The Art of Closing: Steve Finkel Reveals Why Most Recruiters Lose Offers

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Running a recruiting firm is enough work. You shouldn't need five vendors to manage your online presence. With recruiters, websites, you get it all in one place. Websites, SEO, paid ads, automation, and ongoing strategy. All built specifically for recruiters. We understand your industry, your clients and your challenges. Simplify your marketing and strengthen your results. Mention Elite Recruiter and get 10% off any new service at recruiterswebsites.com coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter.

Steve Finkel [00:00:27]:
Podcast, our worth to the client is not at the beginning, it is at the end. You better get as good as you can as fast as you can. And that means welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:52]:
Mindset, money, leadership and placements. Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas. The AI. First recruitment platform built for modern agencies. Doesn't only track resumes and calls. It remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:12]:
Instantly searchable, always available. And now it's entering a whole new era. With Atlas 2.0, you can ask anything and it delivers with magic search. You speak and it listens. It finds the right candidates using real conversations, not simply looking for keywords. Atlas 2.0 also makes business development easier than ever. With opportunities, you can track, manage and grow client relationships. Powered by generative AI and built right into your workflow need insights.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:36]:
Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported up to 41% EBITDA growth and an 85% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. No admin, no silos, no lost info, nothing but faster shortlists, better hires, and more time to focus on what actually drives revenue. Atlas is your personal AI partner for modern recruiting. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruit with atlas.com I am so excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast because I have the legend himself. One of the people that has had one of the most impacts on the entire recruiting industry as a whole.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:16]:
We've had him on previously, but he just dropped a new book and I truly think the book and the focus is going to be the separator between elite recruiters, great recruiters and average recruiters.

Steve Finkel [00:02:30]:
Because our world is changing.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:31]:
We see it all the time. Internal recruiters have like the amazing tools. One of the biggest separators used to be the network. Now because of AI and Because of the world changing, because of, you know, offshoring, near shoring, AI, you have to start focusing on the skill set of closing. So I'm super excited to have Steve Finkel back, the godfather of training of recruiting, to talk about the art of closing. So welcome back, Steve.

Steve Finkel [00:02:58]:
I'm delighted to be here and really to talk about something that has not been sufficiently exposed to the industry, which is to say, frankly, follow up after interview and closing.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:10]:
Well, I mean, it's one of those things that, like, we. I mean, I see it like, I'm friends with a lot of trainers, podcast hosts, so I get to share a lot of stories. But so often the cool, the sexy, the part that everybody talks about is the front end. It's fun. But here's the thing, like the art of closing. Like, companies hire us to get the job done. They don't hire us just to do, like a sourcing or just to do this. So it's super exciting that you're here and for those that have not got the book, definitely pick up a copy yourself.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:40]:
So, like, one quick thing. I know I typically do the deep dive in how people ended up in this wonderful world recruiting. Guess what? We've already done that. Go back and listen to the previous episode. I'll have it in the show notes. You could go and click on that. Make it super easy. So, Steve, why is the art of closing such an important thing for recruiters to learn?

Steve Finkel [00:04:01]:
One of the most significant things to me was said by Larry Nobles, who was one of the, frankly, the quintessential developer of new people. And what he said was, our worth to the client is not at the beginning, it is at the end. And I think that's significant. We've got to face the fact that if you focus on finding people, getting assignments, submitting candidates, the real truth is somewhere out there, there is a nice IT fellow from India or Sri Lanka or Philippines or whatever it might be. And the internal recruiting people that are out there, they think they can do that too. And to some degree, the reality is that they can. But what can't they do? They cannot help the client to identify and really get an offer accepted. What's the benefit to a client if you submit candidate and candidate and candidate and they extend an offer and then there's a turndown or the best candidate that they want does not proceed to a second interview, you have wasted their time and you've wasted your own time.

Steve Finkel [00:05:12]:
And the truth is, occasionally you've reduced the fee. You know, we think of a closing call As a call, it's not. If you get, as an example, two offers a month, grabbing a number, that call represents two weeks of waking up in the morning, driving to work, sitting down at your desk, organizing, planning, AI LinkedIn. You have two weeks of effort in that call. And if you can improve your closing ratio by, let's say, 20%, or moving it from a first interview to a second interview by 20%, you improve that entire two weeks worth of effort. When you hear closing, we kind of address closing because you hear some things that are simply, perhaps not correct. If you say to a recruiter, tell me about closing, they're going to tell you one of probably four things. And I think you've heard this.

Steve Finkel [00:06:12]:
They're saying, well, if you do everything right up front, the close becomes automatic. Have you heard that before?

Benjamin Mena [00:06:20]:
I have definitely heard that before.

Steve Finkel [00:06:23]:
Every once in a while a beautiful hypothesis is destroyed by facts. And that's a beautiful hypoth. Everything right, the close becomes automatic by godly. That's true. But that presumes you know what to do and that you can implement it. It is really like saying if a baseball player has a pitcher has got control of all of his pitches, he's going to throw a perfect game. Well, that's true, but not so easy to do. I've got a pretty good background in martial arts and one of my instructors assured me that if I just worked on my blocking, I would never get hit again.

