How to Shift From Selling Traditional Recruitment to Solution-Based Sales with Troy Neenan

[Music] Troy Nenean. He's worked in recruitment for Nili a decade. Recently got promoted to contract solutions director at Pro Clinical Starfing. And over the last five years he's been instrumental in building the EU Contract Team. Starting it from scratch in four short years this division is now generating circa 1 million net fee income. So how did Troy do it? So this is what you're going to learn in this week's episode. How to become well class at business development. How to identify hiring triggers that could lead to large scale hiring projects. The power of committing to becoming a subject matter expert and how to use your industry knowledge when selling. How to transition from selling typical contract solutions to selling solutions for large scale hiring projects. And so so much more. Let's get into this week's episode. Troy welcome to the pod. Thank you for having me. Obviously we first met when you came to one of the live broadcast events. Yes. So now do you ever think we'll end then end up in this position? Absolutely not. Still quite surreal that I'm actually here. Yeah. So a lot to unpack. Obviously you've been on as we were just saying, like really interesting journey. What we're going to unpack today is the last sort of four years with Pro Clinical. Obviously you've just sort of been, let's call it, I guess, this a promotion right? Yeah. Promotion. You can say that. Yeah. It's in entirely new business focused. But when you joined the business, you was really at the forefront of building out really focusing on the contract side right? Yeah. For Pro Clinical. Yeah. You're at specifically. And your world is under the banner of like life sciences right? That's right. Yeah. So really interested to, if I'm honest, like I know we're going to end up getting in the sort of inter-crissies of like how you've become constantly better on the BD client acquisition side. I know that's something that a lot of people enjoy. So why don't we start here because I find it interesting when the sort of terminology changes. But correct me if I'm wrong. So your title now is Contract Solutions. Direct. Direct, right? So what I want to ask you to kick this off is how would you describe the difference between a contract recruiter and a contract solutions recruiter? That's a good question. My title was a bit hyped up, but it was quite good. Yeah, I guess from starting out, when I've been doing this for eight years now, and typically when I was first starting doing BD, I think I was doing the kind of traditional way of calling up a client, got a great candidate. Well, you think of them. So that's what I was doing from the start. Now eight years later, I've got a much more strategic focused kind of role. I'm basically going up to clients and saying, I know you're running a Phase 3 trial that you need to complete. So you can then go to the authorities and get the medicine approved. I know you need a team of 12 people. So I already know that from the start, and that's kind of the message I'm leading with. So I think that's the kind of key here is that, started off doing kind of the traditional, here's a CV, what do you think? To now moving into more of a solution space, where I'm leading with a bit more value, and I understand what the client wants. And I'm creating a team, a project team, to deliver on their kind of needs of the business basically. What's like, I find really interesting about that, the way that you framed it out, that was a good job by the way. So like, it's still. It's not then. But what's interesting is, like, if you think about, I don't know what you think about this, but what you just described there, the center of it is still like people essentially. Like what will make up that project team is people. But the way you're framing it and the conversations you're having, like you just said, is, I know that you may have a problem getting to the outcome that you want, and I can provide you the solution for this. So it does, like you said, you're not leading with the product being the person, you're actually saying, hey, I know, this is where you want to go, this is what's important to you, these are your goals. And some of the issues that you might have, or to really make sure that you get there, you're going to need this solution, you're going to need these people to do that. - Sort of how I sort of take that. - Yeah, and that's exactly right. We're not a consultant company. I don't work in the consultant space where we're taking on the deliverables of the project, because our insurance just wouldn't be sky high. So that's not something we're doing, but I can certainly add value in, obviously, creating a project team, which can be, in terms of budget, be better for the business. And also, we have direct access to talent, sometimes what a client in my space, they will outsource to a consultancy, that consultancy then asks us to find the talent. So they're almost like a middleman, they do take on a lot of the deliverables of the project, but they essentially need us to find the people. So what we do is we'll come in and say, look, you can have direct access to the talent, how to still have someone internally overseeing the project, but you have direct access to talent, and we can also bring people in from your competitors essentially. Let's start here then, let's just get straight into it. How would you, I know we're early on here, but you haven't just, obviously, this started in January this new role, right? But you wanted to go into this direction when we're prepared for this. Obviously, some of the things that you feel like your colleagues would say you're best known for is business development, is client acquisition. So obviously, this is something you wanted to lean into this and go, but yeah, this wasn't just something that in January, I want to start doing more of this. I'm assuming you saw opportunities and you start to have conversations, pipeline where it was more around projects, teams, these types of things, right? Why don't we just start? I'd love to just, for people listening to this, that may feel like, I don't know, this might be like brand newton, they never heard of a contract recruiter speaking about it this way, but I feel like the more and more contract recruiters that I speak to, it almost seems like this is not everyone, but it seems like they want to get to this sort of position where they're providing solutions more rather than like a person that can solve like a short term problem. So what would you say are the main mindset shifts you have to have towards your client acquisition, your business development, because you said how it's different in terms of how you do it, right? Or how you speak about it, but what about your mindset towards business development, because surely there's going to be some differences there. Yeah, so the mindset, I mean, the mindset I've had with BD always is even when I was doing the candidate side, I was doing BD every day. So even when I was speaking to candidates, I was getting information such as references, you know, where they're interviewing the managers that they've worked with. So I'm getting these pieces of information to help with my BD. So I think the mindset BD in general has to be, it's not separate. Candidate work is also your BD work, and that's been the kind of mindset that I've had throughout my whole career. I think when we are moving into more of the solution space, I think there's two things that we need to know is knowing the triggers to hire for your clients, not only one person, but what are the triggers to hiring a team of people? So do you really understand that? Do you consult and really understand that? That's one point, and the second point is knowing your market really well and inside out. We obviously work in a life science space, but I work in a very specific area, just clinical research, I've been doing this for eight years. Now it's easy for me to say this, eight years on, say I'm a market expert, but even when you're a young consultant or a junior consultant, you can still leverage a lot of market information from your clients, because there's a lot of publicly available data out there. Then you can use your BD kind of course to kind of summarise. Yeah, that's really helpful. So would you mind, I know, fine if you give an example in