When the going gets tough...
Prices go down in a tight market, right?
You’d think prices would go down in a downturn. For many, they have.
But I caught up with three of my recent clients, and all have seen their prices go up in the last 12 months.
One agency has increase their average fee by £500
Another agency has upped their fees by 10%
A third agency has shifted to 100% retained business
None of these agencies are ‘killing it’. They’ve all seen a drop in job flow since the glory days of 2022.
But they continue to believe in their value. The higher fees offset some of the pain of a tough market and - more importantly - they’re ready to capitalise when job flow picks up again.
By the way, this improvement isn’t just for perm recruitment. The ops director of the first agency told me their temp margins are up 10% in the last six months. While we tackled temp pricing in a different way to their perm pricing strategy, both were based on a belief in the value they’re providing their clients.
The CFO of a big agency told me recently that they can’t just wait for the market to come back to them; they felt they had to take control of their own destiny when it comes to driving revenue after a rough time.
The results from the three recent clients of mine show that you can take control of your situation, even in a tough market. And you’ll be in a much stronger position when the recruitment rollercoaster starts to go up again.
If you want to learn how I can help you improve your prices, simply reply to this email and I’ll explain what we do next.
Jon
P.S. I don’t just monitor prices with the agencies I work with. Fill rates are also up across all three examples - which comes from clients valuing their service and committing to work properly with them.
If you want to learn how I can help you improve your prices (and fill rates), simply reply to this email and I’ll explain what we do next.