A guest blog from Jon Brooks as part of our From Surviving to Thriving: Practical Ways to Boost Margins Right Now series.

Great companies will always require great people, and more often than not they need a great recruiter to help them get those people. As technology erodes the lower end of the recruitment market, your future is in creating more value for your clients at the higher end of the market.

With higher value comes better margins. Your clients will be able to achieve more with your help, and your reward will be higher fees. But you need to know how to position yourself to win this higher-value work. Here are three ways to win better business and improve your margins this year:

1. Slow down your pitch

It seems counter-intuitive to pitch more slowly for a new role. After all, we were taught to ‘always be closing’ in recruiter school. And when there’s not a huge number of roles out there, you’d hate to miss an opportunity.

But in order to win high-value business with clients who see you as an expert partner, it’s essential that they get to experience what you are going to be like to work with before they work with you.

Simply telling clients that you’re diligent, thorough, insightful, or whatever else you consider your strengths doesn’t cut it. They need to see and feel those things in action, which means giving yourself the time to prove yourself.

Think about it this way: the shorter the pitch process, the easier it is for someone to blag their way into working the role. The longer the process, the harder it is for an average recruiter to pretend they’re a true expert.

2. ‘You’ not ‘We’

I review a lot of BD meeting follow-up emails, and the majority focus on the recruiter not the potential client. It looks something like this:

“Thanks for your time today. As discussed, we would be a great recruiter because we are number 1, we have some great services, we know our market, we can get great candidates…”

Unfortunately this reduces your chance of winning high-value business, because you’re broadcasting generic sales messages to a client who is looking for a consultative partner. And talking about yourself a lot isn’t consultative.

When you ditch the ‘we’ statements and start talking about ‘you’, the best clients get interested again. Let’s look at how that follow-up email could look:

“Thanks for your time today. As discussed, you want to double the size of your business but you are struggling to find the right people. You are also concerned about your retention rate. I’ve put together some suggestions on how you could address these…”

Get this follow-up email right and you’ll stand out from the crowd as a high-value recruiter worth working with.

3. Offer a menu

Choice is a hugely powerful psychological tool in business, and we see it everywhere. You can’t just buy ‘a coffee’ from Starbucks, you have a menu of options. And if you’re flying somewhere this summer, you’ll have to choose which class you travel in.

Rather than offering a one-size-fits-all approach, B2C brands know that a carefully designed set of options is good for business. People who can afford to pay more have a way to do so (getting more in return), while those who want to pay less can do so (while accepting they’ll miss out on a few bells and whistles).

But look at recruitment and 95 percent of agencies are offering a single service. If a client has a perm role, they offer their ‘perm’ service. One size for all. Which means those who can afford to pay more don’t (you’re leaving money on the table), and those who want to pay less go to someone cheaper (so you lose business).

Creating a menu of services for your clients to choose from is a really powerful way to improve your chances of winning more business from more clients while keeping a focus on value.

For more advice and ideas on how to improve your margin and win high-value business, subscribe to Jon’s Substack emails on recruitment pricing at: pricing.substack.com

About the Author

Jon Brooks is the leading expert in recruitment pricing, and works with industry leaders around the world to create effective pricing and negotiation strategies. Jon has 20 years’ experience in the recruitment industry, and was previously Head of Pricing at Reed Recruitment. His biggest pricing fear is a running taxi meter in a traffic jam.