your world, but I think that first point is really interesting, the trigger point, right? So give us an example of that, you can make it to your world, and then I'll make sure that I feel like I understand it. Yeah, that is a different mindset shift, isn't it? It's like, because you're not talking about they've got a live vacancy, it sounds like you're the trigger point. This then indicates to me that they're going to need these types of people that can do these types of things over this time period, but you tell me what the trigger point is. Yeah, so in terms of the kind of examples I'll use is when I look at partnering with clients, I look at where they're running the clinical trial. So for example, if a new biotech is running a Phase 2 trial in Europe, then I know there will need some oversight of that study, because they're based perhaps in America, and they don't have boots on the ground. So I'm going to that client, and I'm saying, I know you have a new study that you're running, which is typically in Phase 2, the three stages to clinical development. Stage 2, it's typically in more of an international study, so you're going into Europe, you're opening more research sites to run the trial. So I'm going to the client, I'm saying, I know you're running a Phase 2 trial based on kind of the evidence or the info that I have. I know you will need some oversight or a project manager to oversee that study, and then you can go from there and make some use. So you're kind of leading with value and leading with that. So that doesn't mean that to be fairly explained that pretty well. So then you use that inside, and then obviously again, I'm assuming people can get that information, but then it's not everyone's going to do that with that information. Yeah, it's kind of knowing what information to take and then discuss with clients, because this is with a hiring manager, and I typically work with smaller companies that don't have maybe HR team. So maybe my message to HR team might be slightly different than I'm talking to a hiring manager about. - Sure. - But the info is still the same. - So what I know, you might have just given the example about some of the make sure that this is clear for people 'cause I think it's interesting is like, is there anything else that you could share where like, you've seen the trigger point that you've, again, maybe found for experience and you figured out, you know what, if this happens then this probably is gonna mean that, which means they're gonna need these types of people in order to help them, you know, achieve what they wanna achieve. Is there anything else more to share on how else you approach that call? 'Cause that is different, right? 'Cause like you said that at the beginning of this conversation, how a lot of people do be these, like, I've got this person that can do this for you, like, is that someone that you need or whatever? But here you're not even talking about a person, right? You're actually talking about the future needs. So like, is there anything else to share? Like, 'cause I'm assuming that's something you've had to get better at. So like, how have you, tell us a bit more about what that sounds like, right? 'Cause I think that's interesting for people on how you actually approach those types of calls. - Yeah, so I think going back to how I was, you know, doing beauty before, I was really leading with the CV. Now I'm leading the conversation with the project. So I'm discussing the project and understanding the project needs and then based on that, we can then go through, okay, you'll need three people to service this project. But clients also go on the journey as well. They usually start a very small and then they grow and grow. And then once they get to a stage where they're going to approve a medicine, there are 500, 300 person business. So it's understanding, in each stage of the, kind of developing a life cycle, each stage of clients at what they need, how many people they kind of need it as well. - So sure is there? - Maybe leading with the projects a bit more rather than a kind of CV. If that's not your question. - What might be helpful then is, what about like, how do you talk to me about your sales process then? 'Cause like, surely that's evolved. 'Cause like, what it sounds like there, they need to be giving you information and you need to be asking good quality questions. When you find these trigger points, what are you asking for, you're asking for, you're leading with that approach and going. And this is why I think it could be, you know, a good idea to have a 30, 45 minute discovery cool where I can understand a bit more about your potential project needs and the people you're going to need. Or do you know what does the sales process look like? 'Cause surely that's different. - Yeah, so the initial reach out is actually quite specific. So I reach out to a client, usually via email. And I'll state the kind of study name or the study number. Usually it's, yeah, kind of a simple message. I'm working with two of your clients. You know, I've overseen a project team with X amount of people. Here's a few people will have pointed below. I have then have that conversation with them, usually half an hour or 40 minutes. Depending on the size of the company, we then have to might have to go through a, kind of a, sort of a sales process where we're agreeing terms with them, et cetera, typically with a smaller company that you don't have to, typically they're happy to then start to work on those kind of needs that they have. - Okay, so basically that's really interesting. So you're using like case studies, you're using your track record. You're showing them that you've done your research. Like this is what I think, and the ask at that point is then for like a third, 45 minute conversation. - Yeah, when you're free to speak. - And then in that conversation, is that when you're really digging into like, like, you know, tell me a bit more about how you think this is gonna go to the project and you learn that, and then what, and then you advise from that point. - So yeah, so I'll lead with the project. So I say, okay, talk me through what you'll need on this project. We'll go through quite specific, specific details. I know my market quite well. So I can talk a fairly high level. I've not done the role that these guys are doing, but I can work to fairly high level. Based on that info, then I'm advising them on how to go about it. So based on the info, I think you probably need an oversight manager in three countries because you're running trials and these three countries. So that's how I'd lead the conversation. - Yeah, fun. - That is really interesting. Have you had anyone in your team because obviously you used to manage your team? - Yeah. - What have you found people struggle with when trying to have more of those toxic conversations? 'Cause it is different. That is very different, right? 'Cause you're really having to lean into your subject matter expertise and you're advising, right? In terms of the types of people. And also, you're advising on the problems they might run into the solution they'll need in terms of the people they're gonna need. Is there anything that you found people often struggle where they're going from doing the typical BD special in candidates, contractors or whatever, to them booking an meeting and then having to guide the conversation to understand what actually type of contractors and skillsets they're gonna need. Have you found anything that typically people struggle with when trying to make that transition? - Yeah, I think what they do struggle with is traditionally, especially when I've managed people who have quite a few years of experience, they will still lead with the kind of CV. So then it's encouraging them not to do that because there's times where you have to. A client needs a different depending on who they are and where they are. But then it's just coaching them and giving them a good case study as to this is how we've done it. If you leave the project, you're gonna find out way more information. So that client who maybe thinks that he needs one person. In reality, if we go through case studies what we've done before and if you understand the study, they're running, they might need three people. So that's a kind of journey. But you're right, I would say, when I was first managing people, I would always advise them