How to Build a Recruitment Agency in 2026 (FREE COURSE)

A few years ago, I uploaded Recruitment Training Program, a course that was 5 hours long, and now it's been watched by tens of thousands of people. It is one of the best resources on the internet for recruiters today, especially if you're looking at starting or growing a recruitment business. But I also have to be honest with you, if you've been following along and you've implemented everything and it's been a few years since then, then you're going to realize that the landscape of recruitment has changed a little bit. It doesn't mean the methods and teachings from that particular program are now out of date or obsolete. It just means there's new challenges, new challenges that come in recruitment that didn't exist a few years ago. The new challenges require new solutions. Well, spent the last few months creating a brand new course, again, completely for free with no expectation for you to buy anything from me, just to show you exactly how I'm doing things in my business. So you could just copy me and what I'm about to share with you. There's nothing like this available, certainly not for free and certainly not online. I want to make this clear. This isn't a rehash of the previous course. This is something brand new. I will be touching on some elements which will provide foundational components that help you build on it. But this is something brand new. And if I want to say exactly what's brand new, well, we live in a world where the automation tools that you're using to generate your clients and candidates, then your clients have access to them too. And now they are less interested in using external recruitment companies. They want to set up their own internal recruitment teams. And what does that mean for you? It just means that your margins are being squeezed. You are facing tighter challenges and problems, especially with competing recruiters entering in your niche. And if you picked a niche that is a super simple and easy one, then yeah, you're going to have a lot of competition. So if you go back several years, Then once upon a time, using LinkedIn Recruiter was a competitive edge. Now it's crowded. So you might be somebody who needs to play catch up a little bit just so that you can just catch up with the game of automation so you can keep up with things. But not using it is gonna be to your detriment. And if you think there are going to be problems and restrictions and all of these things happen, it's all really, really bad if you use automation, I'm gonna be frank, you probably just haven't used it properly or you don't know how to use it. So onto the actual new program, which is what you're going to be watching today. I wanna explain what separates it first, what makes this particular video different to everything else that you're going to find online. What I'm about to share with you is not something which is taught in textbooks or is in outdated training manuals from 10 or 15 years ago. This is fresh off the press. This is stuff that I am testing and toying with today in my business and certainly in the space that I operate in and some of the people that I have exposure to. I'm going to be teaching you from what is working today. Just in case we've never met before, my name is Mohammed Adris. I run my own recruitment agency. It operates in the construction space in the UK. We've been going for over a decade. We've become the most reputable and recommended in our space. We have just over 10 employees. We regularly do 6 figures a month. And I hope that you will one day have a successful business, a more successful business than mine. So if you stick with me and you stick to the end, then at the end of this video, you're going to have a step-by-step guide and a blueprint to follow so that you can solve the problem for your clients, i.e., the problem that you will encounter when your clients are looking to build internal recruitment teams, or they have internal recruitment teams, or you're being squeezed compared to all of the other competitors that you have operating in your space, and they're undercutting your fees just so that you can operate in the same space. This doesn't mean that you have to switch from contingency to retained, or retained to contingency, or from temp to contingency, or anything else like that. You keep your business exactly as it is. So without further ado, let's dive in. Let's start with what's changed in recruitment. And effectively what that means is that recruiters have to adapt with what's yet to come and what is new. There are a whole host of AI tools that are available. It's insane. Like once upon a time, having a software that automated emails or a messaging sequence on LinkedIn or even scraped data for you, it used to be an edge because it was new and nobody else was using it. Now it's become so available. That you don't need that software. You can even build your own software to go and do the same thing. So now the competitive edge just no longer remains. So for you to be competitive and remain competitive against your competitors, you have to offer something different. That's where this gets interesting. But what's important to keep in mind is the need for something new and different. All you have to do is go into your own niche and go and search for some of the most recent competitors that have started up. And you're going to find that you might have been operating in your particular niche for a really long time. And you've built a reputation, you've built trust, and the next thing you know, there's this new recruitment company that comes out of nowhere and they are 6 months old and now they're shaking hands and doing deals with a client that took you 4 or 5 years to business develop and eventually crack in with. That's one challenge that you're going to be encountering. The second is that the companies that you're recruiting for, they also have access to the same AI and automation tools that you have access to. You need to be able to provide something completely different compared to, you know, I can source for these candidates because they can do that now as well. And the other element is that for every single hiring company out there, especially once they hit six figures in terms of recruitment spend, there's an alarming reality that hits them. Well, I say alarming, it's just a reality that hits, and this reality hits every single company in the world. And that is that once you're spending six figures plus a year and you speak to a couple of friends, you come to realize that running a recruitment company at base level to hire certainly for 10 or 15 people a year does not cost $100K a year. And that's if you hire a full-time employee as well. So now if you're running a company that's growing and you need to hire 15 or 20 full-time professionals and they're going to cost you somewhere between $5K, $10K, even $15K per hire, then how many of those hires do you need to make before you turn around and say, hey, you know what, I might as well just build my own internal recruitment company. Now there are challenges that come with that. And there are things that you have to be concerned of, but this is still a reality. And that reality is, is that the clients that you're recruiting for and that you're working with, they're building their own internal recruitment teams. It's becoming more accessible that people can go and start their own recruitment company because it doesn't require huge capital investment anymore. You don't have to sit there hours cold calling. You can even do this part-time, working in the evenings and weekends. You can kick it off as a side hustle. Now, I just want to make clear, my personal view is that if you are going to run this kind of business, then you should make it your main thing and your full-time thing. But if you want to run it as a side hustle, yes, you can do. I just believe that you should have the intention to one day build it into something that maybe even you can sell one day. And as long as you've got that goal in sight, regardless of whether you want to do that or not, just keep that goal inside because it will get you there. Back to the reality of clients. They have access to the same tools, and once they've spent $100K either with you or one of your competitors, or even pulled together all of it, now they're starting to think about How the hell do we reduce it? So they instantly stop liking you because now you're costing them as much as a full-time employee. And the next thing is that they're going to want to build an internal team. So now for a client that is going through that phase, what do you have to offer them that is different to what all of your competing recruiters in the same niche and in the same space as you are actually offering? Going and attending events is not different enough. Saying to the client that, you know, this is my business and this means everything to me and I will do everything possible. Yes, that is a good selling point for a new and a startup recruitment company. But that's not unique enough. It's not valuable enough. It's not different enough, because everyone else can pitch that. And what is going to make it stand out is how specialist you are in your niche, and what you can offer to your clients that is different to the other recruitment companies. Some recruiters out there experiment with this. And some recruiters have gone down the route of setting up their own podcast. Some recruiters have gone down the path of investing in more marketing. And this could be personal branding efforts. It could be advertising. There's a whole host of things that people have experimented with over the years, applauding them because they've all done an amazing job. However, what their engagement is with their client remains exactly the same. It doesn't matter whether you're offering contingency, retained, or even temporary solutions. In the US, this is more commonly known as staffing solutions. But either way, it doesn't make a difference what you're offering. If your offer remains exactly the same to every type of client that comes in through the door, then there's a moment in time that some of your clients might want something a little bit different. And it's only when they want something different, they want to build in-house, they want to try and use the same tools you're using, or they realize that the same tools you're using are just as easy for them to use compared to paying you to use them. So why would they continue working with you? Well, you need to make a compelling case and a compelling argument that is more than just, I will discount my fees, or I am a small independent business, or I am, you know, I have a small family and, you know, we're a family-owned business and we're a local business. And I mean, these are good things to help get you going. But why would a company spending six figures a year continue spending money with you? Because they're not interested in what kind of business you are. The only thing they're interested in is their growth and their business and the growth of their margins. And if you're eating up 100K, 200K, 500K, heck, even a million