How to use Podcasts to Win new Accounts (Tips From an 800k Biller)

Hey guys, welcome back to yet another episode of Top Billers Toolkit, where me and my twin brother interview top billers from all around the globe to unlock the secrets to their success. Today's guest is Anthony Kelly, otherwise known as Anto. Anto is an $800K biller and he's the only top biller I've ever met that successfully uses podcasts to win new accounts. He can attribute 80 to 90% of his entire company's sales directly and indirectly from the podcast. It's also allowed him to build an absolute powerhouse of a brand within his niche. Today, you're probably going to be learning a completely new BD tactic that's unlike anything you've heard before. We're going to be delving into the exact steps that Anto takes in order to use his podcast as a successful BD tool. We're also going to be delving into Anto's day plan and understanding all the other powerful BD tactics that he uses. And we're going to be talking about why becoming the go-to brand in his niche has been an absolute game changer. Strap yourselves in, guys. Because this is going to be a fantastic episode. As usual, grab a cuppa or glass of wine depending on when you're listening to this, and let's get into it, shall we?

Anto, I've been told that you prefer Anto as a nickname, but Ant or Anto, it's lovely to have you on the podcast. Welcome.

Cheers, lads, nice to be here. Appreciate it.

Awesome. I'm really, really looking forward to this one because you are successfully using old school methods and new technologies like podcasts, which for me and Sam has been an absolute game changer. But let's start with the first question, which is what's the number one tool in your toolkit, whether it be a mindset, strategy, or software?

Yeah, I mean, for me, I'll probably will have to say, uh, what's always worked well for me was being a niche market specialist. Um, everyone always thinks, you know, less is less, particularly in recruitment, you know, less jobs to work, less candidates to speak to. A lot of people out there say, 'I'm a software recruiter.' They do Python, Java, front-end, DevOps, and it gets, gets very hard. I've done that. Luckily, I started off doing manual QA, moved then to just automation QA. Then, then I actually moved into data as a whole about 7 years ago. And I tell you what, that's where I really felt like I was, I was at my end, speaking to a lot of clients, signing a lot of terms. But one day you're working a data analyst, then it's a data engineer, then it's machine learning engineer, then it's a BI developer. Um, then I, like, I'd still, I'd still done well, you know, as a, as a niche market specialist doing QA. Um, struggled, I'd say, with my time when I branched out and done the whole of data. And then as data, I picked AI, then I picked a micro niche within that being computer vision, and that just gave me a lot more control over my own time and how I spent it. Uh, all the candidates I was speaking to were definitely reusable. The leads are all relevant because you're also mapping out your market, uh, and clients, you know, they were very, very receptive to it as well because, you know, it's a super niche within an already super niche. Of software. And, you know, to be— to be some people who I'm in contact with, whether they're current customers, past customers, or wannabe customers, probably about 6 or 7 years. It's a lot of calls, coffees, FaceTime. Can't really keep on top of that if you're trying to, to chase the next thing, but the next thing might not be exactly what you've just been doing. Um, so yeah, so for me, I think, I think that was That was a big one. Helps with getting candidates multiple interviews. And I mean, look, if you can win a new client and already have 3 to 5 CVs that you think are going to get you interviewed straight away, first off, you're definitely more passionate about wanting to work with that client. Probably your own personal motivation probably becomes an easier sell because, you know, you just know that if they work with you, you're going to be able to make a difference or you're going to— it's not It's not hard work because it's, it's just what you do.

That's really interesting. I have to say, niching is definitely one of the most popular topics, I think, um, for recruiters that haven't yet reached like top biller status. Every single top biller always in a niche within a niche within a niche. But the recruiters that aspire to be top billers, I think I even got a message the other day from a recruiter saying he doesn't know what niche to go for. So how do you make that decision as to what microniche to go into? Um, and was it, was it like an epiphany? Did something happen, or did you just enjoy it? Like, what was the decision-making process?

Yeah, well, um, starting off, uh, I was in S3. I was giving QA. Um, that was quite a relatively niche in the software space. I think we're training there probably about 9 or 10 colleagues. I had just done permanent recruitment in Dublin, all doing software, all doing different tech. So, uh, pretty clear to know what, who done what, where was everything going. And then when I moved to Aldis, that was, that was the start of where I was doing all of data. I remember jumping on my first client call for the job intake. And it was in, it was in computer vision. And they asked me, did I have any experience with hiring people who are writing their own TensorRT models on custom GPUs? Because that works better on their own pre-trained or their own custom trained model. Honestly, language that I— the whole call was just language that I've never heard before. And I was like, I'm in over my head here a little bit. And I suppose rather than running away from her, because I would have considered myself a bit of a technical recruiter anyway, I would have had a good insight into what the technology's on and what linked up well together. But I was like, if I don't know what this is, I think nobody will know what this is. And that was sort of where I ran towards it. And that would have been about And about 5 years ago is where I just started going towards computer vision. And then COVID actually kicked in about 2 months later. And all like my large desk of data science, machine learning jobs all completely got killed. Then the clients that actually stayed hiring were computer vision clients. And so for me, I was like, right, there's something here. All these companies are less than 20 people, got no HR team, have all got funding. Obviously, it's new and upcoming tech. So they're, they're sort of budgets where innovation budgets— they had to build new software, they had to build new technologies as part of their VC investment or whatever it might have been. Whereas, you know, if you're working with Just Eat or something, the product's established, they can cut costs straight away. So we would have had some larger companies that we did work with that, that was the norm in AI. But yeah, all these sort of innovation companies where a product is actually built and developed on computer vision, It's like walking into a company that does front-end software and they don't have JavaScript developers, but for computer vision.

