Staffing Industry Spotlight: Dan Mori, Founder of Staffing Mastery

In this installment of Staffing Industry Spotlight (sponsored by Ascen, a leading back office and employer of record for staffing agencies), we welcome Dan Mori, a seasoned staffing industry leader and founder of Staffing Mastery and the Executive Director of the National Independent Staffing Association (NISA). Dan shares his expertise in sales strategy, differentiation, and optimizing business models in staffing. He discusses how agencies can overcome commoditization, implement a targeted sales approach, and leverage technology to stay ahead in a shifting market. His insights on pricing, lead generation, and aligning with industry shifts offer a masterclass in staffing success.

Francis Larson (Ascen) Okay, Dan, thank you so much for being on the Staffing Industry Spotlight. First off, we’d like to know who you are and what you do.

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) That's a loaded question, Francis. I am all things staffing. I came up in this industry as an owner-operator, still a partner with a mid-market, independently owned staffing agency out of the Northeast. I've expanded out because I really have a passion for teaching and helping others grow. So I do some advisory work with other agencies. I also lead the National Independent Staffing Association. In addition to that, I publish Staffing Monthly and I coordinate the Staffing Sales Summit, which focuses exclusively on sales training and sales workshops to help agencies grow.

Francis Larson (Ascen) You're a pretty busy guy. You're currently an owner and you've spent your career in staffing. I'm assuming you came up through the sales route.

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) Yeah, like most people, you kind of stumble into the industry. I didn't really know staffing was a thing until I was approached by a friend who was starting an agency and wanted me to come in and sell. I had no clue how to sell staffing services, but I figured it out. I've pretty much stayed on the BD side. I've worked a desk, I know the recruiting function, but I really prefer the BD side of things and having business conversations with other companies.

Francis Larson (Ascen) You must have learned a lot of hard lessons along the way about how to do staffing sales. What are some standout hard-learned lessons from your career?

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) Let me tell you a story. One of the main objections that we get all the time is, why should I choose you? It's like, why are you different? When I first heard this, I didn't realize what it meant. I was in a sales meeting with a large manufacturer, prepped to the T with my nice polo, logo, tchotchke, pens, and notebook. I went through the entire presentation, and at the end, the guy looked at me and said, "Okay, so why should I choose you?" And what I heard was, he wants to hear this again. So I just kind of spit it all right back out at him. What I didn't realize in the moment is that everything I was saying sounded just like everybody else. That was a hard lesson to learn: we over-commoditize ourselves because we don't know how to differentiate ourselves. Some agencies do a great job of it, but most people don't. Everything you do needs to be different. You have to differentiate your sales process, understand your UVP, and how it connects with the value of your customers. That was one of the first lessons that really steered the rest of my journey.

Francis Larson (Ascen) Yeah, that's so interesting, finding your niche. On one hand, if you're starting your own firm, you can really dial it in. But if you're a salesperson, it's more about crafting the message. How should people who are not owners think about it? Is it different?

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) I don't think it's that different. I've always approached everything with an entrepreneurial mindset. Even when I was a W2 worker, I treated it as my business, my opportunity to serve my customers and make money. Salespeople should really think about what value are we providing, how do I convey that message to my customer, and make sure it's aligned? I don't want to bring in a customer that's not a fit, because that's a waste of time and resources. They should talk to the leadership of their agency and say, "What do we do? What problems are we really solving? How does what we do solve those problems?" If you just do that, you're going to be differentiating yourself from at least 80% of the market.

Francis Larson (Ascen) So, in a way, it's like who you're going after—removing people who aren't a fit. Some firms try to be super general and talk to anybody.

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) 100%. It's sad because staffing is one of the only markets that doesn't really obey the laws of supply and demand pricing. Our inventory is in high demand. There's a massive labor shortage, a talent gap, all those things. In every other industry, if there was a shortage, the prices would be sky high, but we commoditize it. The reason is that no one's really focusing on their core market, where they're the most successful, where they deliver the most value. If you just did that... hey, we focus on third-party logistics, let's say. Just be the best at that, build all of your success metrics into that, all of your messaging around how good you are at that. The next time you sit in front of a new customer that's in the 3PL business, you can say, hey, this is what I do for my customers. If you speak the language and you get the case studies, you're not going to be a commodity. So I think people should be hyper-focused and completely align everything to what you do. I prefer focus over generalities.

