Q4 Priorities and EOY Housekeeping

Summary

In this power-packed episode of Highly Adaptive, Jeff Pelliccio and Erin McKenzie sit down with Tom Erb, President of Tallann Resources and one of staffing's most respected thought leaders, to decode the four mindsets that separate industry champions from the rest of the pack.

With over 30 years in the trenches, Tom reveals why success isn't about having the right skills—it's about approaching your work with the right mindset. Drawing from his experience managing teams, building businesses, and now consulting with hundreds of firms, Tom breaks down exactly how top performers think differently about their daily activities.

The conversation explores Tom's evolution from individual contributor to industry advisor, his discovery that mindset trumps tactics, and why most staffing professionals are leaving money on the table by avoiding one simple activity: picking up the phone. Tom challenges conventional wisdom about email efficiency and digital-first strategies, making the case that human connection still drives results in our increasingly automated world.

Plus, get Tom's travel hacks for the conference circuit, including his game-changing Solgaard portable closet system and his philosophy on never checking bags. This episode delivers both strategic frameworks and tactical tips that leaders can implement immediately.

Key Takeaways

Performance Mindset – Success starts with doing enough of the RIGHT activities that only you can do, not tasks that can be automated or delegated

Value Mindset – Shift from apologizing for interrupting to believing prospects are better off knowing you than not knowing you

Long Game Mindset – What you do today determines your bank account in six months—build tomorrow's pipeline while filling today's orders

Mastery Mindset – Purposefully improve through continuous learning, following thought leaders, and constantly increasing efficiency

Phone Calls Still Win – The more people you talk to, the more good things happen—email alone won't buil

Jeff Pelliccio  0:00  
 Welcome to this week's episode q4, priorities and end of year housekeeping. In this episode, Jeff and Erin share key priorities in operations, technology, business development and lead generation that every executive should consider to end the year strong and open the New Year stronger. The end of the year is not just kind of a finish line, it's really kind of that launch pad for everything that comes next. So be prepared. Get ready. Clear the clutter. Highly adaptive is a podcast where staffing and consulting leaders learn to outpace change, hosted by Jeff Pelliccio and Erin McKenzie. They'll cut through the noise to bring you practical moves you could use right now to grow, adapt and lead

Jeff Pelliccio  0:42  
q4 , priorities and end of year housekeeping, end of year planning is really about like kind of fall cleanup, winter prep, and so I hope this isn't triggering any PTSD for you. Erin, but I do have to ask, since I brought it up here, what's the status on the pair situation over there? 

Erin MacKenzie  0:57  
I have nightmares about these pairs falling. It's like, ping, ping, ping, ping, bark, bark, bark. But I will let you know that we have cleanup. Behold it is the pear tree has no pears left on it. The pears have been neatly canned. We've canned them all, which I've never done canning before in my life, and my mom has said that she's never coming over to my house during Pelliccio Again, but we have canned a lot, and we have can cans of pears. We have cans of apples. I didn't even tell you about the apples, but we've got apple pie. We've got all sorts of stuff. But, you know, this is kind of end of year, everything's off. 

Jeff Pelliccio  1:38  
So question not looking forward to next season. Your mom doesn't want to come back around for Pelliccio. Around for pear season. And you said we were canning like, is that an imperial we like, was mom doing most of the canning on this? 

Erin MacKenzie  1:48  
That could be a good reason why she doesn't want to come back over.

Erin MacKenzie  1:53  
Because while I was working, she was working on canning, and, oh my gosh, the amount of pears we had to actually throw away because we got to it a little bit too late. But we have our pears ready for the winter, for end of year, like q4 I've got pellicciolore. We're ready for this. I love it. Jeff, I have to bring you some pears. We're going to have to make this happen. 

Jeff Pelliccio  2:17  
You should definitely do it. And I see you at the events like my, at least one of my cans of pears there, for sure, 

Erin MacKenzie  2:22  
one one can of pear. We've even made apple butter. See, we've got, like this a side hustle,

Erin MacKenzie  2:29  
I know, all right, so I don't know how good it tastes yet. 

