Behind the Numbers: Ethan’s £70K Weekly GP Story and His Strategies

[Music] Welcome back to another episode of the Recruitment Mentals Podcast. This week I sat down with Ethan Hall from the Interext Group. Me and Ethan sat down over two years ago on the podcast and there's one of our most listened to episodes. This then he's achieved some pretty impressive milestones. At his peak he got his contract book to 70k weekly GP and 105 contractors. Since then there's been as we all know challenges in the market so what we did in this conversation is break down the 10 strategies that Ethan believes he's used to become a £2 million contract biller and also the strategies that he's now using to get back to the heights of 2022. So really expect practical strategies tactics that you can use and apply to your recruitment desk that hopefully can enable you to smash through any performance barriers, performance ceilings that maybe you feel like you have and hopefully there can be some really tangible things in here for you that you can start using. Enjoy this week's episode. Ethan, welcome back to the podcast. Very much. Good to be back. Two years on. Yeah, sat down 200 bit years ago and we thought good timing to talk about what's been going on since we last sat down. So I guess just to paint a bit of a pitch for everyone, feel free to let me know if I get any of this wrong or fill in some of the blanks but I remember when we did sit down you're talking about some of the milestones that you wanted to get to all the goals that you had. Definitely I remember you saying when they listen back to it around you hit one milestone of getting to like 35k weekly GP then you're thinking right the next one the next one. So since we last sat down a couple of big things that you should definitely be proud of one came a shareholder and Inter-X group. That's a big one. That's a huge one. It's really exciting. Obviously a lot of people that listen to this podcast are high performing and we'll find themselves in a position where their directors are saying this is something that you can achieve. It doesn't always materialize so I think that's awesome that that's happened with Inter-X. We're going to talk a bit to their round the strategies that you're applying now but also what you feel has enabled you to get to this peak but your peak contract but wise was 70k weekly GP 105 contractors. That's huge. Good old days. I missed them days. Yeah, always some days were still there. So that was end of 2022. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to talk a bit about what's been going on since in terms of like the infrastructure and how being part of Inter-X how they've enabled you to be able to do those numbers. So you can tell me if I get in this wrong bit in terms of the setup obviously your world and your niche which you've been really focused on nearly for a decade now is Microsoft Dynamics. Yeah. Yeah. Now any contractors, any deals that are happening in that that's you. Yeah. So obviously started my career in recruitment 10 years ago and I always stayed in the same market which was Microsoft Dynamics which is in the ERP space. I was pretty much just doing that until the year 2022 where it was basically just myself and at the time I had one DC that was supporting me but most of the time it was myself on delivery as well. And then coming into 2023 is when that's slightly changed. I took a bit of a different role, I focused on client expansion, growing the accounts across all areas. So it wasn't just Dynamics, I was covering cloud infrastructure, modern workplace data, really growing it. But up until 2022 it was just doing Dynamics and then literally only until a couple months ago I've decided to come back to Mail Market again and focus on Dynamics. Okay, cool. But then if you do pick up work outside of that from your clients you get support on that because obviously Inter-X have the delivery function. Yeah. So up is now everyone in the company is free 60. We don't build a business based on having loads of delivery consultants and only sourced people. Everyone is free 60 but then we have a designated delivery team where that's focused on any accounts that come into the business that might fall outside of market or outside of region. We passed to the delivery team. Yes, I focused on Dynamics 365 which is myself but then I still manage big accounts where we're getting roles outside of Dynamics which will go to delivery where I passed it to delivery. They find the candidates, manage the candidate process and then I just manage the client and the client process. Okay. Because I think that's important to make sure people are clear on that because I think often when we think about these big numbers people thinking about how's Ethan doing that all on his own, what's the setup, what's the support. So you're obviously in the environment and the infrastructure that's enabling you to really maximize your client relationship and do the best job that you can obviously. Yeah. Back in 2022 when I was at my peak pretty much it was just myself and one delivery consultant. So I didn't really have a delivery team. Right. So I just used myself and one D sit at the time and then going into 2023 is when I kind of changed for me. And then the other bit to know again, let me know if there's some updates on this. But if we look at 2022, obviously you've always been quite diverse haven't you. We spoke about this last time in terms of like where your contractors are. If we were to like die set your book at the peak where it was at 70k weekly GP, you had contractors and clients in Main and Europe, US and then Africa as well. Everywhere. I didn't say no to anyone. At the time I had delivered everywhere. So North America, South America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia, the only place I didn't deliver was Australia, just because it was impossible. Other than that, I delivered to every corner of the globe. Okay. What about now? Is there more of a bit of a focus now? Is there still like that? No, it has split. Naturally because the company's grown, we've got two offices in the US and it's growing without a split. So I no longer focus on the Americas now. My focus purely is now is Europe, Middle East, Africa and some parts of Asia. But the whole Americas time zone is moving on somebody else. Got it. Other bit that I think will be interesting to people. So when we had this contract book at the peak, the client spread was about 10 or 11 clients. 40 to 50% of your contractors at that point. So nearly like 40 to 50 contractors was in one client. Yeah. So at my peak, I'd say probably one account had around 50 contractors. Another account had about 20 to 30 and then another account had 10 and then not a few other accounts that had like ones and twos and freeze. Yeah, I think that's just really helpful for people because I think again, into being more and more contractor recruiters, I think if you're getting to these sorts of numbers, there's a lot that goes into it. But oftentimes you're going to find them say I've got one or two accounts where a big chunk of my contractors are versus like imagine if you had that 40 split across like 10 different clients. To be honest, I've never met anyone that has grown to let's say 30, 40, 50 care week with like, low-just spot business. Everyone's got one to three accounts that has the vast majority. But then spot business is great, but you can't scale and grow to those numbers because the whole point of getting to those numbers is to stop becoming a recruiter, become more of a partner and you become more of a managed and outsourcing service. So you can't do that doing spot business because spot business is classic recruitment. The way you get to those numbers is by being a partner which is a different kind of setup where you need those big accounts. Yeah, makes sense. Then in my very, you have to educate me on this, but what was like the sort of bread and butter of like this skill set of your contractors, what did that look like typically at this time and maybe even now like what's normally always the types of contractors that you're placing? Yeah, so in my market, functional consultants was always the key hires. So it's always functional consultants, solution architects, projects and program managers and developers. Other than that, I didn't really look outside of it. I'm very strict on what I look at, especially when it comes in dynamics. I focus on what I know because luckily I've been doing a job 10 years right. So as soon as a request come in, I know exactly who to call. There was no recruitment. I just knew who to call the numbers there. That was it. And the way I did that was by focusing on the role, the area, the location and that's why it was so easy. But those roles are the typical ones. I wouldn't really look outside of that unless I was passing into delivery where somebody else is doing the role. If it wasn't dynamics, that's really helpful. Okay. And then we can get a bit into like how things have taken shape since this period. If we were to look at like a timeline, how long do you think it took you overall to get to that peak, do you think? Because I think that's good for people to know like how long can actually take. I know there's the harder you work, the luck you get, I'm a huge believer in that. But like how long do you think it took you to get to that peak, do you think? Do you know what the massive growth was quite fast? What took me a while was it took me about five years to get to about 20 K a week, which was with loads of end customers as well, come at the time in dynamics. And then when I cracked this one account, that's what took me from 20 K a week to like 30, 35 quite quickly. But in terms of getting to 70 K a week, it took me about two years from like 30, 35 K a week to 70. For five years grinding, getting to that point and then there's a few like tipping points. