The Sales Coaching Roleplay for Staffing / Recruiting Teams: Running the Two-Bad-Quarters 1:1

1. 1

   Before You Sit Down: Pull the Tape Out of the ATS

   Don't walk in with a feeling. Walk in with six things printed: 1. **Submittals by week, last 90 days.** Ty submitted 31 candidates in weeks 1-4 of Q3 and 9 across weeks 5-13. That curve is the entire conversation and you don't have to say a word about it yet. 2. **Submittal-to-interview and interview-to-placement, against branch median.** Priya sits at 1 in 3 on submittal-to-interview. Ty is at 1 in 8 off comparable req volume. 3. **Time-to-submit against the VMS SLA.** If the portal wants three profiles in 24 hours and his average is 38, that's real and it's separate from quality. 4. **Redeployment on contractors rolling off.** Eleven assignments ended on his desk last quarter. Two redeployed. Branch is at 44%. 5. **Fall-off inside 30 days** and **average spread per placement** — his is $21/hr against a desk average of $26. 6. **Two recordings.** One intake call with a hiring manager on a req that filled (Kessner Freight), one on a req that died (Aldridge Health). Timestamped. Before you sit down, know which story the data tells. If the VMS reqs really are junk, his interview rate will be flat against everyone else's on the same portal. If it isn't, his req intake volume is normal and the floor drops out *after* submittal — which means he's shotgunning profiles at reqs he never qualified.

2. 2

   Open: Name the Stakes in Two Sentences

   "Two quarters is a pattern, not a bad market cycle, and I'm not going to sit here and pretend it's noise. But I didn't book this to read you your fill rate — you know your numbers better than I do. I want to find out what's actually going wrong, because I think it's one thing and not five, and I genuinely don't know yet which one it is. Fair?" No 'how was your weekend.' He knows why this meeting exists. False warmth reads as a setup and he'll lock down before you've asked anything real.

3. 3

   Drain the Tank: Get Every Excuse Out Before You Touch One

   "Before I say anything — give me the whole picture. What's making this desk hard right now? Everything. I don't want the diplomatic version." Then, after each one: **"What else?"** Ask it three times. Write them down where he can see the pen moving. The staffing version of this list is predictable: the MSP rate card, the Aldridge and Vantage accounts getting carved to the new AM, VMS reqs going to six suppliers with a 20-minute submittal window, candidates taking counteroffers, hiring managers ghosting on shortlists, and 'the ATS numbers are wrong because I log at 6pm.' Read it back flat: "So: rate card, accounts carved, VMS submittal race, counteroffers, hiring managers going dark, ATS logging. That the full list?" Getting him to agree the list is complete closes the escape hatches for the rest of the call.

4. 4

   Sort It: Real, Partly Real, Story

   Take each one completely seriously and test it against what you brought. "Let's start with the VMS reqs, because if the portal's the problem I need to go fight that with the MSP and I'd rather know now. Last quarter you got 41 reqs off the portal. Priya got 38 off the same distribution list. She submitted 47 candidates against them, you submitted 40 — so you're covering reqs at basically her rate. Where it splits is after the submittal. She's converting 1 in 3 to an interview. You're at 1 in 8. Help me understand that gap." Then shut up. Five seconds. Ten. The silence does more than your next sentence would. On rate: "Nine of your dead reqs last quarter are logged as 'lost on rate.' Of those nine, how many did you have a real intake call on — where you asked what the last person in the seat failed at, who else is on the shortlist, and when the panel is actually free? Walk me through Aldridge. What did the hiring manager say the delay was costing them?" When he can't answer, don't say 'exactly.' Say: **"Okay. What do you make of that?"**

5. 5

   Concede the True One Out Loud

   You have to give him the real grievance or he'll spend 40 minutes proving it. "The account carve is real. You lost Vantage and half of Aldridge to Dominic's desk in April, and that was about a fifth of your historical req flow. That's a legitimate headwind and I'm not going to pretend it isn't — I signed off on it and I own it. The MSP cap is real too. We're at 15% on that program and we're not winning anything on price there. What I don't think is real is that either of those explains going from 31 submittals in four weeks to 9 in six." A recruiter who feels heard on the one true thing stops defending all five.