Interesting. So there was just a clear demand and you thought you've got to take advantage of this?

Yeah, yeah.

You mentioned, Anto, that you were on a call and they were saying lingo that was way above your head. And then I'm guessing you had to go deeper and learn about the industry. How did you go about doing that for someone who wants to, follow in your footsteps and just kind of like learn a super niche. How did you do that?

Yeah, I mean, for me, it was, I really just wanted to map out what the companies were, who were they. Before I'd spoken to that company before, I'd never even heard of a computer vision engineer. The role was actually advertised as a software engineer. And the job spec just had a load of words like NVIDIA technologies that I just didn't know. So rather than just looking at the technology, I just started searching companies that had computer vision engineers. And then slowly, I got, I think, like every company in Germany that I could find on LinkedIn that had a computer vision engineer written into like one long Excel list. Started like reverse engineering that for decision makers, for industries, for job titles. And that was, that was sort of how I, I would create my, my computer vision market.

Pretty interesting. Cool, that's, that's great. And, uh, I guess on the subject of winning new clients, you're the only recruiter we have on the podcast, um, and Anto, um, and probably the only recruiter I've spoken to ever actually that has a— that's successfully leveraging a podcast to win new business. So I'd love to touch on that a little bit. When we had a call before this, you said you've successfully used old-school methods and modern technology to win new business. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, if that's all right?

Yeah, well, I, I do sort of see myself as that sort of old-school traditional recruiter picking up the phones. Like, I'm S3 trained, um, so you're gonna be— even though I was given a market when I joined S3, I was never given a job, even though it was a warm desk. Um, I was, I was actually taking it from someone who was transitioning into a leadership role, so they were sort of covering off their last vacancy. Rather than having them passed over. But my first week in recruitment was just a cold call into clients where I had no knowledge of the market, whether these companies were looking to hire or not. So it was tough for me, but it worked. You know, I picked up a brand new client at S3 Ireland that I'd never even worked with before and made a couple of placements. But you could kind of see it was a bit of a gap filler. You know, it was a gap filler for them. That company just needed someone to fill a hole, and I was that person, which is kind of like where now I use a lot of, like, you call them new school methods, right, to build brand or reputation that almost precedes itself. So I mean, on top of like podcasts, I've been hosting in-person meetup events, online meetup events. We sponsor AI and founders conferences with the sort of demographic that we want to put ourselves in front of. I've probably been podcasting for about 7 years and using it as a way to target companies, managers who I wanted to speak with, flattery, let's say, and probably why I'm here, as well as hosting a meetup. So, you know, for me it works really well. And, you know, it's— I think on top of it, I don't just rely on like the podcast or the meetups, or even just picking up the phone. Even though I don't recruit in the UK, I live in the UK now, but I still do about 20 face-to-face client meetings a month. And like, it's super important to me. I'll go out to Berlin, I'll go 3 or 4 days, or other parts of Germany or Switzerland, and I'll be, I'll be back to back, 5 to 6 meetings a day. Sometimes I'll host 2 events, like a leadership roundtable on Tuesday, and on Wednesday it's a meetup. So again, just all these things to create this reputation, this brand that absolutely perceives itself. Then when it comes to her, you know, these conversations become quite easy. I'm hosting an event for leaders in computer vision on self-driving cars. You're a leader in self-driving cars. Wanna have a talk? Also, I do a podcast and I interview other leaders from self-driving car companies.

Mm, that's really—

yeah, such a great conversation starter, isn't it? Well, because I, I know, and there's some people that have started a podcast, maybe got a few guests on, but haven't managed to turn it into a successful BD activity. So can you go into, like, if you had a— if you were to write down on a piece of paper, like, this is how I do it, can you take us through a step-by-step of, like, your process from podcast, inviting them on, and then how you transition that to a meeting?

If that's okay.

Yeah, I can, I can try as best I can.

So I'm putting you on the spot here.

