How To Win Enterprise Accounts (Tips From A $1 Million 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 secret to their success. Today's guest is Sam Ingwell. Sam is a £1 million biller and he's mastered the art of closing and nurturing enterprise accounts. On today's episode, we're going to be discussing Sam's go-to BD strategy for winning enterprise accounts. We're going to be delving into Sam's day plan and understand exactly how he structures his day. Guys, I promise you, you're going to enjoy this one. And 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? Hey Sam, how you doing, mate?

Doing very well, how are you?

Very good. I've been trying to get you on the podcast for many, many months. You're a hard man to track down, but I finally got you, and you were traveling around Europe. It sounds amazing, but thank you for coming on, mate. I'm very excited about this conversation.

No, it's, it's, it's good to be here, and, um, yeah, you've managed to catch me midway through Europe, so, uh, yeah, let's get this over and done with so I can get the apples.

We won't keep you long, mate. We always start the podcast with this, this same question. What's the number one tool in your toolkit, whether it be a software, strategy, or mindset? What would you say, Sam?

Yeah, it's definitely a mindset for me, and it's a thing, and I'm sure it's kind of a known thing, limiting belief. So it's just this sense of like, if you go and try and get something and you've got something in your brain that's telling you, no, you can't get this because you've got a limiting belief in that matter. Matter, no matter what it is you do in life, I think that's really transferable when it comes to doing recruitment and, you know, being resilient with things like business development, you know, taking a lot of nos. And if you have a limiting belief system in your head that goes, you know what, no matter how many times I get set back, if I keep on cracking through with something, I'll get there, I think that kind of mindset Uh, takes a lot of people to, to do really great things in recruitment, in my opinion.

I love that, man. I feel like that one thing, limiting belief, is probably the destroyer of a lot of dreams. Like, that's just one thing— can I do it or can I not do it? Um, for people that don't know, you're a million-pound biller, you've done extremely well, Sam. What, um, were there any specific limiting beliefs you had throughout your career and how did you overcome them?

Yeah, I mean, so when I came to Australia and did the Aussie market, I noticed everything was quite relationship-driven, and so trying to get quick wins and chasing leads was definitely a hard one. You get a lot of knockbacks, you know, you're not on our list, we don't work with you, and so I had to be quite persistent trying to break into a lot of relationships that— and look, to be honest, it did take years and years. But look, I think if I didn't have that limiting belief mindset where I thought, you know, if I keep on going at it and I'm going to get in, that, you know, if I didn't have that, then I probably would have been with 90% of other recruiters who, you know, might chase a lead or chase something for a week and then give up. I certainly had the mindset where I was like, look, let's play the long game. And, you know, after a few years, I should reap these rewards. But I certainly had. I mean, from early on, I always had this kind of mindset of like, I'm in it for like the long run. Like, I'm not here to just get a quick few deals kind of thing, which I was fortunate to have because I had already done a year of recruitment in the UK prior. So it wasn't exactly like a standing start. But, you know, if I didn't have that kind of belief system, you know, I don't know where I'd be really.

Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. And I feel like that's, that's quite rare to kind of have that so early on in recruitment in terms of that long-term mindset. Um, what was, what was going through your head? Like, how did you— was it just something installed in your brain that was operating on autopilot? Was there a dream you were trying to chase? Like, what kept you on that long-term mindset, do you think?

It's a good question. I think I always had this— it might sound a bit wanky, but like, I always had this vision, like, I'm gonna do well in business, whatever it is. Like, if I keep at doing something, I'm you're going to achieve great things. So I thought if I knuckle down and think about, look, my career is not the next 1 or 2 years. Like I want to do something really great with my time. And I was really money motivated and I still am. You know, I want to make money. I want to succeed and grow, you know, professionally. I want to develop my skills. So I thought as someone who is, you know, a uni dropout and has nothing else to do, I may as well try and make something of myself. So my mindset really was this isn't just a job, this is a career. Um, so for me, you know, I took that in, that kind of mindset came straight into work early days for me. Um, so yeah, love that, man.

Really interesting. Um, if it's okay with you, so I feel like we should give people a little bit of an insight into your journey since 2018 up to 2023. I think it's really impressive to see your progression. Are you okay with that?

Yeah, yeah, go for it.