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe even less, maybe like 18 months, the months just become huge. Like it was just six figure months back to back to back for a long period of time. So there would be some months where I was adding like 15 K a week to my book. I've my biggest month was at 17 K a week. I had some huge numbers. Yeah, it was huge. That's crazy. Yeah, crazy. Yeah. And then, then, let's keep it real here. Like you said before we were chatting, it's been really varied from the conversations I've had. There's plenty of people that have found it really tough this year. Yeah, there's like pockets where they're success. I think what I always say to people what I learn every year is like LinkedIn isn't the truth. Do you know what I mean? Oh, I saw Instagram. So fake. So fake. of how long it took you to get to those peeps, you've already said you miss those days. What's been happening since then, and then we can tie it back into what we're going to talk about today are ultimately eight to ten strategies that you fill. You've doubled down on it so they're able you to get to that peak and ultimately the things you're going to be implementing now to hopefully get you back to those days. But I've always been going on since. Yeah, I think we all have to be honest now and say 2022 wasn't normal. Ten years in recruitment, that was my biggest year in recruitment and probably will be our biggest. It wasn't normal times. Everyone was smashing it. Everyone was hitting records, breaking numbers. And it was easy. could call 10 clients and pick up five jobs. It was just times what easier. There's a massive boom after COVID and it's just the right time, the right place. I was with the working with the right company that had a massive boom that loads of demand and luckily I had the network to deliver it. So I'm not going to sit here and say that I've cracked it and I'm the best recruiter in the world. It was just that I had a very good client. It was very good timing and because I had such a good network over the eight years at the time I built up, it was easy for me to deliver. And that's why I got to those numbers as well as just being consistent and working hard. Going into 2023, that's when there was a massive dip for everyone and it was very up and down. So from getting to 70 KW, I think I'll entered February and it dipped down to like 60. So I lost like 10 KW off for a month. And then throughout 2023, it was just kind of going between 50 and 60 KW the whole year pretty much. Coming into 2024 again, kind of stayed the sort of same. And then again, I've had some ups and downs. So it wasn't a normal year, but I'm now in a position now where it's kind of back to the grind and it's back to normality. Everyone's talking about the market's crash. It's really hard. It's really difficult. It's just normal now. It might be slightly harder than before COVID, but I think we're just comparing it to the year where everyone was smashing. It was really easy. The recruiter was smashing it in all his big targets that were seen as the best recruiters in industry. They get them found out now because they're trying to work the same way and he's not working. That's hopefully what this podcast can help with is like playing a bit more of a picture because if you can imagine like if you joined the industry in like 2122 and then like you said, your only experience was like doing crazy numbers. You got nothing else to compare it to. Of course. It's going to be really tough. So you've got the advantage there in terms of you've got a whole decade to look at and be like it has been this tough. Like this is normal where some people haven't. So I think that's really just a great insight for people. So let's get into, because I know these are the things that we thought about right in terms of strategies that you feel like you've deployed, doubled down on. That's enabled you to achieve the things that you have and also going to be the things that you're going to be applying now. You know, when you say back to the grind. So why don't we start? This isn't in by means any order. But what I found in doing more and more contract recruiter which want to get your take on is they do have really ruthless standards on only working with the best contractors. And this also come in sides with really getting to grips of your market in your industry and your niche. So you've already told us the particular skill sets you're always looking at sounds like you stay pretty disciplined to that. But then you're part of an infrastructure like Interex where you can also benefit from your relationships and get support on other things outside of that. So the more you do that, the more you're going to understand what companies have really high standards for contractors. If those contractors work there, then there's probably a good sign that they're decent. And also this goes into which I think also I've learned is if you can also increase the percentage of contracts that get extended, that's huge as well, right? In terms of protecting your book and maintaining those numbers. So why don't you just talk to a bit about Ethan's perspective on that, like how crucial was this for contract recruiters to really be disciplined with trying to make sure you're working with the best contractors? Yeah, definitely. Well, your network is definitely your wealth. You can't go far in this game. We've haven't got a good network. Our product is people, right? So you need to know good people. Again, you know, if you've been doing this job a long time, naturally, you are going to have the benefit of knowing good people. But in those early days, it is just talking to candidates. I know people don't like it and it is long doing it. But the best way to become an expert is by finding the best product, speaking to the best candidates and networking and working with the best. So when you're working with a customer, right? They want to get the best value and then we get the best candidates. So it was so important for me that when I was working on positions, working on roles and requests that I was only going to the best people because those CVs and those people are a reflection on me. And when I'm talking to clients and very direct, I'll say to them, you're talking to the best contract recurring dynamics. I work with the best people and I am the best in its proven. I can't back that up if I'm sending terrible CVs, right? So I need to make sure I'm working with the best people. So I was always very far on who I selected. I'd box off the market, speak to absolutely everyone. I wouldn't just speak to free candidates. I wouldn't speak to for our send them. I'll speak to these 10 candidates. Then so right, these are the top three, and I'll send those people. So that's a representation of me that you're working with the best. And always get the recommendations from other contractors. Good people know good people and a good way of knowing good people is seeing where people are working. So when you're speaking to contractors knowing where they're working, what projects they're working on and the types of companies they're working with, big companies, usually work with good people. If they're paying a lot of money for someone, they're working with quality. So again, finding out where your contractors work. And if you can see there's a pattern where they're working on these big projects, big companies, high revenue companies, it's normally a good insight that they're good, especially they've been working there for 12 months, 18 months, two years. So let's just talk about this just for a sec, because I think there'll be some bits in there that might be helpful for people. And this might be something that people feel like they already know, but it's more about being reminded right, versus then. So just a couple of things that I've learned, and then you can tell me what you think. So one of the ways that you can get a better grasp, besides just like doing more reps, speaking to more people, and just getting more experience, is if you understand from a client perspective, so if this contractor is working with this particular business, and you know it in that business, that they have a pretty stringent process on on-boarding contractors that weeds out people that aren't that good, that's one thing. So I feel like that's something that I've learned in terms of not all companies are equal in terms of how they onboard contractors. And if you know X company has worked with this contractor, you know they would have gone through certain hoops that should mean that they're better quality. We'll get back to the episode in just one minute, but today I'm excited to talk to you about one of our partners Sourcewell, the industry leading business development and headhunting platform. 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So click the link in the show notes or you can go directly to Sourcewell.com/damo. Some clients they want to do background checks, have ten interviews, like find it where they live, they want to do all kinds of things right. And then there are some clients that just say one chat, get them on board. I don't think a client's process is linked to how good the candidate is. I think it's more just down to the forest search from the person doing the qualification. A lot of people when they're speaking to candidates, it's like, "Are you available? Do you fit in the budget and are you based in that country where you can go on site?" For example, that's not really qualifying the skills. Finding if somebody's good is when you're pressing two or three times in a question about their experience. So for example, if you're asking how long you've been doing this job ten years, okay, in those ten years, how many projects have you done? How have been successful? How many of those have you been extended on? How many have you come back to in the future in the past? There's so many questions you can ask to really find out if someone's good. If someone's joining the project, they're there for like three to six months. They go to another one. Most likely they're not a good candidate because I know in my industry, if you're a good candidate on a project, you're going to be there for a year, 18 months, two years, sometimes even more. So it always comes down to being very specific on the qualification, not just asking one question, ticking the box and moving on. Ask a question. They give you the answer and go back with a further question and so on. So you need to probe a bit further because most recruiters don't and that's when you beat your competition and you really understand who the best people are. Yeah, okay. That's really good inside. So to build on that then again, it's something that I've learned from another great contract recruit. You might use this framework, but he uses this framework when he's selling in contractors, but links back to what you're saying, which he calls Fab which is featured advantage benefit. Yeah, I don't know if you use that. It's a very old school sales technique. Yeah, so but the bit what I just want to highlight is the benefit bit. The bit that he highlights is like great contractors will be able to explain what they did on projects and they'll be able to understand the benefit in terms of the impact it had on the project in terms of the benefit to the actual client that they're