No, I, I think like a lot of it does come in with— and I think I'm gonna mix it up with the new school, old school technique, right? Sometimes I'm just asking people straight up on LinkedIn, whether it's then a LinkedIn message follow-up. I do voice notes, I do video notes on LinkedIn, I email people, I cold call people, ask them if they want to be in my podcast. I check who who's in my network that I've done podcasts with, who they're connected with. If we're mutual connections, can I get referrals? Can I get recommendations? So that's like building this funnel. So for me, it's co-founders of computer vision businesses, people who are VPs, heads of AI, whatever that might be, mapping them out to see who you think the decision makers would be. And I mean, for me, I, I leave it relatively open when it comes to my guests, right? The decision makers, the leaders. I did have podcasts before that didn't yield results, um, and they would have actually been very tech-focused. So I might like interview someone, oh great, you're just, you're the lead software engineer on this computer vision product that's, um, you know, doing like Amazon, you know, self-checkouts. At the end of the day, that person is probably not— they weren't at the influential level that I needed them to be at. So I took one time to stop recording for a bit. I think it was actually when I was having my baby and I came back to work and I was like, right, how do I get more value out of this? It's who makes the decisions. So slightly changed the content of what I was looking to deliver as well so that I could, I could engage the right decision makers. And from that, now I want to add, before this, I think in my 2 and a half years at Trenovo, so my podcast and meetups, I think it was about £900,000 in sales directly coming from those. And that was, that was without me saying— that was me saying I can do better, uh, with the time I put in. Um, so that was like—

still made £900K from that old podcast that you said wasn't working as well?

Yes.

Bloody hell. That sounds like it was working. And but obviously you have higher expectations. I'm guessing.

It does. It does. But for me, again, I wanted to take it into creating this brand, this reputation that precedes itself. People see you or a CEO or a CTO or a co-founder resharing your podcast versus like a technical PM. And the illusion of your business is, is that, right? You know what, if I want to listen for top industry professionals, or people who are really influential. Not to say that tech PMs aren't, but tech PMs are working closer with the software. I ended up wanting to work closer with the people who are making decisions because, let's say, like business penetration, opportunity to get business for not just Deepak but other, other parts of the Trenovo group definitely worked really well for that.

I've got to ask, Anto, the— you said the podcast that wasn't working well generated like 900,000. How much is the podcast that is working well generated then?

If you've got a You got a round figure?

I don't, I don't know, but I would, I would probably attribute about 80 to 90% of all deep wrecks.

Wow.

Sales in some way. And then, yeah, yeah. So, so quite, quite a substantial amount. And that's not mainly becoming that, you know, it's, it's customers that are super engaged with your brand and then they, they don't see anyone else but you.

That's crazy. Um, what would you say is the— just so I can get an idea of— let's say you reach out to 10 co-founders, what's the success rate of the amount of people that say hey, you know, put their hand up and say hey, Anto, yeah, I'd love to come on your podcast?

Might be about 10%, 20%.

Cool, still not bad. So you send 10 messages and you might get 1 or 2 people that say yes, I'll come on.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's, it's not too bad. Um, I think one of the things I've learned though over the 7 years, because you asked, and a lot of people start one and it doesn't work, and I can see that, I can see where it comes from. Um, but I think again, like, when I go back 7 years ago, I was doing Berlin and I was probably doing about 40 client meetings a month back then because I was in a full 180 role, which I was assigned terms and conditions to win business. Uh, and it was, it was pretty intense. So I was in Berlin 3 times a month for 3 to 5 days, so anywhere between 12 to 15 days. Um, yeah, let's— I use the term getting friend-zoned, right? People never see you as a recruiter if you're a podcast host first. Um, so for me, it was, it was setting clear boundaries around like what we do, who we are. Not, hey, like, for me, we're not a community-led recruitment business. We're not. We're a deep tech recruitment business. We help you solve your deep tech recruiting needs. That's what we do. I don't misconstrue that at any point when I'm doing podcast prep, podcast follow-up, I'm getting phone numbers. I just, I actually will tell people, just so you know, whenever I see you posting the job, I'm gonna call you. I love that. I don't, I don't hide from it. I don't think we need to. Um, if anything, I think they respect it a little bit more.

That's cool, man. I feel like, yeah, that's really interesting. I feel like that's one part of— I mean, there's many parts, but you're not hiding from the fact that you're, you're using this as a lead, as a lead generation opportunity as well as providing value.

Is that kind of where you're going, Anto? Yeah. Um, interesting.

I—

so that kind of brings me on to— you've kind of already touched upon it, but I'm guessing, correct me if I'm wrong, Anto, but the money off from the podcast is probably more in the follow-up than you know, initially jumping off and being like, yeah, I've got 3 roads. It's probably like you've built a relationship with them, and then there's multiple follow-ups past that point to which you build a longer-term relationship. Do you mind just telling us a little bit about those different stages that you go through typically with a client after the podcast?