Jeff Pelliccio  2:33  
Clearly, our chores are a bit different, with me being over here in New York City, and you being over there with your Pelliccio and such. But because our chores are different, right when it comes to like, you know, me being more marketing focused and you being a bit more tech focused, I think it would be good for us to kind of live in those singular spaces and kind of go through those chore lists just to eliminate some confusion. So why don't you kick us off and talk about what your fall winter housekeeping looks like from a tech perspective, and what staffing firms should be focusing on? 

Erin MacKenzie  3:04  
Yeah, most definitely. Because I think this is a time of year where we need that reset kind of point, and looking at what do we need to do before truly year end. Because some things that a lot of folks don't really look at is renewals or credit cards and projects that are half finished. What do we need to do? Or like, look at everything and the alignment between the current strategy that they set at the beginning of the year. What do you need to do to finish it? So I kind of break this down into truly four parts, which is, what's your existing tech management? What do we look at for strategic priorities that we need to look at that are finished? I look at data and tech gaps that are within our current system. And then I always which I've brought up time and time again, but like, kind of the tech bloat or tech too skinny evaluations. So if I focus really on, like, kind of part one, which is one thing that people don't normally do is look at their renewals. And I think it's important to really make sure that you look at what type of auto renewals are set up, and is it a renewal that you do want to truly renew. So having a tracking tool, I don't know who's taking inventory on this, but make sure you know who's managing it. What's the contracts? When are they expiring? Are they going up? And then with that, what credit card do you have that's associated with it? Because if your credit card expires, small little detail, but I mean, it can lock it can lock recruiters out of systems. I mean, websites can go down, which impacts candidates coming to your site or clients that are looking you up. I mean, it definitely can impact revenue if you don't have those tiny little things in play. 

Jeff Pelliccio  4:49  
And I have a question for you. So you mentioned like renewals and renewal management, is that sort of in the same vein as like, sort of like your vendor management? Like, would this roll into that same category of individuals that are managing vendor.

Jeff Pelliccio  5:00  
Vendors would manage, also software renewals, or is this sort of like two separate parts? 

Erin MacKenzie  5:04  
I think it depends on your organization, because sometimes I see accounting, do the renewals management and look at that, I also have seen it where technology will manage it and like, have someone that's responsible for all of the inventory on that side. So I think it really depends on how large is your business? Do you have someone that's assigned? I mean, I've worn many different hats where many different things might fall into what I'm doing. So sometimes I'll look at where we add on this, what contracts are expiring. So it really kind of depends. But I think that's a key thing. The The other thing, though, that it really kind of plays into is strategic priorities, which is really my part two. So what work was started at kind of the beginning of the business year, but what have we not finished? So looking at, what are those quarterly priorities that we wanted to have complete, and do they still make sense? Like, is it something that I want to push forward? Is it something we need to cancel, or is it something that truly we kind of need to get our ass in gear and finish it before the end of the year. So let's make sure we do it and we're not kind of going down to the very, very wire to get something done, because a strategic priority is something that's on the business that's going to help us drive momentum forward. We're going to be successful. It's going to help us getting into 2026 so doing those kind of reviews of momentum versus do, are we stalled, and do we need to actually kind of complete this? And so one of the things I would say for this is like one completed initiative beats five, half done ones every single time. So if you can just complete one initiative that you know is going to help drive strategic, whether it's workflow, designs, data cleanup, integrations, reporting, whatever it might be, just kind of make sure that you do get it done, and pick one of those to be done, because you're, you know, if you haven't completed all of them, you probably won't sure kind of a big thing there. And then let me dive in, like data and tech gaps. I mean one thing that I look at, and I think is important, and I don't know if every staffing firm does this, but I look at what metrics were actually tracked over the year, and then tying those metrics back to business outcomes, whether it was what were we trying to drive at the beginning? Was it speed? Was it revenue? Was it the candidate, experience and journey? Did we actually fulfill what was our actual kind of outcomes that we were looking for? Or do we still have blind spots within our technology? So what technology is actually needed to help us better manage these metrics? So that's something that I think is really, really important, as you guys are kind of closing out in here and looking at q4 so looking at kind of all those blind spots, which really is going to be also the tech evaluation. So I mean, looking at the tech bloat, too many overlapping tools. Do you have unused licenses that were the just in case, subscriptions or the, oh my god, we need this tool, and we're not using it. So I always get people during that eval, like, it goes back up to the top, like, look at when it renew. But also ask yourself, is it being used? Is it under adopted? Do you have a change champion that's helping drive it forward, or is it confusing your users more than helping drive clarity. So I mean, every tool that isn't adopted is actually costing a staffing firm twice as much in dollars and in focus, because you don't have the clarity. You don't have Pelliccio it. So it can kind of get a little bit crazy at the end. 

