How Adam Tiberius Generated $1M in New Business: A Masterclass in Building Markets & Winning Clients

Welcome back to the show. In this week's episode I was joined by Adam Tiberius from Zenoopa. Adam joined the industry as an apprentice and what he's been able to achieve over the last four years is nothing sure of incredible and he's absolutely worked his socks off to do it. A few highlights here around some of the things that he's been able to achieve. In one year he generated over one million dollars of a new business, new business only with new clients in a brand new market. Over the four years he's been at the business he's one over a hundred new business accounts in the UK, in the EU and US. So what we do in this conversation is ultimately break down Adam's blueprint. This is one of the most tactical conversations I've recorded and we go into so much detail. There will be so many things that you can take to your process, give you inspiration to improve your process but what we go through together ultimately you're going to be able to use to grow your existing markets, help you build a plan if you want to go to a new market and ultimately we go through the foundations market mapping. We go through the art of prospecting, openers, scripts, the metrics that Adam works to. Then we go into discovery and conversations. If we were able to book meetings with prospects, what we're doing on these meetings, how do we pitch our services, how do we be different and then we get into delivery and client retention. What are we doing there when it comes to retaining clients, getting them spend more money with us and Adam's got some really interesting views when it comes to what a model looks like to scale and they break down their model in sales and delivery and they've got some very interesting takes when it comes to onboarding, driving performance and a bunch of other things. You are going to love this conversation, get a note pad ready, enjoy. Adam, welcome to the podcast. Great to be here. Cool to sit down with you. Obviously we met for the very first time the live podcast event that you came to. I know you shared with me, so I hope you don't mind me saying. Obviously, listen to this podcast for a good amount of time. You're one of the very few people I can imagine who proactively reaches out to people to say, "Hey, love your episode. We'd love to ask you some questions about this." I know you've had some cool conversations with people off the back of the pod, which is really cool. So today you're in the hot seat. I am. We're going to be really focused on something that you've done consistently over the last two years. We're going to treat this as a bit of a building, a market from scratch, masterclass and how you do your business. I think people are going to find really interesting, but most of all, I'm going to be able to learn a lot from. So really excited to go through this with you. We've got a couple of sections that we're going to go through and we might end up talking about a few other bits, but we're going to really start with the foundational stuff, which is market mapping. How does Adam think about that? Why is it so important? Then we're going to get into the detail of actual prospecting because I know you've mapped this entire process out. Then we have discovery and these sales meetings conversations. How we approach those. And then we've got delivery and client retention. How do we go about that? At Zenopi, you have a very committing model that isn't free 60. It's split into very specific roles, which we're going to talk about. So how does Adam think about that model? You've got your own team. So obviously it's set up in that way. And then along the way we might have you share some challenges, learnings, but also how you've got better at coaching, getting the most out of your team as well. So we've got quite a number of things here that we're going to go through to give everyone some immediate context. Let me know if I get any this wrong. But what I love about this story is you started in recruitment early, right? You started as an apprentice. You'd now been in the industry for over four years. And a couple of highlights here, which you should be super, super proud of. Really from year three to year four, you've been really focused on building out specifically business development functions for Zenopi. In year three, after you spent on resourcing, learning, marketing, the recruitment process, running your own recruitment desk, you're free. You're really focused on this sell side. You help run the UK and a bit of EU, right? In terms of building that out. Build the beauty function for that. Beauty function. Sorry. And then for the last year, you've been entirely focused on the US piece. So some highlights within that, which I think are really cool is throughout your time, it's an open, you've won over 100 accounts across UK, EU, US accounts being clients, prospects you sign terms with. Yeah, correct. Right. In the first year of this US focus, you generated $1 million in the business. That's unreal. And right now, you've got four core people in your team that you're coaching, that you're supporting, that you're helping progress their careers. You're literally, you just tell me before we started this, you've got your wee work in Charlotte. Yeah. You're in the process of getting over there, technical team over there, which is really exciting. And then as part of this team as well, you've got some people that also did the UK and EU markets on the delivery side that support your team as well. Yeah. And I find this new period we brought some people over to help with the job fire. Love it. So there's a few bits that we've got to cover. That sort of a bit around you. And I guess the highlight reel. Let's start with market mapping. Just talk to a bit about addons perspective on why this is important because you would have heard this phrase a lot. Why is market mapping so important and why does it start at this level, the foundational level? If we want to build out a market from scratch, we have to start with market mapping and take it seriously. Well, the way I see a market, the market map is your north star with everything that you do. And I think that the majority of people want to go through a market mapping process, don't invest the appropriate amount of times, get it 100% right. So what they might do is they might look at some conference lists. They might do your LinkedIn search, that kind of thing. But unless you have a comprehensive view of every business who within that ICP who allows that candidate profile from the blue chips to the one man bands in that area, you haven't got to clear view of that market. Once you have a market, you know the size of the businesses in that space, you could then start to segment that market by size of business size of the ICP. And then that will dictate the way that you go about your BD process, depending on the size of those clients. So what you can also do from that is you can then, especially if you know your average fee and you know how many highs they make per year, her size of client within that ICP. And you know how many clients you're going to retain on a annual basis through a BD process. You can then start to map out how big is my team going to look like in one year, two years, three years, five years. And then work backwards from there in terms of actually having a bit more of a sustainable way of growing that space, rather than perhaps a more basic view of market mapping where you find some companies in your space, you start to call them without that foundational data to give you a really clear picture of where you're going and why you're going there. Robert, okay. Really great breakdown there. I guess what might be helpful for people is, because people listen to this might be listening to this and go, I've got a market map, I've done it right, but you've shown me your market maps and they are extremely thorough. And I just think it's really called the way that you've approached it. And it really is, if you do this right, it can almost which will get onto massively help you sell your services as well, right? But I guess what might be helpful is if me and you're sitting in maybe a bit of a coaching session, and I had a bit of homework that you gave me, which was to bring you like a minimum viable product as a market map. What would that minimum viable market map would you expect to see on there for people that might be helpful to give people something to work towards as a minimum? Yeah. If I can find a company that isn't on your list for a one man band to a massive blue chip that fits into that market that isn't on your list, it's not done properly. If I can find one, it's not done correctly. That's how you can tell. And the way that you can tell of a market map is done appropriately for that size is let's say you take one candidate in one sub niche of an industry. So for us, for medical devices and life sciences, we do a lot of field service. So if you can take one candidate and send it to every single client in that market space, every single ICP of that company within that market space, then you have an appropriate market, right? But again, if someone came to me and they showed me a market map, and I had to go on indeed and find a job that's relevant for that market that you haven't got the right ICPs from that market map, it's not done properly. So you want to get in a position where nobody has to go anywhere except for that list to find every single relevant stakeholder each company within that market space. If that's not the case, then you've got to go back and do it again. Yeah. Go back. If I can find one, I send them away in time to do it again. Is that just like infinite then? Or like, have you normally found one because you've done a few different sub niches? Is there like a finite? Is there normally, if we say ICP, just to make that clear, that's an idle client profile. We've agreed that that is, I think we've got here like 20 to 100 employees. It's in your subney. There might be a few other bits in there. Like is there normally a finite amount of companies that will fit that? It's just like anything. There's only a finite amount of companies that make chairs. Right? So it's like, it's not a market you're in. There is a finite amount of people who do it. Now, it works better in our market as an evergreen because the majority, especially if you're