Yeah, so I mean, you can have your multiple follow-up points, right? You generally only ever get a handful of minutes after the actual recording, less than 5. Schedule it like maybe like a if they're up for a 15-minute chat, really, you also know timelines of that lead by doing the podcast, right? You know, someone's like, oh, we're going to be raising Series A in 9 months. Honestly, you don't want to have to start thinking about your follow-up process for 6. Um, again, and if you set your expectations right, you're not just that salesperson that's, oh, he knows I'm raising now. No, I told you I'm going to contact you when you're hiring. If they're hiring right now, I'll be like, oh great, look, thanks for this. By the way, I buy everyone who's on my podcast lunch. Let's grab lunch whenever I'm in whatever city they're in next. Or I'm hosting this event, I want you to come, it's for leaders in your space. And then after the event, you're like, oh, let's grab lunch because I want to buy a lunch for the podcast. And then you've actually doubled up and you got two big value adds. On top of it. And again, these are, these are the decision makers, the influencers of their businesses. So I think as, as long as it's— look, for me, I'm going to say FaceTime. For me, it's FaceTime. People are still willing to give you FaceTime whether you're buying them lunch or not. Uh, they're gonna know there's a sale, there's a sales pitch coming, coming with lunch. Uh, terms and conditions, there's a sales pitch coming after this lunch.

Yeah, I love that. That's so good. So you're asking strategic questions to get information off them, some information anyway, in terms of like funding, for example. And then, you know, asking for a 15-minute chat or scheduling lunch after the podcast. That's really clever. And then what percentage of clients do you think— like, how many people say yes to that chat compared to like maybe saying yes on the fourth follow-up? Like, how many follow-up— like, how long do you think it takes to build that relationship after the podcast? Is it like a Is it like a set time or does it vary?

Oh, I wish, I wish there was a set time. Um, I think, I think one of the funniest ones I have is that I'm finally, hopefully this week, converting a customer who I had speak at one of my online conferences in March in COVID. So like literally when doors shut in COVID in March, I put on an online event, uh, he spoke at the last week of March. So that's 4 years.

Wow, that's crazy.

Wow.

Um, a long time ago. But, uh, you can, you can see. But I've also had some people who, uh, I've rang after a podcast and they're like, actually, we need 5 people right now. You know, so there's definitely— is it potluck? But as I said, it's like podcast preparation is super important. Like, for me, I'm getting full client and job qualifications in that 30 minutes. I'm getting a scale of when their next— what hires they're going to be doing in 12, 18 months, whether it's AI, software, DevOps, um, supports, like any roles that we can or we want to be pitching for, for any Trinovo business. Um, and that's, that's where that comes in for me, more so than just relentlessly following up Then also, then every sort of meeting or every time I'm in that country for meetings, if it's Germany, if it's Switzerland, I have someone to go to, right? If I have a gap in my calendar and I've got 2 hours to kill, I can always put in 30 minutes, 45 minutes with one of these people. Be like, oh look, you said in 3 months you're going to be having a raise, you're going to be hiring for 1 or 2 people. Let's have a chat now, see how that's going. So those are all— there's no 1 to 14 step.

Sorry to interrupt, man. And those people, Anto, are typically the ones that you catch up with in Germany off the cuff, or typically people you've had on the podcast already, am I right?

Yeah.

So you've already developed that relationship with—

yeah, yeah, it's quite, it's quite easy, you know. And a lot of it post, post-event, let's say. You do what you have to do it well though, because I know I did friend zone myself a lot. And, you know, WhatsApping people for a beer in Germany can almost never see it as a viable business partner with some people. So I think it's all about your approach. I wish I could say I know exactly what it was that I learned, but yeah, I mean, for me, it's making sure that it's decision makers and it's business. Even if you WhatsApp them for a beer, you're going in there and you're asking about the hiring every time. It's, it's not a social visit. I used to almost be too afraid to address the elephant in the room of saying, yeah, I'm actually a recruiter. I got you on my podcast because I want to make that business and do sales with you. Um, less of that, and it really started to turn a lot better results. And by that I mean like customers that were multiple placements lasting over, over a longer period of time.

Interesting.

That's fascinating.

So just having the confidence, right? It sounds like it— you just had the confidence and, uh, yeah, confidence to go in and ask for it. Um, regarding— so it sounds like a lot of the qualifying questions were on the podcast. Am I right in saying that? Is that you're asking them on the actual podcast? Am I right in saying that, Anton?

Um, at least in the prep, you know.

Cool.

Um, cool, in the prep.

So more—

you—

more in the prep call before they come on the podcast, you're asking those types of questions.

Yeah, yeah.

Cool.