working for. So then if that makes sense, but I feel like that's also something that I've learned, which I found interesting in terms of a great contract will be able to answer those questions and the even better ones will be able to go and because of that, the client was able to speak, let's just say it was easier for users to use the platform that we created or the like just the actual benefit of what they did. I thought that was quite interesting. Yeah, I mean, that that's the difference between a good salesman and a recruiter. A recruiter is someone who works with HR. they fall vacancy and they just find CVs. A good salesman or a good partner, it's someone that can go to a client, understand a pain, a bottleneck, or an area where there's a gap. And then not just sell, oh this guy's got 10 years, he's been doing this module for this long. That's a summary of someone, that's someone CV. You're not saying this guy's in a comment to this project and do X, Y and Z, is gonna make this impact, bring this value, reduce this time, save this cost. That's how you show value. And time is changing now, I've noticed it. Anyone can sell contract perm, contract is higher, right? So about adding value now. And if you can talk to a client and talk about a resource, about the value and benefit they can bring to your project, they're gonna buy into that a lot more than Sam. This guy's got 10 years in dynamics, he's worked on 10 projects, he's a specialist in finance. That's not gonna get to sell, that's not gonna get to buy on, what is the value? Why is this guy different to the other CVs that I've seen? Here's why I'll tell you. - And it comes down to that qualification as you're saying. - Yeah, okay, love that. Final bit then on this, I think you mentioned it. Also pretty crucial that great contractors are also gonna be able to give you references, no qualms about that, confident to give you them as well. Is that fair? - Yeah, definitely. Naturally when you're speaking and networking, you wanna be finding out who are their teammates, who can you recommend, who is part of the project? Because if you follow good candidates or good contractors, it will lead you to the projects where you need to be working because if a contract is working with a client, one, you know the higher contractors, and two, if you can supply similar profiles, or people that have worked within the past, and they can work well as a team, that's gonna add more value, and that's gonna bring more value to the project. - Love that. Just final point, and I said, what you think about this analogy, I thought it was a belt as with a guy that's in a typical Dunker, and again, we're talking about having just ruthless stands on great contractors, and you're saying whenever you've had pushback from contractors around them giving him like a reference that he can sense check what they did in that project, and look, it's in your interest, Ethan, I can then speak to the client that because you've had this experience, this is gonna be really beneficial to them and the project that they have. The analogy that he uses is like, would you ever buy a box of eggs about opening the lid first? - Yeah. - As a banger, and a. - Yeah, it's a good one, yeah. - I really like the market, yeah. - I thought that was just class, okay, cool. As you just said, there's a lot to be said around, probably really a lot of foundational success around working with best contractors, right? That's absolutely crucial. Let's get onto the next one then. I might need your help, and maybe people listening, we might go a bit technical, but I think this often happens when I speak to contract recruiters that, like you said earlier, where you're going beyond like the end customer, and then we're talking about consultancies. So let's just try, I guess, 'cause we've got here, I identify the biggest partners consultancies in your area and focus on working with them. They are the eyes and ears on the market. This is gonna be technical, but contract recruiters are able to learn from this, and that you wanna try and educate us on the difference between end customer and consultancy. - Yeah, this is always quite a controversial topic because even internally, we always say, do we have end customers or show what our partners, and there's always a bit of a debate, and I've always said there needs to be a bit of an even split, but just to break it down, an end customer is the business that are the ones using the technology or using the platform. So for example, it could be, let's say, Bartley's bank are gonna be using Dynamics 365. They're the end user, they're the ones that can be using the actual IT system. The partner or the consultancy is the business that is offering the service to provide the team, the project, the governments, everything to implement that system for Bartley's bank. - Great, so Bartley's have engaged the consultancy to do that. - Yeah, so Bartley's will use a partner or consultancy to run the project and help implement that system into that business. - Got it, yeah. So that's the two different sets. Talk to me a bit about the eyes and ears. So the eyes and ears because these consultancies partners are literally speaking to end customers that need basically taking transformation projects or that these things are going on. And in all of them to do that, they need certain skill sets and need people. So is that where this comes from then, like understanding who are the biggest players in the market? - Yeah, definitely. So I always would just see where the biggest numbers come from and where the revenue comes from. And when I look at our business, don't get me wrong. We have some huge, huge end customers we do. But a lot of our big accounts are partners. And I just think, well, if that's the case, that's who I want to work with. And my biggest account I work with is a partner. And the reason I love working with partners is because I always say, if you work for an end customer, you work for one company. If you work for a partner, you work for a thousand companies. And the reason I say that is because partners work with hundreds and hundreds, even thousands of customers. - They do multiple projects at the same time. - The man's always going to be there. For example, I had a massive project finish, this year, I had about 30 contractors there with an end customer. They went live this summer and I had 12 grand a week come off of a book overnight. And they finished. Whereas if there's work in for a partner, there's a good chance. - Read the product then. - They would get put into another project. And I wouldn't be mowing about losing 12 grand a week on my book. So you need to have a balance because it's great having the end customer, but that day's going to come. I've had it three, four times now where that project finishes and then your book falls off and your back to having beans on totes is dinner. It happens, right? So I'm in a situation now where I want to have a balance. I want to have partners that give me stability and security and volume because they do the work for me. It is graphed constantly calling customers all the time because it never ends. - End customers. - End customers, yeah. If you're always calling end customers, it's never going to end, right? If you're working with partners, they come to you, you have a relationship, you have a partnership. They're the ones winning the projects, they're winning the demands, and they come to you and they make you job easy. So that's why I always say have a balance. I've always said 70%, 70% customers, 3% partners, or even 64, it depends on you want to play it because you need to have the balance and you need the security there. - So let's just talk about this for a second then. One, what's going to be the easiest way for me to understand who the players are, is it again using my network, speed contractors, because good contractors should be aware of some of the big partners who run these projects or are pitching for these transformation projects. Is that fair? The best way, and then just some solid market mapping on the start of the market. - Yeah, there's a few ways. So the first way is always, obviously speaking to contractors. So once you're spoke to every contractor in your market, and you find out where they're working, if you're seeing that, a car spoke to 50 contractors and 15 of them work for this one partner, that's a very good indication. So that partner is a heavy contract in business within your market, that's you need to work with. So talking to people, finding out where they're working, or asking them what partners do you know that hire contractors or win lots of projects and so on. And obviously, of course, when you're talking to end customers, who are their partners? Every time you talk to an end customer, you need to ask them who is your partner, because if the customer fobs you off and doesn't want to work with you, but then their partner is getting all the work and the outsource it to them, that's another angle to get into the project. 'Cause I've had it before where I spoke to a customer, they don't have work with me, because they're saying, "Oh, without outsource it to our partner, who is the partner?" I've gone to them and then got requirements. It happens, right? So that's one way of doing it. Another way you just go on a LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of the most powerful sales tools you can use. A lot of my work is based on LinkedIn. So I just filter down LinkedIn recruiter to identify all the IoT consulting companies, partners, management consultant businesses, and I'll identify all the biggest ones and all the mid-level ones that win the most projects. And I'll map them out on LinkedIn, get all the contacts, and go after them. And then of course you can just go on the mics with partner website, find all the partners online, there's a few ways to do it. - Okay, and then just so I understand then, I'm assuming if I'm an end customer, they're thinking like if the recruiter calls me, and it's a contract recruiter, they're trying to talk to me about, did they have these problems, etc. They're probably thinking we've outsourced all these problems to this partner. You don't need to get involved in this, or I don't even want to be spending any time at energy on it. If you can't really support us or we can't really chat because they must feel like they've just solved that problem it's being dealt with. - Yeah. - Right, okay, that makes sense. - Yeah, because look, I'm a firm believer that it's a numbers and volume game, but you need to know when to walk away sometimes and you can't always sell to