"After 1 year of working with you and using LockOn, we cannot imagine doing this business without it. It is an absolute necessity in order to manage the "Beast" (recruiting business). The bottom line results of Lock-On from the education, consulting and accountability has significantly raised our skill level after 8years in this business. We cannot help but get excited when we think of where our business will be 8 years from now because of LockOn. We are competing every week with LockOn to improve our numbers leading to improving our revenues. Because of LockOn we must face the truth everyday of why or why not we are on track to be successful and achieving the numbers desired. Accountability! No excuses! Thank you Lock-On! Thank you Nico!"

-Trent Lastinger, Lastinger & Associates, LLC

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"I'm not sure that I know why but the Lock-On Report™ is doing great things for us that other tools which I'd used over the years didn't. Most of the numbers used are the same ones that seasoned recruiters would agree are important but it seems that the Lock-On Report™ causes motivation and learning which we didn't experience with other devices. Before Lock-On, we plugged the numbers into a spreadsheet and then seldom, if ever, looked at them again. With the Lock-On Report™ we are all fighting to turn red numbers to blue and blue numbers to green and to see those $$ in the right-most column. And we are having more fun doing it."

-Herschel Gurley, W.H. Gurley Associates

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Dear Nico,

I wanted to let you know that I firmly believe that working with you and the LOR has been the main reason for my being able to turn my business around since the fall. I was always willing to learn new approaches, sign up for training programs and hire coaches. But while all of these approaches gave me some valuable pieces to the puzzle, the one aspect that most of these approaches lacked was a PRACTICAL FRAMEWORK for success and an emotional attachment to the goals.

Everybody in the business talks about hitting the phones and trying to get more sendouts. But other than providing fluffy motivation to get you to make the next call or giving revised scripts to try to result in more sendouts from each call, the FRAMEWORK for success was still missing. My biggest flaw as we initially discussed (at least as it pertains to my business) was a lack of consistency in my approach and effort. I could go gang busters for a couple of months and make some placements, and then put everything into cruise control. The pipeline would empty and by the time I really started needing to generate more revenue, I was starting from scratch all over again. My focus was always on Net Cash In so if I got ahead of my goals, I found ways to distract myself because I was content with my overall revenue numbers. If I fell too far behind the NCI goals, I got frustrated and scared and ultimately shut down because I didn't really know how to get out of a slump. My life as a recruiter was a constant roller coaster ride of incredible highs and devastating lows all of which led me to feeling like I was about to burn out. I even started applying for "regular jobs" this past summer.

The beauty of the LOR is the change in my focus from Net Cash In and number of placements to a simple framework of what I must accomplish on a daily and weekly basis. By focusing on daily market connect hours goals, I don't get caught up in whether I've made a placement this week or not. I also don't rest on my laurels if I've had a successful month or two, as has been the case this quarter. By focusing on what I need to accomplish each day instead of the larger picture of how much I hope to bill all year, AND having an emotional attachment to hitting those daily goals,  I have a solid framework of how to approach this business every day to be successful in the long term. The real benefit to me has been being able to get off the roller coaster and have a more even keeled focus on the business. And the ironic part is that I haven't even hit my stride yet in terms of successfully and consistently hitting my objectives. I guess the best is yet to come!

I also truly appreciate your willingness to work with me on both the metrics that we would work with and the overall goals that I would try to hit. By changing some of the metrics, we were able to custom tailor the program to better fit my industry where the majority of my time has to focus on candidate recruiting with less time needed to generate search assignments. Also, because of my family situation (wife doing a doctorate program and teaching night classes at college while raising 6 and 3 year old boys), I am not able to always put in a full day on the phone at this point in time. By adjusting my market connect time goal down to a more reasonable number for me, I believe I will still be successful because I will still be focusing on a daily goal that will result in my spending more time on the phone more consistently than I ever did before. Plus, when my youngest is finally in school full time and my wife has completed her grad school program, I can change my goals back to the original higher levels and see just how much more successful I can be working the program at full capacity.

I would be happy to serve as a reference for anyone who is considering your program. If anyone in the business is struggling with finding a successful, consistent approach to recruiting and they want to get off of the roller coaster for good, I truly believe your Lock-On Report™ program is the best starting point to accomplish that goal.

To our mutual success!

Warmest regards,

Kirk Russell

CEO, Russell Group Associates, Inc.

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"Maybe it's our industry - professional search. Maybe it's the problem we have that's shared with all production-oriented companies when setting goals with employees. What's meaningful: for piece work, for through-put, for sales calls or volumes, for billings: How does management AND the production worker track those goals on a regular, meaningful basis - where both are engaged? The Lock-On Report has been our answer. An obvious answer? No. We are coming to see its value only kicking and screaming with resistance like children doing our nightly homework. In fact, the Lock-On Report is like homework. I've learned that it is a product requiring constant study to mine the full values. It speaks to the whole office, it addresses the individuals and it answers the questions: What's working and why and what's not working and why. But there is more. The data and ratios, valuable as they are, are only the tip of the iceberg. It's the support from Nico and Pat that make the numbers come alive with meaning and, most importantly, corrective action so performance improves. So there are three levels of participation for us as subscribers: Goal setting; an interactive exercise with employees, management and the Lock-On Report team. Goal keeping; a very difficult, never-ending discipline of holding yourself and your employees accountable for their commitment - how powerful a life-long exercise this really is. What far-reaching personal ramifications it offers. And finally, performance assessment; failure analysis to fearlessly find what went wrong and correct it. For us, the essence of Lock-On Report value comes from the interaction we have with Pat at this level. Painful as it is - so we can grow.

Backing all this up, which I certainly haven't found elsewhere, is a curriculum that addresses the performer as a whole person from just about every angle necessary to identify and eliminate all obstacles to success and simultaneously help the person, if willing, to be a more successful. We're seeing performance improvement every quarter."

-Robert C. Meissner, Jr., CSAM, MEI Search Consultants, LLC

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"The Lock-On Report™ is our firm’s performance management platform.  As a 12 recruiter firm we have a per desk billing average that exceeds $ 300,000 and I attribute a very healthy portion of that success to The Lock-On Report™.  We use it to identify weaknesses in recruiter’s performance so that we can train better.  Unlike many recruiting firms where recruiters set crazy billing goals and never hit them, our recruiters set aggressive yet realistic goals and meet and exceed them by utilizing Lock-On.  Many managers are surprised by slumps as they only manage on high level statistics, the lock on report allows us to catch slumps before they get too far and helps us get people back on track. I am convinced that Lock-On is a tool that can allow recruiters to be successful in good and bad economies alike and I speak from experience.“

-Paul Millard, The Millard Group