Awesome. So just in terms of billings, you gave us some details. So 2018, you did $253K. 2019 was $434K. 2020 was $752K. 2021, you broke that $1 million mark, which is amazing. $1.12 million. 2020, uh, '22, $1.6 million. And 2023, just under a million, um, which is insane. Like, but even from the beginning, Sam, 2018, like, just moving to Oz, Doing 250 is amazing, but then going up to 1 million. So, and I know, you know, we're talking top 1% of recruiters here. Not a lot of recruiters reach that 1 million mark. What was, do you think, what was the, the reason, or what was the, what were the things that made the biggest impact to you getting to 1.6 million, do you think?

Yeah, I think, um, I obviously had to develop kind of my mindset and like really developed like kind of my approach to business, like early on and then throughout the years kind of thing. So let's say, for example, I had to kind of go out and be like, right, I need to have a commercial mindset to win clients and think long term. So for me, it was like, you know, trying to get to that, that kind of upper echelon, that 1%. It was really trying to be that kind of that kind of consultant who can help those businesses achieve goals rather than being like a CV peddler. So over the years, I kind of learnt this and developed that approach, and that was really my main mentality to kind of getting there. I think always trying to solve business problems, you know, always treating people as I'd like to be treated and offering advice, offering information, and acting as a consultant rather than just, as I say, someone who's sending them CVs and trying to get a placement. Over the years I developed that approach and as such my billing's progressed in that way.

So what I heard from that, Sam, is you kind of fundamentally changed your attitude towards kind of short-term mindset, again, going back to that long-term mindset and treating clients differently. What was, this might sound obvious, but then, 'cause for me that does sound simple and I'm like, shit, if I could just do that, I get £1.6 million, that's amazing. What was the— what else was going on in the background for you to achieve that? Were you just starting so many conversations and creating so many relationships that you just had a constant influx of clients? Can you just go into a bit more detail?

Yeah, I think in terms of my approach, like from early, because obviously I had that long kind of, uh, that long-term mindset, I was always— so let's say, uh, back in the first couple of years, I was always looking at the cold leads, which were the companies that my candidates had been working at, and I'd take a list of 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 cold leads. We'd call it a cold lead sheet back in the day, and I'd make sure at the end of the day I've contacted at least one person, one hiring manager, in each of those companies. Um, so obviously that's my spread, right? That's me looking at all my cold leads and making sure that I'm covering off the market. Um, but additionally, throughout the calls that I'd be having throughout the day, I'd be speaking to, let's say, 20 or 30 contractors in the morning And I'd be identifying throughout the days, weeks, months, whatever, which clients are coming up regularly and who are my targets. Additionally, with those targets, who are the consultancies or vehicles into those clients that I also need to network with? So I'd have my kind of hot list of kind of target clients. I'd have my hot leads to chase, my hot project information to chase. Additionally, then I'd have my cold leads to chase, which I over time would expand and grow. So It was very much a big kind of who's who and name matching and adding more names to the puzzle and basically market mapping out the whole thing. And it takes a really, really long time.

Really interesting. And so you just told us your kind of overall strategy that made the biggest, the biggest impact in you getting to that figure. Was that something that you employed, you started doing at like the $700K mark or the $1 million mark, or were you doing that right from the beginning? If you see them.

Yeah, I know, that's a really good question. I think like I always kind of— I had a really great manager at the time, Mike, who was always very big on kind of like chase cold leads, build a business, and don't focus on those short-term wins. So like from early on, I was always doing that. I think the difference is, is when I was reaching those numbers, let's say in 2020 where I hit kind of £750,000, 2021, £1.2 million, what happened at those points is I was maybe 3 or 4 years in and I was starting to get a lot of referral business, a lot of kind of repeat business with the same clients. And thirdly, there was kind of a lot of clients, like target clients as I mentioned, that I was knocking on the door of that eventually after 3 or 4 years let me in. And then I could start to prove myself. So I think the reason it kind of snowballed is it was a mixture of kind of like, okay, everyone's coming back to me. I've proven myself, I've tried hard enough now, and now I'm getting off the doors. So I think in those later years, you know, I placed with quite a lot of clients, and then after that I got a bit more selective and placed more people into less clients.

Hmm, that makes so much sense, man. So like the first 3, 4 years was relentless work ethic, building, uh, starting relationships, starting conversations, and then it kind of all started snowballing from there and just had a knock-on effect. And I'm guessing you still continued with BD, but you just had all this influx of other stuff coming in from all your hard work?