Steve Finkel [00:07:01]:
Now that's a great hypothesis. I never managed it. You may recall that in one of the previous presentations that I did with you, I said, a single mistake can cost you a fee. The same mistake made over and over again will cost you a fortune. If you can do everything perfectly, congratulations. But you know, as is the case with a baseball pitcher, there aren't too many perfect games. And when you get to the end of it, you better know how to go to the first, second interview and how to close. The other thing you're going to hear is, you know, if you just build in a bunch of trial closes or minor point closes along the way, then the clothes will automatically come together.

Steve Finkel [00:07:53]:
You've heard that before, I suspect as well, it is axiomatic in selling. One of the really excellent books on selling was by a man named John Lahan, who wrote the selling bible. He said, the longer you're in sales, the more you will believe that at the very point of the actual close, mild insanity takes place and there was a great resistance on the part of the prospect to saying yes. Well, if that's true. And it is in traditional sales training. Lahan got his start with selling furniture. Tom Hopkins got to start with real estate or people with insurance backgrounds. All true.

Steve Finkel [00:08:36]:
But what's it like when the foundation of all this, your career is on the line? The resistance is enormous. You can build in all the preliminary stuff you want, but at the end of it all, you better be able to deal with it. And frequently the close does not come automatic. The third thing you will hear from people is sometimes I get 75% offers accepted. No matter what I do, I get 75% offers accepted. That's probably true based on what the do, but I want to emphasize that they don't do everything. The book closing for Recruiters, while it is an extensive book and covers follow up after interview as well, which is mandatory, there's 150 pages of serious closes designed for our industry. I will cover some of them, but our industry is different.

Steve Finkel [00:09:40]:
This is a body of knowledge that has never ever been exposed to the industry at large in the past. You've read this book yourself, I hope?

Benjamin Mena [00:09:49]:
Benjamin I have. It's awesome.

Steve Finkel [00:09:52]:
I mean, have you bumped into any of these specific tailored, customized clothes? No matter how much interviewing you're doing.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:01]:
I think one of the biggest wake up calls is like really just pinpointing where some of my offers have fallen apart and sometimes where I could have actually done better. And actually, I hate to say this.

Steve Finkel [00:10:11]:
Got more money, right? And the fourth thing you're going to hear from people is I never lose one. I don't lose any. I get 100% of my offers accepted. Well, there are a couple of comments. Maybe that's not true. Maybe they're subliminating negative thought processes because they don't want to think about it anymore. But there's a comment Oliver I want to write. Someone might write this down.

Steve Finkel [00:10:36]:
Oliver Wendell Holmes had a comment that goes A moment's insight can sometimes supersede decades of experience. When you hear a guy say I don't lose any. I get all of my offers accepted. Presuming that's true, what that person is saying is, is that he is not doing as good a job as he should. At follow up after first interview with candidate what he's doing. If you think of an interview post, followup after interview is stepping into the batter's box. He's always swinging at the home run balls. That's it.

Steve Finkel [00:11:15]:
I mean, that's what he's doing. And you're not there to hit home runs. You're there to get men on Base, you're there to move the candidate presuming it's a good candidate from a first interview to a second interview. That's what you should be doing. Now you want to obviously improve your odds, you want to get the material to help you to close. But at the end result of all this, you need to move him from a first interview to a second interview. And that's why the first third of the book closing for recruiting addresses follow up after interview with candidate. If you do that, you will triple your odds and that's easily provable.

Steve Finkel [00:11:57]:
Take a look, you know, basic send out to placement ratio. I'm reluctant to state numbers, but let's say it's six to one, send out to placement. That's within the realm of possibility, depending on your desk. Now look at your second interview to offer ratio. It will be three times as high. From six to one send out to placement to two to one send a second interview to placement. And if it isn't three times as much, it'll be twice as much. Whatever the numbers might be.

Steve Finkel [00:12:31]:
The point is that your goal should be not just to obtain the information on debriefing the candidate, but to move that candidate from a first interview to a second interview. Now that presumes that there is interest on the part of the client. It'll give you a couple of keys here for debriefing the first thing you ought to have. Again, follow up after interview with candidate and debriefing mean the same thing. You need a form, you need a written out form and it should be a two sided form. The reason I say two sided form is we can kind of separate candidates out into very briefly live and dead, that is the client is interested and then it's dead. I won't go into great detail, but the first couple of questions is easy to find out. Because how hard do you want to work to move the candidate to a second interview? And when do you want to change directions? A simple little opening of what everybody does.

