I was at a staffing conference a few months back, talking with a sales rep between sessions. Smart guy. Motivated. Clearly good at his job. We got to talking about how business had been, and he told me that prospecting had felt almost pointless lately. “I keep calling and emailing and dropping in,” he said, “and everyone’s telling me the same thing. We’re not using staffing. We’re bringing it all in house.”

I asked him how many of those conversations ended with the prospect actually hanging up happy to talk to him again. He laughed. “None, really.”

That’s the problem. And it’s not unique to him. I’m hearing variations of that same story from staffing professionals across the country right now. But here’s what I want you to understand before we go any further: your prospects are probably fibbing to you.

I use the word “fibbing” deliberately, because they’re not necessarily lying. But they are telling you what gets salespeople off the phone fastest. When they say “we’re not using staffing” or “we’ve taken everything in house,” most of them mean “I don’t know who you are, I don’t have time for this, and you haven’t given me a reason to stop and listen.”

Here’s the proof. Staffing revenue in the U.S. hit its all-time high in 2022. It pulled back in 2023 and again in 2024, but we’re still above pre-Covid levels. Not everyone has taken recruiting in house. Not by a long shot. What’s happened is that the market has softened enough that clients feel like they can, or that they can manage with less help. When the pendulum swings back, and it will, they’re going to find out they were wrong. Our job between now and then is to stay in front of them and be positioned to be the obvious choice when that moment comes.

That means we need to be operating with more strategy and more intention than we probably are right now. So let me walk you through five strategies that I think can genuinely move the needle for the rest of this year.

Strategy 1: Sharpen Your Messaging

I do a lot of interviews with staffing sales candidates. I attend 15 to 20 staffing conferences a year. I consult with companies of all shapes and sizes. And when I ask people to describe their value proposition, I hear the same things over and over again.

“We don’t treat our employees like a number.” “We’re local.” “We drug screen and background check everyone.” “Our quality is better.” “We care more.”

Here’s the problem: if I’m hearing all of that, so are your prospects. Those aren’t differentiators. They’re table stakes. And your competitors said all of them before you ever walked in the door.

If we step back and think about what every client fundamentally needs from a staffing firm, it comes down to four things. They need the right number of people when they need them. They need those people to have the right hard and soft skills. They need them to stay as long as the assignment requires. And they need consistent, proactive communication, especially when something goes wrong.

That’s it. If you can clearly demonstrate that you deliver those four things better than who they’re using now, you have a conversation worth having.

The messaging that actually resonates tends to be built around specialization, proof of performance, team tenure and experience, proven expertise, your market reputation, a differentiated delivery model, and the strength and tenure of your client base. Go back and look at every touchpoint in your sales process this week. Your emails, your phone scripts, your elevator pitch. Ask yourself honestly: am I saying the same generic things everybody else is saying, or am I actually giving this prospect a reason to believe I’m different?

Strategy 2: Be Omnipresent

One of the best things someone can say to me is, “Tom, I see you everywhere.” And when they do, I tell them it’s not an accident. It’s a strategy.

If prospects are blowing you off on calls and emails because they don’t know who you are, the answer isn’t to make more calls to people who don’t know who you are. The answer is to become someone they recognize before you ever reach out.

Think about all the ways you can show up. Direct mail, which is genuinely underutilized right now because everyone is fighting in the same digital channels. Public speaking at local or industry events. Guest spots on podcasts and webinars, and trust me, hosts are always looking for relevant guests. Networking, which most salespeople consistently underinvest in. Social media, not just passive presence but actual engagement. And thought leadership, which I’ll come back to in a moment.

None of this happens by accident. You have to build an omnipresence strategy and execute it consistently. The goal is that when you finally do get that prospect on the phone, they already have a sense of who you are. That changes the entire dynamic of the conversation.

Strategy 3: Execute a Targeted Drip Campaign

This is one of my favorite things, and one of the most underused strategies in our industry.

A targeted drip campaign is a multi-step, themed outreach effort where you get something tangible in front of a small group of high-value prospects over four to six weeks. This is not a mass email blast. This is a highly personalized, creative campaign aimed at the 15 or 20 companies that represent your biggest opportunities.