like, have an initial call, a discovery call, and then say there's no pressure on then scheduling another call of them and say, look, based on what you've discussed, but I'm gonna go away with, to the team. We're gonna come up with a solution for you. Let's book an immediately next week and then usually the more junior person my team would then come to me and say, hey, we've got this client, they need essentially one person, they're running a study in Europe. What do you think, basically? So you're saying sometimes a pitfall is you result in just leading with like, oh, I've got a contractor that can do that for you. Yeah, like just jumping straight to that rubber. And taking a breath, taking a step back and actually having more of, let's call it a commercial strategic conversation of like, what are you trying to achieve here? Where are you in the life cycle and like understand that information because then that could then make you realize, oh, hang on a minute, that's probably gonna mean that you may not need this person now, but three months from now you might need this type of person. And so on. Yeah, that's absolutely right. So taking more of a helicopter review or have had the case before a client that wanted to hire someone in America as East Coast. But they didn't need to go, there was no travel involved in the role, but they really wanted someone in America because they thought that was better, they had boots on the ground and time zone wise, it worked. But that comes with a bigger cost to the client. So he said to the client, look, there's a person in Europe, he's done East Coast hours for years, or cost you half the price, here's that person. So again, we're advising them and offering kind of a better solution that saves them money in the long run. Yeah, sure. So what you're saying is sometimes obviously that is what's needed. Yeah, that's what you're saying. Yeah, that's right. So sometimes clients don't know what they kind of right, sorry, I don't even mean, yeah. And before they go into the call. So rather than saying, yeah, we've got that person in America, let's go for it. Taking more of a, maybe, yeah, step back and looking at the kind of bigger picture. 'Cause ultimately, if you get better at that, this isn't you telling me if you disagree with this or not, but there's a lot of benefit to having that approach as a contract recruiter, right? And just even if you don't want to get to the point where you're getting to now in terms of really trying to win big project solutions, actually just by having more of this approach is what I'm hearing is that actually you could be missing opportunities by not having this approach, basically. Even if it doesn't mean like, yeah, we're having the solution conversations, so what I feel like is going to be fundamental to that. Let me know if you disagree with this or not, but you've mentioned discovery call that, 'cause I feel like if your process is just straight to jump in with your product, then of course, the perception of you is just going to be, oh, this person just provide me with this person right now and fix this problem, but what's going to change that or give you more opportunities potentially to get more runners out, to get more contractors out with that same person is actually taking a step back and doing a bit more of a discovery of an understanding where they're at, what's important to them, what their issues are. - Yes, right. - So let's just talk about that for a sec, 'cause surely that could potentially help a lot of people. A lot of people may not even do that or may not even have that in their current process. So if I'm a contractor crew, right now listen to this and I don't conduct a discovery call, I might just go straight into typical, like, you need these contractors, I can do that for you. Like, how do I go about starting to have those? What are the main things that I need to change? What does it all sound like? How do I need to change my approach? - 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 head hunting platform. At the end of last year, SourceWell released an exciting new feature, the platform's very own live feed. Being honest with you, this feature has been one of my favorites to date, because it tells you exactly who's engaging with your outreach in real time. This means you can easily tell which leaders are hot and which is not, so you can connect with the right people at the right time to skyrocket your engagement. You can actually hear from one of our mentors and 2023 panelists, Amber Penrose, on how she's achieved instant results with SourceWell's new feature, live feed. - The SourceWell live list feature has enabled me to become a secret little stalker and to contact my ideal customer profile whilst they're at their desks. And especially for someone like me who works in Biotech where computer time understandably for a lot of scientists just isn't prevalent. This has been a huge help. And for example, a biotech vice president of HR who I have been politely pastoring for what feels like my entire life, finally, people are like, picked up the phone to me because I called her after she'd clicked on my email four times in a row, which SourceWell kindly had let me know. To the point where she actually giggled during my called call opener and responded with, "Are you in the office watching me?" And despite that awkward encounter, we're now working on a retained project with them in Boston and that wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for SourceWell. As you can see, SourceWell is a great tool for driving better engagement, more meetings and higher revenue. If you're looking for a competitive edge in 2024, then SourceWell could be for you. You can book a demo with SourceWell and mention the Recruitment Mentors podcast to enjoy an extra 50 phone and 50 email credits per user, and this exclusive offer for this community is going to save you about £500 and is only going to be available until March 31st. So click the link in the show notes or you can go directly to sourcewell.com/demo. Yeah, I think it was a good question. A million dollar question. I think for my experience, it's about educating clients as well. And as I said before, it's really understanding your market. But I think a lot of people don't educate, well, I'm going to say, can't educate the clients, of course they do, they try. But knowing how to educate your clients and also, as I said, understanding your market well enough so you can identify the problems that they have. Okay, so I feel like how can we, you've mentioned market knowledge a lot like that. How can we speed up that process? Like how, because do you feel like that's one of your big competitive advantages? Yeah, I would say so. Yeah, absolutely. Or see the more you're in something, the more knowledge and information you're going to get. Yeah. But it can be very easy for someone to say, well, yeah, you've been doing it for that long. Yeah. Is it for you to say exactly. How do you handle that? Because I'm sure you had to deal with that when you obviously managing people. Yeah, of course it I did. Yeah, you're absolutely right. So how can people speed that up or not just let that be the reason why they can't have more of these discoverables, why they can't educate their clients more? I would say, for example, in my market, a lot of information is publicly available. This might be the same in other industries, IT, etc. So it's just what we're doing here is just using that information, a publicly available information about the clinical trial, for example, and then just relating that to the client and discussing that with the client. So even when I had a junior consultant in my team, I said to him, take a step back, look at the study info and just talk about the study with the client because that is what the client's doing. And they also like talking about themselves as well and what they're doing. And then based on that information, just try and understand how that relates to hiring processes and what you can do to help basically. So it's using kind of publicly available info and then just discussing that with clients, just putting two in two to two to get them essentially. And what I also take from there is you're not saying that you have to be as competent as a person you're speaking to, but what really you were saying there is asked questions around the study rather than asked