Recruit Assessors now or wait for the right levy client to land?

Here at Red 5 Solutions, we look for cat like traits when recruiting business development and sales people for our clients. The best sales people are highly intelligent, agile and quick thinkers who are skilled in engaging with people. Single minded hunters, they have strong persuasive powers and do not give up, think of a cat in the kitchen weaving around your legs until you feed them.  All of this is very positive, but just like cats, they can sometimes return to the office with a big smile and deposit an unwelcome present.  This will not, of course, be a dead animal, but something which the business is not geared up to deliver or lacks resource to deliver quickly. Like the cat the sales person is buzzing to get a sale, but the operational owner cannot deliver the service.

This is particularly problematic when introducing new products or services, for example, the Associate Project Management Apprenticeship Level 4 Standard.  This is a new apprenticeship requiring project management principles, governance and stakeholder engagement, leadership and communications, financial management, resource and quality management, risk and issue management alongside contract management and procurement.  This specialist qualification is in high demand by employers primarily because of the measurable impact on business efficiency. Sitting in the £9K funding band, providers love it too, but whilst they have been quick to sell, some have been slow to deliver.

Red 5 Solutions are often asked the chicken and egg question, which resource comes first; the sales or the delivery.  For a new product line, our advice is that they should come together and work as a team. Through co-creation, this enables the marketing messages delivered by the sales person to resonate with the knowledge of the project specialist. The specialist can accompany the sales person on early sales appointments as a subject matter expert and to build the sales person’s knowledge.  At the same time, schemes of work, lesson plans and resources can be created so that when the sale lands, the organisation is ready and can hit the ground running. Efficient and planned resourcing can then build capacity through specialist recruitment one cohort at a time, building your business and reputation.

When thinking about both the sales or the delivery resource its worth engaging with someone who knows the landscape and can provide you a realistic plan based on the current talent on the market.  For Assessors, you might need to find occupationally competent people and teach them to assess / deliver (rather than months of searching to no avail and a promise not delivered).