Want to stand out? Act like an outsider

How I learned the value of taking big, bold leaps

When Sir Alec Reed tasked me with setting up an executive search service for his recruitment business, Reed wasn’t known for senior level recruitment. 

I needed to do something different.

After decades of success with high street offices and a mass market job board, clients didn’t think to go to Reed consultants with their executive vacancies.

I needed to turn our clients’ perceptions from “they’re not exec search experts” to “I want to work with them”.

This is a much bigger shift in attitude than if we’d been an established exec search firm looking to persuade more clients to work with us. So we had to offer more value. Much more.

While you could see this as a more difficult challenge, I found myself at an advantage  because I had to go big with our offer. I had to find meaningful ways to differentiate our service from every other exec search firm, and create obvious differences between our well-known recruitment approach and our new search offering.

By comparison, an established exec search firm would have been looking to get a few steps ahead of their competitors. It might have felt significant to them, but more often than not clients struggle to spot the difference when we tweak our messaging.

Back at Reed, I needed to take a giant leap.

So we did. Through a mix of tapping into what clients really valued and pushing through some big internal changes, we started taking business off the traditional senior level firms and placing key strategic hires around the UK.

The lessons I learned from this experience have informed so much of my work around value and differentiation. I’m not always helping recruitment leaders break into completely new markets, but I can always pull on my experience of making big, bold statements that tap into what clients value.

If you’re trying to make a big leap in your business and want support from someone who’s been there and got the t-shirt, simply reply to this email and we can take it from there.

Jon

P.S. If you think I could only make a big leap because I had the resources of a giant recruitment brand behind me, you’re missing the point.

Smaller agencies are almost always playing the ‘challenger’ role. In addition, they usually have the leadership structure to be bolder than the established market leaders.

If you’re trying to make a big leap in your business and want support from someone who’s been there and got the t-shirt, simply reply to this email and we can take it from there.