Podcast can be very much around like, how do they make business decisions around AI? I don't know, like ethics to the EU legislation for the AI Act. You know, don't think people on the listening want to know, oh great, he's going to hire 2 ML engineers. Cool.

I want to do stuff like that. But yeah, cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But for me, yeah, I want to get the whole— I want to get— I want to get the whole state of your business. I want to see where you are right now. What's going on? Give me an idea of what your journey has been like. When did you last hire? What type of people did you hire? Why did you hire them? And then great. When are you going next? How do they shape your business? And then, like, I mean, for me, it takes 10 minutes to get that information. Then you can do 20 minutes prep for the actual podcast.

It's really clever.

It's really—

it's simple, but it's very clever because that's what me and Sam experience as well. When we get people, the prep, the call before the podcast, they're so open. Most people are so open, they're just willing to share, like, because it feel— I feel like their guard is down. And so when you ask them these types of questions, the framing is for the podcast as opposed to full recruitment, which is really interesting. So yeah, that's really— and I guess those qualifying questions that you ask, you now have ammo to follow up with them strategically after the podcast because you have all this information.

Yeah, I mean, I— off the topic of podcast, but I do think, like, I introduced that to as many possible parts of my recruitment cycle as I can. Same as you take a job, a job, a job spec call, job intake. You want to ask these questions, find out, you know, culture fit, everything like that. And then you want to ask them, great, what are you going to ask them in the first interview? What's the topics? What exact questions are you going through? And I will do that with brand new clients that I've never worked with as well, you know. So for me, I don't know, I would say, I would say direct, just being, just being direct and letting them know this is what I'm here for. I can actually start asking these questions to candidates when I'm on the phone with them to see if, if they're worth me putting in front of you. Hmm.

Yeah, I love that, man. I feel like you've mastered how to utilize the podcast and, and then turn that into business, uh, and, uh, which is just, it's fascinating because I haven't met anyone who's managed to do that with such efficiency yet. Um, which is awesome. Lots of tips for me and Ben as well, actually.

Um, absolutely. The other thing I'd love to ask him, because I remember when we spoke, um, you said that the podcast was a big part of your business, but then the other area was speccing, speccing CVs. And, you know, I feel like that's an art in itself. There's some recruiters that can do it exceptionally well and others that have to send hundreds and hundreds and, and, you know, maybe get someone at the end. So would you mind talking us through your strategy around speccing? As well, Anton?

So I say like speccing mixed with traditional BD, like picking up the phone. I guess to go back and say like, let's say I said like a lot of like 80% of the business comes from podcasts. Now, even post-podcast, as long as I've set like the tone that, yeah, I'm a recruiter, I help you hire computer vision professionals in self-driving cars, that's what I do. And I've got that qualification off them, I might not convert them directly from the podcast and it might be more of a traditional BD approach, but the initial rapport and relationship was built off that. So I can spec them and I do feel free to spec them every time I've got a relevant candidate. If we're doing sales days or if I'm doing my cold calling day, I will still call them. And I think, yeah, for me it's a non-negotiable, no matter how busy I am, that I do some form of BD every week. The ideal is that I actually do 2 afternoons a week. You know, every week I'm trying to set myself goals for high-quality sales and at least 5 meetings. So let's say 15 sales and 5 meetings a week is sort of where I want to see myself in terms of like traditional BD outputs. But then the specs that go in on top of that, I would say they're really high quality. So I mentioned about how I broke down my market of computer vision. I mapped out 500 companies and I went to go really deep within that. So creating digital avatar companies is, is a niche within computer vision. Autonomous driving, which is a lot of self-driving cars, is a niche within computer vision. Medical imaging, person tracking, like video tracking. And I would say I've got like this broken down I've broken down computer vision into like 15, 16 areas. So when I'm feeding, I got a list of self-driving, self-driving car companies. But then when I speak to a really good candidate who does self-driving cars and computer vision, I know exactly where to go. Now, it's— I would say like the worst part about this is that it's actually very boring work to build this high-quality list. Um, but the work that you get off it is, is really, is really good. Like, even like 4 weeks ago, I got a, I got a company who came back to me because I specced them in a candidate a year and a half ago. I'm assuming they saved this email somewhere and they messaged me back a year and a half later to say, yes, can you help us? We're hiring.

I love that.

I've since, I've since filled the role in less than 4 weeks. But I spec them in someone who was helping radiologists with detecting cancer with computer vision. That company helps radiologists with detecting cancer using computer vision. So for me, it's like complete— I wouldn't ever send the company a Python software engineer because they hire Python software engineers. If I was more so speaking at like wide markets, I'd probably be like, oh, he's a Python software engineer at a large marketplace working at the checkout part of software. So I would be trying to find them someone who does that, works in the same industry and works on checkout software, backend systems. So to me, I think like it's, it's a very— you might not be, you're not going to be sending 100 specs a week.