Francis Larson (Ascen) It's interesting you use the word vocabulary. If you focus on a particular industry, the clients know that you're using their lingo, their jargon. In healthcare, for instance, there are certain words that healthcare staffing providers use, and clients pick it up right away. They know the insurance issues, the onboarding issues, the credentialing issues. And it's the same thing if you're dealing with clearance jobs, or IT, super niche. If you're a DevOps recruiter, if you don't speak that language, they're going to pick up on it right away. Because then the client's the expert, right?

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) And experts get paid. That's why I really think that kind of niching down makes sense, but it's terrifying. It's even more terrifying when you don't understand the value that you provide. If you can't figure that out for yourself, there's no way your customers are going to know.

Francis Larson (Ascen) Let's say you dial it down, you figure out your message, your buyer persona, you have the perfect direction. How do you get your message out there? What are people doing these days to get leads? Is it cold calling? Is it all marketing-driven or inbound? How do they get those conversations started?

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) The elite, the ones that are really producing, are combining elements of all of it. They're really leaning into social selling. First, it starts with having the ICP, the ideal client profile. They know exactly who they're going after. They know buying signals, pain points that that person might be experiencing. They've done the research to identify their sphere of influence. Where are their eyeballs going? Are they in particular groups on LinkedIn? Are they in trade association groups? Do they pay attention to certain podcasts or publications? They're really defining that ICP. So, when they actually do the cold calls, they're converting less. Same thing with emails. They're thinking more like a marketer and less like an old salesperson. They're being strategic with their keywords, understanding that subject lines of three to four words are opening better, and using shorter messages because they know that 75% of people are reading the emails on their mobile devices. They're also trying to show up in person, going to networking events or trade shows to build multiple relationships within their target organization. That's the direct outreach stuff. Then, they're doing social selling, optimizing their LinkedIn profile, saying, "What are the keywords I need to have in my profile? How do I craft my message so I'm more findable, so I'm showing up in more searches?" Then, what content do I need to be putting out? The top producers are using more video on LinkedIn outreach, dropping a Loom video in and saying, "Hey, I noticed you've had this job post on LinkedIn for a while. I've got these great candidates." They're using the video and audio features of messaging on LinkedIn to differentiate themselves. They're doing all of it in a very immersive, blended approach to create a level of influence and authority, so people feel like it's worth their time to give you at least a discovery meaning.

Francis Larson (Ascen) That's really cool. It used to be that you could pick up the phone or just send a bunch of emails and have conversations. It's evolved to something more holistic, more social. You're thinking like a marketer, as opposed to a pure salesperson.

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) Yeah, we've been institutionalized into marketing in our daily lives. All of our buying habits are influenced by marketing. The data shows it has caught up, even in B2B sales. Recent reports show 80+% of C-suite buyers are influenced by digital media before they take a sales meeting. In the recruiting staffing space, the lion's share of that digital media is how you're showing up on LinkedIn. So it's marketing, but you still have to do the other work. It has to be a multi-touch campaign because buyers have different preferences.

Francis Larson (Ascen) Once you have the first call, there's a whole process. Let's say you're getting noticed, getting intro calls, talking to people. How are you working it through the conversation to clients? What are you doing? How many touchpoints, how many calls is it going to be? Does this depend on enterprise or mid-market? What does the process look like these days from that first intro call to bodies and buildings?

