Why I worry when recruiters say they don’t discount
Fortune favours the brave...
When I talk to consultants in a recruitment business, many of them say “I don’t discount”.
However, this doesn’t add up because I regularly hear recruiters say they struggle to hit their target despite lots of hard work and plenty of placements. After a little questioning it turns out many of them don’t need to discount…
… because they’re already going in at the cheapest rate they can!
The bottom line is, negotiating with clients is painful because we’re dealing with senior people who expect us to drop our rates. Add to that the justifiable fear of losing the business, and you’ve got a recipe for low rates.
So I understand why you might duck these difficult conversations.
But... avoiding the hard conversations costs you SO MUCH MONEY in lost fees!
Back-of-an-envelope example: if you’re billing £200k a year but settling for 15% rather than justifying why you charge 18%, then you’ve lost £40k a year.
£40,000 extra for some honest consultant-to-client conversations? Every year for the rest of your career? This is a life changing sum of money, and all you need is a plan to help you confidently justify your fees.
Look: negotiation is hard, but the benefits of having a sound negotiation strategy are huge.
If you’d like some help with this, simply reply to this email, and we’ll talk.
Jon
P.S. It’s difficult to do hard things, but in my experience the answer is to create and follow a process.
Then you’re not doing hard things; you’re following your process. Plus, every time you follow your process, you get better.
So if you’d like some help putting together your negotiating process, just reply to this email and we’ll talk.