questions around what person they need? Yeah, exactly. Ask questions around what's important to them. Because the reason they've reached out to you initially is because you're there to solve a problem. The problem is I can't find people to execute this clinical trial. That's the end goal. Find the people is that's the kind of middle point. The end point is executing the study because it'll get the company to the next milestone or say the company, you know, X amount of pounds. So talk about the end goal and then work backwards. Yeah, yeah. So I know we like really went deep there until like, so this is tough to make me laugh. But I really, I think it's interesting, right? I think there's a lot to be said, just contract recruitment, pound recruitment or whatever. Having that mindset of that discovery, I think could really transform people's performances a lot more personally. I feel like so. I've seen my business is very different, but I do think when I was in recruitment, like it's just so easy to lead just straight into, I've got this candidate, like are you interested? I know sometimes that's just what's required, right? If you've seen the company is hiring and that, you know, the language is like we need this person, it's urgent and you can see it's open for two, three weeks and maybe it's still not filled. Of course, that can be like what you lead into, leave it into like this one in type of conversation. But I think there's still a lot to be said with like rather than just going straight into like, tell me about this person, like what are they need to have? It's like, how do we get here? What have you tried so far? What have you been struggling with? You know what I mean? So having that discovery mindset and even if it's 30 minutes before we then get into like the job briefing or wherever it may be, like you're saying personally, again, like that seems like that's been a huge thing as to like why you've ended up here, like you've just got better and better understanding your market, asking commercial questions, understanding what's important to them where these companies are going to get to with their clinical trials and stuff. Then you can then go well from what I've learnt today, this is why I'm going to recommend like what we need to do. So I feel like just talking about that and whatever that looks like in your world, just having all that discovery mindset can really transform your beauty results because like you said in your world, it can be the difference from finding out or making that client understand that they don't need one contractor, they need free. Yeah, absolutely. And also clients have, it's never been easy for clients to hire people, you've got LinkedIn and you can write a job description of chat GBT about 10 seconds. So it's even more important now to fully understand what they're looking for and then try and educate your clients where possible of course. So we were just talking about it before I went into that then on like how you like coaching your team and stuff. If you don't mind, I just want to ask you something that I found like I've done a lot of these protocols now with contract recruiters. I thought I had it written down but you might have to help me out here. So do you remember I told you like, oh that's really interesting. You were saying that with your team, you measure if they haven't done enough in a new business like what is the time number that you called? NFI loss position. Yeah, NFI, it's a really boring doesn't it? Can we talk about that? Because I thought that was me about your NFI loss position on a Monday morning after a heavy weekend. No, absolutely. So like, because I thought that was really interesting because you tell me but obviously from what I understood, you're helping your team understand like where they might end up and like what then needs to put more energy into what then needs to focus on. So what is NFI loss position? The way we calculate or the way we look at kind of our contractors is on a monthly basis. So we see how much our contractors are billing the company on a monthly basis. Other companies out there will calculate that as weekly GP. We do monthly NFI, it's called a monthly net fee income. So for example, what I do with the team, what I've done myself as well when I was a sole contributor is I had to look at how much I'm losing each quarter. So let's say for example, I'm losing £10,000 worth of NFI that quarter and say Q1 for example. So I look at that number, £10,000. So if I don't do anything, if I don't do any deals, I'm going to lose £10,000. Because the contracts are coming to an end yet. Exactly. I think what we do as a business quite well and what I've done fairly well is just then understand the new business value that you're bringing in. So as a business, we still calculate a deal size and contract as new business value. So it's capped at six months. Why did you do that? Well, typically contracts can be six months. So then we calculate that as the business. Some companies out there do 12 months, but it can sometimes skew the numbers. So if you do a deal, if you do, I don't know, a project manager deal and you calculate that over 12 months, that's 40 grand. So you would have hit your target or close to your target. So then a person can put their feet up, but they're losing three contractors, because they're coming to an end. So they get to a point at the end of the quarter where they're losing money. So it's like brother and sister, you have your new business value and your NFI value. So to go to your original question, I look at the number which is say £10,000. So then I calculate, okay, what's my average NFI per deal? So typically the average new business value is 15k in my market between 15 and 20k. So if I relate that to what it is on the monthly basis, what that contractor will bring in is about £2,500. So I know going into that quarter, I need to do four deals because if a mass is right to £2,500 times four is £10,000, that's the message now. It's okay. In those first two months, I need to do four deals. So if I do four deals, it will get me to £10,000 and that means I'm not losing, I'm maintaining my contract book. You also have to give a bit of leeway for them to start and also build money for the company. So as a manager, it was quite useful for me to sort of work in that way because I'd have a look at what the person in my team is losing if it's say £10,000. Then I say to that person, you need four deals in first two months. Then we work backwards, how do we get there? You might need to do a lot of work in the start of the quarter and then maybe you can relax a bit towards the end or vice versa. If a person's only losing £2,000 of NFI in that quarter, then that message as a manager is you work your arse off because you can really increase your contract book. You can almost double the contract size depending on how many runners you have. That's the kind of message. So summarise all of that. It's really on the standing relationship between the business you're bringing in and also what your contract book is and how much you're losing. NFI loss position. NFI loss position. You did a good job explaining that. Good. I understood that. So the reason why I wanted you to explain that is one, there might be managers that don't do it that way because again, I'm just going to add to naive here. I'm assuming it can be easy as a contract recruiter to look at what's coming each month and then like on sweet. Exactly. And to cut you off there, that's what some businesses do have. So they'll incentivize their consultants on how much they're bringing in. But they don't really understand the second part, which is how much their contract book is worth. But they kind of sometimes lose sight on how many deals we have to do to maintain. Maintain it. Yeah, exactly. And then like I've had people on here where I don't know if you've ever had this happen, but helps mitigate this. It's not going to be able to completely prevent it from happening. But one of the worst things that can happen as a contract recruiter is your book getting absolutely wiped. Yeah. That is like it's given you, obviously, by you doing that as a manager and working that out, you're giving people that insight where potentially if you didn't have that insight, you could get complacent. Yeah, you could not have visibility on like hang them in there. I'm actually two months away