working in devices or life science on equipment, these things take a long time to make. It took a long time to go through processes to be actually being used in those environments. So on the equipment side, there's not a ton of startups. So you can map a market really quite well, especially in devices. If you work in an industry, that's like constantly pumped with startup companies. It's a little bit more difficult, but for any standard industry, is possible to do. How long would it expect it to take? How long have you found it typically take when you've gone, you know what? I can't go and find another company they've done. If you're doing it manually, if you do it the way that we do it, the size of the UK and the sub niches that we go is probably in months, it'll take you to do that. And that might start like a long time and like from a 360 perspective, when you've got a bill next month, like that is a long time, but you've really got extended your time frame, like the point of this, your point is not to get jobs out of that market today. The point is you want to achieve over three to five year period the maximum market share you can offer as companies hiring that candidate profile. So as long as you extend your timelines, spending a month at the start getting 100% right, so you never have to go on job boards again, you never have to change leads on LinkedIn, you know, as long as you're speaking consistently to every stakeholder in that space, you'll have 100% coverage of that market space. That's a piece of mind that you need to make sure that A, you're actually covering it appropriately, but B, your BD becomes finite. Now a lot of people when they do BD, it seems infinite because there's always more stuff to chase it, all the more stuff to chase there. But if you know every so colder from every company in that space, then and you spoke into all of them, you know, you've covered that as best as you can. What it also allows you to do is do a little tests because I we love co-calling, we do a lot of traditional BD, but there are some great people who do some interesting, for the outbound direct mail methods and that kind of thing. When you have a map of this quality and you know the differential size of companies in the space, you can do really, really strong tests. So you can send, let's say, some funky thing in the mail directs, you can see what the return rate is from the corporates, from the SMEs, from the mid-sized companies. And then when you have that data, you can then apply that to the next market that you do. So from a long term perspective, put in the upfront time and get in that right is fundamental. The other thing that you have happens is let's just say your chairs example, right? And let's say you're finding every single company that makes chairs and you let's say you want one of those accounts and they're looking for an engineer who fixes chairs. Well, guess where they're going to come from? They're going to come from every other company that you found. So you just stop doing like the typical cert string, you stop doing the Boolean stuff, you're like somebody who fixes chairs in this particular market after work for one of these companies. So it means from like a candidate point of view as well to get 100% candidate market map, you use that rather than relying on human input on like CVs or LinkedIn profiles to try and find someone. It means again, you have a finite pool on the candidate side, which then means when you then go to clients to deliver on the role, you can say, well, I know for a fact, this is every single person from every single company in this market space, high one or don't. And you have that level of control and confidence. You can say, go elsewhere if you want to, but these are the guys. Right. So yeah, I think yeah, you just put together such a compelling sell there on why this is so foundational and the benefits not only on the sell side, but like you just said there in terms of understanding where you're likely going to get this talent from and where they're going to be. Just before we move on, because I think you nailed that, you said there could take a month, especially how we do it manually. Just tell us about that. What do you mean manually? Is it like talking to people? Do you not? No, it's all data led. Okay. So I want to go into too much detail on it, but essentially the same way that you might do manual market mapping looking through all TVs, you need to look at everyone's experience they've ever had. And that could be thousands and thousands and thousands of candidates to find these people. Right. So that's the only real way to do it. It's the same problem as why chat, GBT and other like automation tools like clay. I don't like any of them. And the reason why is they rely on the data and put on the company side on the actual human. Yeah. So let's say like typically speaking about 25% of the market will be like a small SME and 25% will be a decently sized SME. So that's like 50 to 300 people will be on the upside, 20 to 50 on the on the low side of those like SMU star ideal accounts. Now a lot of those accounts you're going to get four jobs a year round of on the small side eight to 12 on the higher side. They're going to be really high value accounts you fill in those jobs. Now these people are not going to have all the keywords and data on their system. And anyone can test this. You can go immediately through to you can build up your market map as I describe. And then you can use the AI tools, you can use Google search, you can do whatever. Try and do it without going through all the candidate profile. You'll probably get about 60% but at 60% it's just not enough to do what we're trying to do from a full market perspective. Okay. Fair. Yeah. Because I know we was talking before this like there's some stuff that's no piece really investing that's enabled you to do this and it's part of your USPs right? Which is why you said, "Want me to go into some decent on that which I get?" But I guess just to wrap this up, if I don't have tools like that, what were you saying? Like what would you be doing? So a lot of it like thinking in that first month if I have something in my team. And I buy into this idea of like committing to market mapping in that first month. How would you advise people to do that? Is it speaks to many candidates as possible? We'll get back to the episode in just a moment but today I'm excited to talk about one of our long-term partners, Sourcewell. Unlike last year when hopeful improvement defined the outlook, 2025 brings a renewed sense of confidence. 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So you might be able to find a sub-needs where there's 50 people or 50 companies that just hire someone doing exactly that, but they would hire a person, A and B as a tier two profile because they have an adjacent portfolio or an adjacent skill set within that same niche. So you just start there and then slowly build yourself out rather than saying, bloody hell, my market's got 10,000 companies is trying to do that. If you've got 10,000, you're way off base. If you're in the UK market, you should end up with probably somewhere between 50 to 200 companies within that sub-needs. And again, that's from, you know, you want man banned consultant guy who spun out another company through to your foot, C500, mucypt starts. No, that's a really great explanation. And then, sorry, just find a bit on it. If I was like, yeah, too big, I'm going to do what Adam said and just focus on that, like create that 50 to 200 list. How would you do that? Like the actual tools, do you know what I mean? Like what would it is? Am I just using data tools? Am I using jobless-of-have access to them, LinkedIn, just all the stuff? Yeah. So what I would tell you to someone who's doing this for themselves, is what's the best role you placed that you really know and it's a role that you know exactly how to fill. You know the problems, you know the candidate profiles, you know that stuff. I would start with a billion search that you know works for that market. It will pull up all the candidates that look through every company, every candidate ever worked out, pull those out. You might have a few thousands manually look through those, see which ones of those are actually within your market sector. And then that will be a comprehensive market map because the theory is at least one person from any of these companies will have at least one of those words on their profile. And then as long as you then look at not only their current experience but their previous experiences, you're going to get the full market because does that make sense? Yeah, I make sense. I appreciate the showing that. Okay. You've given me the task of doing my market map. It's taking me a moment. You're happy with what you've seen. Now, because this also ties in with how you upskill people, right? The journey in tech and on which we'll touch on because I think that's really interesting. We're now on to then prospecting because now what we've done is like you just said, you don't need to worry about who am I calling, who are my targets. We've got all of that. We've done the foundational work which is going to help us, like you said in the long term. But now I've got people that I know that I need to engage with and always be trying to be having conversations with, get on the radar of before we get into how you think about this. Why don't you just share how you found over the last two years, how have you typically worked with people because you've many worked on a contingent basis right? But your fill rates are really solid. Is that fair? That's fair. Yeah. So that's the context there. And then I think you've already said, but to be clear, you are working in niche markets as well. Right. This isn't, you're not like a generalist, but I mean, so all the clients will be working with the iron board. It's all contingent exclusive. They're all locked into essentially delivery process that we have. Everyone has to turn to weekly teams meeting. We have very hard timelines on when we deliver the market map. On the candidate side of them, when we have five to 10 profiles, where we have for them, what the individual process looks like, So I have sold some upfront fees before, but it's to be honest with you, I think a lot of the time when people talk about paying up from a fruit standpoint, it's a lot about themselves and