Business Development Strategy & Planning

The Problem:

Are your consultants getting a return on the time they invest in business development?

The secret to effective business development is good planning. Improve your approach to planning BD activity and you’ll fix problems with quality and quantity.

The Solution:

• Use different types of business development activity to build strong client relationships.
• Develop a personal strategy to improve how you source, qualify and nurture new clients.
• Organise your target clients and make the CRM work for you.
• Build detailed daily and weekly plans so you always know who to call next and why.

High-Value Business Development Activity

The Problem:

How often do clients take your calls or respond to your emails?

If all you do is ask them for vacancies you’re going to make yourself unpopular fast. It’s what most consultants do. If you want to elevate yourself above the competition, you need to provide more value to the client.

The Solution:

• Tailor your approaches for initial and follow-up phone calls.
• Identify which skill-sets get your clients excited and use the right candidate profiles to start business conversations.
• Use a multi-call process to chase leads and increase your close rate.

Business Questioning & Client Meetings

The Problem:

Most clients see Recruiters as CV machines.  However Recruiters have the potential to add real value to a client through market and industry insights.   Yet these benefits are unlikely to be realised over the phone or email.  Only through face to face client meetings and high level questioning is a Recruiter likely to be in a positition to share their market insights and elevate themselves above the competition. 

The Solution:

• Understand the benefits to the client of a face to face meeting, before, during and after a recruitment process. 
• Learn how to research your clients so you can talk to them about their business, not just their recruitment needs.
• How to use advanced business questioning through the client meeting to gain higher level insights. 
• Following up on meetings to improve client buyin and generate opportunities. 
• How to build successful relationships with internal recruiting teams.

Account Expansion Strategies 

The Problem:

Recruiters can be messy eaters… too often they have one contact in an organisation that gives them regular work, but are “too busy” to expand beyond that one relationship.  This means that competitors take market share that should be yours.   In good times agencies can afford to be proffligate with this approach, in tougher times they pay dearly.  

The Solution:

• Building a Bronze, Silver, Gold strategy for high potential accounts. 
• Understanding how to cross sell and network across an organisation
• How to engage in strategic conversations to move up the value chain
• Discovering upsell opportunities for project work, PSL’s and retained search
• Building relationships with non-line stakeholders (internal recruitment and procurement)

Value Proposition and Negotiation

The Problem:

Do your consultants really believe the service they provide is better than the competition? Can they convince your clients?

Working hard for low fees is soul destroying. Consultants need to build their belief in the service they provide so they can charge more and defend their price.

The Solution:

• Define how and explain why your service is better than the competition.
• Question techniques that build the need for your services.
• How to defend your initial price.
• Win-Win Negotiation skills.

Candidate Control and Influence

The Problem:

Too many Recruiters think they can CONTROL a Candidates behaviour.  The reality is no Recruiters good enought to make a Candidate do something they do not want to do.   All Recruiters can do is work to anticipate and mitigate candidate risk through building a mutually beneficial relationship with a Candidate

The Solution:

• Improve candidate relationships through deeper questoning registration stage
• Reducing plcaement risk proactively discussing challenging topics such as counter offer
• How to assess and mitigate candidate risk through the placement process. 
• Managing candidate and client expectations through the placement process
• Converting offers into starts through a robust pre-placement nurture process.