from like losing half of my book. So I do really need to emphasize the new business and what I need to be doing. Exactly. So I'm assuming it's also to prevent those like massive drops happening and also help you feature proof your contract book. Yeah. And it is to feature proof your contract book because you have to treat, I mean, as a contract recruiter, you're a cliche in recruitment. You're running your own business, but you have to do so even more in contract recruitment because naturally contracts do finish at some point. So yeah, it does. The kind of peaks and troughs is what we tend to see in recruitment quite often. And that's kind of one thing that I've won tool that I've, that's helped me basically to kind of maintain my contract book over over four years. Have you found that just to be way more an effective way to like encourage your team to do the activities and help them understand why they need to do that? Because this is it. And they then understand why you need to send five CVs. Why you need to book in five BD calls a week because they understand the end goal. Whereas if I didn't explain that to them and I'd just say to that person, okay, you need to increase your CV sent out or your BD calls or whatever. And then don't really understand the kind of reasons behind that. And that's a bit more of a difficult message to give as well. And if I lost position. Love it. Okay. So curious then because we're talking about, we're just talking about this now. So like, I think because I'm always interested here how people think about this personally, I feel like the best recruiters always know their numbers personally. Like regardless of how emotional you're going to get. You're going to challenge me now on my numbers. No, no, no. So like, I think what I'm interested in here you take on. I know every market is different. Every people's contract book will be different or whatever. But I'm sure there'll be some principles that you just feel like it's just tried and tested. If you do this, it should mean that. So my question to you is, if I do this, what you've just said, I've figured out actually, oh my God, like, I've really built on my contract book to a great position. But actually, I am three months away from it being 30% less. Yeah. So my question to you is if I want to make sure that I'm in the same position or better, so particularly on the new business side, which is like your world, what are like the metrics or the core activities that you feel like if you do this, if you get near this, it should take care of your loss position. So I'm interested on how you think about the science behind as a contract recruiter, what those core activities are that if you do your CV sendouts, if you do this, if you do that, the net result will be you'll cover your loss position or you'll be more to get my men. 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, five fish, the recruitment CRM that accelerates data driven growth. Being able to benchmark your agency's performance against others in your industry has always been impossible until now. Our partners at firefish have just recently released their industry benchmarking dashboards taking data insights to the next level by enabling you to benchmark your own performance, your recruiters and team performance against others within your sector. The benchmarking dashboards are built on anonymized placement sales and KPI data. So firefish users can get a monthly snapshot of their agency's performance benchmarks against their peers in seconds, something I'm sure a lot of you would be interested in. If you want to learn more about benchmarking dashboards or find out how firefish can support your company's growth this year, they're very kindly offered our community, the recruitment mental forecast, a special offer that's going to save you thousands of pounds. Now this offer is only available until March the 31st, so you can click the link in the show description or you can head to firefishsoftware.com/RMP. Yeah, absolutely. And I think of all the kind of KPI we look at, what I've seen works, the kind of KPI that's most important to me in my world is your first stage interviews per week. Because that gives you a pipeline of candidates coming through each week. So even when I was doing, you know, doing permanent recruitment, I knew that if I was getting three interviews per week, I was hitting my target quite comfortably. So contract recruiter, you're probably not going to average through a week because you might have three or four jobs one week and nothing next couple of weeks. So an average I would say is your first stage interviews, we like to kind of stay between two and four per week. That gives you kind of a pipeline of candidates coming through each week as well. So I think that's the key. First stage interviews. First stage interviews would be like the KPI that I would measure my team against. Yeah, nice, love that. And then, okay, that's really helpful because I know, like, yeah, I know people get emotional about that word, but I think like you just said, it's just like you people need to, like, like you said, how much easier do you feel about where you're going to end up if you know, like those one or two interviews that you get, you have the best chance of hitting your target, like why would you not want to know what those important numbers are? Exactly. And then you're able to then get that deposit on the house. Yeah, and do what you need to do. Do what you need to do because there's nothing worse and working, getting your books to a certain level and then dropping down by 50% and it's nothing worse and having to then recover from that. One word that I've heard the way more when I interview people like yourself compared to panrocrute is leads. So I really want to hear your philosophy on leads because I feel like I'm sure most contract recruiters won't know what a lead is, but I feel like the best recruiters must be doing something different with the same information or just must be doing something better around it. I don't know how you feel about this. So because I'm sure this is something you've had to manage when you manage people is like they would have heard the exact same thing you did, but they did the polar opposite to what you would have done with the same bit of information and that that was a lead, right? Yeah. So like I guess firstly from your perspective, like if you wouldn't mind like how would you define the lead personally? It's a new business opportunity basically that gets you closer to your target. So that's kind of that would be my definition of a lead. And who gives you the most leads? Like where do you often find yourself getting the most leads that is that? Yeah, it's a tricky question to ask really. I guess what I've seen with lead generation is that there's no single source of lead gen. So there's two ways I would kind of go after two kind of leads that I would go after. First is the leads from candidates, which is your active interviews that those candidates are performing. What I've done over the last couple of years and what I've always encouraged my team to do is to really qualify these leads. So rather than just saying where have you interviewed? Oh, I don't know X company. And that's it. Going to a way more detail because then your conversion rate will increase quite quite significantly. If you then ask that person who's the manager when did you interview? You know basic basic questions that you would expect to do. Because if obviously that interview took place two weeks ago in the contract world that job might have already been gone. Both that interview took place yesterday. Then you know you probably drop everything if you don't have any jobs and really go after that lead. So that's one on the lead from candidates. This is where I've seen where you can pick up jobs fairly quickly because of active jobs. The second lead is like I said before is the market information. Okay, these trials are happening in a month's time. That is a bit more of a long term lead but then leads to pardon the pun to maybe offering a better solution or you know a multi higher project for example. Whereas maybe the leads from that you get from online as well from job adverts and candidates. They're probably maybe your ones and twos that you expect to fill fairly quickly because of active jobs that are ongoing. But to your point I would say really