Everything we're prospecting in the mindset around that is it's not about you about them. It's about that the whole way through It's not about you. So when it comes to why we work in the way that we work and why we onboard them all exclusively But on a contingent basis is because typically that's the best solution for that client and that's something Love it. We're gonna break that down a bit more detail because I think there'll be some things that people can take because I know you've broken this down Talked me through what other if we put headings then we can talk about each one. Yeah, so what are the headings around? I've got my target client. Yeah, I'm now gonna call these people because you're very phone-led. Yeah, how do we break this down? Because we went from like open our problem menus and all that bits How would you break it down what the headings them will get into it before we go through that? Which is important. There's one piece before that Okay, so you break down the call with the most important piece beforehand is the mindset piece. Okay. Yeah, you have to go into that Prospecting session Knowing that these people have problems and you can fix them if you don't know that within your heart And you don't really believe you can do that It's gonna come through and how you speech them It's gonna come through in your tone of voice. It's gonna come through the way in which they treat you and the way in which you allow them to treat you So throughout that entire piece before you go in you can't go in thinking oh my god, I'm bothering these people It's like no, I know this marker back in my hand. I know every company this market. I know every single candidate this market I know what problems I have. I know how to fix them So you're doing them a favor I'll pick up the phone and call them and ask them if there are problems you can solve Yeah, especially those bits. Yeah, and just on that as quickly I appreciate you sharing that because you're totally right because I do feel like if people really committed to getting better at sales They're very quick and come across this phrase problems, right? Yeah, and I'm a big believer in that as well I just think where so I don't know how you feel about this you've literally trained people from scratch So you can tell me how you think about this but I do think sometimes people can get a bit I don't want to say like confused but a bit sort of hung up on like well, I don't like what problems do I solve What how do I understand what problems I solve? So do you mind just talking a bit about that like maybe one gives an example of like the problems that you believe you solve for your clients And two how can we go about Understanding that so then we can then be confident. I think the best way to describe this would be a vacancy isn't really a problem Okay, so let's take what we do is just like maintenance engineers for example The fact they have a hole in their team in the great Lakes region isn't a problem the problem they have is either The engineers across the rest of the country are now flying in cost them a lot of money or they can't deliver for their customers Those machines are down like that's the challenge like the fact they have somebody there to Fix that it's just their current solution. I think probably a more straightforward the thing of that would be let's say someone's looking to grow out Their business and they might have a vacancy for a salesperson, right? But that's not the actual problem they have the problem they have is they trying to go their business Now they could do that by hiring a salesperson or they could do that by hiring a marketing person or they could do that by outsourcing it to Did I mean there's a variety of solutions they have so the vacancy is just like an indicator of a wider business problem So if you know your market inside of now what you should do if you go through the process that I described at the star And you're working just in that small niche when you see let's say they have a gap in their team in one particular Business you'll know well that means person X is having to do why so on and so forth So I think when it comes to the business problem that you're actually trying to fix you need to have an understanding of why are they trying to fill that role in the first place Like what's actually going on on a business level as to why they're trying to fill it with a person because A person's just a solution my they could be trying to hire an SDR But another solution is an a i sDR right so I don't know that I'm a big fan of a i sDR as but I think yeah No, you're completely right because the best recruit is that I meet do have and what we're talking about here is like Comments are acumen and and actually think about the wider picture We're not just thinking about the job briefing and the vacancy like we're not just focusing on that We're trying to actually understand. Okay. What happens if you don't hire this person what's happening right now in the business because his Person isn't in C or whatever, but that's what you're saying right everything you do on a business development side Cast them make delivery easier. That's the whole point So let's say you go through that process and you don't ask those questions about why the how a whole in the business And they just say I want this you can't the day with all this experience into space The delivery team haven't got half a chance to find that person But if you go there and you're like well, I know you have a challenge in this region and the reason you have that challenge is because Someone's left with loads of experience and you haven't got the knowledge there or a solution could be one you send some more junior people Into a different site train them off over six months and then import them. That's a more cost effective way of doing it So I think when it comes to why you do problem-based prospecting and why is always the focus is a it gives you an opportunity to offer alternative solutions Even from a staffing perspective that will actually make you alive easier But also the best outcome for that particular client, but also if they haven't actually got a genuine problem They sure as how I'm going to pay you to fix it Fundamentally and they won't continue to do so So if you're looking to onboard accounts rather than onboarding jobs finding businesses that genuinely have issues that you can fix Is the way to do that rather than trying to slap a plaster and chuck someone in a post? Yeah, and I do think I'm sure you've found this then if you've got anything to compare it to But I do generally believe that if you approach it in this way it gives you an edge and a competitive advantage against like your peers Most likely because they're speaking to people about recruitment and you'll speak some about their problems And you're speaking their language and you're showing them that you know them and you understand or at least You know going and they're going have you got these problems? I know other people like you have them is it something you're motivated to fix or is it something that you do need to be fixed If you don't then I don't need to help you right now You know I can't help you but I do also think having this approach and the way that you approach this can give you an edge as well Is that is how I've year yeah, and you can tell when someone's done it in a certain market for a while Because as soon as you go through in a minute But as soon as you're ringing through your problem menu you just get yes, yes, and yes Anytime you speak about it from the client or the prospect perspective you should be like a flower in the wall They should be like was this guy sitting in my meeting yesterday exactly like that needs to be the level that you're at And the only way that you get there is by arcing all those people in that same market space over extinital time exactly all those challenges are I'm trying to fix them. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Now. I'm glad you brought that up first. So we've got that we understand our problems Yeah, we've got a target list. We've got some numbers. Hopefully that we can call yeah What we're saying how do you break this down with your colleagues? So the purpose of the call is you're turning a suspect into a prospect So a suspect is someone you have on your market map list You think they have problems, but you don't know yeah So the whole purpose of this call is figuring out does this person have these problems? Is it causing enough of an impact to they actually want to get it fixed and if that's the case in your book the meeting So this is broken down into the opener problem impact is it worth solving but the meeting lovely now We have scripts for that, which is good for junior people But what you'll find is that's the five step framework and ask people develop their skills are prospecting They'll start to change it for their own language There's loads of openers. I start with that. So there's a classic like this is a cold cool style opener There's hi-how-wire There's like there's a million opens that you can use the most important thing about the opener is it is comfortable for you Because the only reason why you're doing that opener is so you can deliver the problems How you get to the problems isn't relevant. I don't care if you you know have a some crazy like it better get you jacket on This is a cold cool style opener. I don't care like it doesn't really matter As long as you get through to them saying yes and giving you time to give them the The problem than you then it's fine. That's all that matters Very very well highlighted. I don't know how you feel about this But something that sometimes can be missed unless you do the reps and you consume certain content online is Sometimes what was a bit of a hurdle for me that might be helpful for people is you might be like right I've got my openizer permission based opener. See a lot of these online or whatever. I'm gonna use that Walk might help you if you are struggling to go from someone picks up I do the opener and my conversion from that to the next part of the course isn't very good. Yeah Sometimes you might get hit straight away with like adding what you're trying to sell me or what you calling about Yeah, so I've done this a number of times now and sometimes what helps which might not be missed You've got your opener but someone hits you straight away. They're trying to