Yeah.

Granted, when I started, I did. I used to mass spec every single week, the entire database. That was, that was a long time ago. But now Like my list of 500 companies, I could probably only end up speccing out 20 times a week. But when I spec out 20 times a week, it's someone in generative AI to generative AI companies or medical imaging to medical imaging companies. And of course, computer vision.

That's such great advice. What I got from that is like specificity is key. Like the more specific these candidates, the more successful. And would you say that does the majority of the heavy lifting when it comes to, you know, reaching out? Or have you found that there's other little tricks that you need to do in order to get their attention?

Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say what I've already said is pick up the phone. Um, I mean, we've, we live in a world where we can track who's actually opening emails. Um, you know, I think my very first client that I won at Trinovo, uh, I sent the CV and I tracked the open rates, and in 20, in 12 hours they'd opened it, like um, something like 60 times. Now granted, that was probably him forwarding it to other team members and all that, and it accumulates very quickly. They didn't, they didn't email me back. Um, so the next day I picked up the phone straight away, um, pitched them, got the business on, and they were the first client I signed up. And I ended up making 7 placements off them in 5 months. Wow.

And probably wouldn't have come about if you just didn't pick up the phone.

Is that what you're saying, Andrew?

I would say so, yeah. Yeah, that's mad.

But in conjunction with looking at him, the tracking data, which I think is brilliant, looking at who's actually, you know, put their hand up or at least shown some sort of interest, which is, yeah, again, just a really great tip.

Yeah, I think the value then as well, right, if you ring someone that you've sent maybe 2 or 3 specs to, you've been sending them relevant content on LinkedIn, voice notes, video messages, and then you ring them, it's like, oh, Anthony, I have people say, oh, I know who it is. I know. I was like, I help companies hire digital avatars. He was like, I know. I'm like, how do you take a sales call from there when he says, I know exactly who you are and I know exactly what you do? I think it's really cool. And then he went on to tell me he was raising funding. But it was, again, it's a sales call that just lands quite easy.

Mm, yeah. Just want to go back to your candidates, um, for a second, Anto, because, uh, you, you only spec 20 a week, you said, and they have to be lucky.

Yeah, if you're lucky.

Yeah, so I'm just, you know, they're probably quite hard to find, they don't come around very often. How do you go about finding or attracting those types of candidates? Are you spending hours and hours hunting down that specific skill set, or like, can you just give us an insight into how you'd go about doing that?

Yeah, so I mean, to give you an example from today, I was working a job on LinkedIn. I hide all my candidates that are irrelevant to my searches. I got to send out 60 messages on LinkedIn, but I had hidden 1,340 profiles. So I mean, that's, that's like 0.5% of every profile I look at, I will actually even send a message to. So yeah, the talent isn't hard to find, but I can tell you, if a company who's hiring for these talents right now, uh, wants access to them, I can get a shortlist of 5 like within an hour. Like, that's, that, that's my pitch. It's not— I don't go down the road of we've got a great MPS. To be fair, we do, um, but it's not, it's not my selling point. Like, for us, it's that we get access to, to top talent, um. We don't even just use LinkedIn. We'll search people through the GitHub repos, We'll search Google Scholar and see who's got like the latest papers, if they're relevant to our clients. And we're using a whole bunch of just different techniques to get this sort of AI research talent. It's not easy. And it's, I would say, yeah, the cost of acquisition per talent is, is a lot higher than most, most businesses. But also our opportunity to get these candidates multiple interviews is a lot higher. Because we work with a lot of the same companies. I had, I had one candidate I got 9 interviews for back in February. Um, so we tried to recreate that. That was a once-off, of course, but we, we try to recreate that as much as we possibly can. And it's the same, I have everyone in the, in the team here doing, doing a super niche market. Um, everyone is able to generate multiple interviews, our clients and multiple interviews for a candidate. So again, just trying to increase our possible return off the cost of acquiring a candidate.

Love that, man. Um, can we go back to your— you do 2 afternoons of BD, you said, Anto?

Yes, um, a good week. Yeah, on a good week. Yeah, cool.

Can you just imagine you're about to sit down and start your BD and I, uh, A lot of our audience—

I love this as well.

Can you just map out how you go about doing it step by step?

Like, do you sit down, prepare a list, start calling, send an email, follow up? What do you do on those afternoons?

Well, so first off, I won't prepare the list during BD time. Um, it's always got to be done before— it's always got to be done beforehand. If you, if you set yourself 4 hours an afternoon, what if it takes you 3 hours to prepare? Um, I can't remember who's the guy that says about chopping a tree, if he 10 hours to chop a tree, spent 9 hours sharpening his axe.

Yeah, I can't remember who said that. I've heard of it.

George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, I think it was. But yeah, so I mean, like, for me, it's—

I think it was Lincoln. Sorry.