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) From there, you're still going to be doing the other stuff, but you're not going to be in your prospect funnel anymore. Once you get that meeting, you have to be aware that this is a valuable meeting. If they're giving you that meeting, it's because they have a need they are looking to research solutions for, whether it's an upcoming need or they're looking to replace a partner. You need to respect that, and the average value of a client is so high that you can't just wing it. You should have a standardized prep process. What information do you need to know about this client, the industry they're in, trends that are impacting it, common business challenges, maybe some of the solutions they've tried? You should know this because you're an expert and you have testimonials and case studies. You should know what are the questions to ask to qualify that prospect: Do they have a real problem that's worth solving? Is it something that you can actually solve and solve well? If you can do that, then you have the right to do more of a presentation meeting. Sometimes it happens in one call. If it's a complex need, you figure out the pain points, the desired outcome, how your solution overlaps, and what examples you have of success in the past. When you go to present, bring your lead and key stakeholders. Lay it out: "Can we go through each one of the challenges we covered in our last meeting and show you how we would solve them and what life would look like after implementation?" Get that buy-in through each step. Then, you have to have a really effective handoff. A lot of agencies fail here. There should be a really effective handoff, nail the handoff, and then do your regular check-ins to make sure that you're delivering against the metrics you agreed upon and [hold] quarterly business reviews.

Francis Larson (Ascen) I mean, it speaks back to your first point: if you know your market cold, you will know what questions to ask. Maybe it's logistics, and you ask about turnover. You're qualifying, and you're saying the next call is the presentation, and you're bringing other stakeholders. You said, "Here's what your life will look like when it's solved." We've seen a similar thing. We're a tech company, and we'll show people a demo with their logo on it. Seeing it in a concrete way, that does the trick.

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) If they have a problem, they're looking to get to a better destination. If you can paint a clear picture of what that life will look like with your solution and back it up with case studies for social proof, that's what people want. It's extending the buyer's journey and showing them that the risk of partnering with you is not great.

Francis Larson (Ascen) Let's go back to metrics. There are many things you can track. What should sales leaders focus on in their sales conversations?

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) I am a big proponent of less is more. Just because you have the data doesn't mean you have to look at every single bit of it. I've seen analysis paralysis take hold. If you're not looking at data to make informed decisions, you should start. I look at billing, payroll, billable hours, headcount. I want to monitor these trends every week. That creates derivative metrics like average hours worked per week. Ultimately, my number one metric is the average value of headcount per week: How much gross margin are they generating for the company? If you know that number and you're measuring it, that's a good barometer for the health of your organization. If that number starts to dip, there may be a pricing issue, maybe the burden on your contractors is getting higher, maybe the hours are getting short. It will tell you which area to look in. If I'm an operations manager, I'm going to look at performance metrics like time to fill, fill percentage, rates. On the sales side, I look at conversion metrics: How much activity is someone doing and how much activity does it take to get a meeting? How many meetings does it take to get a proposal? How many proposals does it take to get a contract? How many of my contracts convert into billing clients? I look at conversion yields, set my benchmarks, and measure my progress against those. My holy grail metric is the average value of headcount per week.

Francis Larson (Ascen) That's interesting. I thought you were going to go more into the sales side, but the gross profit and averages and headcount stuff can tell you about the health of your sales. Are you generating the right kind of sales? I heard an analogy once that it's like you can get business if you under-price the market, but it's like eating soup with a fork. Can you talk about how staffing agencies go about pricing? It's a commoditized thing. How should they think about pricing when they're talking to customers, how should they negotiate, and should they turn away deals?

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) Yes, they should turn away deals. I'm a huge proponent of establishing the criteria of "good." You should know what good business looks like. What is a good client, good orders, good pay rates, good bills? That should be clearly defined, and then your salespeople can operate within those guardrails to make sure you're always bringing in good business. If it doesn't meet the criteria of "good," you should turn it away. Staffing agencies don't actually analyze the cost of providing the service to determine what the cost of service should be. It's purely driven by the market. I've very rarely seen staffing agencies that really understand the cost of acquiring a candidate, the cost of acquiring a client, the cost of running a desk. They don't analyze the cost of doing business and then have a target markup. It's usually the other way around. They usually go out and they get whatever price they can get, and then they have to figure out how to do the business at that price.

Francis Larson (Ascen) It's so bad.

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) It's so frustrating to me. I would encourage agencies to look at what it takes to run your business, how much net profit you need to be making, and then set your pricing structure in that range. It's okay if you turn away business. There's not enough talent out there to fill every open job. Just be really good, be the best service provider you can be to a smaller group of clients, and they will pay you more. Your average value of headcount will go up, which means less headcount is required to hit your financial targets.