a year in recruitment spend, then they're going to be looking to reduce their spend in recruiting. Don't blame them. I would do exactly the same thing. You would do exactly the same thing. It's funny because I speak to recruiters who I say, like, you know, you should use a recruiter to help you hire a recruiter because you are so busy filling these vacancies. You need another person on board. And they're like, no, I don't want to pay a recruitment 'Uh, a rec2rec fee,' or, 'I don't want to pay for another recruiter to come and do my job for me.' I'm like, yes, this is the value of recruitment. It is the fact that you are so busy doing this that you should pay for that just to get it done even quicker. So I want to be a little bit more direct and upfront about this. From here on, things do change. For some people, they become harder. For some people, it becomes extremely challenging. But either way, they become different. And that's the most important thing. And when different happens, how you react to that makes all of the difference. Because if different to you means you're going to be rigid and you're going to stay exactly where you are, well, then you're going to be the equivalent of black and yellow cabs across London and New York. It doesn't mean that when Uber came along, you became obsolete. It's just the winners in this journey are Uber. They are the ones that are making way more money as a group. So there are moments in time where market shifts take place and they are balanced and they become balanced or they become unbalanced even in some cases, you have to make sure that you're adopting and adapting as you're going along. Companies are building more in-house recruitment teams. That doesn't make sense for them to pay six figures a year to an external recruitment company when you can hire a full-time recruiter in-house for 40, 50, 60, even 80K. So let me explain what's shifting over time and is what is visible. Inside recruitment companies and the way different businesses operate? Well, first, there are way more internal recruitment teams. Companies are literally building their own in-house talent acquisition teams. More AI and automation is being used in the hiring process. So even companies themselves are starting to use AI and automation to help screen candidates. And there's more competition amongst agencies. Like LinkedIn used to be a level playing field and having LinkedIn Recruiter used to be a notch higher. Now all of a sudden LinkedIn is borderline saturated, meaning that you have to stand out and work so harder just to get the exact same result, which also means that you're competing on placement fees and clients are just demanding better rates, all with higher expectations. They want to hire faster and they want better quality candidates and they become way more picky. So the result is that traditional contingency-only agencies are hitting a wall, meaning that they're competing on price, they're chasing placements, they're exhausted and trying to break past $50K or even $100K months. Is just an absolute nightmare. But this is what makes it a little bit interesting, and that is that agencies that understand the market shift are doing something a little bit different. They're not competing purely on price, they're not chasing placements, they're still building relationships with clients who need ongoing recruitment support, and they're probably making more money with less stress at the same time. So let's talk about the different revenue models, and this is part of the evolution that's taking place in recruitment. The first model is that you make a placement and you get paid. Typically, you're not charging upfront. Client gives you a vacancy and you go and fill the position. You literally find someone, they get hired, you get paid a commission. The next model is when the client doesn't want somebody on a permanent basis and they need them on a temporary basis. And in real terms, it doesn't really make much of a difference whether they're temporary or permanent, because the only real difference is the contract element. There are temporary hires that I have seen happen and they've lasted for several years. So I don't necessarily call this a completely different model or way of recruiting. This is just something that a client might request from you, meaning that somebody goes on long-term sick leave, for argument's sake, and they're away for 9 or 10 months. Then at the end of the day, they don't need a full-time hire, they just need cover for that period of time. That's where you can come in and you can charge a margin on top of what you pay the candidate. It creates recurring revenue, which is nice to have, but it also splits out the fee because you could be charging $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 upfront. But in this case, you're going to split that fee across the period of time that the person is working. That's one option. Another option is that you become more retainable. And all this means is that the client is looking to fill a vacancy and they don't want to compete with a load of recruitment companies. They want somebody who's going to do a quality job. They want a guaranteed fill. And this is where you effectively say to the client, hey, Mr. Client, we would love to fill this position for you. But at the moment, we have huge demand. And the only way that we can take this on is if we charge you a portion of the fee on commencement, meaning that we're going to do a full market map, we'll find you all the possible people that you could possibly higher, we will present them to you, we'll go through all of the usual recruitment processes, arranging the interview, managing the offer, and so on. But instead of paying us a one-time success fee, which is model 1, this time, you're going to pay us a portion of the fee upfront, a portion of the fee at interview stage, and a portion of the fee at offer stage, and maybe a portion of the fee when the person gets placed. Now, there are pros and cons to this. The pro is that it makes it so much more manageable for you, as a recruiter or even a business owner, you can see where money is going to come from. You can see the kind of clients that you're working with. You have so much more control over your cash flow and you know where your time is being dedicated as opposed to model 1, especially if you've got loads of clients and loads of candidates, then it becomes a bit chaotic. That said, we have to keep in mind that there is a competitive element here as well. I'm just going to say to you, in my case, if I had a client who I was talking to and another recruiter had beaten me to it and they were pitching them a retainer and they were about to pay a deposit or even a portion of the fee upfront, I would just say to the client, hey, Mr. Client, don't need to pay a deposit. I'll just find you the people now. Meaning that I would use the contingency model to pitch ahead of the retained model so that they don't have to make a financial commitment. Meaning that yes, there are pros and cons for every single model that is available. However, we have to keep in mind that you need to be available for your clients. So if you are forcing your clients to say, hey, Mr. Client, I only want to work with you if you're paying me on a retained basis, or I only want to work with you if you're paying me on a temporary or even a staffing basis, or I only want to work with you for a contingency basis, then something's going to give way and fall apart somewhere along the way. And this is something that I'll bring into the conversation a little bit later, is having a product catalog where you can offer the right thing to the right client at the right time. And the fourth model is what I called AI-powered RPO. It's not RPO, it's not fractional recruiting, which are two completely separate models, and I'll touch on them. Fractional is where you come forward to one of your clients and say, hey, I will work the vacancies that you have for you, and you just pay me a monthly fee just like a full-time employee. And WO is where you manage the entire process for them. Both of these are high-ticket recurring fees, but what I choose to do is something in the middle, which is a hybrid approach. This is where we use AI to amplify all of the work that we do, but we also take a fractional approach at the same time without bottlenecking ourselves in one particular placement. What that means is that if you do actually get a full-time job with one of your clients where you're managing their entire recruitment process, then it could well be the case that that's the only client that you possibly work with, which is a problem because now you've just gone from quitting your job to starting a business to then getting a job inside your business and then making that your full-time thing, which is— that wasn't the thing that you were aiming for in the first place. So you can expand it. Now, there are agencies that purely operate on Model 1, but the agencies that I've seen that are the most successful are the ones that offer all of them. They keep Model 1 contingency recruitment for smaller clients and new relationships. They offer Model 2 where it's appropriate, i.e., your temp and you're staffing base placements. They offer Model 3, i.e., retained, for those who are looking to scale and need dedicated hires. And they offer Model 4 to clients who are spending north of 6 figures a year, because as soon as a company is spending 6 figures a year in recruitment spend, then the next question is very natural, which is, how much does it cost to hire a recruiter and bring all of this in-house? This isn't about replacing contingency. This isn't about adding. A brand new revenue stream. This is about offering your clients what they want as you grow and as they grow. Because the beauty of it is that one client on a retainer can replace 5 to 10 contingency placements. And that's on a monthly basis, just talking about revenue, but with way less work and way more predictability. So just for clarity, I went over model 1, 2, and 3 in the previous video that I released. It's still relevant today. Nothing has become irrelevant. There's a few fine details in terms of what kind of tools that you use and how you exercise the model, but ultimately the model still remains exactly the same. We still operate the exact same model itself. The new and updated version today is going to be focused on Model 4, which is what happens when those clients want to build an internal recruitment team and how do you approach them before they actually do that. So now the question is, which of your clients are actually ready for this new retainer model and how do you actually identify them? But before I even go into who are the clients that this should be pitched to and who's going to be suitable, let's just explain it in a little bit more detail because there's an inevitable reality that happens as part of the growth of any company. And that is that one day you will spend so much money on external suppliers that one day you will ask yourself, can I bring this in-house? And that doesn't just apply to recruitment. It applies to just