Soaring at the final hurdle
Make sure your BD effort ends in success
Most recruiters are focusing on BD in 2025. But too many risk doing all the hard work of finding new business and then letting it slip through their hands.
And it’s not just wasted effort on BD. You’ve invested huge amounts of time and money in your brand, your website, your ‘who’ and ‘why’, your LinkedIn posts and networking - all with the aim of winning more business.
But… if you end up having to match other recruiters’ rates for contingent work with uncommitted clients, it’s fair to ask whether all that effort (and expense) was worth it.
I see so many great recruiters falling at the final hurdle because their client doesn’t see the value in what they do. The tragedy is that these recruiters offer huge value… but they can’t get it across to their clients.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Clients need good recruiters, and chances are you already offer more than enough value to win retained work at the rate you deserve. But you need to make sure you’re using a proven way to turn your BD efforts into high-value work.
Soaring at the final hurdle means all that effort was worth it. You turn open vacancies into engaged clients who treat you as an expert partner. Your fill rate rockets, which means you get paid for more of the work you do. And you have confidence that your next BD efforts will lead to even more high quality work.
If you want your BD efforts to end in high-value assignments, simply hit the reply button and I’ll explain how I can help.
Jon
P.S. I’m not interested in getting into the contingent vs retained debate here. My point is that you want - need - committed clients who are engaged in the process.
There are various ways to lock-in commitment from your clients. Sadly too many recruiters have been trained to believe that multi-agency work with unengaged clients is ‘normal’. And potentially valuable discussions about commitment often end up in overly simplistic arguments about ‘retainers’, which distracts from the bigger question of how we win great business on our terms.
If you want your BD efforts to end in high-value assignments, simply hit the reply button and I’ll explain how I can help.