take control of the course Like I don't want you to call about what you're trying to sell me. Yeah, is you need to then re-ask it again and just be like If I go through what I want to go through even 30 seconds. It's not relevant then you know Don't need to call you again. Is that fair? Yeah, it's just like a bit of a bridge I just thought I'd share that because sometimes people can hear openers I've got that and they like you just said the whole purpose of it is to have the opportunity to go through do you have these problems? Yeah, so if you're struggling with that part that's something that helped me is like just having a bridge Yeah, I would say like when you're looking at first of all the whole cold call you get about between depending on good you are You'll get between sort of 10 to 20% of them meet you as long as you don't your market map and correctly your problems are correct And all that kind of stuff you're gonna get some of them until you go away But it doesn't matter like if you've done thousands of cold calls you know the conversion rates So as soon as you do the volume you stop worrying about it Anyone who's basically you're being hit by a wall with the opener first of all have someone listen to your call Because most of the time when people struggle to get through openers is confidence and tone You can basically say anything to be honest as long as you say and you say it's very small right and this like You know how often do you get calls from in a state agent or something or you let's say you're you're getting your house done Or something's happening and the plum is gonna call you you don't know it's number. Hmm. You'll say oh hi This is Brian like you don't go oh, yeah, so much of it's how you say it. Yeah So it's like it's very rare that that you put the phone down unless you can hear straight away to sales call I think that's also why if you go into So a prospecting call thinking it to sales call, then you're going to go straight into sales mode and about yourself rather than talking about them and the tonal change and that type of thing. So I think you can mindset correct going into the call, then most of your wishes for the open will be gone. So we get to the next part, talk to a bit about this, you could have a problem menu. Yeah, exactly. So in these market sectors, you're going to have there'll be core problems. Rs is really obvious. Like Rs do they have the right experience on that particular portfolio? Will they travel and then package? So normally the portfolio knowledge or whatever sector you're in, like that particular niche knowledge will be an issue. Price is always going to be an issue from a package perspective. And it's good if you know your market really well to throw something in that only somebody in your market would know. So for example, if I was going to be calling like SMEs in the imaging market, let's say they're sold service businesses, I know for a fact they service Siemens and GE MRI and CT machines. Okay. So you struggle finding that experience, like you haven't told them anything about you. You'd ask them a question, but the nature of the question and the way that it's phrase and what you say tells them straight away, you know what you're talking about. So as long as your problems are real problems that you know they have, which if you know your market, you should know those and you deliver them with confidence, then most of the time or at least half the time they'll say, I recognize that one. After you've given them the problems, how do you normally frame that? Do you go with it? Now you're probably going to tell me that you don't run into any of these issues. I used to do that. I change it quite frequently. So it really depends on your tone because like if you have a bit of a cheeky tone about you, like you can quite easily say, I bet you're going to tell me none of it applies to you. But I actually know what they do. But if you say that in perhaps a little bit more of a dull tone, it won't land so well. So for Alex, the guy who would be changed it to which one of those is causing the most headache. So it really depends on like the way you deliver the clothes of the problem menu will impact which phrase works best for you. And that's just trial and error. And it's having someone who has listened to thousands of call calls to listen to him, but I actually, you know, tweak that and try that again and then improve it. And how do you like to frame it up before the problem and do you normally go in with like, I typically speak to so and so inside job title that keep telling me they're running into one of three problems or couple of problems. One, this, two, this. We'll get back to the episode in just a second, but today I'm excited to talk to you about one of our partners, Rayz, who are hands down the best way to fund and manage your contract book. I've had countless people on the podcast over the years singing their praises. Ray supported hundreds of UK and US agencies, large and small in managing their runners. From funding placements, managing time sheets and expenses, ensuring your invoices, collecting payments from your clients and getting contractors paid on time every time. 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They accelerate the growth for the business as we have done. They continue to do across the US and Europe. As we've grown, you know, and mature as a business, we've moved on to their new direct model, meaning we're able to tap into incredibly cheap lending and provide working capital to help us to continue to expand. They've been a great partner to us and a common recommend them highly enough and long made that partnership continue. As you can see, raise is a trusted invoice finance provider, powering some of the fastest grown recruitment agencies in the market. You can book a demo with raise and mention the recruitment mentors podcast to enjoy 50% of your first month. You can click the link in the show notes or you can go directly to www.racetech.io/rmp. That's www.racetech.io/rmp to get access to that offer and check out raise. Again, it all depends on tone. If you have a little bit more of a curious tone, that works really well. But if you're going straight away like super direct, you're like, "I know you have these three problems and you sound direct." I spoke to this guy and he named up someone and I say, "I know you have one of these three, which one is it?" For some ways of delivering that, the level of confidence, especially if in your problem any of you, you've got some really niche knowledge-based questions in there. You always say, "You don't show what you're talking about by telling about it. You show it by asking informed questions." If that's there within your problem menu and you're that direct and your problems are correct, you have them in the palm of your hand from the dot. If I say, "You understand my world," whatever I might say, but it's the second problem that you said that's really my issue. It's the travelling piece. How do I then transition that? The goal is that they recognise one of those problems. What are you then coaching me to do on the next part of that call? The next part of the problem, they found a problem, expand it. It's pretty obvious. Tell me exactly how long I spent in issue four. Tell me exactly how long you've been trying to fix it. Give me more details on that particular problem. Awesome, for example, of that problem. You want them to talk about it in as much detail as possible by you asking probing questions. If it was a travelling piece, for example, I might say, "Well, tell me exactly what you mean by finding someone high travel." Then I might say, "Nation-wide travel," for example. You might say, "Well, why is that? How long have I been in issue four for you?" Or, "I'll be done so far to try and fix it," etc. If you just delve more into that problem, and you want to expand the problem into as big as you can possibly get it. Then you have a huge problem. Let's say by under that conversation, let's say it takes two or three minutes, the guy is like, "I can't find anyone to do nationwide travel. I've been trying to have a 12 months. The rest of my team's covering the country, is costing me a bomb, and they're all going to leave." That's a big problem. The next thing that you do, the leave part might be a bit about the next one, but then it's impact. As I was the impact to you, was the impact to your customers, was the impact to the wider business. Again, when you go through those, it's all about stretching out the impact of that. The financial impact, the personal impact, the financial impact, of course, is how much that costs to you. The personal impact, how much of your time are you spending on the road doing this? You want to make sure the problems are because it can be, the impact as big as it can be. The guy or girl who's just spent the last 10 minutes crying down the phone at you, telling you every single problem they have, how it's impacted them and all those challenges. That tees you up really nicely after you ask them what you try to do about it so far, and nothing's worked. Then take all of those things, because you're making notes during this, and wrap up the problem and the impact of the problem in a nice little bow. You say, "Somerize it." You told me you have these problems going on for this long. You've tried this. This has not worked. It's causing you a massive headache. It's costing you a lot of money. If I told you I could fix this, is it worth fixing? Then there will say, I mean, clearly after 10 minutes of them telling you how much of a pain in the ass it is, they will tell you it's worth fixing. Only after they've told you it's worth fixing, do them book time. I think that step there is the step that most people miss. There's some right. Oh yeah, 100%. Then asking them, is it worth fixing? Because what a lot of junior BD people will do is they'll get super excited. They'll be like, "I've been smashing the phones. I've finally got through my menus down. I found a guy. He's in massive pain. I know I can fix his problem." They'll be like, "Oh, meet me." They start kind of pulling back. You have to qualify first if it's worth fixing. Essentially, through every step from the opener to book in the meeting, you want it to be as low friction as possible. That extra step in there between asking whether it's a problem for them and book in the meeting, asking them if all of