Steve Finkel [00:13:41]:
How did things go? Mumble, mumble, mumble. Okay, fine. How long were you there? And contrasting the answer of how long he was there with how long the interview should have lasted will give you not infallible, but a pretty decent idea as to how things went with the client. If it was supposed to go an hour, it went an hour and a half. You've got yourself a live candidate here. If it was supposed to be an hour and it went half an hour and there were no interruptions, you got a dead candidate, not perhaps literally, but figuratively speaking, under those circumstances, people think there's nothing to be gained from a dead candidate. That's not true. You can by asking questions directed towards mapping out the client's hiring pattern.

Steve Finkel [00:14:37]:
What kind of questions do you ask? Were there questions that gave you difficulty? What do you think is looking for all sorts of things. You should be mapping out the interview process of the client so that you can coach the next candidate. Now, this is not within the scope of Closing for Recruiters. The book presumes that it is a live candidate where you want to move them to a second interview. The dead candidate question, and it is extensive and it is extraordinarily profitable, is covered in the book Breakthrough 2.0. There are several chapters precisely addressing this, but I don't duplicate material. The material that is enclosing for recruiters is not the same material in any of the other books. So that's where you go for the dead questions.

Steve Finkel [00:15:27]:
So you ask that. The other thing you do. This is really subliminal selling Benjamin. It's things like reinforcing positives, and that's why you need questions that are written out when you get a comment such as, how did you get along with him? Got along with him very well. Really. Now, this is a Xerox professional selling skills, indirect probe. Really? Yeah. He's the kind of guy that, frankly, I can learn a lot from.

Steve Finkel [00:16:05]:
Don't want to sit there. You come back and you reinforce Benjamin. He's got a terrific reputation within his own firm, and I don't mind saying he prides himself on developing top talent. Pause. Yes, that was my thought, too. Now, look, subliminally what you've done, you've taken what was a one second response and run it up to four seconds. That's pretty interesting. And you can go on and expand upon that.

Steve Finkel [00:16:35]:
Have you had a chance to ask him about some of the people that have reported to him in the past? No, I haven't. You know, if you have an opportunity to get together with him a second time, I'd certainly ask him because he really is a developer of excellent people. All right, now, by the way, sub comment, notice that minor pull away. If you have an opportunity to get together with him a second time, you can just kind of feel it in there, all right? And you walk your way through it. Then you get into all the way through and the questions that should be asked or covered in several chapters of Closing for Recruiters. I don't want to attempt to compress the book into a little fast interview, but there's Also rebuttals there. And there are soft rebuttals and hard rebuttals. A soft rebuttal is almost a concern.

Steve Finkel [00:17:30]:
Gee, I'm not really sure about the growth. Okay, now that's, you know, don't go on the, the wrong thing to do. Remember, this is only a follow up after interview. Your purpose is to move him from an attitudinal standpoint. You want to minimize, acknowledge and frankly go on to the next question. Gee, I'm not really sure about the growth. I understand. Let me ask you something.

Steve Finkel [00:17:59]:
I'm surprised because it is a strong positive there. How long were you there? Oh, golly, an hour. Okay, how much of the time were you talking? Oh, probably half an hour. So sounds like you got probably half an hour worth of information from this gentleman. Yes, I did. Well, I understand that. Look, this is early in the game here. Purpose of a first interview is just kind of to get together and see how things go.

Steve Finkel [00:18:26]:
Let me ask what are your feelings about the company? And notice that you're looking for a positive. You acknowledge, you minimize. And this is a soft rebuttal. You go on to the next question. And some of these are subtle. See, notice I said, what are your feelings about the company? The linguistic school of selling. And I would urge everybody to go look at the beginning portions of the last interview we did where I spoke of Steve's background extensively with three different Fortune 500 companies in genuine, in depth, hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on sales training. The linguistics school of selling indicates that it is the words that make a difference.

Steve Finkel [00:19:14]:
Elmer Wheeler, that founded that school, ran over 10,000 questions and monitored how the words were received. He found out that if you simply ask what are your feelings about? The person will speak 50% more than if you said what do you think about. Interesting. The more words you get from this guy, presuming you are directing them. What are your feelings about the company as opposed to what do you think about the company? That's a good example where a single word can make a difference. And this is, you need to have these things written out. And there's the slip and sidestep technique when you come up against a soft concern, acknowledge, minimize. Let me ask, what are your feelings about the company? Well, they're really a good company.

Steve Finkel [00:20:10]:
They are indeed. They've got a great reputation. What about them do you like? Well, gosh, there are, you know, they're spending money on R and D. They're doing, you know, and, and look where you are. You are making the positives Larger and it will stick in his mind. This is subliminal selling and you're making the negatives smaller. Because keep in mind he, he probably this is not the only person that will be involved in the decision making process. From a standpoint of the candidate, he'll be telling it, you know, there could be a wife, there could be a husband, there could be a friend, there could be who knows, a consultant, a buddy.

Steve Finkel [00:20:50]:
They'll relate this information to them and you're sticking it in his mind more strongly as you go through. What you're also going to find out in this particular book is that there are exercises. Remember the exercises that we covered here. Here's a setup. Follow up after interview. Here's the situation. You are the recruiter, you're following up. This is what the candidate says.

