Solidarity Sunday: They Don't Care About Your Timeline
I recently spoke to a VIP in one of the larger local unions. He shared with me that in a recent "blitz" they had 100+ representatives come into the jurisdiction from all over the country to canvass the area and contact 900+ people they had in their database.
"How did it go?", I asked.
"We found about 10 guys we could put to work and we pissed off a bunch of people", he chuckled.
10 guys. That's about 1.1%… of 900+ people … in a "qualified" database. But that's about right given the statistical analysis as compared to other industries.
So why don't 'blitzes' work any better than they do? Because in any given category of business, (including ours) there is only a certain percentage of people in the market right now. That number is shockingly low...usually between 1.7% and 3.1% depending on the business category. And that is our ideal prospect, meaning those prospects who fit the demographic and psychographic profile most likely to take advantage of what we have to offer. It almost always falls within that range. It's a consumer behavior fact that has been vetted by the automotive retail industry, the home services industry, and many other consumer behavior research organizations.
Yet we in the building trade unions continue to do the same thing and expect a different result. We feel pressure to recruit and fill jobs because we're bumping up against a timeline. So we throw more people and resources at it, trying to reach more people and meet that timeline. Here's the challenge with that…
They (the people we are 'blitzing') don't care about our timeline.
They care about theirs.
It may make us feel good or feel like we're doing something to appease our employer partners, but no amount of people on a "blitz" is going to change how consumers behave. Here's the challenge with a 'blitz' strategy:
· It's based on our timeline, not theirs
· It's based on our needs, not theirs
· It hot-boxes people into feeling like they must make a decision they're not ready to make
· It does not take advantage of the way people naturally behave
· It is obscenely expensive for the return on investment
When calculating the travel costs, lodging, meals, etc. of bringing in that many people, even for a few days it can get into the 6-figures easily (especially when you consider that you could build a robust marketing machine that would be far more effective for a fraction of the cost.)
A better play is to develop a recruiting strategy based on the way consumer's naturally behave. More on that in the next Solidarity Sunday...