Yeah, that's pretty much it. And like, for example, in 2021, where I just about built just over a million, I had done something like 66 placements, which was a really, really busy year. If you're doing that many placements in a year and you're doing BD, keeping relationships warm, developing them, that was the busiest year of my life for sure. So, but it snowballed to that point, and by the time it was like 2022 I got to a point where I kind of had exclusive relationships with a few customers and I could kind of then kind of fire clients that I didn't want to work with. If I'm not getting feedback quickly or if you're not giving me exclusivity, I'm going to go to the next one. So it was very much more like, by the time I got to 2022, like it's like I'm partnering with people rather than like I'm trying to grow my business.

Love that, man. I love that. And I think common theme that we speak about all the time is that, you know, the clients you work with not only make your life happier, but you will make more money if you have the right clients on board. Totally.

Yeah, like a big thing that I learned over the years is like, and it's actually really hard to do because like when you're a young, like hungry consultant and you just want to do deals and, you know, build a business, you're open to working with pretty much anyone. Like you'll work with that consultancy that takes 2 weeks to give you feedback just because it is an interview, it's a KPI for your manager to go, yep, you're doing well. But when you get a bit more into it and you've established yourself, you can start to go, actually, you know what, you're wasting my time, this is not good business, and you start to fire clients based on that. And what ends up happening is over the years, as you start to work directly with really good clients who want to partner and want to give you feedback and work with you as a partner, you find that your candidate experience is better, your reputation is better, and it then it snowballs into building you a better reputation as well. So It's, it's win-win in that sense.

Love that, man. Um, I'd love to get into the nitty-gritty BD methods. You've already described a few of them, Sam, but like, let's imagine you, uh, are sitting down at your desk today, uh, and you're, you know, doing your normal BD activities. Can you give us a sneak peek into what you do on a daily, weekly basis in terms of all your BD activities?

Yeah, um, I think like, look, so obviously picking up the phone is obviously the biggest thing, right? And every recruitment manager in history will ever tell anyone that, right? But for me, it was always about making sure that whenever you're dialling, whenever you're calling clients or candidates, that you're making sure that you're opening that call and making it warm. So using any sort of information that you've gathered from the market, any sort of trends that are happening, any names, any mutual connections that you all, or, you know, you and them might know. I think a big thing for me was making sure that every call I made was relatively warm, and therefore those people would then open up and be more open to conversations if they're a client potentially working with me. So definitely that was a huge thing for me. I think always looking to solve business problems. I think that was more kind of further down the track, and I learnt how to do that over time. But, you know, going in and saying, look, I understand you're, you know, hiring for this skill set. Let's figure out why you're looking for this skill set, and let me help you shape the requirement. So that was definitely a method to kind of go in and be more consultative with, you know, clients. And then also there's another one as well that I had wrote down is talking to potential clients as candidates. And this is something I said on Hesham's podcast as well, is everyone's going to be a candidate at some point. So level with people, rub people's egos, and chat to everyone as you would chat to them, you know, as a person, as a candidate, right? You don't need to have this servant mentality. Just because you're a recruiter, you don't put people on pedestals. Like, they're just people. Yeah, I think that's enough points. But yeah, and you know, there's a lot of approaches, right, to a BD strategy, and there's no one right thing, you know.

In terms of the warm call, Sam, you mentioned like a few things that you make it warm. I think it was, do you know mutual connections, market data? Which one was like, was there one that was the most successful? Like if you showed them a piece of data from the market, or was there one that kept on coming up in terms of most success?

Look, most success, more than none, is just name dropping. You know, a lot of people do it. And quite honestly, like what I would do, right, if I'm on the phone to like a really good candidate or a client or whoever, I'll always have LinkedIn up. So I'll call them up and I'll notice that they're working at company X. So company X will be up on my LinkedIn search and I'll type in, you know, X manager. For me, it might be test manager. So I'll type that up and I can see already who the test manager is at that company. So when I chat to them, I go, oh, you must work with, you know, Mike. Who's the test manager there? And I'm not saying that I know Mike, right? I know of Mike. I know he's the test manager there, but I'm not claiming to be his best mate. But just by name dropping that, it will open up the conversation. They feel more comfortable to chat with you because it's not like you're calling up and going like, oh, who is it, who is it, who is it? That's amateur. Like, if you go and make it more comfortable for them to open up, it means that you can have much more quality-filled conversations. And this works with candidates and clients, you know.

That's brilliant. It's so simple, but it's brilliant. And I'm guessing it changes, completely changes the framing of the conversation and how willing they are to give information. Um, that's really helpful. And when you get to the problem area, what— and this is a bit of a— I'm just interested what types of problems they say they would have and how you could kind of consult on that. So, but what kind of problems would crop up when you kind of try to dig deeper into what was going on in their business?

