A guest blog from Pete Ames, Head of Customer Success at The Recruitment Pioneers, a consultancy dedicated to helping SME recruiters make their business scalable.
Stop me if this sounds familiar.
1. You’ve no work on, so you put everything into BD activity. Cold Calls, Prospecting Emails & Candidate Speccing.
2. It works. You pick up spot deals and vacancies.
3. You are busy filling roles. You don’t have time for BD.
4. The roles finish, but there’s nothing to replace them.
5. Return to Point 1
It’s an extreme version of the cycle, but it’s familiar to many recruitment owners. Either for themselves, or for their team.
There’s no denying that the activities in step 1, what we call Tactical BD, are essential and can indeed win work.
However, they have downsides.
1. They are time intensive, so when vacancies are on the board they stop.
2. Requires pretty high levels of confidence and skill on part of the recruiter to succeed.
3. For those that don’t have the skill and confidence its very demoralising
4. Tends to work best in buoyant markets, and much less effective in flat markets.
5. Tend to produce poorer quality vacancies that are hard to fill or low margin
6. They rarely lead to the acquisition of high-value clients who are looking for a partner, not just a supplier.
Enter Strategic BD – a different approach that not only promises higher value, long-term clients but also offers more freedom for you, the owner.
High Value Clients
To understand why Strategic BD trumps Tactical, you need to understand what makes a high value client.
Your definition will be different to every other recruitment firm I work with but will probably look a little like this.
1. Respects their recruiter as a professional service i.e., easy to work with.
2. Has the type of roles you specialise in.
3. Don’t have enough volume to beat down your margins.
4. Do have enough volume to send you multiple roles.
5. Tend to be loyal.
Once you win that client you can be confident several roles will come your way each year. Those roles are relatively easy for you to fill, and their loyalty makes them resistant to approaches from other recruiters via Tactical BD.
Trouble is that people like that tend to bat away Tactical BD approaches. They know they are good clients, and they expect someone that believes in relationships to demonstrate it.
What is Strategic BD
Strategic BD is all about winning high value clients, not spot deals. Less about the hustle and more about the strategy.
The need to build a relationship with key decision makers means it often takes longer to land these clients, sometimes months or even years. For some that’s a reason not to do it.
I’ve two counter points.
First, it’s worth it.
The reward at the end of Strategic BD is a new client that will resist poachers, be easy to work with, give you exactly the roles you are good at and pay you well for the privilege.
Second, it’s not all or nothing.
Strategic BD can be done for just 30 minutes a day, if you set the system up right. Whilst you get started you have more than enough time to maintain your Tactical efforts UNTIL your Strategic BD starts to produce fruit.
When it does, your higher value clients will create stability in your work, and you can pivot a portion of your Tactical activity to even more Strategic activity.
The Freedom that comes with Strategic BD
So, how does Strategic BD provide more freedom for recruitment firm owners?
- It takes less time
For small companies, you only need one person doing Strategic BD. This means you, as the owner, can spend about 30 minutes a day on Strategic BD and still have a successful and growing company.That leaves you with more time to focus on other aspects of your business. - It’s tool-driven
The success rates in Strategic BD are dictated by the strength of the tools you use. Once you have nailed that system then you can have others in your team run aspects of it or take it and run it for themselves.Clients often expect Tools to mean tech so let me be clear. Tech like LinkedIn is a tool, but not all tools are tech. A great bit of content is a tool. A well-designed Ideal Client Profile is a tool. Frameworks and campaigns are tools.A tool is anything that delivers a predictable result with less skill or less time invested.
- The Clients set you free.
Strategic BD leads to the acquisition of higher lifetime value clients, and I know I keep repeating this point but it’s important.• You are winning clients who are looking for a partner, not just a supplier.
• They often hire roles that you find easy to fill
• They’re looking for a long-term relationship.
• They’re willing to pay for it.Clients like this means less time firefighting or chasing hard to fill roles. They mean less time on Tactical BD. They mean less time managing a frustrated and overworked team being asked to do lots of hard things
Implementing Strategic BD in Your Business
So, Strategic BD has benefits you want, and you like the sound of this ’30 minutes a day’ idea. How do you go about implementing it in your business?
- Understand what high-value clients look like for youWithout clarity you and your team will drift into whoever will talk to you.
So, work really hard to understand the organisations and the decision makers you are looking for. Define their motives, values and tribes they identify with.
We call this an Ideal Client Profile (ICP) and they are vital if you want a scalable recruitment business.
- Track your relationship pipeline.Create a database of high value prospects that match your ICP. That system is responsible for making sure you interact regularly and build knowledge of those people to create further interactions.
This can be done with most CRM or ATS systems but requires some configuration to make sure it holds all the data you need then prompts you when needed.
Or you could use a spreadsheet.
I’ve known senior people at huge professional services firms that make millions using, what is essentially, a little black book of contacts on an excel spreadsheet.You don’t need an expensive CRM to do this. Just discipline and no CRM in the world can give you that.
- Systematically add valueInteractions need to be more than “Gotta Job for us?” or “How are you?”.
They must focus on adding value and reinforcing your differences. This will set you apart from your competition and draw you closer to your prospect.
The trick is to learn what each of your target’s values, then deliver it. Looking for economy of scale with re-usable content wherever possible or to create events that will move people off the phone and into real life interactions.
- Test and PrioritiseYou may tip 100 good ICP matches into your pipeline. Some will rise immediately to the top as warm prospects and others will stubbornly refuse to engage.
At some point though you need to turn a relationship of value into one of business.
The easiest way to test is asking them to attend your events, either in person or online. That willingness to commit time is a reliable way of detecting whether they are starting to buy into you and your approach. Time to raise the subject of working together if they do.
The Choice You Need to Make
Strategic BD is not just about winning clients; it’s about winning the right clients. Moving you away from a hand-to-mouth existence and towards sustainable growth and personal freedom.
Focusing on the right clients, building strong relationships, and leveraging the right tools to run your business development efforts.
Yet, it cannot happen overnight. It will take time to build a system and it will take time for it to bear fruit. I believe, and many others do, that the benefits are worth it.
Ultimately the choice is yours.
There are successful businesses out there that rely on the hustle and grind of Tactical BD. They churn staff, or working incredibly hard to do it, but they grow.
Alternatively, you can choose the path of Strategic BD and enjoy the freedom it brings, whilst also making yourself more scalable.
Choose your path.
If you would like the path of Strategic BD and are interested in some guidance, then check out our deep dive into the subject on the Mike Ames Recruitment Show
Or visit recruitmentpioneers.com
Pete Ames is the Head of Customer Success at The Recruitment Pioneers, a consultancy dedicated to helping SME recruiters make their business scalable.
Based on 7 pillars shared by all successful and scalable recruitment businesses, they over a range of out of the box and customisable solutions to help owners of recruitment firms source and keep great employees, win and dominate ideal clients and deliver a recruitment service that doesn’t depend on exceptional individuals but still delivers exceptional results for clients
Pete has over a decades experience in change management and projects and along with his role as head of customer success he has taken on interim operations manager roles to help recruitment firms rapidly grow.