everyone. So there are some customers that go, "Do you know what, we don't want to be accountable for the project, we don't want to be responsible for it, it's down to the partner, they've signed a contract, they're liable for the project. If it goes wrong, it's therefore we're not dealing with it." And some companies are like that. So you might get lucky if you're testing them for a year, two years, three years, and you finally get somebody in. But if they send it to you after the third full fifth call, the likelihood is that you're gonna have to go to the partner. Go to the partner with the information, say, "Look, I know you work in the sewing, so this is the situation, I know you're the partner, let's see if we can work together." That's another angle of doing it because you are gonna have those blockers. - And then have you found in your journey and experience then? Is it a memory of error, I don't know? But like the bigger the end client, the more likely that they engage with a partner to do these transformation. - Yeah, so in my industry, in ERP, every single business will have a partner. I've never come across an end customer that has never had a partner involved. They might have a partner for a very small part and then they take responsibility for a lot of things, but there's always a partner involved because they always need to blame someone. If something doesn't work well. - Yeah, they always need to blame someone, and they're always in a bit of insurance because companies aren't gonna take liability, invest in 5, 10, 15, 20, 50 mil on a project and it goes wrong and it's therefore, if it goes wrong, they can always blame the partner. - Okay, and then I just wanna just make sure I understand this and focus on it 'cause I think it'll be helpful for people. If I'm a partner, what's the benefit to me of working with you is that okay, Ethan is literally in the detail every single day speaking to the types of people that we need to execute great projects. We don't have the resource to be able to do as good a job of Ethan. What's in it for the partner to work with you? (whooshing) - We'll get back to the episode in just one moment, but before we do, I wanted to tell you about one of our partners, SourceWell. Let's be honest, how much of your day is spent on tasks that don't move the needle? Send in counter-seemails, clean up messy data or tweaking messages, to get them just right. It takes up too much time. That's where source well can really help. It saves recruiters up to six plus hours every single week, and it's AI features for you up to focus on what you do best. Whether it's generating personalized outreach campaigns in minutes, or using AI to clean your data, source will handles the heavy lifting so you can maximize your BD and sourcing activity without sacrificing quality. But helping you craft messages that stand out and keeping on top of your data, source well is going to ensure that you connect with the right people with the right message at the right time. If you're at all curious to see how source well AI powered features can give you an edge, go ahead and book a demo with the link in the show note. I use it myself and I'm constantly impressed by how it evolves with AI and automation moving so quickly. Source well is going to enable you to keep that edge and keep you ahead of your competition. As I said, if you want to learn more about Source well and get your hands on and exclusive offer, go to the link in the show notes. Let's get back to the episode. Yeah, so naturally any good recruiters or good sourced person knows how to sell against a partner. When we're talking to end customers in Pitch and them, we're always selling against a partner. So we know a partner's weakness and we can use that to as a vantage when we're pitching them. So like a lot of recruiters, they will over promise, oversell and under deliver right. The partners are the same. So a partner's a sales business is like a recruitment company. So they will over commit to a customer and they will fall short. A partner can only do so much because for example, there's a partner working with a big company and they're located in Europe, Middle East, Africa, the US, Asia, but that partner doesn't really have a team in those locations or has knowledge in those areas. They're going to have to expand and go to external companies. So rather than subcontracting other partners, they're going to be expensive. They can work with a company like us. That's going to be more lower cost, more agile, more flexible, faster and they have the network in each of those locations. There's so many sales that you can go on forever how to sell to a partner, but that's just the reality of it. Partners can't deliver to every customer. It's just impossible. Now that's what I wanted you to share like why would a partner work with you, but that makes sense. That other bit then that we put down here in terms of strategy wise, which I think was focus on big customers that are international will need teams in locations, Europe, Asia and USA. Because I think that is interesting because whenever we've spoken about how you've done what you've done, you've always been quite diversified. I'm sorry to break the news to people, but if you're wanting to get to 50k, 60k, 70k a week and you're doing one country in one area, you ain't going to get there. You put here hard to scale in one country, but I'm fine with what you've seen from your experience. I've interviewed a lot of people throughout with our company and I've networked with a lot of top billers and the highest top billers I've spoken to, they've probably got to like 15, 20, maybe 25k a week doing like one market and what I mean by that, for example, doing just data in Netherlands, for example, you're never going to get to those numbers if you're restricted. If you're lucky enough to be in a company or negotiate to have the opportunity to work outside of those regions, you can scale. I'm not going to sit here and say that the file was unfortunate enough to work where I want, I would have got to those numbers. The reason I got to these big numbers is because I can do Europe, I can do Middle East, I can do Africa, I can do Asia, at the time I was doing US and Canada, even now I could as well, but I've tried to be a bit more focused, but the whole reason I've got to those numbers because I'm not restricted, I can build teams in all these locations. I've been working with a client who they're doing a project, let's say, in the Netherlands, but then they need to build a team in Germany in Malaysia, in New York, I can do it. So I haven't got a part of it's different teams or it's out of my region, I can't touch it, I can do it myself, and especially in the US where you're getting $2,000 a week, $3,000 a week margins, no wonder your books don't grow so much, but if you're doing just one location, one area, getting 5, 6, 700 euros a week margin, it's hard to grow. Like a big part of the recipe is the environment that you're part of writing the image. That's right. In terms of obviously the internet has been enabled that to be even being an option. I've got everything set up so you can do these things. What have you found to be the common misconceptions around this? Because I feel like people might be going, oh yeah, but like what about with the legal stuff? That's something really different. Can't actually do that. It's going to be difficult to start building a network there. I don't know. It's like what are the common misconceptions that you haven't really found to be true? Because it sounds like you're just like, I can do that. I know this girl said, I'll just crack on and make it happen. Yeah, no, look, I can't sit here and say that I've done it all on my own. I've got a great contracts team, compliance team, legal team, contract to care team. It's all set in place for me. When I got to about 50 contractors, that's when my contractor care service started going downhill. When you was doing it yourself? Yeah. Because you get to a point where you're a recruiter and then you're a partner and a service provider. There's a difference. When you get to about 50 heads, it's hard to stand top of your contractors. What I mean by that? Catching up, how things are going, what's the situation on the project? Any problems in the issues, getting information from them, having general catchups. If you've got 50 contractors and you have 50 conversations a week, that's your whole week gone before you've done any BD, right? It gets to a point where you can no longer do it. We had to employ a contractor care team where they basically support people in the business and have large accounts, a large amount of contractors that can no longer do it so they can focus on BD. That's what happened to me. Obviously, when I got to 105 contractors, there's no way I could manage that. The problem is what always happens every month is always an issue. If you've got a hundred people working for you, you're never going to have a month where there's not an issue. There's always something. Again, I can't be conceding with issues with contractors when I'm trying to win clients, manage accounts. It's not going to happen. We had to get the infrastructure in place. I've got my compliance team where they've got loads of experience working international. I've got ones in the US. I've got ones in Europe, in the UK. The infrastructure is there. There's no issues with me working with anyone in the world. The same again with all my contracts in the team. They do everything for me. That's class. It just comes down to execution and things that we're doing so you can just focus on that. Even with the candidate side, if I pass this delivery, I don't touch it. They do it all for me. I just focus on clients, managing my process. I outsource a lot of things. Even when it comes to my admin, I outsource a lot of my admin now. I don't do it myself because sitting there on a CIR reman til I had a clock at night adding clients on the system, I don't want to be doing that. I ain't got time for that. I always try and outsource things as much as possible. Luckily, I'm in a company that gives me the infrastructure to do that. That's what great companies need to be thinking about. How can we make sure people like you are spending time on high leverage tasks and the things that matter and the things that are going to move the needle in your contract book and staying until 8pm, uploading leads or whatever, isn't that. The grind needs to be there in the early days, but I think this day and age, there's a lot of automation, there's a lot of AI, there's a lot of tools you can use