Yeah, so a lot of my clients in particular would have journeys where they want to reduce cost and a lot of companies just thought they could do it by hiring X skillset. And I would often go in and say, all right, well, look, what tooling are you using? Like, are you paying for tooling? You use, you know, open source free tooling? Like, that's the first question. And I'd kind of dig deeper into like, why they're spending this money and how they think they're going to get a return. So, and sometimes even like I'd go and call a client and they'd be saying, oh, we want to hire this one person. And then I'd listen to it and they tell me about what's going on in their business. And I go, yeah, you need 2 people, but you don't need 2, you don't need a senior, you need actually 2 juniors with this skill set and this skill set. And you can get that for the same price. So What I'd try and do is I'd really try and dig into like why they're hiring that skill set instead of blindly just going, all right, yeah, sure. Because, and I'm sure a lot of recruiters who are probably a few years into the job will have it, is that a client will give them a brief, you'll send over CVs, and then the job spec changes after you've sent CVs and they've done a first round of interview. That's wasting a whole week of process. So you may as well really try and challenge them and, and actually consult with them on the initial briefing call to understand why they're spending that money and what they actually need to achieve.

It's really interesting. I'm guessing you wouldn't be able to do that as effectively if you didn't know your market like the back of your hand. Am I right in saying that? Is you just know so much about your market that you, you're confident in challenging your clients on that because you just, you know it?

Yeah, and this, this is it, right? So like, um, as I said in Ayesha's podcast, it's like I'm a big believer in niching down. So I think if you do truly understand your area, you should be a known figure in your space. You should have a brand, you should be known, people should know that when you're calling them that you're not just trying to sell them shit, that you're actually trying to help them and that you've also got reputation in the industry. So yeah, obviously niching is just so damn important to get to know your candidates and to make sure that everyone's open to chatting with you.

Yeah, love that, mate. Just going back to BD, what I got so far is that you are, you've mastered cold calling and warm calling. That's a, that's a main pillar of BD. Is there any other tactics you use in terms of starting that initial conversation? Is there emails, LinkedIn messages, anything kind of that we haven't mentioned yet?

It's a good question. Like what I'll often do is I'll ask, so what I'll do in, let's say there's an enterprise business that I want to work with. The way that I'll often start out is I'll actually go and speak to all the contractors that work there. So I'll go on LinkedIn, I'll go on, you know, any job board and find the contractors that work there. That's kind of the first thing I'm going to do. I'm going to chat to them, figure out which agencies or consultancies they work through, what their rates are, what kind of tech they're using, and then armed with all that information and also from chatting to them as candidates and telling them about the market. They in turn will give me information about, you know, who the managers might be, what kind of projects they're doing. And so what happens is I'm basically using these contractors to, you know, information gather and get to understand, know from an inside perspective what that business is like. Step 2 would be, right, now I know the managers, can I use these contractors for intros? Or can I just approach them myself? So likelihood is I've probably already connected with these managers on LinkedIn because I'll connect with anyone in my space, right? But if I'm not, I will connect with them, I'll send them a message. The message might be something like, oh, I sent you an email the other day, did you get it? And so what I'll do is I'll use multiple contact points to get to those managers. Additionally, I like to think outside the box, so unless you've got I don't know what everyone uses, like Source Whale or, um, whatever it is, like get people's phone numbers. Yeah, sometimes their number might not be there, so I'll look on— this is actually a trick that somebody taught me— is you look on the job boards and you find their old CV and it's got their phone number on it. That's so cool. They go, how'd you get my phone number? And you go, well, your CV's online. Um, so yeah, and what I'll always do is I'll always approach people, as I said earlier, in that kind of warm and open manner. And I'll say something like, you know, I understand you're doing this project and you're trying to achieve this and, you know, you're using supplier X, Y, and Z. You know, are you open to having a chat kind of thing? Instead of going in with the blatantly obvious, I can see that you're hiring, I've got someone. Like, who cares? They've had 10 people doing that to them. So yeah, like there's so many things that you can do with these clients and so many ways that you can gather information, but you've just got to think outside the box when you when you approach them.

Yeah, love that, Sam. In terms of using the contractors for information gathering, that's such genius. I absolutely love that. And then gathering all the ammo that you need and then going in with so much data that it's like impossible not to start one meaningful conversation in that company if you just keep on following up. Absolutely love that. Is that your go-to strategy with most of your enterprise clients? Like, is that kind of down to a T?

