Unless you have an employer brand like Google, Facebook or Amazon, you’ll need to get in line to find and locate top talent. The talent war continues to rage on. ManPower reports 39 percent of U.S. employers are still having difficulty finding candidate’s- which is 4 percent above the global average- particularly in the areas of science, technology, engineering, manufacturing, sales and accounting.

Many of you will be able to get responses to your adverts and attract interviewees, but if you really want to entice top talent to sign with you and not with your competitors, you’ll need to pitch to them well. This means that your candidate facing staff, that is, your recruiters and hiring managers, need to behave like sales people and sell your business to top talent in order to persuade them to join.

The problem is that this is not what many HR and corporate recruiters signed up for when they joined the profession. If they wanted to be in sales, they would have been in sales or become an agency recruiter, but now the profession and climate is requiring that administrative, straight-talking HR folks begin to develop a sales focus and demeanor when interviewing and engaging with candidates.

The good news is that modern sales no longer relies on the aggressive and pushy ABC (Always Be Closing) style of sales which is a world away from the more consultative HR approach. In fact, the sales process has moved much closer to professions like HR and accounting and is adopting a more gentile ABC (Attunement, Bouyancy and Clarity) style of sales. This was put forward by the modern management thinker, Dan Pink, in his book, “To Sell is Human.” This is a sales model which the HR professional can follow when attempting to adopt a sales focus during the interview as they attempt to sell the employer brand and job opportunity to top talent.

How does it work in practice? Attunement is about really listening to a candidate, taking their perspective, and understanding the key motivators, drivers and buttons, which if pushed will encourage the candidate to choose you. This could be anything such as a desire for flexible working or greater responsibility, or it could be that certain aspects of your working culture or products might appeal to them. It’s up to the recruiter to really listen and question the candidate to find out what their ‘green’ motivation button is.

Buoyancy is about your recruiters being seen as evangelists for your business, because if the recruiters don’t love their company how can you expect the candidate to put faith in it?

To be the best persuader possible, recruiters will need to demonstrate clarity, which Pink defines as being able to make a compelling closing speech or summary which completely encapsulates the candidate’s concerns and wants. It also outlines how the company and job opportunity meet those needs.

It is this kind of consultative sales approach that the modern HR and recruiting professional will need training if they are going to effectively attract and sign up the top talent in today’s competitive talent market.

Roz Bahrami is a regular blogger for Skyprep.com.