6. 6

   Make It Safe to Say the Real Thing

   "Let me say the thing that's probably sitting between us. I am not building a file right now. If the answer is 'I got underwater in week three, I stopped picking up the phone for BD and I hid inside two reqs I already knew weren't going to fill' — that is a fixable thing and I've fixed it with recruiters before. What I can't fix is a version where none of it is in your control, because then neither of us has anything to do Monday morning." Then the two questions that usually crack it: "If I handed you fifteen clean direct reqs tomorrow — real hiring managers, no portal, no six-supplier race — do you hit the number?" The hesitation is the admission. Follow with: "What's the part of this you'd fix if nobody was watching and there were no consequences?" Or go straight at the activity: **"Walk me through the last three weeks of Q3. What did Tuesday morning look like — 8 to 10?"** A recruiter who's stopped calling can't describe a Tuesday. He'll describe reqs, not dials.

7. 7

   Go to the Tape: One Moment, Not a Theme

   'Your intake calls need to be deeper' is a horoscope. Play 90 seconds. "This is minute six of your intake with the hiring manager at Aldridge on the Snowflake migration role. She says 'I need someone who can hit the ground running.' Listen to what you do next." [play] "You said 'great, I've got three people, I'll get profiles over this afternoon.' What are the three questions you didn't ask?" Let him name them. The ones you're listening for: who else is already submitted and by whom, what happened to the last contractor in that seat, who signs off besides her, when the panel is actually available, and what the req is worth to her if it stays open another month. If he can name them, this is execution — he knows the move and isn't making it, usually because he's racing the submittal window. If he genuinely can't name them, it's a skill gap and you're training, not coaching. That distinction decides your plan.

8. 8

   The Second Tape: The Contractor Nobody Called

   "Second one. This is the only logged call on Rashid's record between onboarding in February and his last day in November. Nine months, one touch. He was on a competitor's payroll the following Wednesday. Eleven of your contractors rolled off last quarter. Two redeployed. Branch is at 44%, you're at 18%. Those nine people are already recruited, already background-checked, already known to perform — and we paid to source every one of their replacements from scratch. I'm not raising this to pile on. I'm raising it because it's the cheapest gross profit on your desk and it's sitting there untouched. What's the reason those calls don't happen?"

9. 9

   Land on One Root Cause and Say It Plainly

   "Here's where I've landed. The carve cost you req flow, that's real. The MSP cap is real. But the thing that's actually killing the desk is that you're submitting before you've qualified the req — no intake, no shortlist intel, no panel dates — so profiles go into the void and your submittal-to-interview sits at 1 in 8. And because you stopped making BD calls in week three, you can't afford to walk away from a bad req, which makes the intake problem worse. The redeployment number is the same disease: no touch between the start and the end. One root cause: you're working reqs instead of qualifying them. Does that match what you see?" If he pushes back with a real argument, listen — you might be wrong. If he pushes back with a seventh grievance, name it: "That's a new one. We agreed the list was six. I think you're looking for a reason this isn't about the intake calls."

10. 10

    Let Him Write the Plan, Then Make It Checkable

    "Given all that — what do you want to change first?" Whatever he says, convert it into something you can both look at Friday at 4: - 'Qualify better' → **"No submittal on a new req until you've had a live intake — hiring manager on the phone, five questions, logged in the ATS before the profiles go. If it's a portal req and you can't reach them, you note that and we decide together whether we cover it."** - 'Do more BD' → **"Two hours Tuesday and Thursday, 8 to 10, blocked on the calendar. Ten new hiring-manager conversations a week, logged same-day, not at 6pm from memory."** - 'Stay closer to contractors' → **"Every contractor on your billing list gets a call at day 30, at midpoint, and at week eight before end of assignment. The eight-week call has one job: where are they going next and is it us."** Then your half, out loud: "I'll sit on your first two intake calls this week and debrief straight after. And I'll go get you six mid-market direct accounts to backfill what the carve took — that one's mine to fix, not yours." A plan that only assigns work to the recruiter reads as a warning, not a partnership.

