In this recorded conversation between Hishem Azzouz and an experienced business‑development practitioner (Speaker A), the two outline a repeatable, high‑velocity sales process for small‑to‑medium‑enterprise (SME) recruitment services. The discussion begins with the importance of a discovery call that stays strictly on the prospect’s expressed pain points—candidate access, staff turnover, or other operational challenges—while avoiding any self‑promotion or fee talk. After summarising the client’s problem, the seller presents a concise, five‑minute solution pitch, asks a direct “Will this fix your problem?” question, and, upon a positive answer, moves into a commitment phase that pre‑emptively sets expectations about higher fees, increased time investment, and weekly check‑ins. The fee model is a flat 25 % of the placement fee with a six‑month guarantee and a strict no‑discount policy. The onboarding workflow is described in detail: a kickoff Teams call with the BD rep, an account manager, and a delivery specialist; a consultation call to confirm the ability to source the required candidate; weekly progress calls; and a clear timeline of roughly four weeks from job intake to candidate acceptance (one week for market mapping, one week for candidate sourcing, two weeks for interviews). Success rates for these calls range from 30 % to 50 % depending on lead quality. The speakers stress that the entire process hinges on taking control from day one, delivering quickly and with high quality, and ensuring the client’s commitment through transparent fee and process communication. The conversation also touches on the importance of not discounting, as the value‑based pricing is justified by the rigorous delivery process.
Chapters
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? Like, the only thing you should talk about in that meeting are exactly the issues they're speaking about. So that, that could be whether it's candidate access or finding people with the, the right package, right? Or if it's, um, trying to keep their staff because they lose them each 6 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 industry for 25 years, blah, blah, blah, because they don't give a toss. Like, 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'd run that.
And how do you close out that then once you've been like, okay, you've done the summary, this is—
and then I show how—
yeah, 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're talking about like, right, so work this way together.
So you've asked them if it's worth— you summarized it. Their challenge. You then show them how you'd fix it. Hopefully you have some examples. Yeah, as how you'd fix it. Once that's done, you ask them, will this fix your problem or not?
Okay, just ask them straight up, this will fix your problem.
Is this going to help you or not?
Right.
And if they say yes, you're like, 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're used to, this is going to take more of your time than you're used to, you're going to see me on a 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 almost—
yeah, 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 if they say that's great, well, that's done. These, these are our fees, this is this, when you want to book in the briefing call. And that's that. Yeah, really straightforward. Like the pitching part of that process should take 5 minutes.
Yeah.
Because you're only pitching against that particular challenge. Yeah. When it comes to—
and again, we're talking about these SME-style businesses, so you can make decisions quite quickly.
You can get decisions like that as long as you're with the right stakeholder. Yeah.
And you've seen a 30-50% success rate on these calls?
As long as the— 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 still all right, you know, one-third. Yeah.
Between that, between that 30-50%, mate, if you were to compare that to people, how many client meetings they're having to like working with, it'd be interesting. But you've had that up to 50% before.
Yeah.
And then you've just said again, in the way that you deliver it, we charge 25% and offer a 6-month guarantee.
Yeah, that's it.
That's it. Yeah. When you do— and you, again, you can tell the way that you're talking about it, how you say it is important.
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. Um, and if you've gone through this process appropriately and they actually have a problem and you can actually fix it, 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 doing this or not, you just mentioned it there. So I've gone, I've just, you've just taken me through that. I'm a prospect and then I've gone, all sounds good. Excited to get cracking. We book in the job briefing call. Just tell us about, you already mentioned it earlier, but the process that you've built around this in terms of going from job briefing call to being filled, why you've got some really solid fill rates. Because I think that this is class, the way you do this. So tell us about the important bits there.
Yeah, so in terms of when the account comes in, it then gets handed over to the team. So that'll be a Teams call, be a kickoff call. So that will have the BD person in it. So in this case, me. It will have probably an account manager, a more seasoned person, and then probably a delivery person. So it'll be 3 of us on the call and 1 or 2 of them, depending how many people are relevant for that particular brief. We'll 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, uh, 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 and 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, right? So that's the point of that particular call. And then from then you book in weekly Teams calls with that client every single week. Um, I want 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 the weekly calls, we stop working the job. So it's super important that, and this again comes back to when you onboard the accounts, when you go through this process and they were on your call and 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. What I would say though, if you're looking to do this for yourself, is you better bloody fill the job. You have to deliver. You have to deliver on 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 bravado in the world up front. Yeah, you've got to deliver. But on the back end, if you mess it up, you're in a real pickle.
What, what's typically been from the time that you've always worked towards from job briefing to like, yeah, what does a good look like? What are you always aiming for, like the key milestones there?
So it depends on the region because that will impact how much data we have.
Okay.
Um, on the candidate side, um, but typically it'd be, you know, one week mapping, one week, um, week, week two, sorry, when they have the candidates. The interviews typically take two weeks, so it should be four weeks from job in to accept.
Really?
Yeah.
Nice.
And there's no reason why that can't happen. And the only reason why these might go off the rails would be if a client stopped 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 start and 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 3 people in that briefing call, like they have— yeah. I mean, there's a lot of weight behind that. And then I've shown you, we won't go into loads of detail, but I showed you the, the candidate maps we have and all that kind of stuff, like, and the, the data we had to back up the filling process of the particular jobs. With that, you had that confidence in the client. There's no reason why they wouldn't show up. And again, it's a real issue they're trying to fix.