qualifying the lead is really crucial because that's where people go wrong. That's where I've gone wrong in the past when I first started I thought this person's interviewing at X company let me go after that company. I can go on LinkedIn and find the manager but that's all I know. So my conversion rate wasn't as strong where I found the conversion rate go up from lead generation to job pulled. So when I started qualifying the leads really you know with a kind of fine tooth claim. Or it would be your non-negotiable then to make it qualified. If someone gave you all the info what would be like yeah and that's based on people giving you that's not easy. It's like as people know the game right and it's like so I'm gonna ask you that but just if we were to put that aside for a second light. What would make you go off a call and go this is a really qualified lead what would be like the non-negotiable things that you'd really want to aim to walk away with. So when they interviewed so that's see it's all about speed and contract recruitment. So when they interviewed is crucial who the manager is what the job title is and also sometimes what the rate is as well. If I know the rate is very low then I know that job might not be getting filled in the time that that company wants it to get filled by. So it gives me more chance to then go in and have that conversation with a client. So when how long does that interview? Yeah I think that's probably number one I would say. Just given the nature of contract recruitment being and then you were saying who interviewed and the manager and then the rate would be helpful just because that's really important. give you a bit of an insight on like, 'cause you'll know your market on like, if they're underpaying or-- - Yeah, exactly. Or if it's decent rate, et cetera. - So how have we got better at people giving the info mate? (laughing) 'Cause it's like, these contracts, they know the game, sure. - Of course, of course. - It's not mean they get it. - Of course, it's like, I'm always interested in people's take on like, yeah, how-- - Give me some advice, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know, like, would you say, is it something that you're, is it something that people are naturally better at doing? Like, I don't know, 'cause there's quite a lot that goes into it, I can imagine, in terms of like, how you deliver the question, the tonality, how, I don't know, like, what your reputation is, if you spiked that person before, but like, what have you found to be like, yeah, how have you become more effective at having people willingly share this information with you? - Yeah, absolutely. I would say giving them some information as well, and getting to a point where it's almost like a two-way conversation, that's where I found it works. - So what could you give someone? - So, for example, if I was a person you, where they've interviewed, oh, ex company, I actually know that company, you know, they're going, I know they're going through phase one or phase three study, or I appreciate, they've also let a lot of people go, you know, and then, so having a conversation around that company, and then saying, oh, just that's how I've interests, who'd you speak to on Friday? What I then saying, who you've interviewed with, who'd you speak to on Friday? - Yeah, it's totally different. - Or maybe wait to the end before they hang up the phone and say, I'll just one more thing. - Ooh, the one last question. One last question. (laughing) - Where did you interview? - I knew you'd interview. - I love that, yeah, that's a banger. - So, yeah. - That is, it is so, I don't know if you found this, but I was being so friend about this today, like, it's funny how many times you can get there. Oh, one quick question. - Yeah, one last question, you could actually get quite a few questions in. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. What do you get no leads off as podcast comes out? (laughing) - No, I think what the insight that I took from that is if you go straight in for that, like how much success you're gonna have, like, oh, yeah, I met this company, oh, like who interviewed you straight away? - Yeah. - But like you just said, like, just being, treating a lot of natural conversation, being curious, like, oh, that's interesting. I've, I've, I've, I've, someone else who said they're really enjoying - Yeah, exactly. - on that project, or, you know, the opposite, then leading with like, oh, like, be curious and not just be like direct, I guess. - This is it, and not being direct is quite important. Like, one of the guys I used to manage, he was quite direct, quite a direct person. - I said so, I'm just, have a conversation with him like he would's a friend, obviously, to a certain, certain point, and just have more of a two-way conversation, and he found that, that worked quite well. - Would you rather, if you could only get one last question in those conversations, would you rather walk away with, how long ago the interview door, who the manager was? - Probably who the company is, so no, to target. - Oh yeah, fair. - And, I'm a fair, fair, fair. - Probably that, and then I can kind of find, yeah, that and make the time of day, yeah. - Yeah, that would be, that would be really good info. - Yeah. - So, what have you found, 'cause I'm sure you've seen people do what you've just said, and then they don't do the next bit. - Which is the follow-up? - Yeah. - Is that what people miss? Like, is it like, they get that info, and then they're like, they don't then take the next step. Is it the follow-up that then people just don't, 'cause that's the next bit right? You've got the information. You've done a really good job there, but then it's like, the best people then action that consistently. - This is it, and why don't they do that bit? - And it's actioning it, that's what gets you obviously the new business. - Why do you think people struggle with that? - So I can't speak for everyone, really. I'm not too sure in terms of why the core struggle is. - What have you found when you manage people? - For me, it's yeah, the next follow-up is obviously very crucial. You know, you're getting the lead, get all the good information, but I think maybe people try, and I've had people in my team where they've tried three, four times and got nowhere, or have the perception that because the client is not coming back to them, they're either angry that they've reached out so many times. But if you put yourself in the client's shoe, and this is what I said to the people in my group and to the people I've worked with before, if you put yourself into the client's shoe, give you an example, look, the client wants, met her in London, and we got onto the topic of like emails and how busy she is, and she actually showed me her emails. She was like, "I've just received 200 emails today 'cause I've had the clinical trial side that's activated, I've got recruiters, emailing me, et cetera, et cetera. So if you put yourself in the client's shoe, that client's receiving a ton of emails. So for your email to get sent and then get read and a response to then happen, and the first goes very limited. So what I'd say to people is just be relentless, and just keep going until that client does eventually come back to you, 'cause they will. I've only had the case maybe once or twice with the clients actually been quite angry that I've maybe emailed them 10 or 12 times over a period of time, et cetera. - Let me ask you this then and interested. I know it'd be like different each time, but 'cause we're just talking about it, what is like the rough, like right window? So like if I get like a really good lead, I know you say I'm be relentless, like you have to just be consistent, but what would be like the ideal window where, if I can get them in this, how long should I chase it before I'm like, you know what, I need to make that now more like a long, I need to make sure I'm still, I now know they're high contractors, you know, they've used this person, I know's good. So there might be another opportunity there. I've missed out on this one, but there might be an opportunity in the next six to 12 months. - Right, they're going to that camp, but like how long should I be relentless for before you might have just missed the opportunity where you haven't, do you know what I mean? - Yeah, I don't know if there's a window there, 'cause