Jeff Pelliccio  8:39  
You know? What I really love about this list is that if people go and do this list, they are better than 50% there for their tech stack mapping, 100% like if you actually go through and do each of these steps that you recommended, you're probably a good 60, 70%

Jeff Pelliccio  8:55  
all squared away on tech stack mapping. The only last little bit that you would need is understanding, obviously, where it fits in the flow and doing some additional work. But what a great bit of housekeeping in preparation, obviously, for end of year. But also, you know, in setting yourself up to be able to be in a in a better, more transparent position for the upcoming 

Erin MacKenzie  9:15  
year, yeah, it really kind of helps people prepare for everything that's to come. So, like, I'm going to wrap it up for everyone. I mean, basically, if you guys look at your auto renewals, auto renewals and billing, you close out at least one finished project, you look at your metrics, and are there any data blind spots that you have, or not even data but technology blind spots, and then running your tech load audit, and like looking at that, I mean, you're going to be in a good, good spot. So my recommendation, from a technology standpoint, is clean house now, because you're going to start in 2026 running really lighter, faster and more focused as an organization. So let me ask you, Jeff, I mean, you've.

Erin MacKenzie  10:00  
Probably got a lot on your end as well. What's your like? Kind of Fall, Winter cleanup. You're not cleaning up pears, what are you cleaning up on your end? 

Jeff Pelliccio  10:10  
No pairs here. We don't have any pairs here, but yeah, so mine really sort of takes a look at, you know, what's happening in the market, along with also, what does the frontline team need to perform, followed by what resources does marketing need to build? So those are sort of like my three overarching components to the sort of housekeeping and q4 and planning. So kicking it off. You know, whoever it is that's running marketing should be looking to do a competitive analysis update. So in that you should be identifying who's left the market, who's entered the market, and also revisiting like, does your brand positioning against today's competitive grouping? Does it still have good positioning, good value? And then if you aren't finding that you're competing well enough against the new landscape, then I would encourage looking at what's already happening, look at your existing process, look at your existing solutions. Don't, don't try to recreate the wheel at this stage of the game. But instead, identify those things that may be a more clear definition to them may create some branded competitive advantages. So doing a competitive analysis update, I think, is key to this time of year. 

Erin MacKenzie  11:21  
That means that everyone needs to have their competitive analysis in place to begin. 

Jeff Pelliccio  11:28  
I mean, or you could do it for the first time, and it still would be a competitive analysis. So you still get it, you still get it done, even if you know if you didn't have one before. But without a doubt, you're seeing companies come in and out of the market, you're seeing them start to refresh their resources and their offers. It is a great time to start to understand what it is that you're up against as you go into the upcoming year. Huge along with that, I would also say to review your ideal client profiles or adjust them or build them from scratch, right, whatever, wherever you are. Like setting that ICP up, I do think is important. Look at how your sales cycles have changed. Are they longer? Do they require more stakeholders? Do you need to create additional resources in order to validate who you are, where you are, what you're offering? Are there needs for greater transparency, so understanding a bit more about how the sales process and even the recruiting process has changed will allow marketing to generate the resources that they can then kind of fill those gaps with

Jeff Pelliccio  12:38  
next database hygiene. Yeah, time for a good scrub. So you want to make sure that it is clean. You also want to make sure that you could segment really well. So when I say clean, I mean has your team you know that is entering most of the things into your database. Are they still using the fields the way they're supposed to have they started using them for different things to help them with their individual pipelines? This is the time to sort all of that stuff out and course correct it. 

Erin MacKenzie  13:04  
I'm, like, picturing a database brushing their teeth and, like, flossing and, you know, just make it, having a shower daily. 

Jeff Pelliccio  13:12  
Like I had, like, a loofah in my head, you know, like, I think, yeah, it is. It

Jeff Pelliccio  15:00  
Four, but also to support q1 what, 

Erin MacKenzie  15:04  
what all is, like the resource building that we need to have was that kind of where you're driving before, like, what's, what's the key things there? 

