The retainer you're waiting to earn is the one you'll never win

A recruiter told me last month he'd get onto retained work "once he'd proven himself" to a few more clients. He'd been saying a version of that for nine years. Nine years of contingency, of three-way splits on the same role, of quoting a fee and then quietly knocking ten percent off it before the client even pushed back. And still waiting for the day he'd earned the right to ask for more.

He never earned it. Because that's not how it works.

Retained isn't something you graduate to

Most owners who came up through contingency carry the same belief without ever saying it out loud: retained business is something you graduate to. You do the contingent work, you build the relationship, you deliver a few placements, and then, once you've shown them you're safe, you raise the idea of an exclusive arrangement.

It sounds sensible. It's the reason your fees have barely moved in five years.

The client you've been servicing on contingency has already decided what you are to them. You're the firm they call alongside two others when a role opens up. You're the one who sends CVs on spec and hopes. Every contingent placement you make for that client doesn't move you closer to retained. It confirms, one more time, exactly where you sit in their mind. You're not building toward exclusivity. You're reinforcing the arrangement you want to escape.

You don't earn the right. You position for it.

Here's what most of the industry won't say, because the whole contingent model is built on the opposite belief: you do not earn the right to work retained. You position for it, or you don't get it. The two are decided before the brief ever lands.

Chasing contingent work first, to prove yourself worthy of retained work later, is the single biggest thing keeping owners stuck in the cycle. It feels like progress. It's actually the trap closing. The recruiter who "just takes the contingent role for now to get a foot in the door" has already lost the exclusivity conversation, because he's told the client, in the only language clients listen to, that he'll work for nothing until chosen. Nobody pays a retainer to the person who already agreed to work on spec.

The owners winning retained and exclusive assignments aren't better recruiters than you. Most of them were doing exactly what you're doing eighteen months ago. They stopped trying to earn the retainer. They started deciding, before the first real conversation, that retained was the only way they'd take the work.

The terms are set before the brief even lands

The reframe is this. A retainer isn't a reward for a relationship. It's a decision about how the work gets structured, and that decision gets made at the start of the conversation or it doesn't get made at all. By the time you've "proven yourself," the terms are already set, and they were set by the client, in the client's favour, the moment you agreed to compete for free.

Most owners who wait to raise exclusivity until they've built trust end up never raising it, because the relationship hardens around the contingent terms they opened on. The ones who break out don't wait. They walk into a contingent brief and, mid-conversation, without pressure and without discounting to get there, turn it into an exclusive assignment. They lock exclusivity in before a competitor has even seen the role. Same client. Same brief. A completely different position in the room, chosen on purpose.

That's not a personality trait. It's a set of specific moves, run in a specific order, at a specific point in the conversation. The words exist. Most owners have simply never been handed them, so they default to the only script they know: send the CVs, do the work, hope it turns into something more.

Take an owner we worked with who'd run his firm on pure contingency for over a decade. Same belief as everyone else, that retained was for the big search houses and he'd get there eventually. He didn't change sectors, didn't chase new clients, didn't work harder. He changed how he entered the conversation. From one hundred percent contingency to four retainers in three weeks.

Two versions of the same month

Picture the two versions of the same month.

In the first, you take four contingent briefs. You compete on all four. You place two, if the market's kind. You split a fee. You chase the client for feedback that never comes, and you end the month roughly where you started, hoping next month's roles turn into something with more commitment behind them.

In the second, you take two briefs. Both retained or exclusive. Fee agreed up front, work paid for whether or not the perfect candidate walks through the door in week one. You're not one of three. You're the only one. The client is now invested in you succeeding, which changes every conversation you have with them from that point on. Owners we work with have gone from zero retained business to over half their book retained inside a year, on the same client base they already had.

Fewer roles. Higher fees. More control. And you stopped competing for free.

Count the roles you're working for free

Go and look at your current live roles. Count how many you're working on with no commitment from the client, alongside other firms, for a fee you'll only see if you win the race. Not the ones you wish were exclusive. The ones you're actually competing on for free right now.

That number is the size of the problem. It's also the size of the opportunity, because almost every one of those clients could have been approached differently, and most of them still can be.

Worth a few minutes this week if you've ever knocked money off a fee before the client even asked.

If you've been running your firm for more than five years and you're still working mostly on contingency, waiting for the retained work to arrive once you've earned it, I'd ask you honestly: what's another five years of waiting actually going to cost you?

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Next Wednesday, live

I'm running a live workshop on exactly this next Wednesday, 5 August.

It's called How to Win Retained and Exclusive Roles in the Next 90 Days, and it's for owners of established recruitment and search firms who are tired of competing for free. We're covering the four things this article only touched: how to get in the room with decision-makers who actually want retained arrangements, why "earning it on contingency first" keeps you stuck and what to do instead, the specific words that turn a contingent brief into an exclusive one mid-conversation, and how top performers lock in exclusivity before a competitor ever sees the brief.

You'll be able to use it on your next client conversation, not in six months.

It's for owners and directors only, and it's live, so bring the client situation you're stuck on. Save your spot here: makemoreplacements.com/win-retainers