Steve Finkel [00:21:19]:
And there are exercises to remind you to, to emphasize the positives, to minimize the negatives, to use the slip. There are a number of sections in this book on rebuttals that you'd better be using and they're exercises. You can't just read a book and say, golly, great stuff. There was the quote from Confucius, what I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember, but what I do, I understand. This is a training book. It is a what to do and how to do it book. It is an implementation book.

Steve Finkel [00:22:10]:
And I would strongly urge people, when they go through the book the first time, to underline and highlight and so forth, to go back and do the exercises so that rapidly your skill level will improve. Does that sound sensible to you?

Benjamin Mena [00:22:26]:
I mean, it's one of those things I know we spoke about before. It's, you know, you are big on people training and going back and forth and like, you know, like bantering a bit with us or even recording yourself. You want to talk about like that real quick as you're doing this? Because I mean, this is one of those things. Like I remember my initial training for working at a super large agency. We really focused on a lot of the front end and we barely focused on anything on the back end. It was just like, oh, get to the offer stage and like fingers crossed.

Steve Finkel [00:23:00]:
Right, exactly. Right, yeah. Benjamin, look, there, there are people again. We're going to get into closing in just a second, but there are people that go, Steve, you know, I've been following after interview for 27 years. I know how to do this stuff. Well, maybe not. Let me ask you a question. Suppose we had a brand new person come on board, set up the situation.

Steve Finkel [00:23:26]:
A brand new person came on Board and his manager said, look, here's how you recruit. Here's the steps 1, 2, and 3. Here's the questions you ask. Here's a rebuttal. Let's do a little walkthrough on this one. Walkthrough on this one. Okay? And that recruiter made two recruiting calls a week. All right? Now let's put aside the two recruiting calls is not sufficient.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:46]:
That's a good way to get fired, right?

Steve Finkel [00:23:47]:
Yeah, that's exactly right. But I mean, let's presume in some way make it easy. He made two recruiting calls a week, all right? We're talking about skill level that he'll develop. And the next week he made two recruiting calls a week. And the next week he made two recruiting calls a week and two recruiting calls a week. And he continued this for a year. That's all he did. Two recruiting calls a week.

Steve Finkel [00:24:08]:
Now let's put aside, as you say, that's not enough. Let's just talk about how much skill level would he have at recruiting if he made two recruiting calls a week?

Benjamin Mena [00:24:23]:
I personally feel like you should be doing more than two a week to have any sort of skill level that's nowhere close to.

Steve Finkel [00:24:31]:
You're exactly right. Now, again, I'm putting aside that you wouldn't have enough candidates. And just purely looking at skill level, if we assume that his skill level at the end of a year would be wretched, all right, or not good, because he was making two a week.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:47]:
I mean, that's probably only a total of 75 hours of work for how many hours in a year?

Steve Finkel [00:24:53]:
Well, how many follow up after interviews do you run per week? If you set up two interviews a week, if you say, you know, and some people set more and some less, but if you set up two interviews a week, you're following up twice a week and twice a week and twice a week. And yet the importance of follow up after interview, once again, if you move the candidate from a first to a second, you'll triple your odds of placement or double it or whatever it may be. The point is you better get as good as you can as fast as you can. And that means role playing, which is where we have the exercises here. And it also means recording these calls and analyzing them so it can figure out where you need to improve and then putting the signs on your desk and probably doing another role playing scenario so you correct what you were not doing. People think, yeah, yeah, I've been doing follow up after interview for 27 years, son. Well, that's great. How many, how many follow ups a week do you do? Well, I set up two interviews a week, so I do two a week.

Steve Finkel [00:26:02]:
How good would you be at recruiting if you did two a week? You know, and you look at it and you go, well, I'm pretty good. And you go, look, I believe you're pretty good. I might not say that, but you know, okay, so you are. But what happens if you're better?

Benjamin Mena [00:26:24]:
I mean, if you want a good.

Steve Finkel [00:26:25]:
Laugh, like, I'm just running the numbers, think about that. Yeah, I mean, we, you know, we naturally assume that with time we get better, but it depends on how much effort you put into improvement. And it requires your skill level. You need to find out where you are. And it needs practice. And it means analysis. And it means frankly studying new material. The material that you will get for years and years and years.

Steve Finkel [00:26:57]:
You know, I work with some of the best companies, recruiting firms in the world. They focus on stuff at the beginning. And that's all right, they focus on the AI, they focus on contacting candidates. But if you look at the whole direction from the beginning of the search to the end of the search, how much of their effort, and I'm talking about their skill improvement and their determination to get better is focused at the beginning. When the real truth is, look, that nice little internal recruiter guy, that nice little fellow over in the Philippines, he can find candidates. He can. And look, you've got groovy little AIs and software programs and all kinds of stuff, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm certainly not saying anything wrong.