Without a doubt. Yeah. I think that is that. When you say ammo, that's literally the word I use as well. And it sounds quite funny because it's like, but like when you have enough ammo, like, and you literally go to a client and they don't know who the hell you are, but you know everything about them, there is no way in hell they're not replying to that email or picking up that call. Like there is no way in hell if you know so much about their business, they, the question is almost like, how do you know so much? And then you go, Well, I'm a specialist. This is what I do, and we should chat because of that. Like, it's just, it's obvious, right?

I love that, man. When you are, when you are speaking to contractors and you're trying to get that ammo, what are some of the key things, uh, key bits of information when you get it, you're like, yes, I've got it, that's going to be one of my biggest ins? Is there any little key moments like that?

Yeah, I mean, obviously to get that information, obviously you want to be using a lot of open questions. And you know, when you start to gather information, you're looking for things like, you know, who do they work through? So find out real quickly who the competition is, right? Which agencies are they working with? Because then you can start to understand after a long period of time, you'll figure out who your regular competitors are, how much they may charge the client. So, you know, can you deliver a cheaper service or a quicker service? So finding out first of all who your competition is. Obviously, you know, the obvious ones are kind of like, you know, what project's going on? When did it start? When's it due to end? Is there a next wave of hiring? You know, what's going on internally? Is there any struggles kind of thing? Like, is there any kind of gaps in their projects, in their staffing? But like, yeah, ideally what you really want to do is just get as much inside information as you can about what is going on and what's going on in terms of of how much they're spending and that kind of thing.

Cool, mate. And again, I'm really putting you on the spot, uh, Sam, so tell me to, to pee off if I, uh, go too, too far. But in terms of— so you, you, you speak to the contractors, you gather the information. Is there any— when you take that information and you start reaching out to decision makers, is there any one piece of information that kind of gets a better hit rate than others? Is it like competitors Is it the fact that they've got a pain at the moment? Is it something else? Is there anyone that kind of gets a higher hit rate when you present it to them?

That's a really tough one. Um, I, I honestly think it, it's so dependent on, on the client and what they're trying to do, so it's really, really hard to give a specific on that one.

Cool, don't worry, man. Yeah, I'm drilling down on like the little tiny details here, but no, that makes sense. Um, one thing that I found really fascinating, mate, is you said that you don't really spec in your market because it doesn't really work. Instead, you send a PDF. Can you tell us what— I mean, yeah, firstly, why do you send a PDF? What— and what point do you send the PDF? If you could let us know that.

So, and to be fair, I did send a lot of CVs when I started out because the way that our business was structured is we were very KPI-driven on CV sends, as most traditional recruitment companies are. But I noticed that I was getting probably less than a 10% response rate on those CVs very early on, and of which that 10% response rate would often be, no, not interested, we're not using an agency, role's already filled, that kind of thing. So obviously everyone's heard of, you know, PDF sales decks, and if you haven't, it's essentially just a very short PowerPoint that you turn into a PDF where it's got Basically, this is what you do, these are your case studies and who you've helped, these are the market rates and this is how you can add value. Normally, like, make it within, you know, a few slides and get it whipped out. So with these PDF, like, I guess sales decks you want to call them, I'd often send them out to clients as like a follow-up. So like, let's say I call them up and, you know, I know they're hiring and they say, actually, no, we've just hired. I can go, all right, cool, look, this is my information, this is the kind of clients I've helped, like, this is everything you need to know about me, so if you do need help in the future, this is the simple document you can refer to. And other times I would use it on the first point of contact when I know that somebody's hiring, I couldn't get hold of them, you know, I noticed, for example, they might be hiring in the payroll space and doing a payroll project, so I might write a quick blurb in the email saying, hey, look, I've I've actually worked in this niche doing a bit of payroll hiring. And then in my case study, in that PDF, there's a whole thing on a Company X that I've done a payroll project for in like further detail. So yeah, I just think like being able to just like send an attachment that just adds good bit of value and market information is really wise to do. And there's, I don't think there's any right or like wrong way to send it or when to send it.

Cool, mate. And you said you, you would— you, you reverted to that because your response rate was quite low. Did, did you see an increase in response rate? And if so, what were kind— what were the responses that were coming back? Were they like, oh, thanks for this, Sam, this is awesome, and then contacted you further down the line? What, what have you noticed, the trends when sending the PDF?

Yeah, that, that— this is literally it. So when you're sending out that market information, which might include things like market rates, um, you know, I'll often get people going people from CTO level down to, you know, just hiring manager level, and everyone will be like, okay, thanks for the market rates, that's really useful to know for our next intake. And that obviously gives me, you know, like they think, you know, he knows what he's doing, and they might then come back to me on the next hire. So awesome. Yeah, it definitely makes you sound like a valid resource, you know.