that is worth fixing. That little baby step makes that final step a lot easier. Yeah, that's really good insight. If you do a little cold-calling, you might end your cause in this closed part to be like, is it a bad idea to explore further on a quality if we can fix this for you? You're saying what you fancy really effective is like, if I can fix this problem for you, do you think it's worth fixing? Yeah. That's fair. That's a good insight. Nothing. When you book meetings, you want to book qualified meetings. What typically happens again with newer people in the BD process is because it takes a lot of practice to do all this over a long period of time and they'll get to the end and then they'll just, whether the prospect really has the issue or not or the suspect in this case really has the issue, they'll say, well, is it worth 10 minutes if I showed you all of this stuff? You don't want someone who will give you 10 minutes, but they've just spent the last 10 to 15 minutes on the phone with you, telling you about how much pain they're in. They will spend half an hour with you properly and if they're not willing to spend half an hour with you after telling you exactly what a pain in the ass is, they're probably not going to pay you to fix it either. So it's really important that when you go through these steps, you're not just trying to book meetings for the sake of booking meetings. You want to book meetings with people who actually have issues that actually want to fix them. So then when you go in, you can get way higher conversions on your discos. You spend a lot of time listening to your team's cold calls, coaching, where would you say often you're seeing people fall short or like common hurdles on this that might be interesting to share, because there's a lot that you covered there where you often found people really struggled the most or where the often people go wrong. There are kind of three major points. So what typically happens? if they say no to, I've not got any of those three problems, it's not panicking and they're like, I don't know what to do now. Right. So that's a really cool one. So from there, like if you know your market really well, you know they have at least one of those problems, you can either do it one or two ways. So you can be kind of a dick about it and be like, well, I know you have one of these ones with one, is it? But if you really know it really well, now if you're not so confident, you can say, okay, do you have any different challenges or different problems that say you're trying to build a marker the first time and don't really know it or a nice soft one, if you're trying to do some information gathering, it's like, oh, okay, that's interesting. The last five guys in X market, I suppose, you said they had these. What are you doing differently? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then that would be my. That's the third one. But that's typically if you need to get information for a marker, most of the time, if you've been BD in the same market for a long period of time and they tell you no and you know it's a fob off, you just got to go for it. Just not tell that, and it should know straight away. Okay, fair. So when you maybe put on the spot, well, no, I don't have any of those. Sometimes people might have to have a few of those instances to then better handle that next time, where people are going wrong, okay? Yeah, I mean, like sometimes you can laugh, like, because again, if you really know your market and that's why it comes down to the North Star market, if you really know what's going on, you know, everyone has these same challenges. Someone tells you they don't, you know they're not being honest. Yeah, right? Okay, so that's the first one. That's the first one. I'd say the second one is jumping from problem to, is it worth solving too quickly? Right. So they might-- Expanding in the brand. Yeah, you got to do way more expanding on it. And the other thing is I not clarifying exactly what that issue is. So for example, let's say the core problem they have is finding people with industry experience. Is their challenge. Someone with news a call call, you might say, "What have I told you I could find people with industry experience?" It's just too vague. Like you need to spend more time digging into what exactly do you mean by that? Like what have you actually done to find that kind of person? Right? So spending the time to really delve down as deeply possibly can as to what exactly that issue is, and then spending the time on the impact. If you haven't done that, the prospect only needs to feel like two or three minutes. Like they haven't really spoken about it as a call call. Is that a nowhere their minds elsewhere? Unless you give them the time to talk about their issue and talk about the impact of their issue, they're not going to be emotionally bought in and off to actually warrant saying, "You know what, that's worth fixing." So spending the appropriate amount of time digging into exactly what the issue is, exactly, they're trying to fix it and exactly the impacts. That's probably the second biggest one. And the third biggest one is the wrap-up of the end. And saying, "Is it actually worth fixing?" That piece there is the final hurdle. I think those three things are by far the most common issues that I will see in other people. So bits that if you're listening, maybe you could work on. Because I'm not surprised that you said that. It's a real skill getting them to expand and getting to the impact. I've often found the best way to do that for me personally is before maybe I'm asking them to break it down a bit further, like framing up with like, "Do you mind if I should direct question about that?" "Do you mind if I should explain that?" "Go ahead and find a bit more detail." Or just framing up that because obviously you probably listen to way more than I have. But like you said, it's about them. You've called them out of the blue. You obviously understand them because you've gone through the problems. But sometimes it can be difficult to get that information. So you don't want to call people up and then then feel like it's just a complete one-way interview. Do you know what I mean? You just pep and loads of questions. So I've just found to help from that second point that some people might use is like if you're struggling to get to like the root cause or get to the emotional part with that one question, following up with a framed question of like, "Adam, do you mind if I just ask you a direct question about what you just said there has often helped me? I don't know how you found that one." I think I, for especially difficult aspects, when you're going through the prospecting process is what to be able to do is you can almost tell them a short story. So let's say they told you they have the issue of the travelling piece. You're trying to go through an impact that does not give me it to you. You can say, "Well, I suppose X person, who's a manager here, they had that same problem. It was causing this impacts. Is that causing you the same impacts?" Because a lot of the time they're like, "Actually, that is the issue that I have." And because you've just told them there's someone else who has the same issue, they're a little bit more inclined to be open with you about it, even on a cold cold. So that's not the ideal situation, but if they're being cagey and of course, it's a cold cold, people are going to be cagey sometimes. Tell them about other circumstances very, very briefly, very succinctly. There doesn't take a lot of cold cold time. About the impacts had to a different company, you often make some more inclined to tell you what they're trying to do. Yeah, that's a really good insight. Let's move this on to the next phase, which is you booked a meeting with Hannah Discovery. Just before we do really quickly, two things. One, if I'm in your team, and my core goal is to book meetings and one of the main channels that I'm doing that on is calling, what does good look like in terms of if I have a day, and I've had maybe, I don't know how you do it, two sprints in that day on the cold calling. We've got the foundational market map all that. If you look at my numbers and you go, that was great versus not good enough. What's the difference? What are the numbers you expect to see on the cool ones? A very quick one from me and we'll get back to the conversation. Alongside hosting this podcast, I'm also the founder of Hector, the online skills development platform, helping recruiters, solo founders, and growing businesses master the skills to dominate their markets. Whether you're a solo founder wanting to hone your recruitment skills alongside a lot of the community, and ambitious recruiters striving to hit their targets faster, or maybe a recruitment leader focused on building high performing teams. Hector has got you covered. All of our courses are delivered by today's top performing recruiters. So you're going to get practical proven strategies not outdated theory. Book your free skills assessment session with me today. And let's find out if Hector can help you achieve your goals. The links in the show notes, check it out, and let's see if we can help. So we're not super high volume. So they would do, let's say, 40 dials will be about 10 connects with the right data. By the way, if you're doing this cold calling thing, like by great data, the data is terrible. Yeah, I think that's what I'm talking about. Yeah. So we should get about 25% pick a brain. They should have about 10 conversations, but one meeting in per day from that from a nice EP. So good feel. It's like 40 calls because they're targeted right there. Yeah, but we, so we don't talk on dialouts. We're talking to them actually, have you spoken to the guy? So connected. Yeah, exactly. So a good day would be 10. 