Steve Finkel [00:27:49]:
But that same knowledge base, that same software, that same LinkedIn recruiter stuff is available to your clients, to the IT guy in India. I mean, it's there and if it isn't, they'll get it fast. I did an interview or conversation with a very, very good computer specialist for the recruiting industry a few years ago and he went through his Boolean strings and computer stuff and he made the comment to me he had written or produced three books or extensive papers on computerization and the Internet and AI and how it could lead to increased production for recruiters. And then he said, but, you know, I've done three books or three extensive papers and every one of them is out of date. That's what he said. So, you know, and somebody else is going to get that same stuff. And if you work on it again, nothing wrong with this, but what can't he do? He can't get the candidate to accept if you just found candidates and threw Them on the client's desk, figuratively speaking, and then walked away and eliminated your own personal skills. You might have one third of the production that should be yours.

Steve Finkel [00:29:17]:
And that's where you really nail down a client. You may recall, at the very, very end of closing for recruiters, there is. I went through the closes. The closes, the closes. And then there was a very real, genuinely real demonstration where there was a candidate that the client wanted very, very much. Offer had been extended, and there had been two turndowns. Turndowns over the course of three days. Well, I went through this as a demonstration, and believe me, it was a perfectly real thing.

Steve Finkel [00:29:51]:
It was extended outwards. We did a printout of exactly the words that were said. I won't tell you what happened with the candidate because you'll have to read the book to find out. But the key to the call is probably twofold. At the end of it, the client said, steve, if this comes through, I gotta tell you, you did a hell of a job. Well, you know, that's where you develop repeat clients. And in this particular instance, it was with a pretty good sized firm. So he called up his other managers of the operation.

Steve Finkel [00:30:23]:
I did a great deal of business there. And at the very end of it, the candidate also said, steve, I want to thank you. I almost made a terrible mistake. That's a good thing. You know, Larry Nobles was a big fan of saying that we have to bring value to client and candidate. Nobody else could have done that. Okay, well, you could have because you read the book, but most people couldn't do that. Certainly their internal recruiting people couldn't do that.

Steve Finkel [00:30:55]:
Certainly the little guy that was working away submitting candidates offshore could not have done this. You develop a repeat client that way, and the truth is, you do your best for the candidate in that way because you saved his career. I saved his career. And. And you can do it, too.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:16]:
The recruiter sales and business development summit is coming back. It is kicking off January 26, 2026. It is going to be the best, biggest, most focused conference for recruiters to help them grow with business development and sales. Remember, with all the summits, the live sessions are free. If you want to go for the replays, you got two options. You can go VIP on the summit platform, or you can join the community and have access to all the summits. But this is a summit that you do not want to miss. If you want 2026 to beat the absolute best year possible, be there, be ready to learn, and be ready to crush it.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:51]:
I'll See you there. So Steve, this has been awesome. And one of my favorite things about this is how detailed you have gotten with the different closes that are in the book and the options and the things that most of us recruiters probably haven't thought about or actually spent time thinking through in saying that. I gotta, I gotta ask, what is your favorite closing out of the wait, how many did you have in here? What's the total?

Steve Finkel [00:32:15]:
25. There are probably 25 though sometimes they run together.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:20]:
And one of these things like the 25 that you have set up, it's different for different scenarios and different situations. But as you were putting this together, did you have a favorite one or two?

Steve Finkel [00:32:30]:
Benjamin it is not precise one. Keep something in mind. Our industry is different. I mean, that's the real truth of the matter. If you take a look at all of the cumulative closing that has been put together by broadly speaking sales trainers over the years, it's all oriented towards signing on the dotted line, getting the contract signed, getting the product shipped. I mean, it's a one way deal. We have got first of all a product that can say no. You know, that's the real truth.

Steve Finkel [00:33:08]:
You know, that piece of capital equipment does not say no, I don't like this guy. Or that insurance policy doesn't say no, he's a bum. You know, it's there. But if you take a look, if you go back over the great background of selling, it could be Tom Hopkins, wonderful writer, how to master the art of selling, the whole section of golly, Brian Tracy that wrote a book on the art of closing, Charles Roth, closing the sale, all kinds of them. Most of this stuff started off with one call, closes or selling a specific product. The truth is our industry is different. Tom Sant, who wrote a wonderful book called the Giants of Sales, said the truth is a type of selling and a type of closing that might work well under some type of sales performs rather poorly in another type of sales. You know, take an example.

Steve Finkel [00:34:05]:
You know, if you go back to all of this stuff that that is there it is stuff that was developed for a completely different industry. To the degree we talk closing in this industry, it's the porcupine or the minor point sale. It's the Ben Franklin close. It's the alternate choice close. This is much more complex. You can't really say what are the steps of a sale because of a close, because it depends. Here's what you need to do. For starters, when you've got yourself an offer that you accept, expect will be extended, a client says I'm going to extend an offer of X amount.

Steve Finkel [00:34:45]:
All right, fine. What do you do? Your first step, frankly is you don't pick up the phone when the candidate calls you. And you don't call the candidate. You sit down and you strategize. That's what you do. You go, okay, what are my positives here? Probably there are steps of the sale. You've got to have a good product to sell. That is to say, you have to have selected the assignment properly.

