Fine Dining and Fast Food – Why ‘Fit For Purpose’ Matters to Channel Partner Recruitment

I do like a good burger. And I see nothing wrong with ordering one in a half decent restaurant if it’s on the menu. Equally, a fast food fix serves its purpose if I’m late back from a meeting with little prospect or will to make dinner when I get home. Each satisfies my need at the time.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting a Michelin star restaurant’s burger has any comparison to the thrown-together-without-care burger from my local fast food joint. But both are burgers, right?

The important thing here is I know what I’m getting from each eatery. My expectation is set and my need fulfilled accordingly. I know I should be able to go to a fast food joint of the same name (OK, let’s advertise – I am a Burger King fan) in pretty much any location, up and down the country, or even another country and select the same product, and it be the same when it comes. I know if I go to a restaurant that I expect care and attention and an understanding of the kind of customer I am, with a burger tailored to suit.

Now this may seem a stretch for some (possibly most), but I take the same attitude to partner recruitment. It’s OK, I can wait while you make the leap of faith.

Let’s take my BK experience. It’s a volume play. It scales. It’s consistent (usually), built to the same recipe and should therefore deliver the same result, regardless of location. There’s a formula that works and it’s designed to meet the basic fulfilment of my need for sustenance, as it does for tends of thousands of others. It doesn’t take into account any ‘local conditions’ and adjust accordingly, and nor do I expect it to.

If I’m recruiting at volume, across multiple countries, I take the same approach. It’s vital to figure out the formula. What’s the basic need here that we need to fulfil? Then once we know the formula, deploy consistently across the whole exercise so we can compare results and perhaps adjust the formula if we need. I don’t seek to tailor to local requirement since to do so creates complexity that I cannot scale.

So to the Michelin star burger. Think of it as a value play. It’s not meant to scale like my BK burger. If there’s more than one restaurant under the same ownership, the chef will still take time to tailor and add their own signature touches in response to the needs of the local customer base. I’m serving relatively few people and I want the experience to be reasonably individual, though based on the same core ingredients and method.

Applying those principles to recruitment, I need to take a different approach when the need is for a small handful of partners. In each country I need a deep understanding of the local market, how it differs from the last and how to adjust the mix of ingredients. If I apply my BK approach, I’ll not know enough about the local nuances to get the right result. And my customers will not approve of me taking such a formulaic approach to their exacting requirement.

As I see it, for successful recruitment you’ve got to be attuned to your client’s need. I need to offer both the fast food, fixed formula approach and the dining experience approach to be successful. And I need to make sure my clients know that and understand how I’m meeting their requirement. The end product, like the burger, is the same – a partner willing to go to the next conversation. But the need, the approach and the delivery must be ‘fit for purpose’.

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