11. 11

    Close on the Standard, Not a Pep Talk

    "So: no submittal without a logged intake, two hours BD Tuesday and Thursday, week-eight call on every contractor rolling off. I'm on your Kessner intake Wednesday. We meet Friday at 4 and we look at submittal-to-interview and BD conversations — not placements, those lag. And to be straight with you: a third quarter like the last two changes what this conversation is. I don't think that's where we're headed, but I'd be doing you a disservice not saying it." Then: **"What did you hear me commit to?"** His summary tells you whether any of it landed.

12. 12

    If He Never Admits Anything: Turn It Into an Experiment

    Some versions of this end with the recruiter still holding the line on the rate card and the portal. Don't chase a confession — you'll get a fake one and it'll expire in eleven days. "Alright. We disagree on cause. Let's test it. Run three weeks: no submittal without an intake call, ten BD conversations a week. If the portal's the problem, your submittal-to-interview won't move at all and I'll take the MSP fight upstairs myself with your data in hand. If it does move, we know what we're dealing with. Either way we know more in three weeks than we know right now." That converts a stalemate into evidence, keeps the relationship intact, and gives you a clean decision point in 21 days.

1. Rep

   Two quarters is a pattern, Ty, not a bad cycle, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But I didn't book this to read you your fill rate. I want to find out what's actually going on, because I think it's one thing, not five. Before I say anything — give me the whole picture. What's making this desk hard?

2. Buyer

   Honestly? The portal. Every req that comes through that MSP goes to six suppliers at the same time and whoever hits submit in the first twenty minutes gets the look. I'm not going to get a hiring manager on the phone in twenty minutes. Nobody is. And then we're capped at fifteen points on top of that, so even when I win it I'm booking spread that isn't worth the hours.

3. Rep

   Okay. What else?

4. Buyer

   Vantage and half of Aldridge went to Dominic in April. That was a fifth of my req flow, gone, and I got a list of dormant logos to replace it. Plus candidates are ghosting — I had a data engineer accept on a Thursday and no-show the Monday. That's the market right now, that's not me.

5. Rep

   What else? Give me the fourth thing.

6. Buyer

   The ATS numbers you're looking at are wrong. I do the work, I just don't log it in real time — I'm logging at six at night from memory, so half my touches never make it in. Whatever report you printed is undercounting me by a mile.

7. Rep

   So: portal race, rate cap, accounts carved, candidate ghosting, ATS logging. That the full list? Nothing else?

8. Buyer

   That's the list.

9. Rep

   Let's take the portal first, because if that's it I need to go fight it with the MSP and I'd rather know today. You pulled 41 reqs off that portal last quarter. Priya pulled 38 off the same distribution. She submitted 47 profiles, you submitted 40 — you're covering at her rate. Where it splits is after. She's converting 1 in 3 submittals to an interview. You're at 1 in 8. Help me understand that gap.

10. Buyer

    …She's got the Kessner relationship. Those hiring managers pick up when she calls. I'm submitting cold into accounts where nobody knows my name, so of course my ratio looks worse. That's a coverage thing, not a quality thing.

11. Rep

    Maybe. Let's test it against the tape. This is minute six of your intake with Aldridge on the Snowflake migration req. She says 'I need someone who can hit the ground running.' [plays] You said 'great, I've got three people, profiles this afternoon.' What are the three questions you didn't ask?

12. Buyer

    I mean — I had a twenty-four hour SLA on that one. If I spend fifteen minutes interrogating her about the panel, someone else's profiles are sitting in her inbox before mine. You're asking me to slow down in a market that pays for speed.

13. Rep

    That's fair on speed. And it's also the reason nine of your dead reqs are logged 'lost on rate' — nobody ever established what the seat was costing her, so the only thing left to compare is a bill rate. Let me concede the real one: the carve is real, that's a fifth of your flow and I signed off on it. The cap is real. Neither of those explains 31 submittals in your first four weeks and 9 in the following six. What happened in week three?

14. Buyer

    I got buried in the Vantage backfill and the two Aldridge reqs. I was working them every day.

15. Rep

    Walk me through a Tuesday morning in that stretch. Eight to ten. What were you actually doing?