Yeah, definitely, man. And I'm guessing if you did want to call them up, but they've already seen your PDF like that's kind of a warm call now, isn't it? It's like, hey John, I sent you that PDF, you responded, what did you think of it? That could be a conversation starter in itself, couldn't it?

Yeah, literally somebody might come back off it and be like, you know, it might be a few months later and they'll go, are these still the rates? They just ping, you just bring them up, right? And then you just go, well, you know, you were asking about the rates, let's have a chat about market rates. And yeah, it might— the approach might not even be that salesy. You might just go and be like, let's just talk about the rates. I'm I'm like, I'm a consultant in this space. Like, even if I don't work with you, let me just offer you a bit of advice because it might come around full circle.

Yeah, I love that, man. Really interesting. What would you say, Sam, uh, some of the biggest mistakes you see other contract recruiters make, if you could help them to get to where you are faster?

It's a good one. Um, I think that the biggest mistakes people make is, um, is they're not persistent enough in terms of their business development approach. So For example, they might get a lead or a bit of project information, they might give up after a week. So I think my biggest bit of advice to, you know, people starting out and who really want to succeed is chase a lead until you damn know the answer, right? Until you know it's an absolute 'they're hired' or 'we need your help,' don't give up. There's just so many things to consider, and also like, especially when you're growing out a contract book, Like, obviously my contract book over the years has gone, in terms of yearly billings, up, up, up, up. But in between that, like, your GP per week, it can drop and go up and drop and go up. And there's no great contract recruiter in history who's just had this book that just consistently grows. You're always going to have setbacks. So like, advice to people starting out and stuff like that, you know, just be resilient about it and You know, you'll get to a point eventually where when you do a deal, and it sounds kind of shit, but you'll do a deal and it will just feel numb. You won't get that excitement. You know, when you start out, you do a deal, you'll just get this kind of like, yeah, all right, next one. And if somebody leaves, you'll get the same feeling. Because when, like, when a contractor leaves early on and you're trying to build your business, you just see it as like money falling out your pocket. You're like, fuck, like, what am I doing? But you'll eventually get numb to that feeling. So just carry on.

That's really interesting. When do you think you became— at what point do you think you became kind of desensitized to that? Was it like one year? Was it like after a year, or was it 3 years or 4 years? Just so we can give people maybe some, some advice.

Yeah, it's, it's a really— I think it's so, so individual to everyone. There's some people that come in and forever they're always going to be a bit sensitive to things. I think it took me a couple of years to figure it out. Um, I think it was probably 2, 2 to 3 years on I had kind of built my book up and watched it go down probably once or twice, nothing major. Um, but because I had ridden those little waves, I kind of realized, okay, this is how it works.

Yeah, awesome, man. Um, Sam, we've already kind of touched a bit upon this, but I kind of want to go into the specific day plan of Sam. So I want to know, like, when you get into the office, what do you do? To the end of the day from like 7, 6 AM to whenever you leave the office. Can you give us a— as if we were sitting on your shoulders right now watching—

can you give us that? I was the most unstructured fucker you've ever seen. Like, I just do anything, right? I was just trying to run my business because I had so many contracts and whatnot. But I'll take you back to like, let's say, the growth stage where I did have to be very structured and I was growing my Yeah, wicked. So, what I do is I get up in the morning, go to work, and I log in and I'm just purely on candidate calls. So, as I briefly touched on earlier, I'd have these cold lead sheets which would literally be sheets of paper, 25 kind of lengths long, and you kind of write in the candidate name, where they're working, any hot leads, any cold leads, manager names. I would do this over and over and over again in a period of probably like 2 to 3 hours, just chatting to contractors. So I'll be chatting to contractors off like the job boards, anyone on LinkedIn, anyone that has, you know, been applying to adverts, that kind of thing. So it's all about candidate generation, information generation, like in the morning, right? Once it kind of hit about 10 or 11 o'clock, I'm straight getting onto those leads that I've got in the morning. Hopefully by then, right, what might happen is I might have got a lead from a candidate in the morning, maybe even 2 candidates have given me the same lead, right? Now I've got hopefully a bit of information about which agency they've gone through, what the manager name is, and now I'm going to do some smart, quick BD to figure out how I can reach out to those hiring managers. So at this point in the morning, I'm really going hard on who this, like, who are the hot leads, who are the hot leads from the previous day, what, you know, what real good information am I attacking. That would probably take me up to 1 PM, kind of, and then I'll have lunch and I'll get back at 2. And then I'll come back and think, all right, have those hot leads been chased properly? Should I just go again? I might go again. Otherwise, then I'm going to maybe, I might then spend my afternoon trying to crack into potential target clients that I've identified. Or I might be going through, just spending an afternoon just going through all my cold lead sheets and just hitting up as many managers as I can. And what I would do is I'd always mix my activity up. So throughout the week in terms of BD, it really just depends where my head's at. Some weeks I might spend an entire week, and the afternoon period I'm trying to map out one enterprise client and try and understand like literally a spider web of who are the names, who are the managers, who's, you know, who have I contacted, who have I not. So yeah, like in short, candidates information in the morning, from about 11 onwards, just pure BD focus, especially hot BD. And then later on in the afternoon, a mixture of target client work mixed with cold business development activities.