Yeah, we have all that done beforehand. And again, I think being a niche market specialist, it definitely helps because you're never really calling anyone different. So like most of the time, kind of gunning on, if you haven't got a contact number for someone, that I wouldn't even include this in my BD time, right? That we're sending voice notes, video messages on LinkedIn, sending them articles, trying to get something that might even relate to a phone number to come back to, which is always good. Someone's been on a podcast, you've got a phone number to go to. So I'll always try to have a list of about 200 phone numbers. Always there ready to go, um, twice a week. So I mean, you do well to call 100 people a day in an afternoon. Honestly, I don't check the careers pages, I don't check any news about them, I just call as many of them as I can in that afternoon and see what, see what comes out of it. Um, love that.

So calling is your main tactic in those BD afternoons? You're getting the, the lists already prepared and then if you can get 100 calls out, that's a, that's a good afternoon of BD?

I would, I would prefer if I didn't get the 100 calls out because it means nobody's answering.

Yeah, yeah, good point.

Uh, but yeah, you know, it's, it's kind of that. And I mean, the goal of that, like, for me, I aim to book a follow-up meeting more so than I aim to pull a job or terms on a phone call. Um, I think you, you can often catch people when they're quite happy to just talk about recruitment, to talk about their problems and how you can be their savior and you can make everything great. But then there's a, there's a severe lack of follow-up or appetite from them. And you might have a, you might have discussed the terms, you might discuss the job, you might send them over an email, great, I'm ready, looking forward to get started. You might send them 3 CVs and you get nothing. But like, for me, the biggest commitment of someone willing to work from you or with you, sorry, is, is that they will go from a phone call to a dedicated 30-45 minute slot. To specifically talk about recruitment. So I don't go into these to say I want to pull X jobs. I'm going in and I'm, I'm, my goal is meetings.

Yeah, great advice. That was exactly what another chap we had, a £2 million biller that we had on last week, said the exact same thing. He said the first, first call is information gathering and basically booking another call. That was his objective, information gathering and booking another call, because he said Yeah, the likelihood of getting a job in that call is quite slim for most people. Um, so yeah, another great piece of advice. Um, and what—

sorry, Ben, just one last question. Uh, and what about the— so you make those 100 calls, and so you, you'll speak to some people, hopefully majority of them, or a good portion. Um, you will get some of them to commit to an additional call afterwards in a week or so, whenever. What's your follow-up process after that? Is it emails? Is it LinkedIn? Is it voice notes? Like, can you talk us through that?

Make sure of everything really. When I'm not, when I'm not going off plan, you know, I've built in these quite methodical sales processes into Sourcewell so that when I try to call someone and I hit no answer, it actually sends them out a follow-up email. Hey, I tried to call you today. I was hoping to speak to you about this. Next thing you know, I've attached like a Deepak salary guide for They're based in Munich, Munich, Berlin, Switzerland, whatever. So again, it's, it's not like, don't have, I don't, I don't have a catch-all sequence. So again, I'll say medical imaging people. I tried to call you today. I wanted to speak to you about this candidate, medical imaging CV attached, and it automatically goes out as soon as I hit no answer.

Love that.

That must save you hours, just that little thing.

It's pretty clever.

Yeah, yeah. And then what it does is I set it so that it automatically reminds me to do a callback 5 working days later.

Love that, man. Again, really simple little things but saves you hours of time and really effective.

Yeah, BD planning is really saving you that time. It's pretty nice.

I have to ask, and does the charm of the Irish accent help at all when you're on the phone? Have you ever had compliments or people mentioning your accent at all?

Not, not in Germany, I'm afraid. I would imagine, I would imagine it would go down a lot better in maybe like the UK or the US. Um, the Germans don't even get it. They just say, oh, all these UK recruiters keep calling me. I'm like, oh really? I'm not from the UK. I was like, yes, I'm sitting here. Uh, then I started telling them, oh, we've actually got a Berlin registered business and Sometimes tell them I live in, I live in Berlin, uh, if, if I feel it's going to turn it around. But does it? No, because accentism has never worked for me.

Oh, fine. Okay, cool. We, we have to— I have to say, it does help for me and Sam when we speak to, uh, recruiters in the US. It, like, it's automatically a differentiator, which is quite nice. Um, does— is it a big difference working— if you were to compare UK clients and clients from Germany. What are the biggest differences in terms of how they work, fees, you know, the quality of the client, do you think?