about everything. If you're spending 10 grand a month with your accountant, you're probably going to look to hire a CFO. If you're spending 10 grand a month in a company to manage all of your day-to-day operations and you're going to hire a COO. This is just the natural growth of any business and it applies to recruitment companies too. Because one day you're going to be hiring recruiters to help you grow your business. And if that annual recruitment spend exceeds 100 grand a year, you're going to say yourself, hey, you know what, we should just hire a recruiter internally who can just manage our entire recruitment process. So it's nothing to be upset about. This is just a natural occurrence in any business, except what I'm about to explain here is if you had been implementing everything that I taught in the previous course, then you will now be at a stage where some of your clients have been been growing consistently, and they're at a stage now where they're probably toying with the idea. They may have even spent $30, $40, $50, even $100K with you alone, meaning that the question is on their minds of how the heck do we reduce the spend on recruitment companies. So don't take it personally, they're just looking at their expenses, and they're looking at you as an expense too, questioning how the heck can we reduce it. So this is where the question really fits in. You've got a client who is spending $200K plus a year in recruitment fees. And they're paying $200K a year. Let's just say you're dealing with fees at $10K or $20K a go. That's 10 to 20 hires in a year that they're paying $200K for. And now they're thinking, you know what, I'm going to bring this in-house. But there's some problems and challenges with this as well. Your clients are not experienced recruitment business owners, or at least they may not be. And they don't know the challenges of managing KPIs in recruitment. They don't know how to manage the team. They don't know how to onboard, train, and even manage a recruiter day to day. And then having that person working in-house in the company where they can hear people's salaries and what they're negotiating with, with other packages like this is not the kind of stuff that they want. But what they want is the actual engine behind your business. How do you generate clients and candidates regularly? So if you follow the previous training, you know how to do that. And that's what they actually want. So this client comes along, or they might be a client who you're already working with and they're spending $200K+ a year in recruitment fees, and you say to them, hey, Mr. Client, how about I take on your entire recruitment work for you and I charge you $5K per month for it? That's $60K a year. Do you think they're going to say no? And that $200K spend that they had in recruitment fees, what are the chances that all of it was with you? And if all of it was with you, then yeah, fine, then probably wouldn't pitch it to them. But if it wasn't and it was spread across a few different agencies where you were probably seeing 40, even 50K from it, and now you pitch them anything which is 5K a month or even 10K a month, they still see the benefit of having this service because their recruitment agency spend has been reduced by 50%, and their expectation of you is 10 placements. That sounds like a dream job for a recruiter, doesn't it? So why not do that for them? Meaning that you pitch them the service and you say, we'll manage your entire recruitment process for you, we'll manage everything inbound, may or may not take some commission from it, and this is like a negotiation point, that you can talk about later on in the process. And this is where you tie them in to a long-term agreement. And now you're not chasing them for a fee, and they don't see you as a recruiter who's chasing them for a fee. They see you as a true partner that is supporting the growth of their business. So why not offer that to them? And for everything that I've mentioned so far, this is exactly why this pitch never fails. You speak to one of your clients and you explain to them how you can reduce their recruitment agency spend by 50%, and they don't have to train, manage, and onboard a recruiter so that you can do it. Why they say no. But yes, as you might have guessed, not every single client will fit into that boat. Not every single person or every single client is retainer ready or model 4 ready or AI RPO ready. And if you want to know what the primary signal is, the primary signal is hiring volume, meaning that companies with less than 50 employees, they might not be ready for this. And I'm looking at this from two different angles. One is the growth of the organization, but there's also the churn because they will have a certain amount of people that leave, typically 20%. Let's say half of them are done through recruitment companies and they're $10K fees at a time, they're spending $50K a year in recruitment fees. Could you offer them an RPO model on a lower rate, call it $2.5K per month or even $2K per month? Yes, you could. But you can imagine it's going to be really hard to manage their expectations because they don't see a result every single month. They just continue to pay you a retainer even in months when they don't actually need any hires. But clients want to see results and the immediate saving that you give them is what they're going to benefit from and that's what they're going to value the most. So a really good client is going to somewhere between 50, 100, maybe pushing it 200 employees, even higher than that, because these are prime clients. They have consistent hiring need, they have regular churn, they have growth plans. They're probably the ones that are going to be winning the biggest clients and the biggest projects in their space. And they may or may not have built an internal recruitment team at the moment. And if you catch them before they've even built the internal recruitment team, then this becomes so much more of an easier conversation. Whereas if you go to the companies that are 200+ employees, they probably already have an internal recruitment team. doesn't mean that you can't pitch them. Just means that you need to be able to present something that still presents itself as a massive cost saving. And that's one indicator that they could be a good fit. Another good fit, or other indicator that they're a good fit, is that they're already spending 6 figures a year or more on recruitment agencies. How do you find out? Well, you've got to have a meeting with them and ask them the question. And the next indicator beyond their spend is how consistent is that? Do they hire 5, 10, even 15 even 20 people of a similar kind of profession every single year through recruitment companies? And what has that been like for the previous few years? What does that look like for the anticipated year? Because if it's sporadic, but they go through waves of hiring and then there's no hiring for a period of time, then they're not going to be as attracted to this. And there's also another signal, and this is just for your existing clients. Just ask yourself the question: have you been working with them for more than 6 months? Do they actually trust you? Do they like you? How receptive have they been to to any requests that you've made regarding retainers? How open to conversation are they, especially regarding things outside of work? Like, if you have a relationship with them that is beyond business, then even better. So if you want the quickest and easiest route to success for this, then just go and speak to your existing clients. Look at the ones that fall into the bracket and maybe even meet the criteria that I've mentioned. Just ask them the question, say, hey, Mr. Client, how much do you spend in recruitment, and would you be open to a conversation if I could help reduce your recruitment agency spend by 50% or more. And this depends on the decision maker that you're dealing with. If you want to go a level higher, the CFO is a really good person to approach in this position as well. Other indicators also include, let's say the company advertises for an internal recruiter as the first one that they're going to hire. That means that they're thinking about this, and it's usually the CFO, the CEO, maybe even the COO, or whoever your point of contact is. They're going to be a good person to speak to. So these are just some triggers that I'm giving you that would indicate that now is a good time to approach them about this solution. And And last but not least, let's just say you've actually made a few placements with them recently. That's a good time to approach them as well. Because now they've actually spent the money with you. And you're approaching them saying, hey, look, you're already spending 60, 70, 80, even 100k a year with me. What are you spending with your competitors? And would you be interested in reducing that cost? And here's where it becomes really important just to pay attention to what's happening in the market. Because how well you listen to your clients and they will tell you when they've got problems or they've got challenges or they're thinking about introducing something new. How well you pay attention to that indicates how well you're going to time your pitches. If you time your pitches at the right time, then a good chunk of your work is already done. So moving on, the next most important thing is how you position yourself, because if you get this wrong, then you could position yourself in the wrong way and that presents you in the wrong light to the client. And one wrong way would mean that it comes across to the client like as if you're trying to upsell them into a new solution. That would be be a terrible idea. Like, imagine you just said to them, hey, we want to charge you a retainer instead of per placement fees. For most of them, they won't even understand what that actually means, and it just sounds like you're trying to make more money. Clients will naturally reject this. So the right positioning is that as you scale, your hiring needs are changing. Here's a better way to handle it. And all this means is that you're positioning it as an evolution, not an upsell. It acknowledges their growth, it positions you as a strategic partner, and that's what enables trust. So the core principle is that right now they're paying per hire. That works when you're hiring occasionally and you're growing very slowly. But when your hiring becomes consistent, it just means that you need a different solution. So instead of paying per hire, what if you had dedicated recruitment support focused on your hiring? You'd get faster hiring, better quality candidates, and predictable costs. And this just makes it clear. It makes it clear that you're not trying to make money. Arguably, you're helping them save money and you're solving a problem that they actually have. And you're becoming a strategic partner. So let's say you have one of these clients on a call with you. You've said to them, hey, I would love to see if I can help you reduce your recruitment agency spend. Let me talk you through some of the questions that you have to ask in order