10 connects. Yeah. 10 conversation. People picked up and then you go through this. And you spoke to it. Yeah. Okay. Cool. I've had quite a lot of people share with me that they haven't had a whole lot of success cold calling people in the US rubbish. Complete rubbish. Perfect. In fact, it's easier. Okay. The data is way easier to get hold of. Okay. So in the UK, we'll probably have like 40% of our ICP's phone numbers is more like 95% in America. Okay. You've got everyone's phone number really quite easily. Pick up where it should found to be similar. Very, very similar. Okay. So you get your systems right. Yeah. Like, don't try and call from a 07 number. It's not going to work. Like buy a proper American phone and do it properly or don't bother. Yeah. That's key. If me and you both work in recruitment, we met up as mates were in the pub chatting about recruitment. Yeah. And you're telling me about how you do things. How would you describe this discovery meeting? Like, what's the point in it? What's the purpose of it? Just tell us about that because everyone has that. Yeah. So I'll frame this this way. The point of a prospecting phase of that call is to turn a suspect into a prospect. So someone who you think has a problem, i.e. a suspect, now there are prospects. You know has a problem. The point of that discovery call is working out, is this problem, something they actually want to fix? You can actually help them fix. And will they pay for it to be fixed? That's the point of the call. Okay. So when you go through these discovery calls, they're much like on the call call, any kind of client outreach. Like, none of it should be about you. At this point, they probably shouldn't even know your name. Like, if you don't call call properly, you don't say who you are, none of that, they see you name on the email. So that just gives you a bit of framework in terms of you haven't told them anything about you yet. You join that meeting. The purpose of that meeting again is to get them to open up, talk about it, much like on a call call, but in more detail with the problem and that particular impact. And then find out if you can fix it. So the way that you do that is really straightforward. The biggest mistake everyone makes when they start on discos is not taking control. Again, it's a big end. Yeah. So this is a mindset thing. This is your meeting. They're the one with the problem, not you. You're there with the solution. So best ways is that as a gender setting. I feel like this is how I normally like to run these. Let me know if you want to do any of that. How I like to run this. This is how it's going to run. Okay. So yeah, we have half an hour today. I'm not here to show you anything. I'm not going to pitch deck. I want to find out about you. And I've worked with this particular business. Or you might want to say that's a bit of framework and context, but it's like, tell me exactly. You mentioned these three challenges. Tell me exactly about the challenges again and they're on the room again. And you run through much similar to on a cold call where you go through problem and impact. You do that, but way more in depth. Okay. So much like on a cold call, you go problem impacts. Is it worth solving? Rapping the bow. You know, book a meeting. It's the same thing. So it's problem. It's impact. We've done about to find a fix here. How much does it cost to them? All that kind of stuff. Then you summarize again for them. I'm going to wrap it all in nice little bow and say, you've told me all this stuff. Let me show you how you fix it. And then for the last five to minutes of that call, you show them exactly how you fix only the problem they spoke about. Like one of the big problems or challenges that new BD people have with client meetings is they start selling stuff the client just couldn't give a toss about. Right. The only thing you should talk about in that meeting are exactly the issues they're speaking about. Okay. could be where those candidate access or finding people with the right package, right, or if it's trying to keep their staff because they lose them at each six months, whatever it is that they spoke about and that's the impact they spoke about and that's what they're really nagging. That's what you solve at the end. You don't solve it by saying we worked in the street for 25 years, blah, blah, blah, blah, because they don't give a toss. They've only just spoken about their challenges themselves. So I think for that discovery process, you shouldn't even be anywhere near fees. You shouldn't be talking about yourself at all. You should just be asking really good, probing questions that are very specific to that industry, to that particular prospect, to get them to uncover every single challenge they're having, exactly how they're trying to fix it right now, how long it's been going on for and if they actually want to get it fixed. So that's typically how you're drawn that. And how do you close out that then once you've been like, okay, you've done the summary, this is how we can fix this for you, but then what's the ask at the end because I'm assuming what you're getting you talking about right, right? So this way together. So you've asked them if it's worth, you've summarized it, they challenge, you then show them how you'd fix it. Hopefully you have some examples as how you'd fix it. Once that's done, you ask them, will this fix your problem or not? Does ask them straight away. This will fix your problem or not. It's just going to help you or not. And if they say, yes, you're okay, great. Now we go through commitment. And this is where you do things like saying, this is going to be more expensive than you used to. This is going to take more of your time than you'll use to. You're going to see a little weekly basis until this is done. Not, you know, these types of things. It's like you're prefacing everything as in like the, you're almost counting the definitions. Yeah, you're saying this is what's going to happen. Are you okay with that? Right. And then they say yes or no. And then they say, they say, that's great. These are our fees. This is this when you're going to book in the bridging call. And that's that. Yeah. Really straightforward. Like the pitching part of that process should take five minutes. Yeah. Because you're only pitching against that particular challenge. Yeah. When it comes to, and again, we're talking about these SME star businesses. So you can see it's quite quickly. It's like that. It's always your with the right stakeholder. Yeah. And you've seen a fair 50% success rate on these calls. Yeah. So we were at 50%. Our boys have been booking in some less qualified discos, dropped down to 30. So that's like, it's so slow. Right. You know, one third between there for 50%. Mate, if you were to compare that to people, how many client means they're having to like work and maybe be interesting, but you've had that to 50% before. Yeah. And then you've just said again, in the way that you deliver it, which are 25% and offers six month guarantee. Yeah. That's it. Again, you can tell the way that you're talking about it. How you say it is important as well. It's all about how you say it. Yeah. Like, I've never discounted. I just don't do it. I don't believe in it. And if you've gone through this process appropriately and they actually have a problem and you can actually fix it, it's why would they say no? No, you're right. Tell us about because again, I love this and there'll be parts that maybe some people are doing this or not. You just mentioned it there. You've just taken me through that. I'm a prospect. And then I've gone, all sounds good. Excited to get cracking. We booking the job briefing call. Just tell us about the process that you've built around this in terms of going from job briefing call to being filled while you've got some really solid fill rates. Because I think that this is class the way you do this. Tell us about the important bits there. Yeah. So in terms of when the account comes in, it thing gets handed over to the team. So that'd be a team's call, we kick off call. So that will have the BD person in it. So in this case, me, it will have probably an account manager or more seasoned person and then probably a delivery person. So it'd be free of us on the call and one or two of them depending how many people relevant for that particular brief will go through a consultation process. So again, because we spoke about what actual issue they're trying to fix in that consultation to deliver, they might say we need someone like this and we'll say, well, here's the market map. Go back into the North Star market I spoke about earlier. It's like that person doesn't exist in that region. How about you do this instead? So you use that consultation call to basically make sure you do not come off that call until you are 100% positive. You can find that person for that business. So that's the point of that particular call. And then from then you book in weekly teams called with that client every single week onto like a basically a timeline of when you need to get candidates and that kind of thing. They don't agree to that. We don't take on the job. They don't turn up to the briefing call to to the weekly call. So we stop working the job. So it's super important that and it's again comes back to when you onboard the account. When you go through this process and they're on your call, you took control from day one and you took control in terms of how the fees work. You show them exactly how the filling process works. You take control of the consultation when the job first comes in. The only interaction that clients have with you is you running the process appropriately. It gives them a level of confidence in what you're doing and it means they're more committed to turning up to your meetings. Well, I would say though, if you're looking through this for yourself, is you better bloody fill the job. You have to deliver. You have to deliver wrong time. It has to be quick. It has to be quality because if you're asking for higher fees, you're asking for that level of commitment, like the delivery process has to fulfill that to a high standard because it's really quite easy. You can have all the provider in the world at front. You got to deliver it. But on the back end, if you mess it up, you're in a real pickle from the time that you've always worked towards from job briefing to like, yeah, what is good like what you're always aiming for? Like the key milestones there. So it depends on the region because that will impact how much data we have on the candidate side, but typically it'd be one week mapping, one week, week two, sorry, when they had the candidates, the interview's typically take two weeks. So it should be four weeks from job into the accept. Really? Yeah. Nice. And there's no reason why that kind happen. And the only reason why these might go off the rails would be if a client stops showing up to meetings. Yeah. Right? But that's why throughout the BD