Stephanie Moss

And I'll say something like, hey, Tom, this is Stephanie Moss with Thinking Ahead Executive Search. Let me just right out of the gates. You and I have never spoken and you probably weren't anticipating a search firm call right this minute. Let me share with you who I am and why I'm calling. And you can let me know if I caught you with just a couple of minutes. And then they usually go, okay.

And I'll say, I work with a search firm, specialized commercial banking, commercial finance, specific to your market. I cannot imagine, Tom, that today was my lucky day and I called you and you're ready to give me a search. Instead, the reason why I wanted to call is we work a lot in the same space. I think we know a lot of the same folks.

And I just simply wanted to do a professional introduction. If he responds with, hey, Stephanie, thanks for calling. I don't have a need. I know he didn't hear anything I just said. Because I basically just said, I'm not calling to see if you have a need. And if he wasn't listening to me, then I need to go back. Oh, yeah, absolutely, Tom. As I said, I'm not calling to get a search.

I really just want to call and do a professional introduction. We're in the same space. Your world is my world. And based on who we know and the markets we serve, I thought it made sense for us to at least know each other. And you go from there. That's handling an objection on the front end. Same thing if you're cold calling somebody about an opportunity.

You can change the verbiage, but you accomplish the same thing. Hey, Pam, Stephanie Moss, sticking ahead executive search. I don't know that you're expecting my call right now. In fact, most folks that call are not actively calling. looking to make a move, but I specialize in your space. We know a lot of folks.

I am working on a really cool opportunity, but I have no idea timing wise, if it would make sense for you. The purpose of my call is truly just to get to know you professionally. And then if the timing makes sense or shoot, even if you're just curious, I'm happy to share what's what's happening in my market. You have five to eight minutes, super simple, super easy.

That's handling it on the front end. Now, let's say that you're representing a challenging organization. Then I say something to the effect of, hey, I'd like to share some details about the organization and the opportunity I'm representing. Before I dive in, though, can I get you just to bear with me for a second? I'm going to share with you the name of the organization.

And I know that they've had some recent challenges. So before you shut me down, would you be willing to hear a little bit more about what they've been through? And I can give you some insight as to what those challenges have been and what they're doing to deal with them. Because this really is a neat opportunity for the right person.

So again, if I say, hey, I'm representing ABC and they go, oh yeah, I've heard their challenge. Oh, totally. Are you open minded enough to let me share with you a little bit of the backstory there? There's a reason why we have the phrase curiosity killed the cat. It's because cats, but also humans are very curious by nature.

Even if they're not interested in the opportunity, they want to know what's going on. It's part of their world. It's in their professional niche. They will at least listen. And by the way, that's one of the services we provide to our clients is we, by doing the recruiting the way we do with lots and lots and lots of phone calls, we get to push the client's story out there.

And that's one of the reasons why we tell folks they should work with us. It's really difficult to push a story out into the market through an email, through LinkedIn postings. People don't read that much and they don't care. But when you engage and say, yeah, you know, if you'd be willing, I can kind of explain what's been going on over there and what they're doing to deal with it.

And again, even if they're not interested, most people are curious enough to want to hear what's going on. And again, this now extends the conversation and the opportunity still may not be right for them, but they may be more comfortable telling you what would be important to them. They may be more comfortable now giving a referral, whatever the case may be. So we handle it before it comes up.

The second is when it comes up. So, for example, on the recruiting side, it may be, let's say that we don't do a good job prefacing the I'm not looking. So we know that if you approach somebody and you don't handle on the front end and they say, hey, Stephanie, thanks so much for calling, but I'm not really looking right now. Again, we talked earlier about these half sentences.

Oftentimes the back half of that sentence. is what we don't give people time to think or definitely not to say. And oftentimes what they're really trying to say is I'm not really interested unless the opportunity would be significantly better than the one I currently have. So again, we want to practice patience.

When an objection comes up, pause, give them an opportunity to see if they'll keep talking. Or in that scenario, you have to deal with it before you can continue the conversation. Super easy way to do that is, oh, absolutely, Erin, most of the folks I talk to are not actively looking when I call them. I could only be so lucky.

However, most of them are least willing to have a conversation, even if it's just out of sheer curiosity. And again, since we didn't really know each other, I thought we could just spend a couple minutes professionally getting to know each other. I'm happy to share a few details and we'll just take it from there. That cool? Another thing might be, again, we'll go back to the commute.

That's a big deal in my market. So, hey, there's no way I consider an opportunity at XYZ. That's an hour, 15 minute commute day in and day out. Okay, well, I'm going to have a hard time getting that person to engage unless I can address that. And again, it's just conversational resistance. They're not saying absolutely no. What they're saying is based on the information I have, probably not.

So then you can offer up, hey, walk me through where are you commuting from? What would that look like for you? Get a few more details and then just ask, hey, if they had a three days a week hybrid where you could be home three days a week or only go to the office, would that make a difference at all for you? And again, we're just expanding the conversation.

We're getting people in an environment where they can relax and we can just have conversation. We are in a service business and that's what we set out to do is to serve our clients and our candidates. This is how we do it, by putting them in a place where they're comfortable talking to us about their professional challenges so we can potentially serve them, whether it's today or down the road.

So handling objections. By the way, please notice, There's nothing about my style that suggests bulldozing or super aggressive. Never do I say, well, let me tell you why that shouldn't be a concern. This opportunity is so freaking good that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They are so close minded at that point. They're going to hear anything you say. They're going to be offended.