to pitch this solution. Now, from my experience, I found that this usually takes 2 calls. So I'm going to start with just explaining what you do on the first call. So on the first call, they will know that you have the intention to support them with something completely different. So the call starts very simply. Thank them for their time. Ask them if it's important that they're interested in reducing their recruitment spend. And just explain that your intention is to establish if you can actually help them make a significant saving. And if you feel like you can, then you'll have another call to discuss in a bit more detail. And if you feel like you can't, you'll just be honest and say that you can't. And the first thing is that you have to explain recruitment to them first. Like, they've got to understand why recruitment fees are justified in the first place. And the best way that I've used to explain it is to say recruitment is no different to any business development process. When they are prospecting to their clients, they might build lead lists, they might find their clients, whether that's on Google, like industry events, or however they find their clients. And once they know that this is a client that we could target, they become a prospect. Once they build a two-way communication channel— this could be over email, over phone, for Instagram, over LinkedIn, they could meet at an event— however it's triggered is irrelevant. What matters is that that person becomes a lead when you have two-way communication with them. And the lead becomes meetings, and meetings become proposed offers, and then proposed offers become agreements. And then we move into a retention phase where we do everything that we can to make sure that the client keeps coming back to us over and over again. It's the same thing in recruitment. If you want to hire people for your own business, it's the same process. You find people who you would like to hire, you contact them and gain their interest. You have meetings with them. These are also known as interviews. And generally speaking, if it requires more than one meeting, you're going to have them in a short space of time. So you're not wasting time in between. And when it comes to the meeting, you're going to make a proposal that you believe is a good fit. And then you're going to make sure the client is happy all the way through the onboarding process. You're going to deliver things to the highest standard. And then you're going to stay in contact with them to make sure that they are happy with working with you. And they carry on doing the same thing. It's the same thing in recruitment. And that's why recruiters charge so much. This is the kind of words that you want to say to your client. That's why recruiters charge so much is because what you're outsourcing is an entire business development process. So once you've explained that, the next thing is to understand what they're actually doing at the moment. We need to understand how many hires they make, whether they are white-collar hires, blue-collar hires, how many of those hires come from recruitment agencies, what do they typically spend with recruitment agencies, what's their average fill time, and if they have any, what are their internal costs? This isn't just internal recruiters, but what about your LinkedIn Recruiter licenses? What about your job boards? What about your ATS systems? Are there any admin or even PA staff or even HR that get involved in the recruitment process? How much time does it take of them? What are the soft costs relating to their time? And then what are their forecasted hires? And only once you've got a detailed insight into what their actual hiring costs are per hire, then you will have the true picture. Because if you believe that they're spending $100K a year with you in recruitment fees, or even in total in recruitment fees, then the chances are once they've totaled up the soft costs and they've totaled up the fact that somebody has a LinkedIn Recruiter license and somebody else is paying for Indeed, what you quickly find is that the total spend on recruitment is more like $150K, maybe even $200K a year. In some cases, I've had meetings and we've discovered that the recruitment spend is actually double what we thought it was. And only once you've got all of that information, this is where you can make a judgment. Because if the client is spending less than $30K a year in recruitment spend, this model isn't going to work. They need to be a little bit higher than that. And once you've laid everything out, this is where you can ask them a very direct question. And that direct question is, If I can present to you a solution which provides considerable savings, 40, even 50%, would that be a serious conversation that you'd be interested in implementing as soon as possible? If they say no, cool, no pitch. If they say yes, follow up. This is with another question, and that is that in what time frame would you be interested in implementing such a solution? And ultimately, you want them to say as soon as possible. If they say in a few months, next year, whenever it is, just ask them why they would want to delay it and really deep dive into this. And last but not least, ask them if anybody else needs to be involved in the decision-making process. And from there on, book in your follow-up meeting because you've got all the information that you need that this solution is going to work for them, and you book a second meeting. So now you've booked in your second meeting. This is usually going to be an hour long. In between that meeting and the one that you've just finished, ask them if they have any questions, and you send them over a document which contains a scope of works. This is where you detail everything and you say, hey, Mr. Client, this is what you're doing at the moment, This is what I'm going to do. And you're going to do that by referencing everything that they just told you. They spend how many hours reviewing contracts? They spend how many hours looking at bad CVs? They spend how many hours dealing with multiple agencies? They spend how many hours dealing with disputes? All of this is information that you need to present to them a viable solution. And once you've broken everything down, this is where you can give them a price. So just think of it yourself. And this is how I personally think of it is 'What if I were to do this myself, whether I'm in the earlier stages of my recruitment business or whether I have a large team behind me? Like, what would I need to charge to make sure that this is still profitable for me, but it also secures recurring revenue deals?' So if I'm looking at a recruiter in my team and thinking, 'Okay, cool, I'm going to put them into this client's business,' I'm going to be looking to charge $100,000-$120,000. And there's still enough profit in that for it to be worthwhile for for me, except there's one more leverage play here, which I'm going to touch on a little bit later to make it even more profitable. We're talking 120K a year contract should bring in the best part of 70 or 80K in profit for you. But we're digressing for the time being. You're going to send them a scope of works. That scope of works is going to explain what you will be doing day to day, weekly, monthly. Guess what? It's actually everything that you do in recruitment. So simple. And then eventually this brings us onto the second call with the client. And the second call with the client is effectively your sales call. However, at this point you've sent over the scope of works. You've hopefully made all of the decision makers that need to be involved aware, and they are attending this call as well. If they're not available, then I would stop the call there. By the way, this is just something that I take approach on and I stand firm on, and that is that if all of the people that need to be involved in the decision are not present, then I'd be saying something on the lines of, guys, look, I would love to carry on with this conversation, but there's a couple of people who are involved in the decision-making process that are not present today. Can we move this to a time where they all can be present, because otherwise I'm going to have to explain it here and have to explain it again, and I'd rather have everybody on the same playing field. Otherwise you guys are going to be well informed and then the other decision makers are going to have some questions and we're just going to be repeating and potentially losing time. When would be a good time to set this up? So I would just be a little bit firm there, but nonetheless, we'll go on to some of the details of the sales process a little bit later. But first and foremost is just make sure everybody is up to speed. Have they reviewed all of the information? Have they reviewed all of the documentation? Have they seen your scope of works? Do they agree with the accurate calculations? And then reconfirm some of the questions that you asked previously. Is this important to you? Is this something that you would actually want to implement? Is the cost saving significant enough for you to take action on it? And is everybody here that needs to be involved in the decision for us to be able to take action on this? If a decision is made, can a decision be made today? So effectively you've closed them on the whole idea of everything before you've even gone into it. And this is where you present the entire solution. Now, presenting the entire solution means presenting your entire scope of works documentation over to them. Now, I want to mention here where I've seen some people make mistakes. Sometimes adding in more layers of complexity makes it harder for your clients to understand. So if you are pitching any kind of AI solution, let's just be straight about it. Your clients don't care whether you're using AI or not. They only care about the cost saving that you can give to them and the quality of the work that you're going to produce. That is what they care about. So now, by throwing in AI tools and technologies and mentioning them and explaining them, then it opens up a few avenues. Number one is they're trying to understand how you use these tools, in which case, should we just do this ourselves? Which will be a little bit cheeky, but either way, it's like, it just damages the whole pitching process. And the other element is the complexity of the pitch, because if you're doing live demos on your entire recruitment software and all of the tools and tactics that you use internally, then naturally your clients are going to be thinking, hey, why don't we just use all of these And for them to understand how all of these tools come together and the little demo pieces that come in play with it, you're effectively teaching them how to run the entire recruitment engine, which is your business, which may have taken you years to build. And you're trying to explain that and condense it within a 20 or a 30-minute conversation. It's a lot to take in and they're not going to completely get to grasp with it. So rather than explaining the entire recruitment business model, then you got two options. You