Jeff Pelliccio  15:11  
Sure. So in terms of some key resources, salary guides are still wildly effective because they're so predictive, yeah. So salary guides are really, really good for staffing firms, if you don't want to do a salary guide, at least a white paper that talks about market trends or it talks about supply and demand issues, or maybe even, like you know, opportunities within given industries that you serve, if you're really niche, those are really good interactive campaigns. End of year is a great time to do annual planning exercises where you just invite them into a meeting so that, that way you can provide advisement based on your expertise a great idea, or again, events, yeah, and then all of those things that you build, they all can get delivered in q4

Jeff Pelliccio  15:55  
but they also can be leveraged in January. And it's important to make sure that you have that overlap of efforts, because January is really when you're trying to get past that holiday hangover, right where everybody is still like, you know, they're still in holiday mode, they still have, you know, their holiday brain. They're really, not really focused just yet. 

Erin MacKenzie  16:15  
I'm liking this, the holiday hangover. This is, this might be like a movie coming to you. 

Jeff Pelliccio  16:22  
Let's just hope it stops at the first one and doesn't go into sequels, you know. But, yeah, the holiday hangover. It's a real thing. It's a real problem. And you know, if you stage things properly and coordinate them across those teams, make sure that they understand what's being delivered and also what the expectations are in using it, then you really have a very tight structure. So those are my housekeeping tips to get you through market activities and also supportive. Build out. 

Erin MacKenzie  16:51  
No, I love this. So basically, don't just celebrate the wins. Yeah, make sure you clear out the like clutter, pick up your pairs. Go through everything. And, I mean, I think the firms that are going to take these steps now are the ones that are going to, like, truly hit the New Year with like clarity and not the chaos. Because, I mean, because really, like, the end of the year is not just kind of a finish line. It's really kind of that launch pad for everything that comes next. Yeah. So be prepared. Get ready. Clear the clutter. I love it. 

Jeff Pelliccio  17:26  
Yeah. You know, like Winter's coming and a new year is on the horizon. So these are the greatest ways that you can really stage your organization and have you pointed in the right direction to have that growth that you're looking for in the upcoming year. 

Erin MacKenzie  17:38  
I love it. 

Jeff Pelliccio  17:40  
All right. Well, this has been good. I hope it's been helpful, and I can't wait to do another session with you. 

Erin MacKenzie  17:45  
This is gonna be great. We are super thankful for everyone, so thank you guys, and we'll see you next time. 

Jeff Pelliccio  17:50  
If this episode was helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues and subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts and Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts while you're there, consider leaving us a review, and when you're ready for more, Industry Insights, articles, case studies and more, find it on all things, staffing.com

Jeff Pelliccio  13:20  
is time to make sure your database is ready to show up. Yeah, so making sure that it's clean and ready to go, making sure your segmenting is in place, so that that way you know that when you want to run a campaign, either nationwide, regionally, state specific, vertical, specific, industry specific, role specific in terms of seniority, you should be able to flex that database in all of those ways in order to help support your corporate initiatives. As you go forward after that, it's a really good opportunity to identify what are going to be the activities for q4 end of year. So from a sales and recruiting perspective, what is it that we're doing? Are we reviving previous clients or previous candidates, where we're trying to sort of re engage with companies or with individuals who had previously worked with our company, with our staffing firm. Are there any farming exercises that you want them to perform which will allow you to extend your reach into given companies and get better penetration, both of which, by the way, are your fastest paths to revenue because they already know who you are as a brand? Or Are there efforts that you're going to be putting in place in order to nurture the community that you're serving? So do you have additional outreach efforts that you're doing, whether it be in person events, virtual events, or supporting the conversation through being a part of a panel or hosting? So those types of activities that are going to be prescribed for a successful q4. Those are important to understand and know so that that way, again, marketing can build the resources to help support you in your in your approach. Huge. Next you've got resource building. So because resources take a minute to build, it's important that marketing starts building those things now. For Q.

Jeff Pelliccio  18:09  
this episode was produced and edited by me, Jeff Pelliccio, and the Music provided by home music stock. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.