 
• Close the Sale (Hiring/Onboarding/Training)
• Delivery of Product (Compensation, Benefits, Promotions, Profit sharing, Equity, KPIs) 
• Customer Service (motivating, caring about your employees, and holding them accountable)

The Motto of Hire slow and Fire fast is the best you can follow.

Interview Process

When hiring for a position you should be interviewing around 20 qualified candidates if possible, and ideally they would have experience in the position you are hiring for. During the interview process you should ask questions that teach you what is needed in the position. The people who teach you about the position and divulge information and systems you weren’t aware of are the ones you should be looking to hire. I really you’d find someone for each position that is even better than yourself for that role.

Contract for Position

When putting together a Contract for a position you should make it as enticing as you can for the right person to come on board. That potentially means paying a bit more than you are comfortable with for the position, offering benefits (if you’re able to do so), and selling your company’s vision of where it will be in 5-10years time along with where they would fit into that future.

Hiring/Onboarding/training

Once the new employee commits to being on your team they should be given an employee handbook that outlines all of your policies and procedures an employee is expected to follow.

After signing all of the onboarding paperwork required for direct deposit of their paycheck, taxes, and benefits, a leader should take them through the on-boarding process. This process should set them up for success. If multiple people are hired and do not work out for a position it is likely your training manager, training program, or the entire on-baording process that needs to be reviewed and revised. This concept is explained in greater detail in the next part of this section.

Delivery of Product (Compensation, Benefits, Promotions, Profit sharing, Equity, KPIs) 

Setting up KPIs(key performance indicators) for each position that incentivizes the behavior you want for someone in each position is key for their success. These should follow a well outlined training on all the (SOPs)systems of operation the position needs to know and use on a regular basis.

As an Example these KPIs for a sales person could include: sales margin, total sales, gross profit, number of cold calls per day/week/month, conversion rate, ect.

The best compensation system should include a base pay(salary) with another portion paid out on an incentive program. Ideally each position’s incentive based pay is half based on KPIs they can control and the other half coming from their department/company reaching the overall goals set by management. If you allow people to set their own goals each month, while having positive peer pressure in your culture, you should see employees setting higher and higher goals each month because others will pressure them to do so. /the portion of employees’ pay that comes from the company/department hitting its goal can come in the form of profit sharing.

Benefits are a necessity in today’s competitive market for employers. This may be difficult for a smaller company with limited capital, but if you are able to recruit and retain the right people into your company, that’s what will allow you to become much more profitable. These benefits might include, but are not limited to: IRA or 401K with a match of a certain percentage, health insurance, life insurance, dental insurance, critical illness insurance, ect.

All these benefits listed are write offs for employers as well! If/when you are interested in a quote on these benefits please contact me and I’ll make sure you get the best deal for you and your employees possible.

Last but not least, offering equity…. This is a last resort tool in my opinion. The only time you may require this, is if you are already well above $1million in top line revenue, and recruiting a high level executive to continue to grow the business as you remove yourself from the business or a very large department. Phantom equity is a great way to incentivise high performers who already work in your business to continue to improve and grow the company, and what I would suggest for 99% of situations.

Customer Service

Just like with your customers to keep them coming back and buying more of your product or service, you have to continually motivate, incentivize, care for, and hold your employees accountable. This can be difficult to do, especially if times are hard, but that’s normally when your team will need you the most. If you have a smaller company and can meet with employees on a monthly basis to discuss their personal lives and their performance, you’ll be miles ahead of your competition on retaining and motivating your staff. People want to work somewhere they feel they are valued and are more than just a number. In today’s competitive profit driven business world that is difficult to find.. And the larger your company gets the hard this is to maintain. When speaking to top Ceos most were able to keep this up until they had around 50-100 employees on their staff. Once a company reaches this size it will be much larger than the $1million top line revenue, but the managers in each department should be holding these meetings and having these conversations at that point to keep the culture and morale high.

Letting People Go

Holding people accountable to what they stated to you they wanted in the position is a big part of your job in leading a team as well. This is where the Firing part comes in… Once a person is not performing and has without a doubt been trained through a High level onboarding process, you’ll need to let them go as soon as possible. The faster they move on the fast you can start the internal sales process over with someone new who will perform.

When firing someone you should have had conversations they explained to you what they wanted and standards they would hold themselves to so It’s easy for you to explain to them why they are not a fit for the position. Once you have explained they didn’t live up to their own promises, you can then tell them all the good things they do have going for them. Let them know if they choose a job in the right field, that requires the skills they are good at, then you will be happy to give them a recommendation.