So fascinating, Sam. We just interviewed a £2 million biller, Asha Rudolph. It's almost identical to your day plan, like almost identical. It's insane. So that's just really fascinating that you guys billing huge amounts in the millions have a very similar day plan and how you go about chasing candidates at the beginning, gathering information, and then going after hot leads. Everyone listening, please take heed of that because that is, uh, that's come up again. Um, sorry, what would you, what would you class as a hot lead? Just for people that don't know, uh, Sam?

Yeah, I mean, plain and simple, a hot lead is, is something like an interview lead. So if somebody's told you that they're going to interview somewhere on Wednesday this week, um, that's a hot lead. So any sort of interview leads, um, or any sort of information about where agencies have sent candidates kind of thing. I mean, I wouldn't even consider, like, you can very quickly qualify your hot leads as well because if somebody said that they had interviewed, you know, 2 or 3 weeks ago at a company, it's not necessarily that hot. But if they say it's going to happen that week or next week, you can jump on it quick. And that's a hot lead. And that's the kind of stuff you need to jump on really damn quick.

Yeah. And from that lead, is your first go to the phone? Do you just jump on the phone, try and get the the manager's name, say, hey, I know you're interviewing. Is that kind of— can you talk us through what that next step is, chasing the hot lead?

Yeah. Honestly speaking, the next step is I'll spend a few minutes trying to figure out who I already know in that business, and I might try and leverage that. So the first things first is I'll go, right, who do I know that might know that person that might be able to intro me? And then from that, I'll make an informed decision to be like, okay, I might wait an hour for that person to intro me. Or I might just cold call them straight away. But obviously it's not going to be a cold call. It's going to be a warm call because I know what's going on. I know what's going on in their business, what project they're trying to do, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to ask this candidate, like, for example, when this candidate gives me that hot lead, I'm not just going to go, oh, okay, you're interviewing there. That's great. Thank you. I'll go, which agency? Okay. What kind of rate is it? What projects are you guys doing? What tech stack? I need to know everything. So that when I go and chase that lead, I'm actually armed with information and I can make that call warm.

Love that, man. Again, the ammo that you need to have a very productive call. You keep on— I get you've mentioned this on other podcasts and I get the feeling it's very much part of your ethos. And I just want to give people another reminder of the volume that you do as a, you know, someone billing millions, in the millions. How many calls were you making on a typical day? Just, just so we understand, Sam.

Depends what year you ask. Because if it was 2023, not many. But at the start of my career, like, like the volume was massive. I would be very, very active on the phones. Like, it's hard to kind of give a number because I never really target myself to a number, but it was pretty much as many damn calls as I can make in the time I had during the day. So it could be like, let's say, 30 candidate calls in the morning and followed by maybe 40 dial-outs or 50 dial-outs to clients in the afternoon, of which maybe 10 answer. I don't know, it really depends.

