Recruiting Key—Your Unique Selling Proposition

Recruiting Key—Your Unique Selling Proposition

Know what makes your company unique to attract new hires

BY DAVE HERSHMAN | CONTRIBUTING WRITER, NATIONAL MORTGAGE PROFESSIONAL

The ability to summarize your benefits in a short statement is typically called a “USP” or Unique Selling Proposition. It is also sometimes called an “elevator speech” because you are imagined being in an elevator and someone asking the question – What do you do? You must answer in full before the elevator door opens.

It makes sense that, to attract candidates, you really have to answer the all-important question – why should I come to work for your company? With all the other choices out there, what makes your company unique? If you can’t answer this question easily, then you will have to compete within the areas where most other companies compete:

• What is your commission plan?

• What is your pricing like?

• Do you have every product under the sun?

Thus, this step is extremely important unless you have the best commission, the lowest pricing and every product. The key to marketing is to differentiate yourself from the competition in a positive manner. For a manager, recruiting requires all the steps of marketing and this one is essential.

EASY COMMUNICATION

Here are a few rules for developing your USP:

• It must be easily communicated.

If it takes you an hour to describe your USP, your opportunity for marketing and connecting will be very limited. You should be able to do this in seconds, not hours.

• It must be factual and specific.

Everyone says they have a low rate or deliver quality service. Broad statements such as these are worthless. If you are focusing on service, for example, what is your average approval time? Are you surveying your consumers and agents and have you compiled statistics to demonstrate your satisfaction ratings?

• When you don’t have facts… use testimonials, or social proof.

Statements from your customers, employees and vendors are absolutely essential to establish credibility for your statements.

• Tie it to the interest of your candidates. Like mortgage marketing, true value lies in the interests of your targets.

What you are interested in is not paramount. Most candidates will be interested in two things:

• Increasing their income; and

• Lowering their stress levels at the same time.

• You must recognize why you are unique.

Your experience, education, and skills and more, are all part of what makes you a unique manager. Your unique ability to help your candidates increase their production and lower the stress levels in their life are paramount. You must take an inventory before you develop your uniqueness. Do not make the mistake of looking at other companies and saying “I am like that one.” Your uniqueness should come from “within” not from “the outside.”

In this regard, you must remember that the question is not only why they should come to work for your company. The question is also – why should I come to work for you? It makes sense to spend some time making this determination of uniqueness before you commence building your recruiting marketing plan.

Here are some possible categories—

> Service

> Support

> Benefits

> Technology

> Targeting

> Compensation plan

> Products and services

> Company reputation

> Team make-up

> Culture

UNIQUE STATEMENTS

Here are some examples of unique statements which are factual and targeted to the interests of your candidates –

• Our average operation staff member has 12 years of experience.

• Our customer service response is 99.1% positive.

• Our loan officers averaged $175,000 in income last year and 30% were listed as national top producers.

• Our marketing systems helped produce an average of 20 referrals to each of our loan officers last year.

• I have personally hired, trained and coached over ___ top industry producers during my career.

• Here is what our loan officers are saying about our operational staff.

Take some time to determine what you would like to say about yourself and your company – before you start the recruiting process. If you want quality recruits, you will have to upgrade your game with a quality plan.

Dave Hershman, senior vice-president of sales for Weichert Financial Services, has published seven books.