Business Development Culture: The Secret Recipe
Are You Making Time for Business Development?
How good are you and your team at winning new business and retaining existing clients? Proactive business development is critical to the success of any recruitment business, but many of us struggle to make time for it.
Feast and Famine Billing Cycle
Many recruiters follow a feast and famine cycle. They put all their effort into business development until they get a vacancy. Then they put all their focus into trying to fill the vacancy. Once they fill, or fail to fill, the vacancy, it’s back to business development until they get the next vacancy. This approach makes it hard to predict performance. It also creates a lot of stress for everyone involved. Proactive business development activity can prevent this, but it’s hard work. It can be emotionally draining. Many consultants avoid would rather search a CV database, or use LinkedIn, than pick up the phone to someone they don’t know.
What are the Benefits of a True BD Culture?
Managers who do develop proactive BD cultures reap the rewards of:
- Higher job fill rates
- Higher fee levels
- Higher volume of placements per consultant
- Higher levels of control when working vacancies.
We’ve put together an 11 point checklist to share the key features we find in recruitment firms with high performing BD cultures.