the contract, like you said, you have to act quick. So like, if I speak to a contractor, I have get a lead, I do a good job with that. I know they've interviewed there last week. Should I then be on that for like five days straight? And if I get no bites at all, I'm like, right, I need to then move them into more of like a, maybe every other week, every week. I'm at least trying to grab their attention or at least trying to speak to them, 'cause I wasn't successful in that initial window. I would say in contract recruitment, you have to try it probably every day. - Really? - For how long now? - Until they respond. (laughing) Until they respond. But also you have to do it in the right way. You can't just, you know, pager them, 'cause that's obviously get annoying and then it's ruins your relationship with the client in the market, in the reputation as well. So whenever I'm chasing a client, I'm adding a piece of information about what I know about the company, why I think that person's good for the organization, or any pieces of information. I've also got to the point sometimes, especially last year where it was a bit more difficult to get clients on board, is giving them information about the market, for example, some marketing material. If you give someone a bit of info, naturally, there will be subconsciously, they'll say, okay, let me at least answer this person or give something back. That's a very human sort of natural thing to do. If you give something to someone, subconsciously, they will return to favor. Have you got a story where like, you was very close to like giving up, but then they became a client? - Yeah, it's happened a few times. To be fair, I've actually worked with, not me, but someone I used to work with. He emailed the client 12 times over three months, and that client finally then responded, being like, yeah, I'm free to speak. And that client then went on to be, you're quite an important client for them in that year. He sold a retainer, et cetera. So there's been stages where I've been like, they're not gonna pick up. They're not gonna pick up. I usually leave all that to the end of the day. So at the end of the day, what I'll do is, if I'm chasing a client, I'll just try one more time. Outside of working hours. More times, sometimes it does work, I would say, but you just have to have to be relentless. That's what I'm probably gonna have. - Yeah, I'll write that down, be relentless. That's just nonstop. - Yeah, that's a non-negotiable. - It has to be, doesn't it? I guess, but even more, even like, more so in your world, letting terms of like, how quickly things can change. That is the thing that I did permanent recruitment. So that is, I'll say, no, you've done both. But I do find that just mad in terms of like, if on Friday, there's this company that you've been chasing for five days straight, they finally come back on Friday. And you know that could be a company that could be big for you. And they've got, they say, Troy, you know what, like, I really respect how persistent you've been of how good things about you in the market. Look, we've really struggled to get these free contractors or we need these free people. Can you help us out? Like, you know, if you've got plans on, like, but you then have to do it, don't you? Like Friday, four o'clock, that call comes in. - Well, it depends what your value. Do you value going down the pub? - Well, I think that's what I just find, well, 'cause it's like, if you don't do that, someone else will. - 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 maximize 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, is stale, is delivered by people that did it five, 10, 15 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 notes where you'll be able to book a call thus. Let's get straight back into the episode. Yeah, exactly. That's the thing that I think's mad. That's right. Also, they never, I mean, last year, it was a fairly tough year for a lot of businesses. A lot more recruiters now want to do business development or need to do business development to all in order to survive. So if it's not going to be you, it will be someone else. It will be someone else, yeah. Yeah, like you said, and then it's just nonstop. So let's just step into a bit into like, now then, I really enjoyed all that, like the leads. - That feels like a special-- - It's definitely lost position. Yeah, that was good. Yeah, definitely, I guess just to round this conversation out, as you continue to progress on your like, this development journey, this solution of journey you're going on, I think I wrote down here, maybe it was a bit interesting for you to talk about it a bit in terms of like how you view different like solutions. This might be interesting. So I've gone and written down here that this might be, some of this might be wrong, but I think you shared a few things with me. So when we think about different solutions that you can offer as a contract recruiter, right? So I wrote down here, try before you hire, I don't know if you'd like to use that term, I would say absolutely. - Yeah, yeah. - So try before you hire contract to perm, and then you've got project based hiring, which is now what you want to be like, building a lot more of your pipeline around and winning, and then you've got contract standard in terms of like, I need a contract to, and then you deliver that person. - Yeah, that's right. - So let's try to find that more at like C-suite level as well, the kind of interim CEOs for such. - Right, sure, fair. So let's just talk a bit about this, 'cause again, this is your world now, right? Solutions, and this might be, someone listening to this right now might just have one view to the only solution they could provide is the contract standard. So why don't we talk a bit about the tribe before you hire, I think. I thought this is like, you probably speak to more contract recruiters than I do. Yeah, so is the tribe before you hire pieces that literally like you turn perm opportunities into contract opportunities? - Yeah, it's term to perm. So yeah, not reinventing the wheel or anything like that, but the way tribe before you hire came about, I mean, term to perm has been around forever really. But during COVID, a lot of the clients that I was working with, they tend to have been smaller organizations. They were still had to run studies, but I think, well, a lot of clients are quite reluctant to pay large recruitment fees up front for their permanent staff. So in 2020, I was doing the Swiss market. Typical Swiss fees are between 20 and 40,000 Swiss francs, which is obviously a lot of money if you're a startup or if you're an nonprofit organization that's running clinical trials. You then have to factor in 12% of social costs then the person's annual salary. In Switzerland, the annual salary is between 150,000. So companies, what they saw is they had to invest a huge amount in the front end to then get the person that's interviewed. That's not, the person not even walked through the door yet and they've spent a lot of money at the front end. So a lot of clients were quite reluctant to do that and that's why you saw, you know, perm hiring, especially the first kind of half of, well, when COVID hit, it fell off quite significantly because a lot of clients put permanent hiring on hold. But some clients, and quite a lot of organizations, they still had to run the clinical trials, vaccine trials, remassive. Other studies were huge as well because medicines still need to get to the people that need it most. So the try before we hire came about by, or the solution we provided to those clients is to say we can hire that person through our company through through Proclinical in say Switzerland. We will outsource the social costs and the contract to the HRPs and the salary, which is an hourly rate. We will wrap that all up into one hourly budget or a monthly budget as well, which some clients did want. And then the result from that is actually got the talent in much quicker. They didn't have to spend 20,040,000 for sure. - So it goes north-south. - So you can see how good is this person going to be, can I deliver and then they're going to be way more confident about potentially hiring on an permanent basis. - This is it. - So the six to 12 months, they got the candor in much quicker, usually immediately or straight away. They didn't have to spend the front