Steve Finkel [00:35:11]:
Just as there is a difference between a marketable candidate and a placeable candidate, there is a difference between a fillable assignment and a recruitable assignment. There are two different ones you need to select properly. And people are surprised that in the book, Real Recruiting, the whole first third of the book, Real Recruiting, addresses selecting the assignment on which to recruit. Then you've got to have candidate concerns. This is much more complex and much more detailed than is normally done. The candidate must not only be moving to something, he must be moving from something. And if he's not moving from something, truthfully, you really should not be necessarily working with the candidate and certainly not submitting him on a particular good quality assignment. But then finally, you take a look at your follow up after interview notes.

Steve Finkel [00:36:17]:
What does he like? What are his concerns? And you literally, I'll grab you this later. You take a look at this here fine book and you go, okay, what about this close? Would that be appropriate? What about that close? Would it be appropriate? What about this close? Would it be appropriate? And you write some notes on this and you strategize. Ideally you find someone else in your office or if not in your office, because you can do it on the phone, who has also got this book and has read the book and has absorbed the book. And you discuss the different closes of what would work. There are different types of closes here. You've got your anything accumulated dollars close, dollar action close. There are all sorts of the pool close. You know, you go through them and you take a look at them and you write your little notes down.

Steve Finkel [00:37:06]:
And that's why they have got names on them. Truth, all closes have got names on them because it triggers off here to here to here. And you line these up and you plan them. Generally speaking, generally speaking, you want to address logic first with a candidate in the context of the closing call. And then you want to go to emotions. Now there's always going to be a blend. People can turn down offers. It could be a matter of logic, which is dollars.

Steve Finkel [00:37:41]:
It could be a matter of emotions, which is fear of change. It could be a matter that they haven't worked out their career strategy properly. This is something you'll see mentioned in this book. Significantly, we tend to describe ourselves as recruiters. I use the term myself, but you'll notice in the book that it makes reference to candidate search consultants. Candidate search consultants. I don't use the word recruiters in the book, though I do use it obviously in casual conversation. We are what kind of consultants? We are career strategists.

Steve Finkel [00:38:22]:
And we've got a great edge in terms of closing if we present ourselves from a career strategy standpoint. Most people don't think that way. That's where the pool close, meaning billiards close comes in and a number of other ones as well. We've got to get the candidate thinking long term, rationally and show him where a career change at this particular point in his career can move him upwards, thinking not for what's my next move, but what's the next move after that. Many people don't know this. You know, it's an easy thing. We all know this. Let's take a simple example.

Steve Finkel [00:39:01]:
If you had a hiring authority and he was considering bringing in a new sales rep to open up a new territory with a new product, and the future of it was once he opened up that territory, as it developed, it would divide up because the demographics indicated you could do a lot of business there. It would divide up into two territories and then it could divide up into four territories. And the salesman, the first guy being brought in would logically be the manager that would be supervising the others. And as this new product rolled out, he would move into a regional managership and a national sales managership. And it all focused on this first person introducing a new product in a new territory. And he had two candidates to hire. First guy had been with the company doing a good job for 15 years. The other had been with two companies and had done an excellent job but had opened up two different territories successfully.

Steve Finkel [00:40:01]:
Who would get hired? Now? The real truth is the hired would be the one that had made the right career change move and had been with two companies and had been successful with two companies. Now, this is not a close, though you can use it that way. It's an example. Does the candidate know that? And you can make this applicable to it, accounting, whatever areas of specialization you want. The point is that a career change will enhance not only his next move, but his entire career and the one after that and the move after that. That's what I mean when I say a Lot of the closes, not a lot of. There are 25. But many of the closes address directing his career in the proper direction to maximize the return on the investment of his time.

Steve Finkel [00:40:56]:
He's going to put in 40 years or whatever the number may be. The point of it then is, okay, where do I get the most return on the investment of that time? And making the right career move will really accelerate him. But he doesn't know that. We talk about the logic, meaning perhaps how much money is involved? What is he doing? The emotions? How does he feel about this? We'll address this in a second. But the third part that we really overlook is positioning ourselves as career strategists and showing where he's going to move from a career standpoint. I'll suggest you that when you do this, you need to be doing this on the phone. I'm talking about closing. A lot of us work on zoom and there's nothing wrong with that.

Steve Finkel [00:41:46]:
We talk to people in terms of zoom or Skype or whatever it may be. Closing a closing call is complex. And really you can't memorize all this. What you ought to be doing is speaking from notes. Here's where I'm going to go. How about this? Here's my next close that I'm going to be using. Gee, don't forget to slow my pace. It is a complex call.

Steve Finkel [00:42:13]:
And the merit. How can you memorize, let's say of the 150 pages of closes, you might be using 75 pages of closes. Now that's a broad number. It's not going to be that way, but it's going to be a lot. You can't memorize this. You ought to have notes in front of you. And the best way to do that is to really be on the telephone so you can kind of be looking at your notes. He doesn't know that, but you should be doing it.