process, why it's so important because if you get that commitment from the staff, they know that's what they're signing up for. And they know they're paying higher fees because they're going through this extensive process. Then they meet three people in that briefing course. Yeah. They have, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of weight behind that. And then I'll show you who I'm going to look at the detail, but I showed you the candidate maps we have and all that kind of stuff. The day to have the backup, the filling process of the particular jobs with that, you have that confidence in the client. There's been a reason why they wouldn't show up. And again, it's a real issue to try to fix what's like typical agenda on those weekly calls. So we can be you told us you want to find this person, we told you this was available. This is actually what's available in that market space. Right. That's what it won't be to is these are the candidates yourself. The candidates on the call. I tell a team, you don't send a CV to the client until you're on the call. You speak them for every single candidate you talk through with them. Okay. Some of the time we'll do a recorded interview and send that as well, depending on how busy that particular client is. Right? to make sure the process is on time. And then the next one's pretty much to be feedback. So you know, you said if someone doesn't shout to one of those, you start working the job. How do you deliver that in a way that doesn't number and bridges? Well, it's relatively straightforward. So right from the first meeting, you send them a document that outlines the whole process. A lot of SLS. Yeah. And you're like, so and I'll be really honest with them because we spend a lot of time on our vacancies. I'll tell them it's like, if I'm paying someone to working weeks to fill your job, you're going to show over half an hour meeting. And if you don't, we don't fill your job in. It's like, okay. Yeah. It's like, so we're first out to week one another short to week two. How are you delivering that to me? Because if they had some of the things, but if they have the challenges right from and that's why we went through a particular process and they're short to week one when we went through that, we wouldn't send them to the candidates until they show up to week two. Right. So it's like, you either fill yourself in which case is pointless taking our time anywhere in that particular role or you need to rebook it. But you won't get any candidates to interview until you talk to us. Yeah. But again, it's kind of rarely. It happens occasionally, mostly with very small companies. But most of the time, like if you've taken someone all the way through this, like you've really got the data to back it up, you've got really great case studies, you know what you're talking about, you've got three or four people that are on the job for them, you've given them that much time. Fairly foolproof. It's like, it's fairly foolproof on that side. Yeah. You've done this a lot now, right? And I'm sure this part of the years we're having this conversation you'll be looking at the data even more, thinking about where you can get this US division to. What does a good month look like? You know, we've got, we've spoken about what is good calling it like. But now when we think about meetings, jobs on accounts on. Yeah. If we follow this process, we get this dialed, I'm really trying to improve myself's process to implement some of the things that I've learned from this conversation. What does good look like? If you're doing full-time BDA at a competent level, you should get four new accounts a month. Four new accounts a month. Each of those accounts, as long as you're on your ICP correctly, again, your North Star Market Map, each of them should hire between four to eight times a year. So you should be able to build a solid desk into three months. Okay, four accounts. How many discover meetings are we having? So if you're doing full-time BDA, between two or three a week, on a really a week or before, but two or three really well qualified meetings from companies within that market map. Love it. Let's talk about this way, you've got the team set up because not everyone has it set up this way. Do you mind just telling us a bit about this? Because I think this is really cool. How do you know to have this set up? Because you built out this BD team. So explain to us what that means. So let's just break this down because we've got business development, account management and delivery. Who's responsible for what? Where does responsibility stop? Just tell us a bit about that because I think this is really interesting. I'll start with perhaps comparing it to all the models. So when you separate BD from account management, you start to get in a position where your best BDs start to avalanche in loads of accounts. What typically happens? Let's say you've got a model where you've got sales and delivery, but sales keeps the account. Right. Which is a lot of models. The challenge is, like let's say you're a consultant, you're decent at BD, you've been doing it for two years. You're now sitting on a pretty nice fat desk. You're not incentivized to do that. You're not incentivized to do any more. So it's a complete waste. You can get complacent. Yeah, you get complacent straight away and it also limits. what you think you can do. So when I first started doing BD, I had to hand over the desk that I built and then when I started doing the American market I had to hand over all the markets that I built out for the UK. So I got really used to building it out But for us in order to make sure that we're consistently growing the people who bring on the accounts Hand them off straightaway turn the sign they're exclusive join that first job briefing I now don't get involved until there's an issue. So BD stops at that first job briefing call. Yeah, and then back to on the phones New client and market space if you're doing a good job You should do about 10% of the market map you built you should be working with a near Mike if you do it properly and then a Account manager and starts from that job briefing called to when yeah, so until the end of the account until it's filled Yeah, so the account manager's always talking to that account. Okay, so you have the delivery there and incentivize to make sure they Work if you fall to eight times. Yeah, exactly because like once once they're really wants to go through the first job And they're going to really get filled for the process the feedback is normally pretty good Because like it's quite rare these SMEs get that level of commitment and level delivery for these jobs So normally it's quite strong and then it's the AM job at that point to do my internal business development I suppose with another account that can't develop There's a count of element stuff all about delivery. Where does that stop for them? So that's per vacancy Essentially, so they would run the process from the start I might have a more junior person resourcing on it But from torsion the candidates through the system all the way through the job offer accept on that particular role Joining will weekly meetings that type of thing joining the review call So after any job we feel we book and a call to tell us how it's gone and that kind of thing So they'll do all of that stuff. So they were really close to the account managers. Yeah exactly exactly So again, like so it's when you're looking at staffing in general You're thinking about like what people are good at It becomes really difficult for someone to do really competent AM and really competent delivery and really focusing on it But if you're able to split them up like there You're able to acquire lots of accounts, quality accounts, you know the keep lots of them Anyway to fill lots of their jobs The only challenge with that is like unlike the 360 model which has sort of like a busying how simple it is The challenge with this model works really well. Everything has to work really well Right because when there's every part that has to be right Every part on that has to work really well because one break in that chain you got a real big problem Right so that's been really challenging making sure you get that right But once it's right in its humming it's like a factory Right and you can do really really well with it but you do spell a lot more time making sure every piece of that puzzle aligns appropriately How many accounts per account manager on average roughly what does that look like before maybe service levels drop or I don't know What typically a account manager's work until it's you know It really depends on the size of account because if you're dealing with like we have four groups of account sizes So depending on the size of account or depending on how much work you do for it Right So that would really vary I think in the UK it's like a million dot pound with a business is one full-time job Right for account manager something like that Right, got you for It's probably about It would be more than that in my mind It's something you have to figure out though Yeah So it would really depend on the outcomes that we get from what we do And then when we are over there Because a lot more easier in terms of like face-to-face meetings and that kind of thing It's got to budget those in and work out from a time perspective But account management really shouldn't take that long And the reason why is at the end of the day you're a supplier for that business Like if you're dealing with people you should be dealing with which are the directors They are not hanging around waiting for a coffee catch up Like they're doing their job So if you're doing your job as an account manager You're doing the minimum amount of appropriate contact to that account to maintain and grow it Not too little so you lose it And not too much that you start in approaching on their business And that's a really fine line I think you'll know it because if you deal with suppliers Right, they've become to certain point where it's just too much Bit too much yeah And then there's too little way now you're open to other people Yeah right so if find that balance whereas it was appropriate And then the real skill in my view with the account management is When you have those quarterly meetings or monthly meetings depending on the size of the account Actually talking about stuff they care about And again