Francis Larson (Ascen) There's this thread, which is: if you really know who your customer is, you really know the value you give, you have complete conviction about it, you know what it's worth, and you can't even deliver it in the way that you want if you go below that. Our best customers think about it in the way that you were talking about: Here's the margin I need to make, or I cannot provide the service. A lot of firms, they'll just take any price and then they offer this terrible service to the customer and the client.

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) And then they go back and they complain like, oh, can't get a good price. And it's like, you know what, you do have more influence over that than you think. The agencies that say, this is how much money I need to provide a good quality service and they turn business away if it's not there, they're doing right by their clients. Anytime you start competing on price, it is a race to the bottom. The customer loses, you're going to lose, it's just an awful game.

Francis Larson (Ascen) The one area in which we've seen some inevitable price declines is commercial staffing, the light industrial side. It continues to go down, and it seems a lot driven by platforms. What do you think about AI's effect on the staffing market generally, and then specifically on sales? Are salespeople going to be done in a few years?

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) No, I don't think that salespeople are going to be done in a few years. Do I think that there's going to be an overreach of AI that's going to snap back and start including more human involvement? Yeah, I think we're going to hit our upper echelon and realize, you know what, we need more human involvement. AI is impacting sales, impacting staffing in general. There are certain industries that are getting hit harder. See anything in the creative space. They're because people are realizing that sometimes the content that's put out there isn't human enough. People are starting to get wise to it. Staffing agents should use it in any task that is low value. If it's not something that you're doing that is adding value to what the customer is buying from you, then using an AI tool or an automation tool is really, really important. However, it's also really important to understand that the value we really have this industry is the relationships that we form and the human understanding of how we deliver service and how we meet needs. AI is not going to be equipped to really discern that just yet. We need to double down on those interaction points with our clients with our candidates. I think customers are fully aware of how much money they spend on staffing services. If a robot calls them, they're going to think that the staffing partner doesn't value their business. And then they're going to further commoditize it. I would be very leery about turning your sales process over to purely AI without human involvement. I agree with you in the commercial space, there is pricing compression or margin compression. The value is shifted. A lot of the commercial buyers are starting to back off the quality metric. They're starting to think, hey, I'm not going to get these super-qualified people. So now they want to compete on price. I would encourage staffing agencies to use AI and automation to basically streamline their process, use a platform to deliver talent as quickly as possible, and you're going to win more business and still maintain those margins you have, but you just don't sell in the premise of higher quality. Back that value off, and I think you'll be okay in the commercial space.

Francis Larson (Ascen) If you have parting lessons for staffing agents today, what should they be focusing on as staffing leaders?

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) The biggest thing they need to be thinking about is the shift in the market. There are two things that have happened. Coming off the pandemic hangover, there was this huge uptick, and things have been sliding down. There are natural cyclical changes, and there is some business that's going to come back the way that it used to. However, some serious structural changes have happened to our industry. If you're not analyzing it and prepared to meet that moment, you're going to get crushed. One of the structural changes that I've seen happen is that the value drivers have shifted. A lot of times we've been commoditized so much, staffing agency buyers, clients, they don't believe that we're going to deliver better value for lower prices. So now there's this trust recession. They're like, you know what, I don't necessarily need the highest quality people. I'm just going to use staffing for my less-skilled, my lower-value positions. So they're going to work with those partners that can align speed and convenience in value. You better have a system and a platform that's efficient to meet the market in that demand. The other structural change was just a few years ago, buyers were looking for partners that could give them people. Now it's more sophisticated. Buyers today are like, you know what, I can go get people. I recognize that most of the staffing industry is just over-reliant on job boards. We can do that. That's not valuable. We want to partner with someone that not only has the person but actually can demonstrate that they have an effective system that's multi-channel candidate sourcing to constantly, you know, those people on a regular basis and tap more into the passive talent pools with actually targeted, you know, recruitment marketing like we used to do in the old days, strong referral networks, a really healthy portfolio of recruiting to deliver talent that meets their needs. And then again, efficiency through automations and technology. So really a more comprehensive recruiting partner. If you can deliver that, I think you're going to meet the most present.

Francis Larson (Ascen) Well, Dan, wise words from a seasoned pro, thank you for being on the series.

Dan Mori (Staffing Mastery) Thank you very much.