How Recruiters Win New Clients Without Pitching on the First Call

Twenty-five minutes into a first call, it's going well. He likes your process. He's nodding. Then he says he'd be happy to look at a few CVs if you want to send some over.

You've spent half an hour proving you're worth talking to, and you leave as just one more name in his inbox.

Breaking Bad had the same problem for four years.

On 20 January 2008, 1.41 million people watched its first episode. Last month, the New York Times asked 516 actors, writers, and executives to name the best television of this century. Breaking Bad came first.

In between, it was a show almost nobody watched. Across its first four seasons, it went past two million viewers once. The critics loved it. Bryan Cranston won the Emmy for best actor three years in a row. The audience barely moved.

Then the earlier seasons went onto Netflix.

People who had never heard of it started at episode one and kept going. They caught up in weeks on what had taken years to air, then told their friends. When the final run began in August 2013, 5.9 million watched it live. The finale pulled in 10.3 million, more than five times the audience at the end of season four. Vince Gilligan has credited Netflix with saving the show.

Nothing in the show had changed. The episodes most people ignored in 2008 were the same ones millions binged later. The difference was that a stranger could now get through four seasons of it before the next episode aired, and turn up to the new one already hooked.

If you run a recruitment or search firm, you are probably sitting on your own version of those first four seasons.

The problem

Fifteen years of knowledge about one market. Every hiring mistake you've watched a client make. The reason their last three hires didn't stick. What the good candidates in that sector actually want and won't say in an interview.

All of it lives in your head, and in the memory of the clients who already work with you. None of it is anywhere a new buyer can get to.

So a hiring manager meets you for the first time on a thirty minute call, and the call has to do everything. Credibility, trust, relevance, a reason to pick you over the other names in his inbox. All of it in half an hour, with a stranger.

So you pitch. Track record, process, how fast you can shortlist. He asks for the CVs. Then he goes quiet, or the same brief lands with three other agencies and you're in a race you didn't sign up for.

Most recruiters who sell like this end up as one more name on a supplier list, because a stranger has no way to tell them apart.

Why a better pitch won't fix it

The first call is the worst place in your business to make a sale.

If the persuading happens on the call, the buyer is in charge of everything that follows. He has seen nothing of how you think. He has your promises to judge you by, and at that stage every recruiter's promises sound identical.

The usual fix is to polish the pitch. Owners spend years on it, tightening the script and sharpening the objection handling, and it keeps landing in the same place. They are asking one episode to do the work of four seasons.

What changes when the selling happens first

The buyer who commits on the first call has almost always spent time with you before you met.

He has read how you think about his market. He has heard you explain a problem he was halfway through himself. Someone forwarded him something you wrote. By the time he books, the call is a conversation about how you'd go about it, and whether you can start this month.

A solo recruiter in the SaaS space is a good example. She worked hard and was invisible. Cold calls went unanswered and her posts got a handful of likes. She started turning up where her buyers were already listening, on niche podcasts and in her own webinars for SaaS founders. Her first webinar had 15 people on it. Her third had 75, and a lot of them got in touch about hiring afterwards. One CEO opened his first call with this:

"I heard you on the SaaS Growth Podcast, then saw your LinkedIn post, then my COO forwarded me your webinar invite. It feels like you're reading our minds."

He had sold himself before she said a word. Her business doubled inside a year, and she now takes Fridays off.

The shift

Before, every new client starts from zero. You spend the first twenty minutes proving you're worth talking to. You leave with a maybe, chase it for three weeks, and win the work eventually, if he hasn't handed it to someone else first.

After, the buyer turns up halfway through the story. He opens with his problem, not a request for your credentials. He has already decided you understand his world, so the only question left is how you'd tackle it.

Among the owners we work with, one won three exclusive assignments in a single week.

One thing to do this week

Pull up your last five first meetings with new clients.

For each one, write down what that person had read, watched or heard from you before the call. If the answer is nothing, write nothing.

Then mark which of those five you had to chase afterwards.

Don't fix anything yet. Just look at whether the two lists line up.

Over to you

Think about the last client who said yes on the first call.

What had they seen of you before you ever spoke?

Drop your answer in the comments.

Where to go next

Getting buyers to arrive already sold is exactly what we help recruitment and search firm owners do.

If you want to see what that looks like in a business like yours, start with the free training at makemoreplacements.com/vsl.