Here’s an example I came up with recently. I was on vacation, and we walked into a candy store to escape the heat. I started looking at these candy tins designed around old retro video games, and I immediately thought: that’s a drip campaign. We put together a concept called “Level Up Your Staffing Game.” Week one is a Game Boy candy tin. Week two is gummy ghosts, with a note about being tired of good candidates ghosting you. Week three is a power-up themed candy. Week four is a Nintendo controller mint tin about taking control of your recruiting. Each delivery comes with a short, relevant, slightly funny message that ties back to the problems you solve.

Does it get their attention? Absolutely. I’ve seen clients implement similar campaigns and have prospects actually looking forward to what shows up next.

The investment is modest. For one prospect over six weeks, you might spend thirty dollars. That same prospect could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue annually. This is one of the best return-on-effort activities you can do right now, and almost nobody in your market is doing it.

Strategy 4: Ramp Up Your Thought Leadership

Most staffing salespeople do nothing around thought leadership. That’s a significant missed opportunity, because positioning yourself as a trusted expert changes how prospects and clients relate to you. You’re no longer just another vendor. You become a resource they actually want to hear from.

Here’s the thing: you don’t have to create all of your own content. You can curate it. Find great articles, ebooks, white papers, and data that is relevant to your prospects’ businesses and share it with your own brief commentary. “I came across this and thought of our conversation last month. Here’s what I found most relevant for you.” That’s thought leadership in practice.

Beyond content sharing, look at executive breakfasts and lunches where you bring in a speaker or facilitate a conversation around topics your clients care about. These work particularly well in the morning, before people get buried in the day. Look at Lightcast for data and ebooks you can leverage. Look for podcast and webinar opportunities where you can share your expertise and build credibility beyond your existing network.

Every time someone reads something you shared, hears you on a podcast, or sits across from you at an event where you’re the host, you move from unknown vendor to trusted expert. That’s a very different sales conversation.

Strategy 5: Commit to Being Hyper Efficient

I want to close with this one because I think it’s the foundation that makes everything else possible.

There’s a difference between being busy and being productive. There’s also a difference between being productive and being hyper efficient. Hyper efficient means you are intentional and disciplined about how you spend every hour, and you are constantly looking for ways to get more output from the same input.

A few things I see make the biggest difference.

Focus on the important, not just the urgent. Your day will always try to fill itself with urgent things that aren’t actually important. The Eisenhower grid, which separates tasks by urgency and importance, is one of the most useful frameworks I know for keeping yourself oriented toward high-value work. Block your calendar as if your results depend on it, because they do.

Be smart about research. You don’t need to spend 20 minutes researching every prospect before you call them. Run your call list through ChatGPT or another AI tool and get a one to two sentence company overview and a couple of notes on your contact. It takes seconds, and you can glance at it while the phone is ringing.

Commit to 10 hours of phone time per week. The phone is still the best predictor of sales success in this industry. Right now, we’re seeing connect ratios of about 22 to 25 calls per live conversation. If you put in 10 hours of call time per week at 25 calls per hour, that’s 250 calls. At a 25 to 1 ratio, that’s 10 live conversations per week. Multiply that by 52 weeks and you’ve had over 500 meaningful conversations with decision makers in a year. That is a full pipeline.

Finally, allocate specific time to each of the five strategies I’ve outlined. You’ve committed 10 hours to phone calls. The remaining hours in your week need to be intentionally assigned as well. Thought leadership development. Drip campaign execution. Networking. Omnipresence activities. These don’t happen in the margins. They have to be built into your schedule.

The Opportunity Is Still There

I’ll say this clearly: the staffing industry has not fallen off a cliff. Revenue is still strong relative to where we were before 2022. The companies that are winning right now aren’t waiting for the market to turn. They’re sharpening their messaging, building their presence, getting creative with how they reach prospects, and managing their time with real discipline.

The prospects who are telling you they don’t need you are going to need you again. Probably sooner than they think. The question is whether they’ll think of you when that moment comes.

Start working these five strategies now, and they will.

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