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Why it’s important to be excited about our clients
Editorial by Christian Saint Cyr
National Director / Canadian Job Development Network
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Our clients or the students we’re working with are a lot like our colleagues. There are some we like more than others and some that downright frustrate us. It’s easy to see a client with unreasonable expectations, one who doesn’t follow-up with what they say they are going to do or one that doesn’t prepare and be irritated or even frustrated by what they’re doing or not doing.
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We are going out and developing positive relationships with employers and not only do we want our clients to make a good impression, we’re hoping our clients can bring value to our skills and services in job development.
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Are you sensing a ‘but’ is coming? But – our clients aren’t just our clients, they are the product we’re selling to an employer.
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If we’re going to apply sales strategies to job development, in terms of measuring outcomes and employer engagement, then we need to remember that our clients are the product and every salesperson needs to be excited about their product or service.
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Can you imagine if your job is about selling post-it notes or pencils? What if you were selling pharmaceuticals or industrial solvents. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to paint a dramatic picture of how ground-breaking this post-it note is or how this degreaser is going to improve the efficiency of your manufacturing machinery by at least 2.5 to 2.7 per cent.
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If a salesperson wants to capture the imagination of a customer, they have to not only be knowledgeable about their products, they also have to be enthusiastic about them, advocate for their merits and make a compelling case for how transformative they are.
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And while you and I may not be wild about industrial solvents, there is a good chance the customer is. Perhaps a 2.7 per cent improvement is ground-breaking for them.
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Like customers, employers take their business very seriously and they are extremely invested in them. When we bring them a candidate for a position, we need to be excited about what this individual can do for them.
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I was speaking at a conference recently and I stressed, job development isn’t about charity. An employer may hire someone who’s younger, older, has a disability, is new to the country, is Indigenous, lives in a rural or remote community, or anyone who has a myriad of employment challenges. And yet, in most cases, no employer is going to hire someone because they fall into one of these categories.
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Employers hire people, regardless of their circumstances because this person is going to support their organization. They hire people who are going to help their organization better serve their customers, produce their products, grow their market share, diversify and excel in their category.
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We cannot approach an employer based on ‘doing the right thing’. An employer may feel good in hiring someone with an employment challenge, but they’re motivated by seeing their organization supported.
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Sometimes hiring someone with an employment challenge makes good economic sense. People with disabilities are typically more loyal, punctual and stay with employers for longer periods. Hiring someone who is new to the country might provide greater language or cultural capacity. And while these certainly are benefits, when we approach an employer, these qualities need to be the ‘additional benefits’ and not the central reason for hiring them.
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If I approach an employer, I want to talk-up what they can do in the job, mention the skills, training and ability they have and then add on the additional benefits.
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If we see ourselves as job developers who place students who’ve never worked before or as a ‘disability job developer’, we are now making our client’s employment challenge the central focus of our conversation with an employer.
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You need to envision yourself as a job developer with great clients who happen to have a disability; happen to be new to country; happen to be women; or happen to be Indigenous. The nature of the employment challenge frames your relationship with the client, why you’re working with them in the first place, not the relationship the employer has with them.
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Every single one of us has, does or will face an employment challenge or multiple employment challenges throughout our lives. We start off our working lives with no work experience and no vocational training. Our clients or the students we are working with are not unusual and should not be defined by their employment challenges but by what they bring to the employment.
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This is where you need to put yourself in the mindset of the employer and for each of your clients, make a list of the five to ten benefits of hiring each them, be those benefits experience, training, understanding or capabilities. For each of your clients you should be able to deliver a 30 second elevator pitch about what would make them great candidates, with no mention of their employment challenges.
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To bring this full-circle – yes, there are going to be clients who frustrate us and let us down. As the weeks and months go by, we’ll talk more about transferring additional responsibility to our clients, but I will tell you what I would tell any employer who is dissatisfied with their employees. Find and nurture the best in them.
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I’ve encountered numerous employers in my career that just wish they had a better group of employees – even though they’ve hired many if not all of them. I tell these employers that they’re never going to find perfect employees – because there are no perfect people. I tell them to strive to be the best employer they can be. This is the only way they will get the best out of their employees.
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To you I say, be the best job developer you can be. Find something to get excited about in each of your clients. If you can genuinely demonstrate faith in them, to encourage them and to support them, they will work harder for your and be more accountable for their actions. .
We’ll be discussing how we can be more excited about our clients at our #MotivatingMondays meeting of the Canadian Job Development Network, Monday March 18th at 8:30am Pacific; 9:30am Mountain; 10:30am Central; 11:30am Eastern; 12:30pm Atlantic and at 1pm in Newfoundland. Visit: www.MotivatingMondays.ca on Monday to join the session LIVE.
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