either just tell them what the solution is, or you can send them to my 5-hour YouTube course and they can just go and watch that because either way they get the same I think. And that is partly the point that I'm making. Clients don't want to build a recruitment business inside their own business. What they want is they want the result of having a recruitment business without the large upfront fees, which naturally create inconsistent profitable margins and months for their business. Now, what I've given to you is an overview of the pitching process and the cycle that you're going to go through. But keep in mind that there will be some objections that come up, and there will be challenges that you come up with as well. And this is where the sales process gets refined over time. Like, what happens when a client says, 'What's the minimum term?' or 'How much does this actually work out to be?' and 'Why is it so expensive?' or 'Your fees are too expensive,' or 'I've had a better quote.' All of these are irrelevant when you actually anchor your solution to their particular problem. Because if they're spending $200K a year in recruitment fees and you're giving them a solution that's going to cost them $80K, what are they debating about? And just keep in mind that when you do deliver the scope of works, you put the pricing in there. So by the time they turn up to the call, they already know how much it's going to cost. So now that you know how to pitch, let's just talk about money. How much should you charge? And what does it actually look like in practice? Let's break it down. If you just take the core running costs of your recruitment business, you shouldn't be spending more than £1,000, dollars, or euros per month on tools. And if you've got a VA, then you might add in an extra $1,000 there if you've got a really good one. So at $2K per month, you are running a recruitment business. That's your baseline. That's effectively what you're going to replicate across to one of your clients. Out, let's say you hire a full-time employee into this business model. I would encourage that the first one that you actually do yourself. But let's just say you hire somebody into this model. What that means is you now have a full-time recruiter in there. So if the full-time recruiter is going to cost you $5K or $6K per month, then you add that in. So $8K per month becomes your baseline. So for that kind of client, you need to be charging $10K, $12K, even $15K per month for. And that's more than doable depending on how much they spend. What's interesting is when you use near and offshore employees to help you manage that process because now your margins just double. So let's assume that you actually go down that route of hiring nearshore and offshore employees, then your base costs could be as low as $3K per month, even $2K per month. So let's say you have the ability to be profitable with a 50% margin at $5K per month. Everything above that is a bonus. And just keep in mind, the person that you're talking to on the other end, they're used to spending an average of $15K, $20K, even $30K per month just to make 10 or 12 hires. So what I'm going to talk through right now are trigger events. Like, these are the moments at which you realize, you know what, now is a good time to approach and have this conversation with any one of your clients. And these events, they are not once in a lifetime things. They actually happen quite frequently amongst your clients, and they will happen, and you will experience that they happen. It's just when they actually happen, these are the opportunities that you have to use so that you know when to approach this conversation, so you know what to say next. So the first and most obvious one is when they actually mention that they have some hiring challenges. And they could say something like, we are struggling to fill this particular type of role, we are struggling in this particular department, we can't find senior-level professionals. And, and what this is ultimately doing is signaling pain to you. This is telling you that they are in a state of pain, and they need a solution for the pain that they're experiencing. And you have to understand, when somebody is telling you about a problem that they're having, they're also simultaneously telling you that they don't know how to fix it, because you don't complain about problems that you know how to fix. And it's the same thing for your clients, meaning that if they know how to fix something, it's no longer a problem for them, in which case they wouldn't even mention it to you. And if they do mention it, this is the kind of moment and time that you should be thinking, hey, I have a solution for this and I would love to explore this conversation with you. That's one example. Another event is when they're asking about reducing costs, like they've obviously thought about how much recruitment costs and now they are concerned about it and they say, your fees are getting expensive or we need lower rates or we need something a little bit more favorable. And instead of just negotiating down, this is when you can actually pivot. This is when you say, what if I could reduce your cost per hire cost and give you dedicated support? Because this completely reframes the entire conversation from lower fees to better value. And that's what you actually want. And that's also what your clients want, which because they want the highest ROI for the money that they put in. They don't necessarily just want to reduce their costs. They also want the highest ROI possible. And if you can help them achieve that from a recruitment perspective, why would they not entertain the conversation? That's the second trigger. Let me give you another one. What if they mention that they're trying to hire internally? You know, we're going to try and fill this ourselves. We are going to use our internal recruitment team. We're going to use our internal resource. Or they're gonna say, we're thinking about hiring our own internal recruiter. Like this is quite a critical moment because you've gotta say that before you do that, can I show you another option that might be better for you? And that's exactly where you can entertain this conversation and actually start the conversation about how a retained solution for ongoing recruitment needs is actually valuable and plays a part. That's a third trigger. I'll give you the fourth. What happens when you've just delivered a big win? This is like you've just placed somebody with them, a key hire for them. And they are so happy, they're grateful, they're over the moon, then this is the perfect time to have that strategic conversation about the future, current costs from a recruitment perspective, what their long-term plans are for growth, what does that actually equate to from a costing perspective, and explain the importance of it. Meaning that you have to say something on the lines of, look, I understand that how much you're going to be spending, like over the next few years as you're growing, you're going to be spending all of this money. We can either do it on a one-time per hire basis, basis, contingency or retained, or we can talk about it in a way where it's much more sustainable for you from a cost perspective and from a delivery perspective. And this is why it's so important for you to listen, because your job is to listen for these trigger events. Because some of these trigger events, they happen before they're mentioned online and before AI can even detect them. So when you hear one, that's your signal to have the evolution conversation. Which leads me onto the next section. Now that you know who to target, let's talk about how to actually pitch this without sounding like you're trying to upsell them. So let's start from the beginning. Your positioning is absolutely everything. If you position this incorrectly, it sounds like an upsell. And if you position it in the right way, then it sounds like a solution. So the wrong position is, we want to charge you a retainer instead of per placement fees. Like you literally just said what your intentions are. That sounds like you're trying to make more money from clients and they ultimately will reject this. The right positioning, however, is as you scale, your hiring needs are changing. Here's a better way to handle it. And this almost positions you as an evolution of what you're already doing, not an upsell. And it acknowledges their growth. It positions you as the strategic partner. And that's effectively where you have to make the bold statement and the claim because you have to say to your clients, hey, Mr. Client, You are paying per hire. That works when you're hiring occasionally, but you're hiring consistently now. You're spending 6 figures plus a year in recruitment agency spent. Hiring costs may well be more than that, which means that for you, Mr. Client, you need a different model. Instead of paying per hire, what if you had a dedicated recruitment support focused on your hiring? You'd get faster hiring, better quality candidates, and predictable costs. That's effectively how you word it. And this transition almost makes it clear that you're not just trying to make more money from them, you're trying to solve a problem that they have, and you solve that by being a strategic partner. So your position in this pitch and conversation is not that, hey, Mr. Client, here's a new product that we're offering, and we're gonna raise our prices, and we're gonna charge you a little bit more, and so on. This is acknowledging their current recruitment spend, what they're about to spend in the upcoming months, and recognizing that paying per hire, which is what most recruitment companies offer at the moment and what your clients are doing at the moment as well, this is no longer the best thing because the likelihood is, is that the moment they cross over that 6-figure per year in recruitment agency spend, they're also thinking about hiring an internal recruiter. That is another way that they're trying to transition and switch away from relying purely on recruitment agency spend. You just have to be there in that moment to say that, hey, you don't have to build a recruitment company inside your business. You can let me run the entire solution for you. So obviously you can pitch this to existing clients and you can pitch it to brand new clients. This is where you're going to have the most amount of success. Certainly if you were to this product today. But even if you don't have any clients, then it's a nice place to start regardless. And this is where I have to really emphasize this, which is that you have to word it in a way where the client is going to trust you. Because if for any reason they feel like, oh, this is something else that is being offered, then it doesn't come with due care and attention. But if you're speaking to your client and you're doing a really good job for them, and you can explain back to them— and this takes a little bit of articulation— and say, I understand that you're experiencing this problem and you're about to enter into a new phase of experiencing that problem. Let me just give you the example. For those