It’s that time of year again! Realigning, rethinking your plans. Reflecting on the past year: what went well, what didn’t go so well. As you ramp up to make your goals for the new year, we have a few suggestions on what you might include on your list.

More Time with Clients

Once you land clients as a business, you have to fulfill the staffing requests. Depending on your processes, this can take a lot of time.

• Sending out email blasts to talent when there is a new job
• Making spreadsheets of talent availability and schedules by hand
• Manually making staff profile power points or PDFs to send to your clients.
• Having talent text you a photo when they get to their job
• Paying talent individually via Bill.com or Venmo
• Using Google Forms or another survey software to manually reconcile who has filled out their recaps

If you are doing any of the above tasks manually, you might look into a staffing system like PopBookings. Automating your administrative tasks will give you more time to focus on growth of your business. Often times we get into the habit of doing these as they have always been done. With the new decade, it’s time to rethink how you are doing things to take your business to the next level.

Centralizing Your Database of Talent

We often get into the habit of posting emails. On PopBookings, clients who post their portal links on their job postings online or on social media boards get an average of 25% more applicants registering with them than those that post their email as the call-to-action. The reason for this is job seekers will create a profile even if they aren’t available for the exact job that you are posting for at the time. They want to know when you have other opportunities in the future that they might be able to work. If the call to action is simply an email, they might overlook your posting and you just lost out on a potentially good future job candidate.

Your database is your nest egg as a business. Having easy, direct access to candidates is key to getting that competitive edge as an event staffing agency. Don’t sell yourself short. Make a resolution to get into the habit of posting your portal link (if you have one!)

Better Sales Processes

One reason prospective clients might choose to DIY their staffing or simply not work with an agency is speed. “Please allow up to 24 hours for a response to your staffing request” is no longer competitive in the age of immediate gratification with apps like Uber, Netflix, Postmates. There are many marketing systems that will give you tools to provide a better experience to leads looking at your service. A lot of these tools are free!

Hubspot, for example is a free CRM tool that not only allows you to track and manage your customer relationships, but has good tools to integrate into your website. For example, they have a great tool called “Meetings.” Some leads might be interested in your services, but they don’t know what they don’t know. And these leads might want to talk to a a human before making a decision. Giving them a phone number to call is one thing, but if you can’t answer your phone, they might drop their engagement with you. Offering a calendar for people to pick a time on your calendar to chat is a great way to keep them engaged. This gives your leads immediate gratification with a automated calendar invite sent to them without any extra work on your end. With Hubspot’s Meetings tool, those appointments show in your CRM under the customer’s name automatically.

Mailchimp is a great email marketing tool Their free plan allows you to gather up to 2,000 emails on your list. They also have great tools to integrate into your website. One of those being a pop-up to subscribe. When a lead hits your website, sometimes, if the web copy isn’t speaking to them, they might bounce. That’s lost opportunity for you. One way to potentially grab them before they leave your page is to have a pop-up happen when they go to the “X” in their browser. Using the concept of reciprocity, offer them something free to be emailed to them. Marketing materials like white papers or infographics can be enticing for someone who was interested in event staffing services. Then you can capture more leads that might have otherwise bounced.

As you adopt more systems, you will want to have a hub for it all. Slack is a free messaging app that can tie all of your systems into one place. Integrate alerts to happen in different channels so that you will have running feeds of activity for any new app you might adopt this year. Further centralize with getting your team on board. Your team can then chat about the activity coming in from various channels amongst yourselves. (Not for your talent, but for your internal coordinators or fellow owners.) If you don’t use Slack already, you will be surprised at how centralizing your team’s communication will feel next level, no matter the size of team. (BONUS: PopBookings has a Slack integration as well!)

Let’s Get Planning for the New Year!

If you have any questions or want to talk through any of the above, we would like to offer a free consultation call to help you. No obligations, we just like to see fellow agencies grow and succeed. You can schedule a call using this link. We look forward to talk with you!