now. I think naturally companies are moving in that way now. If you can outsource even when we are meeting, you take the piss out of me because I was taking notes from the pen and you're sitting there with AI notes. Companies are doing it now. If you can outsource things, why not do it? Bottom line there is, if you're listening to this and maybe you feel like you have hit a bit of a ceiling, it's worth thinking about how can I provide this skill set, work on similar projects, but not limited to ex location. If you haven't got the infrastructure, speech and manager, speak to the leaders in your business and go, what needs to happen so we can start supporting on these projects in US in different parts of Europe, because you've seen it sounds like you might run into a ceiling if it's just London this or Netherlands this that you focus on. Yeah, and if you haven't got out of your company, you can always come up for internet. Absolutely. So, okay, then we've got leverage relationships within the group and network, and just basically network network. My biggest client had 15+ contacts in the business unit. I find that's a really good insight. So you're saying there, your biggest client, you had 15 different contacts that you made in that business. Yeah, just in dynamics. I think, again, a lot of people can have the issue where they talk to one contact, they get a really good conversation, they do a few deals, and they think that's it. Again, luckily, I had the opportunity to network outside of my regions. So if you're working for an organization that is global, you want to make sure that your network is as much as possible, that it's network network network, and the more contact you work within a company, the easier it gets. Because sometimes if you work with one contact, some people think, "Oh, that's my client. I've worked for clients before. You do one do with a contact, and you try network around. They don't want to know." It takes a long time to crack an account and be an actual partner. So you always have to network and keep on pretending like they're not your client, always networking, providing a good service, always having follow-ups and catch-ups with all contacts. And so we get to a point where they're all talking about you, they all know who you are, and it becomes an actual account. So it's really important to always network. Even if you think you've got a really good relationship, get recommendations, get introductions, get an organogram to find out who the manager and the company. Find out absolutely everyone so you can really maximize the account, and that account will look at your company as a supplier and as a partner. Obviously, don't want to know who the client is, but like how long would you say it's taken you to crack one of your biggest accounts out of interest? Yes, my biggest account, it took me about six months for I cracked it. Really, really hard company to get into. Lose a red tape, Lose a legislation, it wasn't really happening. And the whole reason I got in there is because the contact knew me of course, and we had previous contact before, but it was a case of a kept sounding touch trying to find a chink in the armor. And then it comes to a point where their other supplier basically messed up. There wasn't a performance, wasn't doing a good job. That's some really urgent projects. I needed help and I was knocking on the door and probably driving him crazy. And eventually it was like, look, I'm going to give you a shot. Give me some time to see what I can do. He went away and managed to find a way for us to work together, but you could say it was luck and good timing, but I just put it down to being very consistent. Like six months, it took me to crack into the client. A lot of people will give up after that four, five calls. I had 30 plus conversations with him before I got in there. So I think I'll which is very persistent and luckily it got to a point where there was a chink in the armour and it was the right time for me to get in there. - You didn't really deliver it. - Yeah. - And that's the main thing. He gave me two roles on the first time and I delivered two people in like less than 12 hours that was spot on. - I hope it does. - But no, I think you put yourself in that position 100%. - Yeah. - Like, DeFi. Have you found typically the best way to try and network, grow the number of relationships you have in an organisation is introductions? - Yes, my formula of working is I won't call anyone or reach out to anyone unless I've reached out LinkedIn first. So I'll connect on LinkedIn with a little message, introduce myself and then once they connect to me, I'll then call them and send them email and cover all touch points. But I always try to make conversations as warm as possible. So the best way you can do that is by someone physically seeing your face, where you work, your job title, see your profile. So if they see my LinkedIn profile and I call them and say it's Ethan Hall from the Interex group, straight away they know me, they know my face where I'm calling from and it's a lot more warmer and that's always my approach. So it doesn't matter if it's an existing client or a new client, I have the same approach. And of course, if I know somebody in the business, I'll get them to make an introduction by a set up a team's call, an email introduction, I'll set up a conversation, I'll get them to maybe give a reference on us. So I'm always leveraging relationships and partnerships or if I know a customer is working with a partner and I have a relationship with them, I'll ask the customer to put me in touch with a partner and vice versa. So I'm always leveraging relationships, no matter if it's internal, the customer or the partner. Yeah, nice, love that. Or a contractor as well. You can always use a contractor. So a project manager, a program manager or a solution architect, someone's senior, preferably and use the contractor to then put a good word in for you. You mentioned earlier, this is something that come out of one of our training sessions actually that you'd be surprised how many people will be willing to give you a lot of an org chart if you ask for it. Yeah, if you don't ask, you don't get. That's quite interesting there. Yeah, don't get me wrong. Some companies will say no because it is very inside Intel, but if you work with a client and you've got NDA, sign all that kind of stuff that they should give it to you, saves a lot of time. No one wants to be sitting there and linked in, mapping out clients until silly o'clock. Make things easier. Just ask the question. You might fall in comfortable asking them. It's always the uncomfortable questions that get you the furthest. So ask the question, make it easy for yourself. Ask them who's in charge. Have you got a map of the business? Makes things easier. Also, we're talking about here, exists relationships, maximising accounts, right? So I think you're also going to be asking a hope for it from a point of leverage like you've been done a good job. You're starting to build some reports. So I think, like you said, you don't ask, you don't get. Okay, so then we've got, I think this is a big one and I think there's always come out of when I've interviewed really great contract recruiters, which is we've got here, sell different solutions. But businesses want more value and then we've got sell, statement of work, managed services, our peer outsourcing, white labelling. So do you want to talk a bit about this because I feel like this is quite critical, isn't it? If you do the big numbers. Yeah, definitely. I hate being called a recruiter. Really? Yeah, it's just, I don't like it. What? Reason I say that is because I think the relationships I've had over the years and what I've done and what I've been involved in, I seem myself more as a partner, more of a consultant rather than a recruiter because look, don't get me wrong. I still work at a recruiter in terms of chasing postage jobs, chasing leads, all this kind of stuff for right. But every time I get onto a phone call with a client, I always tell them there's two parts of my business offering traditional staffing services and offering projects delivery services that's two very separate things. Working services is just your boring contract, permanent contract to hire. Anyone can do that. And every Tom Dickens Harry selling them solutions. Even now when I say, I've been doing job 10 years, I'm especially some of the highest billing consultant in my industry, all these things I can talk about. Client's always going to put me in the same box as someone calling from my computer. Even though I can't confess out on better than all of them, I can't be taking out that box. And the way you make yourself different is by selling a different solution. Client's a board of recruiters now. Clients are getting called by tens and tens of recruiters every single day, every single week with the same pitch. Everyone can improve their pitch and get a better pitch. But the way you make yourself different is by pushing yourself to be more of a partner and all in value, sending a CV only adds so much value. But are you actually offering a service with some kind of responsibility and accountability? Are you taking time off of the client's hands so you can do it for them? So a lot of my agreements that I have now that are really big for me are, for example, learning services or white labeling services. Exactly. So a managed service is essentially where you're still providing, let's say, recruitment where one increased capacity or they want to increase their head count. You go to market, you find the resources, but they don't do the interview. So the client completely outsources all the interviewing and the recruitment to us. So that way all they're doing is saying, this is the request. Ethan, go find it. We identify the resource. We have the interview. We run the technical interviews. We do all the onboarding and so on. We then manage that resource in terms of they're onboarding, they're learning and development, they're training, escalations. If there's problems and issues, we deal with it. I have a service delivery manager that we've hired off our own back who then manage those resources, deal with situations. So those resources focus on delivery and the client hasn't got to deal with the day-to-day boring management tasks, the problems, the issues, all that kind of stuff. It's fully outsourced through our business. So we're providing talent, but also managing the talent as well. A real quick one from me and we'll get straight back into the conversation. Some of you may or may not be aware that I