Steve Finkel [00:42:39]:
You also ought to have a backup person if you are in an office. This obviously doesn't precisely apply to a one man show, but if somebody else is listening in on the phone, I'm saying another recruiter who is familiar with the material and he's the guy that you had done this strategizing with, he should be listening in on that call with you. And that doesn't mean in the office. It means he should be listening in to both sides of the conversation so that he can say, go over to this. Or maybe it's a matter of slow your pace or pause or ask a question or you're talking too fast or wait you were going to use the alternative close. Just write the alternative close, hand it in front of you, right bang. And then you're into the. The alternatives close.

Steve Finkel [00:43:26]:
You are going to do that. You ought to have somebody backing you up on the call. It's a positive to doing that. Now you can strategize as a sub comment. You ought to pay attention to your phone because if you're using speakerphones, you just need to be careful. There's no reverberation there because he needs to be listening to both sides of that conversation. And at the end of it all, you should end the call. Don't let a closing call get to the end.

Steve Finkel [00:43:53]:
If it is to be a turndown or if it's not 100% acceptance and let it dribble out with him repeating why he's not accepting and you repeating what you already said. Say what you have to say, go through the material. And then I've got a call coming in that I really do have to take. Give it some thought. Call me back. This is a heck of an opportunity. I'd sure look forward to hearing from you tomorrow. Get off the phone.

Steve Finkel [00:44:21]:
Get off the phone. Don't just do any repetitious stuff where it kind of dribbles out in kind of a sad way. Do your material. Get off the phone. You probably will have another chance to make another call. Closing is combinations. It's not one close. You know, we are all hooked into perhaps what we've been told by our managers.

Steve Finkel [00:44:41]:
Do the Ben Franklin close. Do the sharp angle close. Do the. That's not right for our industry. It probably is going to take you. There could be six closes built in, there could be eight closes built in. And these are not short, these are conversations back and forth where you're leading him, you're asking him questions. What about this? You know, it's been our experience that pause, hesitate.

Steve Finkel [00:45:08]:
It's an extensive call. Most closing calls probably are, you know, they might be 10 minutes, they might be 20 minutes, they might be 30 minutes. You know, they are extensive calls. And as you go through these, it's not one, it is multiple combinations. This is a body of exposure, of knowledge of closes that has never ever been exposed to the industry previously. Never, except through my in house training. And I can show you what results you could expect. You do this really easily.

Steve Finkel [00:45:45]:
When I first started off doing training long time ago, I did five day programs. A slight misnomer because there were slightly more than a half day program, but I did five day programs and then I came Back six months later for a two day follow up. What I found out was the people were increasing their production enormously, but they really weren't using the material I was presenting in the latter portion of the search process. That is to say perhaps follow up with client, follow up with candidate, follow up, closing. They really weren't implementing it. And I realized that what I was doing wrong, I had done five day programs because that's what I did in my own offices, developing my own operations. Well, they had the benefit of my continual supervision. People out there didn't really have that benefit, so they really weren't implementing it all.

Steve Finkel [00:46:37]:
So I broke it up into a series of two day programs. We cover expanding your client base here. All right, I refer you to the book Unlimited clients, Identifying and recruiting candidates, Presenting candidates, Follow up with Clients and at the end of it all, because I ran easily, still do 85% repeat business. The last couple of programs were what you will see in closing for recruiting, follow up after interview with candidate and then a two day program on recruiting. So what I could do, I ended up with a bunch of people that were seriously good recruiters. They had been through a series of two day programs. In fairness, the manager was committed to implementing the material, otherwise they would not have brought me in and the people were committed to working with the manager. So I had a bunch of people that were genuinely top quality high producers.

Steve Finkel [00:47:40]:
In the last couple of programs. I went in with these top quality excellent recruiters and did follow up after interview with candidate debriefing, including doing the exercises that you'll see here and closing. Those excellent recruiters increased their production anywhere from 30 to 50% on top of what they were already doing as a pure result of the material that was covered in those particular areas. And they did it by moving the candidate from an attitudinal standpoint from a first interview to a second interview and then improving their closing skills. Again, if you get an offer once a month and I'm just grabbing a number, you can tell me twice a month or whatever you want. But if you've got an offer of once a month and in a high dollar type of a recruiting location, that's not unreasonable. Might be twice a month, might be more. You've got a month of work in this thing.

Steve Finkel [00:48:49]:
I mean you have got a solid month, 40 hours a week of waking up, organizing, planning, looking at LinkedIn, doing AI, submitting candidates, filing, all got a month involved in this thing. You can improve your production. An exceptional person can improve his production 30 to 50% purely as a result of these two sections, debriefing and closing. Now, let me double back to a question you asked about a close. It's difficult to speak of a close because we've got 25 of them and one close will not get the deal done. One close moves it to the next and moves him in the right direction and another one moves him in the right direction combined with other. Separate yourself from the fee or you know, which is an important portion of this. There's a lot there.

