Plan for Growth is a series of three articles which looks at the importance of having a strategical growth plan, how you can fulfil your objectives and the best practices to implement successful change management and talent attraction.
Talent, training and business change specialist and founder of GMA, Greg McManus has over 25 years of experience, here he shares his experiences of leading business development and growth.
As we discussed at the end of our last article, as part of your plan for growth you will need to review your internal teams to assess whether you have all the skills and experience you need to support the growth of your recruitment business. This is by way of the skills and experience required to add value in the management and direction process for growth, as well as potential talent gaps within the business to accelerate organic growth around which you can build teams.
If you have a gap in proven skills or experience of successfully growing and selling recruitment businesses within your internal team, you want to consider hiring external resource in the form of a consultant or advisor. Ultimately, you’re looking for someone who has done this successfully so your journey will be accelerated. Consider how you will source this person or persons; how will you find them and whether you already have someone in your network that fits the role.
Detail how you will source any external resource that is required in your growth plan and prioritise the skills and experience you want the advisor to have and in which markets. For example, if you are looking to break into the tech market you may want an external advisor that has a minimum of 5 years of experience in this sector.
Review each candidate looking at their experience and skills and think about how they could help you achieve your growth objectives, the role you see them playing and the benefits they would bring to the table. This will help you create a shortlist of advisors to continue discussions with.
Discuss the brief you set out in your growth plan and the budget you’ve allocated with your shortlisted advisors and ask them how they would support the development of the business from its current structure and staff through to annual milestones and to your 3-year objectives.
The responses you receive at this stage will give you a better understanding of how they each work and their approach. From this, you can decide how they align with your approach and your business and thus you may make further cuts to your shortlist.
With your final shortlist decided, each consultant or advisor will submit a proposal of what they could do for you and how they could support you. Request that in their proposal they detail the following:
- Targeted milestones they propose are achievable and how they’ll contribute to their achievement:
- in the first 100 days
- at the end of the first year
- at the end of the 3-year plan
- How will each milestone be achieved and how will success be measured?
These milestones are the results within your growth plan that prove you’re heading in the right direction and may include increased leads, job flow and revenue pipeline (including within new targeted markets), more meetings with target clients, growth in headcount and increased revenue and profit.
Requesting detailed proposals from each consultant or advisor in your shortlist will help you further narrow your search, using this information along with interviews with them to make an informed decision about hiring the best external resource. Choose someone who has proven success in delivering Operational results at desk level to achieve the quarterly milestones, as these are what will `achieve the strategies agreed at Board level.
It’s imperative that the external resource you hire is a good fit with your business. Look for someone who shares your vision, drive and who is aligned with your company.
The third article in the series will be available from Monday 31stAugust 2020, in which I’ll detail how you need to implement the required Change Management along with the Talent Attraction and Development structures and techniques that are critical to grow your business.
Photo courtesy of Frank Busch on Unsplash