of you who remember the previous full recruitment agency course that I mentioned, I gave examples of companies who might hire 5 people per year and pay $20K in recruitment fees per hire. Nice client to have. Okay. But that client is what you're working towards as an A-grade client in the first phase of your business. As you begin to grow, those A-grade clients become high-risk clients because they're the ones who are actively pursuing a route to reduce recruitment agency spend. So a company which is spending a lot of money with the recruitment company is a great client for the recruitment company, but it's also the company that is most likely to change direction. So it's the most volatile account, it's the one that has the highest unpredictable behavior, all because you're not having conversations like this one. Because once you do become a strategic internal partner with your clients and you begin to talk to them like as if you are an internal partner and you're sitting in on those meetings as well. Now all of a sudden you are more involved in the actual growth of the business and you have more say in how it comes about. So this is super important, meaning that make sure that you present and pitch the solution in a way that it doesn't come across like an upsell. It has to come across as, hey, Mr. Client, we understand your situation. You're just evolving from this situation to this situation, i.e., you're moving on from getting the highest ROI from paying per hire to now getting the best ROI from paying for a recruitment solution. And we'd like to talk to you about that. And that's where you come in to present that solution. Let's talk now about how you actually pitch the solution. And what's important here is that you have to follow a structure. What this absolutely cannot be is a hard sell. It has to be a conversation that you're working with. So just keep in mind, I gave a structure earlier. When it comes to this particular call, this is the second call that you're having. The first call is going to be your discovery call where you're asking plenty of questions to understand. This is the pitch call that I'm talking about. So when you start this call, you have to spend the first 30 seconds making sure that everyone is there and repeating back what you've understood so far in terms of what the problem is, the urgency of it. You should be able to repeat back to them their specific situation from a recruitment perspective and word it in a way that they feel that you have fully understood them. And as long as they believe they believe that you have understood them, everything else becomes a lot easier. For example, okay, Mr. Client, I've been working with you for the past 10 months. We've placed 25 people with you. You're hiring on average 2 to 3 people every single month consistently. And that tells me something important. And that is that your hiring needs have evolved. Now, that's just stating facts. From there on, you go into more detail. On our last call, we spoke about how this is how much it's costing. This is how much you're spending with recruitment Here's how much you're spending on internal people to support you with this entire hiring process. Here's the total hard costs. Spell everything back to them to the point that they know that you've understood them and they know that you were taking detailed notes in the previous meeting. And as long as that's happened correctly, that's where you can pause for a moment and just say, is there anything that I have misunderstood? Look at all of them. You might be doing this over Zoom, Teams, or whatever, or you might even be doing this in person. Regardless of that, just Pay close attention to every single one and pay attention to their body language as well. Because if they're looking elsewhere, if they are messing about stuff with on their screen, or if they're not fully present whatsoever, this is not important to them. And call it out. Like, you have to be as straightforward as you can possibly be. And the way that you can call this out is to say, hey, Mr. Client, I don't have your full attention. Is this not a priority for you right now? It's okay if it's not. Like, I'm not offended. It's just, if this is not important to you, then it's cool. I just noticed that I didn't have your attention. So Is what I've mentioned accurate to you or is it not a priority or is it not a problem for you or is it just that something caught you off? Okay, cool. No problem. As long as I've got your attention, like I would rather have everybody's full attention because when we get to the end of this, I just don't want to be repeating any questions. Otherwise it's not going to be the best use of our time. Now the way that I've worded it, for a lot of people that might come across as almost aggressive, almost uncomfortable, confrontational, whatever it is. In the environments that you're dealing with, which is B2B environments, people don't have time to mince words. They would rather just get to the point and move on as quickly and fast as they possibly can. That doesn't mean that you don't show emotion or you don't work alongside it. It's just, it doesn't work. They want to just get to the point. So if you can see somebody is not fully there, you have full right to say to them, hey, look, if you're not fully present, no point you being here. That's what you're checking off, which is, is the problem important enough to get everybody's attention? Is it something that is important for everybody to solve? From a timing perspective, is there anything that would stop stop them from implementing a solution if there was a viable solution right in front of them right now? And assuming there is a viable solution, which is what we're talking about today, is there any reason why they wouldn't want to implement it immediately? And also, you want to be checking if every single decision maker who needs to be involved is on this call right now, and if there is anybody else who needs to be involved that isn't present on this call. Once you've got these few things checked off, you'll continue with the rest of the call. Like, what I've just described there, I'm trying to explain it in as much detail as I possibly can, but it shouldn't really take more than 30 seconds, a minute at best. And certainly we want to avoid all of the friendly chitchat. You're on this call to talk business. We're not there to make friends. So we're moving on to the next phase of the pitch, which is explaining the problem back to them. And you want to say something like, hey, Mr. Client, like right now you're paying per placement. And at your scale, that means that you're spending— and you repeat the amount that they've told you that they're spending, which is it could be $100K, $200K, $300K, $500K, whatever it is, all on recruitment fees and you're still dealing with hiring delays and candidate quality issues. Meaning that you're reminding them that even though you're spending all of this money, you still have a load of all of these problems. And when they appreciate that for a moment, they begin to think, hang on a second, you're right. We have all of these problems despite spending all of this money. Maybe there is an alternative way. They already know that, that you're here to pitch it, but you need to really bed this in. And in this brief moment, lasting usually 1 to 2 minutes, you want to take enough time just to repeat back all of the problems that they've said to you. Here's all the things that you like, here's all the things that you don't like, and these are all the things that you wish you could change. This is all information that you should have got out of the discovery call. And this brings me on to the next phase of the pitch because we have to be able to explain to them what happens if they don't make a change. You say to the client, hey, Mr. Light Light, imagine you continue to grow and what you're dealing with right now is your recruitment situation, not just the cost but also the problems that come with it. Tell me what happens over the next few years as you begin to double, triple, or even quadruple in size. Because whether they say it or not, the reality is that their recruitment costs will also double, triple, quadruple in size. And at some point, the math just becomes obvious, meaning that you should hire your own internal recruiter. That's the default position that they all turn to. But when that happens, it has to happen in a way that you don't lose the relationship. And that's exactly the point of this conversation, which is, hey, Mr. Client, I would rather work with you long term. You know that we know your market inside out. You hire an external recruiter, there's certain things that they need to understand. They need to understand the dynamics of the market. They need to understand the job specifications that you have and they need to understand your company culture. Let's just say you hire somebody who has one of them. It still takes them time to learn the other two. Not to mention the fact that you as a consultant, advisor, whatever the client is doing, you now have to manage a recruiter in your own business. So it seems like you're at a crossroads at the moment, which is one option is to carry on doing everything as you are, which is pay per hire. And we already know how the costs are going going to amplify in the upcoming years. Another option is that you stop working with us and you hire an internal recruiter, but knowing that now you have to manage a recruiter and you have to deal with new problems that you don't have experience with dealing with. Or we can find a solution that sits right in the middle between the two. And this is where you pitch the solution. There is another way. Just imagine that you had a dedicated recruitment resource focused on your hiring. You pay a fixed monthly fee, and in return you get faster hiring, better candidates, predictable costs. And the best part is we're not losing relationship either. We're actually deepening it. And this is where you present the value, which is that we're not cutting ties. We have a solution. We have amplified our own business, our own recruitment business, using AI and automation and a load of other tools that you can talk them through as well, which means that we're more efficient and effective in the way that we generate candidates for our clients that work with us. So what if we just gave you that engine and that dedicated resource to have in your business? That is effectively the pitch. Throughout this entire pitch, your tone should be collaborative. You're basically having a strategic conversation with a partner. You're not trying to close a deal. And even if you do execute properly, the likelihood is you will face at least some objections. So let me go through some of the common ones. Let's just say the company says, you know what, we're actually thinking about hiring our own internal recruiter. Well, yeah, that's a great option. But before you do, have you considered this? You'd have to pay someone 40, 50, even 60K a year year in salary, benefits, plus management overheads. And that's not to say that that person is going to be the