Steve Finkel [00:49:44]:
But a college professor close is pretty good. Remember, logic first, then you can go to the emotion. A college professor closes is pretty interesting. It's, you know, Bob, let me ask you something. You're deeply involved in this. Emotionally, it's a big deal. I understand. But let me ask you something.

Steve Finkel [00:50:04]:
If you were to go to someone that you respect, might be a successful businessman whom you knew growing up, might be a college professor that if you succeed, would like to think it's partially due to him, and if you were to lay out all the facts about both positions, your current firm, the one you've been offered. I guess the right word is. Now notice the conversation here. I guess the right word is conversational tone. I guess the right word is objectively, dispassionately the growth, the potential, the people you're working with, where it can go. And if you were to ask him what advice he might give you to maximize the return on the investment of your career. Tell me, Bob, what advice do you think he'd give you pause and because you're setting this up right, remember you've got a good opportunity. The truth is he ought to accept.

Steve Finkel [00:51:00]:
Chances are, you know that and he knows that and he's not accepting. He's going to say, well, I guess your client. Okay, why do you think he would say that, Benjamin? Well, and he will explain to you why he ought to accept that position. Now that's just, that's a college professor clothes. But you know, as an example and you ought to do that and then perhaps you'll go to a different type of clothes. Different type of clothes. You might want to run over to a fear of change clothes. Now, again, I'm giving you a clothes and a clothes and they are not enough.

Steve Finkel [00:51:41]:
Don't say, here's this close. I can put this together. No, you can't. There are multiple closes that must be done to move him in the right direction. But if it was a fear of change clothes, you know, I hear what you're saying and frankly, I'd be Surprised if I didn't hear this. What you're feeling, if you'll think back, Susan, is exactly what you felt when you went from high school to college and from college to your first job. You know that little nagging feeling sometimes we call it a gut feel about moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Every one of us tends to cling to what we know we do.

Steve Finkel [00:52:24]:
But frequently it's to our detriment. Changing and stretching, moving ahead that causes a sense of uneasiness. Everyone. But what's the objective? What are you going to do? Stay where you are forever? Is that right? Let me ask, do you think you're going to stay with the company for the rest of your life? Well, no. Well, you know, and then you might move to a career strategy direction with this person as an example of which there are many. Closes the pool, close, the alternatives, close. There are all sorts of things. You can put these together.

Steve Finkel [00:53:01]:
But our business is different. Our business is different. You can listen to 12 Hours of Brian Tracy on the Art of Closing. Wonderful audio series, by the way. Recommended. And you won't find anything there other than getting his name signed on the dotted line and walking away. We need industry specific closes, and these have never been presented when you started off, when any of us started off, the person that trained us gave us the beginning portions of the business. And then we went out there and maybe we banged on enough doors, maybe we had talent, maybe we got lucky, we did okay.

Steve Finkel [00:53:46]:
And then we kept on doing better, picking up an extra client, building up our database, whatever it might be. And we did better and better. And then we went back and said, gee whiz, maybe we can find candidates better. Maybe AI will help me to organize better. We focus on the beginning portions of the business, our worth to the client. What we basically do is what he cannot do for himself or what cannot be done less expensively by somebody else. If it's just a matter of finding candidates and submitting candidates, other people can do that. They, rightly or wrongly, they believe their internal recruiting department can do that.

Steve Finkel [00:54:32]:
Okay, fine. What we bring to the table is we can nail down the deal. We can deliver the goods. We could help him to hire the right person so that his company can grow. That's what we do. But it takes a little bit of work. I gotta say that it takes a little bit of work.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:50]:
You just got done listening to part one of this interview with Steve Finkel, the godfather of recruiting training. Make sure to go download and listen to part two. Running a recruiting firm is enough work. You shouldn't need five vendors to manage your online presence. With recruiters websites, you get it all in one place. Websites, SEO, paid ads, automation and ongoing strategy all built specifically for recruiters. We understand your industry, your clients and your challenges. Simplify your marketing and strengthen your results.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:18]:
Mention Elite Recruiter and get 10% off any new service at recruiterswebsites.com admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas, the AI first recruitment platform built for modern agencies. It doesn't only track resumes and calls. It remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation. Instantly searchable, always available. And now it's entering a whole new era. With Atlas 2.0, you can ask anything and it delivers.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:45]:
With MagicSearch, you speak and it listens. It finds the right candidates using real conversations, not simply looking for keywords. Atlas 2.0 also makes business development easier than ever. With opportunities, you can track, manage and grow client relationships. Powered by generative AI and built right into your workflow need insights Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported up to 41% EBITDA growth and an 85% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. No admin, no silos, no lost info.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:16]:
Nothing but faster shortlists, better hires, and more time to focus on what actually drives revenue. Atlas is your personal AI partner for modern recruiting. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive Listener offer@reruitwithatlas.com thanks for listening.

Steve Finkel [00:56:31]:
To this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit, subscribe and leave a rating.