Yeah, again, very similar numbers to Asha, the £2 million bit. It's really interesting. Yeah, cool, man. Oh my God, the time has flown by. One question I did want to ask, Sam, because I feel like You know, anyone who's managed to get to your level of billings has, has gone through some kind of transformation. Do you know what I mean? Like, um, I don't mean like a come-to-Jesus moment, but I mean like you have managed— you've grown as a person. You must have done in order to get from 200 to 500 to 800 to a million. What are the— what are some of the biggest things you've learned about yourself through this journey? Are there any kind of key things that you've learned about yourself coming up.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's funny, like, you have to really swallow your pride, um, and, and really learn who you are as a person. Because like a common trap that people fall into as recruiters is they start to succeed— and this is like, I think, any salesperson— is they start to succeed in their money and do well, and they can either A, act like a wanker, or B, be a little bit humble. Um, and I'm not going to say that straight away I was super humble about it. I was well happy, like you know, I was finally earning money and finally doing well for myself. Like it's really hard to like adjust to that. But definitely like over the years, I learned, you know, humble yourself. Like, you know, you don't know what the next person's doing or going through kind of thing. And I think over the years, like it wasn't always ups. Like, you know, I had down moments where in my personal life I might have been stressed or down. So I definitely found things like just as easy as like going to the gym and stuff like that would help definitely in the later stages. But I won't lie to you, in the first few years of kind of going through it, I think building a business for me was everything. And I definitely sacrificed a lot in that time. And after a few years, I kind of realized, shit, like there's other areas in my life that aren't exactly where I wanted them to be. So yeah, and I think it's a common problem for most people, you know, especially most people that are going in and working like 60, 70, 80-hour weeks and just so laser-focused on their work, they forget that there's like other areas of their life.

100%, mate. Yeah, thank you for being honest. That's really, really insightful. And is there any habits that you've had outside of work that have helped you inside of work? There might not be, but I'm just curious, are there any like little habits that you did outside?

Not really. I can't really say. I think I'm pretty transferable in and out, right? So I am who I am regardless. And yeah, I'm like, I'm a pretty go, you know, happy, persistent now person. So I'm that outside of work and I'm that inside of work. So that's just me, you know what I mean?

I get you, mate.

I get you.

So it sounds like whatever mindset you have is kind of ingrained in you, because for me, Sam, it's quite different. My mindset is, is absolutely directly impacted by my daily habits. Like, without my daily habits, yeah, my mindset would be absolute squishiness. Like I need to have specific habits every single day in order to maintain a certain level, and that's just the way my brain works. But some people have this like ingrained mindset, which I think you have, which I find fascinating.

Yeah, I think it's, it's definitely like there's a lot of like, you know, childhood trauma and stuff like that can really kind of drive a person and make someone the way they are.

Yeah.

Um, but my missus, her, her mum is a kind of holistic, uh, health kind of person, and and she kind of got us into, like, outside of work, like, I've been doing things like ice baths and all that kind of work. And I know, I know, like, some people think, oh, ice baths, get up at 5 AM and do a 10K or whatever. But I started doing those things and I noticed, like, you know, even doing, like, an ice bath, it's just so effective for just making you feel really happy, like you've achieved something before your day's even started. But I'm not going to go out there publicly and be like, I do an ice bath every day. I do it like every couple of weeks and it shocks me to my core.

Yeah, but during your climb up, it was mainly just working. You already had this kind of ingrained mindset and you just worked your ass off kind of thing?

Pretty much, yeah. And I won't lie and say that that's the best— that's, in fact, that's actually in hindsight, that's not the best way about it. You should really think about balance during that growth stage, and even if it might take you a bit longer, um, don't burn yourself out too quickly because I definitely had moments where I was pretty burnt out. But, you know, sometimes it might be that I was too afraid to take holiday because I thought if I went on holiday, you know, I'd lose contractors and then therefore lose money. So, you know, figuring out that balance is a really tough one, especially if you're like really motivated and really want something. But, you know, life's about balance and there's more than just work sometimes. You know what I mean?

Yeah, definitely, Sam. Yeah, I also think on the other end of that, in order to achieve what you've done in top 1%, there is a— is there's an element of obsession that you just can't avoid, do you know what I mean?

Like, there is— that is a word I use like a lot. Like, my business will be like, why are you scrolling LinkedIn at 5 in the morning? You're traveling. I know it sounds ridiculous. I am just hyper, like, obsessed with doing well and making sure that like whatever I do, like even doing this podcast, I'm doing it to make sure my name's still out there and that nobody's forgotten about me when I come back. So I'm always, I'm always obsessed with, with trying to do better and better. Um, yeah, and it's, it's a good thing, but also it can kill you.

So yeah, a double-edged sword, isn't it?

It is a double-edged sword, it really is.

Sam, thank you so much for coming, mate. I feel like that was again, um, uh I say again, it was a little masterclass in BD. Thank you so much for coming on, mate. I learned a lot and just appreciate your time.

No, thank you very much, boys. And, um, I hope I didn't speak too fast there. I'm in a little hotel room in France shouting at my computer, so I feel like a madman.

You did great, mate, and you sound perfect. So thank you.

Thank you. Cheers, guys.

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