perfect fit. Like, you understand what it takes to hire people, and you know that not every single hire is the perfect hire on the first go. So what if instead you just kept working with us, but we provided you some embedded resource which embeds into your business? And instead of paying a really high price per hire, why not just pay a monthly fee for the solution? You get the same think, but without the hiring and the management overhead. So if you are ever faced with that challenge, then at the end of the day, if a client is thinking about doing something which you know deep down is not the best thing for them, then you have to be able to explain to them why that is not going to be the best solution. So if you know anything more that is worth mentioning, then it's worth asking them like, hey, look, I understand why you're doing this. If I understand correctly, you want to do this because you want to reduce your cost, right? Okay, cool. We're on the same page then. So with this particular move, have you considered what happens in this situation? And this is where you can explain explain to them how do you measure the recruiter's performance? How much time is that going to take? Is that going to be your responsibility? Is it going to be somebody else's? I'm just giving some examples here because these are things that maybe your clients haven't considered. But moving on to a few other objections, what if they just say that, oh, your fees are too high? At this moment in time, you should have a full breakdown of what their current spend is. So if you just look at the math, you can say to them, Mr. Client, look, you're currently spending $100, $200, $300, $400K a year, and at the moment you're paying on a per-placement basis. And with this, you'd be spending a different number, and you know, it's going to be 60 or 70% less than what you're currently spending. So this is interesting here. Most people anticipate "you're too expensive" as an objection. It's more retaliation to change than it is an objection because an objection implies that there is a justified reason why they shouldn't take you up on the solution. The reality is, is that when you've presented everything well, then there is no reason why they shouldn't take you up on that solution. So you don't really have that much of a problem. I think most people get very uncomfortable about how to pitch what is going to be a $50K solution or a $60K solution or even a $100K solution. Oh, the price is too high. Like, yeah, compared to what? What are you comparing the price to? Because the price isn't actually that high. It sounds like a big number. Yes, quoting somebody $100K, $200K, even $500K sounds like a crazy high big number over a 1-year contract. But the reality is, compared to what? If they're already spending a million a year, you're saving them 50%. A pricing objection is more psychologically traumatizing than anything else. But it's in this particular scenario, you're selling against the cost of recruiting. So the likelihood of you facing or experiencing a pricing objection is like that much. In which case, if you knew you were going to experience that, then you just have to prepare for it from a pitch perspective. And another objection is that maybe they just want I want to try it with a smaller commitment first. And the reality is this isn't really an objection. This actually makes the most amount of sense because what you're offering is something that they've never tried before. No different to when they hire an employee, i.e., your clients will hire an employee, you will hire an employee, and there's a period of testing. It might last a month. Some companies have a probation period of 1 month, sometimes 3 months, sometimes 6 months. And that's cool. That makes sense. So why not start with a few months as a pilot test on a use rate, you get the experience that the model works. And if it works, we move in on a full 12-month agreement. If it doesn't, we can go back to the old model. A lot of the time when you experience objections, they're not necessarily real objections. And that said, this is my personal take on it. Whenever you're in a sales environment, if you experience an objection, it's because you didn't ask the question earlier on. So what you'll find is that this is the first time that you go into pitching such a solution, you are going to experience some objections. Second time round, you just ask the questions upfront. And last but not least, what if they say, we don't have the budget for this right now? Well, the reality is they do because they're already spending the money. So just remember, whenever you get an objection, you don't necessarily have to argue with it. You just acknowledge it, reframe it, show them how the solution actually addresses the concern that they're raising. And there you have it. These are probably going to be the most common objections that you encounter. Encounter when you go to present such a solution. Now that you know how to pitch it, let's just talk about some of the economics that go into this particular model and how much should you actually charge? What does this actually look like in practice? I want to give the example from a few different angles, but I also want to keep it reasonably high level, meaning that I want to stick to the strategic element. Now there's one important part here. There is nothing set in stone that means that you have to price this service in a certain way. There is no detailed structure. Structure for this. You choose what is most suitable for you. And if you're in the earlier stages of dealing with a client, or you have a client that you're pitching to that you really want to secure on this deal, then you can be flexible. The goal here isn't to find a pricing structure that is so rigid that it never changes. It's just find one that works well for you and for your clients. I'm going to give you an example. Let's just say you've got a client who is spending $100K a year in recruitment agency they spend. This is before you've actually pitched this solution. I would aim to pitch them on a $60K per year package. That works out to about $5K per month. I'm specifically not mentioning dollars, euros, or pounds because irrelevant of which region you operate in, the principle remains the same. At $5K per month, you are able to cover the running costs of your business and potentially even one employee, assuming that they don't get any commission. If you want to include commission, you can also make use of nearshore or even offshore employees, and you can make it profitable. So given a $5K per month spend, then that would equate to $60K per year, of which 75 to 80% is actually profit. And at this moment in time, we're only talking about one client. Like, imagine you've got a few of these at $5K per month in spend, already baked in what is going to be $3.5K per month in profit. Now, the pricing element is something else, which is, you know, that you can secure you have a client on a $60K per year contract. What does that actually look like? What if it's $5K for the first month and the second month is free and then we continue? So first 2 months is half price. You're still going to collect $60K. Okay, cool. You've just extended it over an extra couple of months, but it's not the end of the world. And at the same time, you've got other situations where what if you decide that actually I would rather charge a monthly fee of a smaller amount, let's just say $4K £4K per month, but I'd want to charge £12K as an initiation fee. So you charge £12K upfront and then £4K every single month thereafter. There's nothing set in stone for this. You have to find what is suitable for you and your clients. In my experience, charging an initiation fee plus a monthly element and then using the initiation fee as a discounting element. So to say, hey, Mr. Client, look, if you take action on this today, I'll discount the initiation fee by 50%. I use that as leverage. So even if That means that my entire project, which I forecasted that was going to bring me in $60K worth of revenue, is now going to bring in $55K worth of revenue. Hey man, there's still enough profit in there to play around with because regardless of whether the year-long deal is going to bring in $55K, $60K, or even $100K, I'm not focused on just the one. I'm looking forward to the moment that I can have 10 or 20 and then repeat this process and build it out into an entire department. Heck, eventually we're going to have of these. So 5K per year times it by 100, I'm not too worried about that because if that's what it's going to cost me to secure the client, then I'm cool with it. And I'm sure you can understand in any particular market or anybody who implements such a solution, there's only really room for one in any given niche because as soon as one recruiter starts to pitch this, then next thing you know, everyone else is going to be trying to follow up. But if you're already a few months ahead, nobody else is going to be able to catch catch up with you. Now, I think it's worth mentioning, i.e., what if you don't have a team? And what if this is the first agreement that you're about to get in place with one of your clients? And how do you start that? How do you scale it? How do you push it? And how do you grow it forward? Well, I gave the example earlier of what do you do if you are the only person in your company and you're pitching the solution? Well, then effectively what you're pitching is a part-time recruiter to go into their business. Pricing remains exactly the same. Except if this is the only thing that you can offer, or the only thing that you have to offer, then the way that you're going to deliver it is you deliver it as if you are the recruiter that they are hiring. Meaning that I will do all of the work for you. Instead of you paying $100,000, $150,000, $200,000 per year, just pay me $5,000 per month and I'll get this job done. Yes, it is a bit of a bottleneck situation that you're going to push yourself into. However, it's a start starting point. Because if this is a new revenue stream or your first bit of revenue stream and you secure a contract at $4,000, $5,000, even $6,000 per month, then it covers your costs, it gives you a little bit of revenue and income, and it only takes a few more months from here on that you can just start hiring near or even offshore employees to help you manage and run the entire solution. Now that we've explained that, let's just zoom out for a moment and let me just show you how all of this just fits together. I give you this high-level overview first. Number one is that this is not a replacement for recruitment services. This is an alternative solution. If you're looking at this from a financial perspective, depending on how much coffee you drink, there is a moment in time it makes sense for you to go and buy the coffee, and there's a moment in time where it makes sense for you to just buy a coffee machine to have at home. And all it takes is for somebody to run the numbers back to you and say, hey, Mr. Client, you are spending several thousand pounds, dollars, or euros with us every single month on Ko-fi. I think