Um, fees are definitely higher in Germany. Salaries remain the same. Switzerland fees are higher, salaries are even higher. Then we've got the US, fees are higher, salaries are probably triple. Um, so I mean, we've, we've sort of selectively picked our markets so that, I mean, as individuals everyone can get more for the same job, right? Um, in the UK, everyone's used to working with a recruiter. A lot of businesses will actually have their choice recruiter, Talentsoft. In, in Berlin, still the most open to working with recruiters. In Germany, still resistant. Um, I, I would say Switzerland, still resistant. And when I say resistant, it's that it's not started to sort of part of their minimum business process or their standard business processes, right? In the UK, I mean, you can't even find a recruitment agency that doesn't work with recruiters, you know. It's, it's, it's just how it is. Um, in Germany, they try to take— like, they'll want to arrange interviews, they'll want to make offers. They try to take the candidate control away from you. I don't know if it's they think they're better at it than you or not, but they definitely aren't. So I mean, like, for me, it's always making sure that your German clients aren't just going to randomly go call your candidate after final stage interview, make them an offer that they won't accept, or present the offer in a bad way without addressing potential concerns that could just throw the deal in doubt. So it's all then, I think, about setting up your client control in Germany from the start. Set it up. I do believe the processes that I grew up learning in Ireland same as the UK, or are a lot better than how a standard company in England, uh, in Germany would actually work with a recruiter, right? They'll— you can send them a CV and they basically just see you as an introduction service. They don't want to tell you, like, you might not find out if they're interviewing. They'll go and set up interviews direct. They can almost take you away from it, which takes away a lot of our power when it comes to preparing candidates, debriefing debriefing clients, um, and how much we can actually influence the whole process. So you gotta— in, in DAC, you have to really get that influence. You have to own it from the start, from the very first call.

That's really interesting. So it sounds like a double-edged sword. It sounds like they're a lot more susceptible, a lot more open to working with recruiters, um, but there's a, there's a possibility that they can take too much control of the situation.

Yeah, you have to, you have to educate them how recruiters work. Again, I remember when I started, I was happy to just sign terms and send over CVs, and then your processes just aren't moving, or candidates aren't getting feedback, and you're not getting feedback, and you're like, oh, this isn't, this isn't what I'm used to. Um, but yeah, just, just have to really set those foundations early on.

Love that, man. How much of the podcast contributed to you penetrating the, the German market? Um, and so was it a lot? Was it 50%? Or I'm just curious, how much did that play a part in it?

Oh, so everything I've ever done has been in, in the, the DACH region. Um, all my business. Okay, cool. Um, okay, yeah, so I, I don't, I don't know exactly how much, but yeah, like a lot of it.

I thought you used the podcast to penetrate, but you've been working in those markets for many, many years.

Yeah, so at Trinovo, so I started doing Germany at Aldus. I was their first employee. Yeah, and I just jumped in doing the data AI market while doing events, while doing podcasts, and then it just really worked, worked really well. So I just kind of like double, triple down on the amount I was doing because it was really helping with our client acquisition. Um, but then yeah, you have to quickly realize that it's not all about client acquisition, it's about quality of the clients. Yeah, about how, how much you actually can, can make or place with them. Um, you know, that's what I mean, like getting that control or getting that friend zone. It was, there was a lot, there was a lot of training, um, and learning curves that I sort of went through, but nobody had the answers beforehand. Not for me anyway. So yeah, I would say like right now it's— we've even gone as far as to tell clients that we'll only have them on the podcast if they do and sign terms and conditions with us. Or if they want to speak at an event that we're hosting, or if they want to host an event, there's a thing we want to— you have to sign our terms and conditions to be a recruitment partner.

Love that.

How's that? I'm just curious, what's been the success rate of that? Has that been pretty good?

Pretty good. Yeah, well, you'd be surprised because every— I think though, it's again like we've— I've got this reputation of doing events in Germany and that region for 7 years. Yeah, podcasting for 7 years in Germany and that. I've got pretty good followership. Um, Deep Break has got a pretty good followership already for, for only a small business and less than a year old. Uh, I think it kind of holds a little bit of weight. Yeah, of course. Then when you create this reputation that precedes itself, again, you can tell companies, right, this is the value of it. We've got information about how companies have made placements off hosting our events at theirs, at their offices. So it's like, what's the, what's the, what's the actual cost of you working with us to make one or two hires if, if you get all this EVP, um, or you get some direct placements as well? We'll give you access to the people who attended. You know, that's, that's what we do.

Love that. That's like a perfect cycle. Now you've spent all the years building up your reputation. It's like a perfect cycle of like them coming on, building your brand, signing up a client. Just very clever, man. Really, really love it.

Very cool. And I think we're coming towards the end of the podcast. Thank you so much, mate. This has been super valuable. Genuinely, I've learned a lot and I think a lot of our members, a lot of our audience who have listened to this are going to take lots of nuggets. For BD, for starting a podcast, for, for just doing a better job in recruitment. So thank you so much, mate. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on.

Cheers, lads. Appreciate it.

Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please don't forget to subscribe on YouTube and Spotify. Tune in for another episode next week, and we look forward to seeing you again very soon. Peace and love.

Mm.