16. Buyer

    …Sourcing, mostly. In LinkedIn Recruiter. Building lists for those two reqs.

17. Rep

    Both of which died. Here's the other number I brought. Eleven of your contractors rolled off last quarter. Two redeployed — that's 18% against a branch at 44%. Rashid had one logged touch in nine months and he was on a competitor's payroll the next Wednesday. Nine people we'd already recruited, already cleared, already knew could perform. What's the reason those calls don't happen?

18. Buyer

    Because nobody's screaming about a contractor who's billing. The screaming is always the open req. I know that's not a good answer.

19. Rep

    It's the first honest answer of this call, so I'll take it. Here's where I've landed: you're working reqs instead of qualifying them, and when the desk gets tight you stop BD entirely, which means you can't afford to walk away from anything. The redeployment number is the same disease at the other end. One cause, two symptoms. Does that match what you see?

20. Buyer

    Partly. I still think the portal reqs are unwinnable at that rate card.

21. Rep

    Then let's test it instead of arguing about it. Three weeks: no submittal without a logged intake call, ten new hiring-manager conversations a week, and a week-eight call on every contractor rolling off. If the portal's the problem your submittal-to-interview won't move an inch and I'll take that to the MSP myself with your data. What do you want to change first — you pick the order.

What makes a sales coaching roleplay for Staffing / Recruiting teams different from a generic manager coaching drill?

The excuses are industry-specific and half of them are legitimate. A recruiter missing quarters will point at the VMS submittal race, a 15% MSP rate cap, accounts carved to another desk, and candidate counteroffers — and you can't rebut any of that with generic 'own your number' coaching. The drill has to train you to concede the rate card out loud while still pressing on why submittal-to-interview sits at 1 in 8, and to know the difference between a req-flow problem and an intake-quality problem before you sit down.

Which numbers should a Director of Delivery or Branch Manager pull before running this call?

Six: submittals by week over the last 90 days, submittal-to-interview and interview-to-placement against the branch median, time-to-submit against the VMS SLA, redeployment rate on contractors rolling off, fall-off inside 30 days, and average spread per placement. Then two recordings — one intake call on a req that filled and one on a req that died. You cannot coach a story; you can only coach a number and a moment on tape.

How do I tell whether it's a sourcing problem, a closing problem or an effort problem?

Compare the recruiter against a peer on the same req source. If their req coverage and submittal volume are in line with peers but the floor drops out at submittal-to-interview, it's intake and qualification — they're sending profiles into reqs they never worked. If submittal volume itself collapsed mid-quarter, it's effort, and the tell is that they can't describe what a Tuesday morning looked like. If redeployment and fall-off are the outliers, it's contractor care — nobody spoke to the person between onboarding and last day.

Should I bring up a performance plan in this conversation?

Not in the first ten minutes and ideally not at all in this session. The moment a recruiter hears 'formal plan' they stop diagnosing and start defending, and you lose the only honest half-hour you were going to get. State the stakes once at the close — 'a third quarter like the last two changes this conversation' — and leave it there. Say explicitly early on that you're not building a file, because that belief is what keeps them defending the rate card instead of admitting they stopped BD calling in week three.

What if the recruiter never admits anything?

Don't force it — a coerced admission expires in eleven days. Turn the disagreement into a three-week experiment: no submittal without a logged intake call, ten new hiring-manager conversations a week, week-eight call on every contractor rolling off. Tell them plainly that if the portal really is the problem, their submittal-to-interview won't move and you'll take that data to the MSP yourself. Either way you have evidence in 21 days instead of two opinions today.

How do you practise this without burning a real 1:1 on a live recruiter?

Roleplay it against the specific difficulty you'll actually face: an AI that opens with the VMS race, escalates to the account carve when you press, throws 'your ATS numbers are wrong' as a third layer, and offers you a fast fake admission at minute six to end the meeting early. Run it until you can drain all six grievances before rebutting any, concede the true one without losing the thread, and land the call on one root cause and one rep-authored change — not nine.

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• Warm CallWarm Call Script for Staffing / Recruiting: Cashing a Referral Before It Cools

The same call in a neighbouring market

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