Good Morning __,

Hi, (my name) here, specialty recruiter for (x industry). I wanted to catch up with you regarding a skilled sales engineer with a proven track record of sales performance that I recently recruited. He has over 20 years of manufacturing experience which includes (x, y, and z industries). In his career he’s brought in over $60 million in sales. In just one success story he secured $21 million in sales in 3 years for a leading (industry) company. In another success story he brought in $4 million in transfer sales by offering better services to customers over 5 years. Call me if you’d like to talk with this candidate or if you’re looking to fill any other (industry) positions.
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Danny’s Critique:

I’m a big believer in leading with good news when giving a critique (so if I was giving feedback to the RNC on their recent convention, I’d have to go with, “Well, it was dark, but not as dark as…uh…Black Holes in the outer reaches of the cosmos.”), so let’s start with this…

You get an A Plus with the “A” standing for “affable.” Don’t trivialize this! (I’m sure you’ve been told over and over you come across as a nice guy, and I know nice guys hate to hear that, because we have spent our youths noticing the bad boys get the girls.) People instinctively want to call back, and buy…from people they like. You have a genuine warmth that can’t be faked. Trust me, I’ve tried.

But content wise, while you’re not a hot mess, you need to be moved off the range to cool and reassess.

My Points of Concern.

“Specialty recruiter” sounds vague. Name your specialty. If I say “I run the blow molding practice at a boutique search firm, then they know, “blow molding” is my specialty. We need to be concise. They won’t listen for long.

“Skilled” Sales engineer is weak. Do you think any headhunter has ever presented an unskilled anybody? Put an uncommon adjective with some punch in front of “sales engineer” and you are in business. AKA “stupefying, jaw dropping, Rio worthy”…THEN you prove it!

But you do so in bullet points, not your complete sentences which slow us down. You should lead with the $60 million dollars! BUT DON’T say in 20 years! In fact, don’t ever mention how many years anyone has done anything. It rarely helps and could hurt. Besides, a little mystery please? $60 million in 20 years, depending on the product, means he’s slow and steady, in 2 years it means, well, he’s stupefyingly, jaw droppingly….RIO WORTHY!!

Lose, “in one success story,” “in another”…just go, “check it” and list the quantitative data points. They GET it!

Finally, don’t say, “Call me IF you’d like to talk to the candidate.” What if they have jobs but don’t want to talk to that candidate? Just suggest they call to discuss further!