it comes back to that market map If you're working solely within that market space And you know everything that's going on All the information from their directors petitors is going to be useful for them to know If there's a new bonus structure going on somewhere If a new space is drawing faster If someone's paying better Whatever you should know that through the market map That's more useful to tell those guys But it has to be that particular that niche to that market sector I think it goes hand in hand with your sales process Or your filling process as well But I think if you're really good at account management as well We're really good and simple tactic as you always have the next meeting But or you know the next time you're speaking to that account As well I think that's crucial Something that whenever I speak to people about this Well they're always trying to figure out the best way to do it I hopefully you don't mind sharing But like how do we incentivize this machine Do you know what I mean? How is that typically done? It might have changed over time But does the sales team get the majority of the placement is done Do you know what I mean? Because I think that's something that people have to experiment with as well So how is everyone incentivized I won't go into loads of detail On that What I would say is if someone's good at BD They can build their own desk pretty quickly And they can have a resource and all that stuff And they'll get to that position where Without this system Where they're kind of comfy Okay If you're expecting somebody To do nothing but cold outreach Non-stop high quality bringing high value accounts Like most of these accounts should be worth 50k plus To bring on the size Even the smaller ones be around that kind of mark You have to incentivize them really well To warn them doing that Otherwise they might as well go and start their own business Or like whatever if they're that good at BD So but you have to pay them separately Because at the same time as that We don't want to happen is We're not incentivizing the account managers And they do every people Because as soon as that jobs come in that account is in They have to manage that really really well So I'd say it's probably 80% on the delivery side And 20% but then there's a different scheme for the sales piece But in terms of why if you look at your billings From a delivery perspective You will still get the majority of that For you for that job Yeah Because I know again this might have taken Over a long period of time to figure that out And every business is different But you've got this like really breaking down And there's an overhaven you like at each stage And then just curious Because I know this is something also something people think about Do you think the BD times should be incentivized Or not only the accounts that you bring on And that first job being filled or jobs being filled But also are you incentivized for the amount of money That account spends in the first year or Yeah exactly that Okay Because that is the other part that I think You should incentivize that Isn't just about doing spot business And you're just incentivized to bring on accounts That spend in the short time But actually are you targeting accounts That could be spending money with us over the next 12 months 24 months Yeah You should be incentivized to that Yeah it's just on that way Yeah it should be yeah Nice Let's bring this home then around The stuff that you spend a lot of time on now with your team You know everything that we've gone through Makes this part easier Still hard and takes energy and work In terms of you helping people become competent And really great in these aspects But I think from my view As you've got all this broken down You've got a clear process Which a lot of recruitment teams don't It makes your coaching And how to help people get better a lot easier Because as you've got clear processes So you tell me before we started this The normal journey to take people on toes about that Because I thought that was interesting Because a lot of your time now is the coaching part Isn't it And helping people get great at the prospect And get great at the discovery Get good at these bits Tell us a bit about if I join your team Tom Ram and apprentice And I'm in the BD team I'm in Adam's team What are we doing in those early periods Because I thought it was quite interesting Well to start with You won't join the team until you go through the Resourcing order And the managing order For a few reasons So you need to understand what recruitment is And how that works In my view We try to import sales people It doesn't work very well In my view So you try to do that Straight to sales versus resource in Yeah well Yeah so you have to really get it and also There's a certain level of Fluency within your market That's really useful When you're doing BD I spoke about it in terms of How specific your questioning is around the problems But if you aren't fluent in your market Your margin for error in sales calls Especially BD calls is tiny Like if you say something stupid It's just picked up like that straight away So without that foundation or knowledge Within that market space Because a lot more difficult So let's see You want to do sales You want to do BD You've gone through the first six months At the business and you want to do that From there we have a three month audit So month one is mapping So you have a month You map at a market You all suffering through earlier Month two is prospecting As I spoke about earlier Going through all those stages from A lot of that is cool based Like we don't Ask them to do things like LinkedIn And email and that kind of stuff We have different systems for that But at the same time I was like Spain too earlier One of the biggest challenges People have building out Sales functions is Phone first Yeah, yeah So we make sure that they're trained From day one just with the phone Now the thing is if you're going to do that You've got to make sure they have Inventionary good projects And ICP less Amazing data Great phone systems You've got to make it easy For them to consistently use the phone Reduces friction Yeah, if you're trying to get someone to be phone first And you're getting a 1% pickup break Your data's terrible Like good luck So do your job first Set them up for success And be phone first So with that Month to prospecting essentially it's a theory Behind prospecting They had to book one meeting They had to talk me through what that looks like And then month three is is disco So again as I spoke about They had to book like 10 meetings They had to attend meetings Go through that process with me Or someone else Seen the business watching them And then once they're through that Or did which could take anywhere from three to nine months Only at that point Are they then allowed to go away and do their own Cruck on beading And what Having this process What have you seen so far with the team Because you've got some pretty cool things you should be proud of Like how have you Yeah Some bits that the team have achieved right And a fairly short period of time The coolest thing for me Is Everyone in you guys through that process Has the same conversion rates In what sense In terms of the quality of discovery Discovery to account Right Pretty much Within really small variants Regardless of the unpredictable That's the whole point That's what makes it most exciting Because if you know it's predictable And I know I'm concoction to do it Then it's just find the bodies that are are good enough to do it, right? And you want to pull through that process. So that's the cool thing. The other thing is like, with our second year, we onboard, I mean, the last six months, we've onboarded just over a million pounds worth of new business, which is a lot from that, from that BD function. So, and again, it's only two years' time. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's really quite cool to see. From a business perspective, like, it's our job to provide people who work for us with opportunities to do well. If that's through the really strong BD coach that I spoke about, give them consistent results there, and paying them really well for doing whole BD, or from a delivery standpoint, by you're feeling them really high value exclusive vacancies, they can fill with high committed clients, so that they can make great money out of. It's like, just hold, what I'm most proud of with the whole system is, A, it works, which is the most important thing, but B, every single person benefits from it, not just the business, but the BD people, delivery people, everyone does better because they're working within that system. - Love it. So we're if we were to sit down this time next year, where are we gonna be mate? What are we excited about, what we're making happen? - Well, I'm gonna wait for the US government to get my team through first, so that's really fun. - For that would have happened, where are we taking this US team? - So I'm going to load the detail. But I think by next year, we'll have at least four to eight more head count, and then from there I'll reassess because it really depends on how good my two new BD guys get. So whether they get to level four level two, that will dictate that amount of accounts that come in, which will then dictate how many highs I'm making so I'm so full. So because of the way we had it as a really well structured, and we know our conversion rates across it, depending on the quality of those guys, will depend on the race of growth. - Yeah, love it. - Now if they tell us it's rock stars, then, you know, it's time for you to be in the US, living the dream. - Yeah, with any luck. (laughing) - Sorry. - Now look, honestly, massive thank you for breaking all of this down for us. I know there'll be so many different parts there that people can take, can use, can implement the narrowing processes, and like genuinely, like really excited to see from afar, you know, where you take this team, the journey that you're going on, like it's really cool to see and really appreciate you showing it with us today. - Oh, thank you. - 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 Mentals podcast, but I'm also the founder of Recruitment Mentals. 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. So 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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