you should get one for yourself. And it's a bit of a traumatic conversation to have because every single business would rather have that customer that's going to spend several thousand pounds, dollars, or euros with them every single month. But there's only one person that can possibly sell them the solution of a 20 or a 30K coffee machine to keep at home. Only one person can pitch that. Is that going to be you or is it going to be one of your competitors? Because the thought at some point is going to crop into their minds, which is, heck, man, you're right. I'm spending as much money as a full-time employee's wage on coffee. Do I just bring this in-house? The same rule applies from a recruitment perspective, which is it's only inevitable that your clients are one day going to question themselves on how much they're spending on recruitment agency spend. So now they are going to shift direction whether you like it or not. They're going to try and hire internal. They're going to try and reduce their recruitment agency fees. They're going to We're going to set up a PSL and then say you're only allowed on the PSL if you charge us 10% or less. And then on top of that, we're going to hire internal. They're going to have these thoughts. They're going to look at ways, including if they have to be aggressive, ways to reduce their spend, especially once they realize that, hey, we're spending too much. And that trigger usually happens once they're spending 6 figures a year in recruitment spend. The moment they get past that, the urgency for the conversation improves and it increases. But either way, they're going to do this. So the point about this is this: there are going to be some companies out there that would love the idea of bringing their recruitment spend down to $60K per year. And there are also recruitment clients out there who don't spend $60K per year. They might only spend $30K. Yes, you can reduce the price and you can make it work still, but the best solution for that company isn't to have a consistent recruitment agency spend. For them, it's stick to traditional recruitment, which is pay per hire, because if they do that, then they just pay for what they need. And that's the end of it. They don't need to have any recurring costs. And this is where this fits in to the bigger picture of building a scaling recruitment business, which is that yes, you need high ticket fees, which should get you to 20, 30, 40, even 50k per month. And you should be able to add the exact same amount onto your business as an additional revenue stream. And if you want to throw in temp and retained and so on, like, before you know it, you've got 4 different revenue streams talking to the exact same clients that you were always, and each one of them brings in $20K to $50K every single month. That, that should be happening because this isn't stuff that I've spoken about which replaces recruitment. It actually layers on top of recruitment. So let me give you a little bit of a summary. Like, this is very typical typically the progression of a recruitment agency owner or a founder. They're going to start right at the beginning. Solo operator should last about 6 months. Sometimes it can take a little bit longer, but this is where you're doing everything yourself. You're making all of the placements, and you might be making $5,000, $15,000, even $20,000 per month. You work 40, 50 hours every single week, and that's just the reality of stage 1. Stage 2 is that you start scaling your business. This could be 6, 12, even 18 months. This is you making your first hire, might be a recruiter, hopefully not if you've been watching my videos, but either way, it could be a recruiter, and you're either doing contingency or retained, and you're thinking about adding some recurring revenue. Maybe even you've started doing temporary or even staffing placements. But either way, somewhere between $20K and $50K a month, this is your regular number, but you still feel like you're hitting a ceiling. Then we move into stage 3. This is where you add new revenue streams. You talk about retainers, you talk about RPO, you talk about hiring team members to run these individual departments. You now start paying attention into marketing. And all of these become ways that you can grow the business. And for everything that I've shared today, then you are effectively adding high-ticket retainer clients per hire clients. So this isn't necessarily something that I'm teaching to say, okay, this is gonna get you to 10, 15, or 20K per month. It's like, no, even the previous YouTube video that I released, that should have got you to 20, 30, 40, 50, even 100K months. Now you can choose, do you want a little bit of both, or do you want to layer it on top? And eventually you're going to move into stage 4, and this is where you have built team and infrastructure where both divisions, the per-hire model and building the engine model, both continue to grow with heads of departments in place. And there's an important point to mention, is that the shift from stage 2 to stage 3 is critical because this is where you go from a growing business to a scaling business. This is where you break through the ceiling, and you have to understand that most agencies get comfortable at this stage. I used Stage 2, they think that they're done. They make their first 10, 15, or even 20K a month, and they're thinking, gosh, like, I'm sorted for the rest of my life. Like, I know how to do this over and over again. And the agencies that do, they stay stuck there. But there's a handful that will break through, and they will continue to push and grow, and they're the ones that will get to 7 and 8 figures, and they will continue to innovate, and they will continue to grow. And you have to understand this: in some particular cases over the last 10 years or so that I've been involved in recruitment, there are certain competitive advantages advantages that come with technology and even the internet. And that was once upon a time, people never used a CRM. CRMs came along and they became a competitive advantage because they helped the company stay organized. Then LinkedIn came along and it leveled out the playing field. And then inMails came along and then job boards started to dwindle away. And then loads of people started adopting automation and AI. And now we're in a situation where all of the AI and automation tools that you could be using, your clients are using them as well. So for most of your competitors who are stuck and only really pitching one particular solution, well, just like the example that I gave of the person who's spending a lot of money on coffee, eventually they're going to think about buying their own coffee machine. Just like the person who spends a lot of money on car hires, eventually they're going to think about buying their own car. And in any case where you're spending a regular or a consistent amount of spend and you're looking at that amount of money that you're spending on a yearly, quarterly, or even a monthly basis, you're always going to reflect at some point and just ask yourself the question, which is, hey, how the heck do I reduce the spend? And when you ask yourself that question, it's nicer to be able to have that conversation with somebody who you already know, like, and trust. So if that is you as a recruiter for your clients, when your clients go through that experience of we're spending too much with our recruiters, then you'll be the person who's in a position to talk about a different solution. So instead of only offering one model and then complaining about how you're competing on price, or having your clients accuse you of saying, 'Oh, they're only interested in chasing placements,' and then you feel exhausted, and now you're trying to compete on value— well, what you're doing now is you're offering them a solution, and you're building relationships, and you're offering them a solution to a real problem that they actually have. And if you do go ahead and implement it, then it will be predictable revenue for you. It will help you build deeper client relationships. You would be embedded in their business as a partner. You would have higher margins, ultimately making you more profitable. You would have better talent retention, and so will your clients, because your recruitment consultants are going to be happier. They're going to have stable income. You're ultimately able to scale because one recruiter can handle multiple retainer clients. And ultimately, this builds a little bit of defensibility because the clients who are paying you on a retainer basis and the they're happy, they tend to stay with you longer as well. Like, the whole solution is a little bit sticky. If you're the only agency in your niche that understands this, then you already have a huge advantage. So there you have it. You've just completed it. This is the new updated guide for the next stage and the evolution of your recruitment agency. So now you genuinely know everything. You know how to do everything from picking a niche, building client acquisition processes, finding and placing candidates, using certain tech tools. You know how to build the right system so that you don't end up doing everything yourself, and you know how to hire a team and scale it. But as I said at the beginning, information without action is absolutely useless. So the only thing left to do is to take what you've learned and put it into practice. So I want to give you some direction on where you can go from here. The first is that if you haven't implemented everything that I taught in the previous full course that I released, which was 5 hours long, please go ahead and watch that. Tick everything off on that because this layers and stacks on top. If you've decided that this is going to be the way that you start pitching business for the first time because you've never worked in recruitment before, you don't understand everything that I've spoken about in this video, or maybe this has been the most helpful video that you've watched, then good luck. And how you can work with me if you choose it, well, we can work in a group setting, we can work on a private one-to-one setting as well. I'll leave some information about that below. And if you want to, just click the link, watch the video, and you're welcome book in a call or apply to work with me. So if you are a recruiter ready to start your own agency, an agency owner who's ready to scale, or even a complete beginner, then we've helped over 100 people start and grow their own agency and even helped many of them, some of them being complete beginners, hit $30K months, in some cases in their first quarter. So if you want to be the next person who does that, then you've got two options. You can go through all of my YouTube video content, because I genuinely share everything here so that you can go and implement it. Or if you want to shortcut it and you want a timeline and a dedicated focus on making sure that you achieve these results within a 6-month timeframe, then I'll leave the information for that below. So once again, thank you all for watching and I'll see you all in the next video.