am also the founder of a business called Hector. Hector is an all-in-one training platform for recruitment founders to maximise team performance. The reason why I'm sharing this with you is because if you are someone that is enjoying this podcast week after week, you might even share this podcast with your colleagues. Then I'd love to connect with you. Our training platform is powered by top performers delivering practical training for today's market. We believe training a lot of the time in the recruitment industry is dated, it's stale, it's delivered by people that did it five, ten, fifteen years ago, and we are completely going against that. So a lot of the people that you're able to learn on this podcast, you're able to learn even more from at Hector. So if you'd love to find out more about how we could potentially help you get more out of your people, ramp up their performance more quickly, then please connect with me on LinkedIn or click the link in the show and it's where we'll be able to book a call. Let's get straight back into the episode. The problems that you'd be solving for a client there would be what, so I guess time, and then also just, you know what I mean, I think I'll be helpful just to understand. Again, it would be nuanced, but why is a company paying you to do that? There must be things that they just don't want to deal with or what the main pain is. Yeah, I mean, everyone can say the most time consuming thing about this job is process. You know, you win a job, you might agree a profile call, they push it back, you jump on the profile call, this person who's interviewing is off, you've got to like, a week for the interviews, you confirm a date to catch up on the call, they push it back. Process can literally make you blank in a month because you might take a week, two weeks, three weeks, a closer process and it can happen, right? So if you can control the process, you can control the deal time because if you've got managed service, a client will give you that agreement, you manage the process so you can do deal with literally within a couple of days, right? First of all, where the ones running the interview, we're doing a technical interview, we're doing the on board in the selection, the feedback, it's all run by us, right? So we're now in full control of the process, right? So saving time and having ownership and control is one of the key things. It's about partnership really. Client, it's just one of the thoughts that I've got a partner, not just someone that's you know, invoicing them a margin every month because in reality, that is what we do. They give us a request, we send to CV, we send in the person and we kind of step away and we invoice a margin every month, right? That is reality and clients would more than that. They want to feel like somebody's part of their business, they're sharing the pain, they're sharing the responsibility, they're sharing the accountability for the person, they want to feel like you're more of a team unit rather than just, okay, you send a CV and there's a margin. I'm just really big on value and partnership now because that's where I'm seeing recruitment and heading now. I think a lot of business owners are seeing now that the industry is changing and it is going down the SW route. It's going down managed services, support services, white labelling services. It's moving down that route now because people are having to get smart and big competition. And is this typically when we think about the end customer, all project lead? Not always, not always. So there's difference. There's projects that lead work and then there's support services. So I do both. So I'll provide projects delivery services as well as support services. So when a client has gone liar, if the project's done and then need just people to deal with liat, business use, your escalations, problems, tickets, all that great stuff, change management. Okay, so yeah, okay, that makes sense. Okay, so curious and this might be a good way to talk about it. Let's just assume if anyone's listened to this, they've got the infrastructure to some degree that Intersect have to be able to fulfill these types of services. But like I might be listening to this and I understand what you're saying. That's where I want to get to. That's my aspiration. I want to become a partner and add way more value to my clients. And I've got the infrastructure. I've got this support. I've got all of that. What are the steps to go from doing the one to free contract deals of end clients, maybe more to spot business? I built my book that way. How do I start going from there to start having conversations with clients around managed services, SOWD, things like what are the steps to that? Because I feel like you do have to start thinking about what you do differently. Yeah. Like there's going to be a different process because I feel like you're not going to be so focused on, oh yeah, you need this person with this experience. I can get you that. You're actually going to be more willing to take a step back and go, what's important here? What happens if you don't get this person? What matters on the project? or I don't know, do you know what I mean? I feel like you need to start having different conversations almost. - Yeah, it is a different conversation. Look, I think if you want to get your foot in the door and place a contract at, that's a good way to start because you're proving your capabilities, they're getting a bit of an insight into your service, your models, what you like as a partner, it's a good way to start. You can start off a place in one, two, three contractors, and then it's the case of, look, speaking to the right contact and booking a call, booking the meeting to talk about other services that we can provide you. We're not just a staff and company, we're also a consultant business that I can offer you more of a managed service and offer you more of a partnership. Let's book a call to go into that. And then you go into that conversation and you pitch them the idea, you pitch them the case study, you talk about the value, the benefits, and how it can benefit them more rather than just providing CVs as a staff and business. Once you're open up that conversation and you talk to them about the benefits, the advantages, the value case studies, for example, once you go into that conversation, you'll naturally be seen completely different. You'll stop being put into that box as just that other HR recruiter. I always think naturally you get a bit more respect. I'll feel like when you're having those conversations of being more of a partner, you get a bit more time, they listen to a bit more, you get more of a stronger connection with them and it leaves to bigger pieces of work and bigger agreements. - There's a different process than it is in terms of like sales process. - Yeah, it is different. You're not having to deal with HR, lie managers, competitors with other agencies, interview feedback, profile calls, that is all gone. It's completely different conversation. - Talking about the bigger picture aren't you? You're talking about obviously how you can support them in different ways, but you're obviously going to anchor that to if they're going through a chain transformation or like you just said, the services when they've gone lie with things, you're going to be asking them questions around that, you're not going to be asking them, do you need this skill set, do you need this someone with this experience? - Yeah. - To be talking about the bigger picture. - Again, you start talking about project budget as well. You're not talking about HR head count and that kind of stuff. It's all about project budget. It's all in the form of an SWS work order. It's a different kind of agreement and it's a different kind of budget. So it's very separate from HR vacancy to project budget. - Final bit on this then. How can I, as a recruit, get more educated on this and it's different because I do feel like if I work in a business and they have a good contract team, this is an important part of their business, they should be thinking about these things. - Yeah. - So as an individual recruit, how can I educate myself on these different types of ways of working? Is it again for my network through the contract? I don't know. - Come with me, that's good. (laughing) - But like, I'm just curious. Obviously, I hope for this helps, right? But I'm just interested, like, is there anything that you did or is it actually you just had the internal network and you've got the internal expertise that you've been leaning on? - In this job, you speak to partners, consulting companies, outsource and businesses, et cetera. They all do the same kind of thing. So these partners that you're pitching as clients or these companies you're going to to subcontract some of their resources on projects, they do the same stuff. So you can naturally speak with them, learn from them about how they pitch here, what they're doing, the kind of services they run, and then use that yourself to sell to other businesses. And then of course, you can just research online, gone on YouTube, research your things online, even looking at competitors. There's a lot of recruitment companies doing it. Look on LinkedIn, gone Google, look at other recruiters that are selling these sort of solutions and these consulting models. And even speaking to contractors, some contractors that own their own businesses, they also sell these services too. So there's a lot of people that you can talk to get this information. - Yeah, I think that'll be really helpful for people. - What we've got here then, you might have mentioned this. So we've also put here one of the things that you have to be doing, LinkedIn is just a really important tool. So if we want to find out and identify the biggest partners, consultancies, look for the big companies that have got a thousand plus employees and filter out partners to find end customers. So what we're saying here is a lot of the time if you are market mapping, you're making sure you know who are the biggest enterprise end customers. - Yeah, I'm guilty of this. I waste a lot of time talking to companies with like 200 employees, 300 employees. You know, you might get lucky getting the odd spot business, place one contract that's there for six months and they move on, but you ain't gonna get rich doing that. You're not gonna grow accounts doing that. The reason why, because contractors aren't cheap. And if they're paying 200 grand, 250 grand a year for a contractor, but you know, their revenue is, let's say, could be 10 million for example, a big portion