end. And more importantly, they had the opportunity to see how that person works in their real life setting. Because a CV, in my opinion, and an interview can sometimes be quite a poor indicator of someone's ability, especially in a small company, where in small companies you have to be really hands on, you have to hit the ground running. It's a really important, soft skill, which you sometimes can't get from an interview. And then more times than not, after six to 12 months, that company said, right, we're going to invest in you now. We'll either most likely take you on perm, give you a salary, et cetera. And then there's an exit fee or whatever you want on the go-shade with the client. So to summarize everything, that's how we took a perm higher. Educated the client and said, "There's another solution we can provide you," which is an essence tempt a perm, we wrapped it up in a nice little tagline and nice marketing behind it. You see a lot of that happening still now, then, in terms of your team converting. Yeah, huge amount now, but certainly-- Still a solid base of our deals, especially in really high fee countries, like Switzerland, America, the buildings. So what you're saying, where it's like a really high upfront cost to a risk higher, basically? Exactly. And now companies, they need, especially if a biotech is going for funding, they're not a revenue-generating company. So when that funding dries up, a lot of the time that company then goes under because the funding is dried up. So HR and Tiaia, now looking for essentially talent guarantees to say, if we do obviously put some upfront cost into this process and they don't work out, then we lose money. And that's obviously a huge issue. So just to tell that together, just out of interest, is that I'm assuming, like, again, like you said, this does involve educating the client. Because I'm assuming, what have you found, I don't know if you've seen this across your team? Has there been, like, typically where, if they've seen a notice that a client has been trying to get in like a permanent person or they've seen that they advertise with someone and it's gone on for maybe a certain time period? They've found, you know, that's like a great opportunity for me to turn that into a potential try before you hire, hire, like, 10 to perm, opportunity. Is that the key to it? Is just like, if there are companies out there that you know are trying to find someone where it is hard to find people, but there's way more of, like, a talent pool for contractors. And they might have been looking for that person or looking for those types of people for a while, like two, three weeks or a lot, I don't know if there's longer period where then that tends to be a good opportunity to do that, is there a certain window you've found? Yeah, there is a window. There's the timeframe where companies looking to hire for, if they're looking for several months, then that solution does become more relevant and we can sort of discuss that with the client. So there's that limit, but also what's the cost to the business for that person not being in the role as well? Yeah. There is that. But in some countries, like the US, Switzerland, for example, it's quite common for people to initially start off as a contractor. They don't have their limited company. We're essentially employing them, for example, like a PAY kind of model. And then clients that will then internalize them after 12, 18 months, et cetera. So in some markets, it's more common, but then you can take that into other markets, into Belgium or the UK, and then educate your clients through that model. They tell the client, like, we've been doing this in Switzerland, it's saved the business X amount. It's also resulted in that person being with the business for longer, because you're essentially testing them out. And if you don't like them, it's an easy offboarding process. So kind of go back to the main point. It's really about educating your clients. Yeah, it comes back to that, doesn't it? Yeah. Let's think about so over the next, as you think about this year, then, obviously I know you was excited to get into this position or something that you really wanted. When you think about your craft and what you know, you're going to have to continue to get world class out, what does that look like for you? How do you think about that? What is trojan after consistently now really focus on becoming world class out? Because the responsibility that you now have, as we were talking before, we started this, you're someone that's going to be seen internally as someone that is going to be responsible for generating pipeline for people, for the business. That's a big responsibility. Yeah. So like, what, just to sort of tap into how you're thinking about yourself and what do you know you're going to have to be laser focused on, what you're going to have to consistently think about? I need to keep getting better at this world class at this. Yeah, I think probably time management is really crucial for me, because at the moment, in my role, I'm juggling my own clients, then I'm juggling potential bids that we're doing with other clients which can take a long time. And then I'm working with consultants who are asking me questions on a regular basis in the office as well. So I think for me, being a bit more visible role here is time management is really crucial. So I would say if I nail that, then I'll be fine. On more of the recruitment side, yeah, it's probably delivering that message and discussing past success with other clients as well. Because I wouldn't say the issue, but when you are working in more of a solution space, the companies we're working with, larger companies, they go to quite reputable organizations and it's almost an insurance policy for them. I've had it before, for example, where I've spoken to a CEO at a quite well-known biotech or a midsize biotech. And they've said, Troy, we've actually gone with a very well-established company. They're more of a consultancy because if they don't deliver the project, then I can go to my chairman and say, look, I've used the best in the business. You can't sack me. Or it's difficult for you to-- It's difficult. It's better for them to have that conversation then to say, I've gone with Proclinical, who are the new kids on the block. It's so interesting to say that because I was listening to a podcast recently where they said that example where they-- yeah, like you just said, no one's going to get fired for deciding to go Deloiet. This is it. I mean, that's so interesting. - Yeah, yeah. - Say that, no one's gonna get fired for doing that. - Yeah, that's it. - As mad as that. - So you're saying like what you're very aware of is, you're gonna have to really lean into your case studies. - Telling the story and yeah, telling that, that kind of story of the insurance policy and example of what I've said is interesting. - So it's some interesting times I had done. - Yeah, should be a big kid. - Love it, well, but Troy, thanks so much for coming on the pod. I know we went into some details, but I know a lot of people are gonna love that. So the big thanks to Con the pod. - Brilliant, thank you. (laughs) - 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. 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. We can ultimately help you get more out of your teams by giving your people access to modern and engaging online learning, which they can access on demand. The thing that's really cool about what we're doing at recruitment mentors is that all of the people that your teams are able to learn from and the people that are delivering the learning content, are people that are in role right now. They're billing. They're actively facing the challenges that your teams are, and a lot of the time they're amongst the top performers within their companies, which means your teams are going to be way more confident to learn and spend on their learning when they know they're learning from people that are doing it right now, have been there and done it. There's nothing worse than feeling like training is not relevant and not current. The best place to find out more about recruitment mentors and if we can help you accelerate your team's performance is a semi-missage on LinkedIn, connect with me on LinkedIn directly and I'd love to connect with you and find out if we can help you get more outwelled your people.