of their revenue, right? So it's not gonna happen. So you also need to work with companies that are international because if they're running these projects, they're not just doing it in London, they're doing it in London, in Paris, in Frankfurt, in New York and so on. So you need to work with companies that can scale, they've got big infrastructures, big teams, higher revenue and global businesses. So I'll always focus on working with companies that have at least a couple of thousand employees because they're the ones running projects. They can have full contractors, they can scale, they can grow teams because you're only gonna have a good contract book if you're winning an account where you're getting four, five, six contracts into a project as a minimum. The reason I got to such big contract books because when I had 10 or 11 accounts, they were accounts. They weren't just like one contractor. I had between three and six and a lot of them and then the rest were like 20, 30, 50 plus. - And you just found in your experience, the best chance of you actually getting that is companies that like said, have way bigger budgets, way bigger turnover. So they're likely gonna be in that enterprise base. - Use LinkedIn filters, LinkedIn filters are the best way to do it. - LinkedIn changed the filters, the location, the company sizes, the industries, and I identified all the biggest companies in that area to identify the best ones to work with. That's the best way to do it. - And does that mean then, if that becomes my strategy, if I wanna break the ceiling of 10, 12, 15, 20 K a week, does that mean that it might take me a bit more longer to crack these accounts? So you found out, you said six months was your longest, but is that also part of what you got to expect? - No, that wasn't normal though. I mean, it wouldn't normally take me that long to break into an account. Some of my biggest accounts I've cracked into, I have cracked into from one or two calls, three at most. But again, it was kind of a lot of right time rams, right sort of place. So six months is not normal, but usually most accounts take between one and three months to crack into, I'd say, normally one to two months. It depends if you get them on the phone. If you get them on the phone, and you can have two, three, four conversations with them, you're either gonna get a no or a yes. That's how it usually works, but I wouldn't say that it's gonna take six months for everyone, but if you go with the right pitch, the right contact, standing regular contacts with them, it should happen a bit more faster. - I think that is helpful to know though, like if you map out these end clients that fit what we've said, they're, I don't know, maybe there's like 50 on that, that you've got on your list, that you should expect at the very least, if you get more than 50. - My client database have like a thousand clients on there, like companies. - That'll be because obviously you're doing a lot of different geographies. - Yeah, but even for example, if you're doing Netherlands, for example, if you've got like a hundred 200 companies on there, it's nowhere near enough. - Really? - Like you need that 500 plus companies. - Why is that then? - Because I've always sort of broken down that if you pitch 100 companies between three and six of those will convert into a buying client, usually, might be high, might get 10 for example, but you can't have a massive success rate if you've only got a hundred clients that you're calling because you can do a hundred to 200 dollars a day, quite comfortably. If you're just doing BD all day, nothing else, 100 200 dollars quite comfortably. So if you're calling the same hundred companies every single day, day and day out, and expecting different results each time, since Sané, you need to have a big network and a big amount of clients to go after because if you're going after five of your clients in one country, or in one sort of area, for example, you're covering a big space, but if you're only covering a hundred, it's not a big space to be covering. - Okay, so there's got to be plenty to go out. - You've got to be finding at least 25 minimum, ideally 40 to 50 new companies a week. When you first start off in recruitment, they're the kind of numbers you're dealing with, but if you're clientally, it's less than 500 you've got work to do. - If you used to give an advice to anyone, obviously it depends on your strategy, right? But if we're aiming big, you want to make sure those companies are what we've said, the thousand plus employees, multiple locations. - Yeah, so I always have a thousand as a minimum. I don't deal with other companies, I was about a 500 people, so you can do deals, but I don't see any growth in that account. I think they'll work there for a year, that'll be it. And I don't think there'll be more hires. You want to have a focus on getting big clients above a thousand employees. If you get a lead or you see a posted job, you're not trying to find chase it, but don't have a strategy of just pitching companies between two and 500 employees all the time. For example, if you're in between, let's say 10 and 20 K-week right now, and you're hitting a brick wall, and you're finally difficult, and you're analysing the client you're working with, and you're realising, "Do you know what? "I've got quite a lot of clients "that are below a thousand employees. "You might find that's the reason why." - That doesn't make sense again, 'cause like you said, it's not cheap to have these types of people supporting your business. I think that'll be really helpful for people. Okay, what's the recent move in contact with some filter, what was said on that? - Yeah, so I'm kind of giving away some secrets here, so I shouldn't be really saying it, but a good way that I normally work is that, in this job right, we're always late. We're information galleries, we're lead chases. We're always getting information secondhand, so we're not a consultancy or a partner that I've found in our, the customers that are starting projects that are completely green, filled and brand new, we're always late to the party. So the best way to be first, when you're late, is a Ghana LinkedIn recruiter and setting up alerts for when people move. If somebody moves to a business and they're within your market, that's a new project. That's a company that's recently hired somebody within your market, that means the site going on, there's a project they're doing stuff. That's a good way to keep up with current projects because you can waste a lot of time calling clients and pitching clients that might be live on their projects. They've been using the system for years and years and there's not much going on. So the best way to do that is of course, get a lease from candidates, talking to partners, find out what projects they're working on, but it's also using LinkedIn recruiter, recently moved, that as soon as they moved to a new company, a Lertz shoe. You go on the LinkedIn profile, see what they've moved to, find a contact and pitcher because they've just hired somebody within your market, it's brand new, and stuff going on and that's the best way to get into projects in the early days. And the way I always say it right, you needs to be first in this game. - It helps, don't I? - You need to be first. first because if for example you pitch a client, if you're the first staffing company or the first partner to pitch them, you've got a pretty good chance of winning. If you're the third person, you still got a good chance. If you're eight, probably not. Is that because what they've heard it all before? They've heard it all before. There isn't really a need and you don't need brass in yourself out working with eight or ten suppliers. It's not good for anyone. So if I talk to a client and they say, "Oh yeah, we've got five or six suppliers. I won't work with them." It's got to be either just one, two or three, four, still, it's not great, but it's just a rat race and we've all got the same candidates. It's just kind of who calls them first and it's a shit way to work. It's not really a great partnership. So you need to make sure you're first because you might not be in the best pitcher or the best recruiter, but if you're first and then that client decides they're not going to work with anybody else, you might have been had your lucky day in and you've cracked into account that's going to be your mortgage payer. So I've always said be first, that's a good way of cracking into clients. And I guess also if you're good at what you do and you're our first, you're also going to be able to really understand the scope of what's going on and actually also ask good questions, understand what's going on and then also prophecy the potential. Whereas maybe three, four, five, six conversations down the line of speed to recruitment agencies, maybe stuff's already happened, but again, if you are first, I guess you're going to also be able to really realise like probably going to need maybe eight contractors. The need is less. I mean, I can give them all my case studies, told them who I work with, the stuff I've done over the years and they might be able to see on paper that I'm probably the better recruiter to work with. But if they're working with a recruiter that's giving them a service and it's working, why would they work with me? I can sell against the other competition and sell myself and pitch them of why they should work with me. But if they are seeing the value from somebody else and they don't need the help why they're going to work with me. You know, it's like for example if you're into at home, if you're into that's working, it's cheap, it's good, it's fast, why are you going to move? There's no pain there, is there? There's no pain. Again, like we need to be good salesmen and know when to sell when not to sell. A couple of last bits then. So we've already mentioned you found if you have the freedom to deliver across different continent's geographies, that's going to be a big plus. We've also then got here, delivery teams for project-based work and also support work long-term, ongoing, billable hours. Yeah, so it goes back on to the kind of services that you're selling. Right, okay. Two different categories. Yeah, so a lot of contractors in my market, they are involved in project delivery but not so much on support and manage services. Is that less sexy or people don't enjoy doing that or? It is less sexy, yeah. Smaller margins, works a bit more boring for the contractor, not so much me. Well, it's a long-term ongoing billable hours bit. When you're talking to a client and you're supporting them on the project delivery side, that's great, you know, it's going to run for a long time. You're going to get peaks and troughs. With, let's say, support and manage services, they usually buy blocks of hours each month or they have like a fixed monthly fee. So you might charge, for example, 20,000 euros a month for this service. If they use those hours or not, you still get paid. Right. So it's guaranteed income full-time, 100% all the time. Whereas project delivery work, sometimes as peaks and troughs, they might go on holiday, they might be sick, you know, there's downtime, there's bench time, you might not get billable hours. Support services, manage services, it's always 100%. It's always paid. So you're paid all the time. There's the pros and cons to. It's pros and cons. The margins are going to be smaller. It's less sexy work for the contractor, but you're getting, you know, a year to three year agreement, full-time billable each month in its guaranteed. Again, it's diversifying the contractor, isn't it? And it's a different conversation. Yes, Mr. Client, I can help with project delivery. Yes, Mr. Client, I can help with support services too. You're opening up the sales avenues. This might really vary, but just curious how long typically, because you hear this word a lot when I speak to contractor recruits, but typically in your market, how long did a lot of projects last? My longest projects right now is running for six, going on seven years. Really? Yeah, yeah. You've been going for that long. Really long, yeah. So it's one of my, it's my oldest account. Yeah, I've done about 25 placements there. Right now, there's about 12 contractors left, and they've been there between four and six and a half years now. Yeah. So luckily, ERP is one of the best markers you can work in. So is it quite typical the day come on for that long, or like what's like average? On average, I would say like 18 months to two years is like quite normal. I would save within the kind of projects I go after, especially their global and international. You're always looking at between three and five years normally. So very rare that I'll play somebody just for six months. It's always like 12 months to five years normally. And this is also what we were getting. We were talking about it so early on, but like that's also part of the strategy. It's like the market, right? And what the work you're winning. So like I said, if you know you're doing with that hard graph, then you do win the partnership that you know that should mean the contracts that you do place, they're going to be there for. Yeah, we had the conversation before we started the podcast. And I said, if you're working in the market where your contracts are working between one and three months, good luck. You've got no chance. The only reason I've been able to get to these numbers is because my contracts have been working there a long time. When there are certain quarters where they're a bit slower than usual, you know, you might bang in a few deals, three or four deals, five deals, maybe in a quarter and it's a bit slow. When you've got long projects and they're continuing and you haven't got finishes, having that slow quarter wouldn't really matter because you've got the security and you've got the base there. If you have into a replacement for every month and you have in slow months, it's a hard game to give a top of. You know, so you want to make sure you're in an industry and you're working in projects that are going to guarantee you at least 12 to 18 months if you want to get bigger counts. So let's run this out then. The last one, we might have touched on it but we put leverage partnerships with smaller partners, leverage their resources and sell their services to help you win projects. Yeah, make this job easy for yourself. I've been in situations where I've had a team build of like 17 people and I'm about to deliver 17 roles on my own and it's not fun. It takes a lot of time. There's a couple companies I've worked with over the years. One of them's nine years I've been working with and he's provided me probably more than 50 people over the years and he's 50 people in what is from his company. So there's contractors. Yeah, so there's contractors that own their own companies. Yeah. They could have five people working for them, 10 people, even 100 or 200 people working for them. To make my life easier, if I win a requirement from a client, I'll just outsource it to him and he'll provide me with a team, the resources and it's very easy. My second biggest account that finished this year are outsource 25 people to one contractor who has employees. And the problem that you're solving for him is you're getting stuff from them to be working on, right? They're not having to do any of that. You're giving them more. It was still contract recruitment, but I wasn't going to market finds in the candidates qualifying people. Oh, yeah, but I'm saying for them, the reason why that's beneficial to them is like you'll bring them work, like they're not having to do it. Yeah, so when he comes to London once and he got me some gifts because he said to me, this is when he had a smaller company, he said, more than a third of our company's revenue comes from you alone. Well, thank you. You've really helped us grow and I was the number one salesman on their side. That's what I mean. That's the benefit to that. Yeah, exactly. But obviously you also get the benefit because you're not like you said, you know, obviously I'm assuming you don't need work with them because you know, be a high quality resource, etc. Yeah. Obviously, yeah, it's a partnership again. Yeah, I'm not sitting there till eight o'clock sweating, like trying to find people, it makes my job easier. So I've outsource all of the delivery to him. I can crack on doing BD now. I can win new jobs and it is the gravy train. You keep going and going and going. How did you meet him then? He was a contractor and I placed him on a project years ago when he probably had about 10 people in his company and then over the years, it's grown to hundreds. We've got a really good relationship. I always introduce him to my customers. He doesn't speak to my clients directly. If he pulls jobs, it always goes through me. He never does direct. So we've got a really good relationship. If I'm talking to clients and they want to manage service or a support service, I'll introduce his business. You know, so it goes vice versa. So again, what you're saying there again, that's just can you work smart or not harder? Yeah, forget it. It's all done relationships networking. Yeah. These are the things that you can benefit from if you're really committed to your space, been in relationships you're doing good work, you build a good reputation. These are the things that you can also leverage, potentially lay it down the line, right? 100%. This job, like I said, your network is your wealth and again, if you've been doing this job a long time, no one's been sitting there doing delivery. So make your life easier and get the right contacts and leverage partnerships to make sure that you can deliver quickly and build and scale. Love it. So what are you really going to be doubling down on then over like, you know, you said you're back to the grind mate. Yeah, I mean, I'm not in 70 car week anymore. So what's top of mind for you, mate? Yes. So what you're doubling down on? Yeah. So it's getting back to basics. It's not being complacent and it's being consistent. So all the things we've gone through right now, these are all the things I'm doing. Plus the basic stuff. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. It's just doing the basics and it's just discipline and hard work and working like a robot and not changing things. This job isn't rocket science. Here's the structure. You can't work smart. Be a bit different, but ultimately it's all the same right. So it's just the case of working the same as like when I was on five car week. It's just being hungry. It's just smashing the phone, having conversations, pitching, pitching, pitching. That's all it is. I was guilty of being in a situation where it was 2022. Life was good. Life was easy. I had a big account. I was getting a lot of roles coming my way for days a week. Working four days a week. Life was easy, right? 2023. It got a bit tougher. 2024 is still tough, right? So it's just about going back to market, doing things great and sticking to it. That's all it is really. Yeah, no, love it. There's always going to be years like that, right? But I think you've done this for such a long time now. I feel like that's always going to be part of the story. In terms of there's going to be moments where you get to and you're like, this is nice. This is good. I deserve it. Pat on that. It will be boring. If you're sitting on a massive conjure book and it's easy, trust me, you'll get, I was bored. I was bored at the start of the show. I was like, this is boring. I'm not really doing BD anymore. I'm not really winning new clients. The work's quite easy. It was boring. I actually prefer cold calling, chasing clients and winning new business. Yes, I can. My earnings took a bit of a dip, but I enjoyed chasing. I enjoy the grind. That's what keeps you motivated and energetic, not sitting on a massive account and jobs coming your way because it will make you lazy. I always get for it, no, no for sure. Well it used to be an absolute pleasure mate. You should definitely be proud of everything that you've achieved and so much great stuff in their mates, I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. I hope there were plenty of golden nuggets for you to take away. As you know, I'm your host here of the recruitment mentors podcast, but I'm also the founder of recruitment mentors. We're a online subscription based learning and education platform. We're on a mission to help thousands of recruiters achieve their professional goals and successfully progress their careers through modern and engaging online learning. If you're a recruitment business owner listening to this, there's a good chance that you value self development, personal development. You're trying to develop a culture of continuous improvement, but we've partnered with a number of grown recruitment companies who were struggling to understand how they can invest more in their people, how they can upskill them more quickly without spending more time, without having to spend thousands of pounds of external trainers and we've ended up being a really great fit, modern fit for recruitment teams. 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