The difference between a $200K biller and a £1,000,000 Biller (full Breakdown video)

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 Jeremy Sizemore. Jeremy is a long-standing member and a former board member of the Pinnacle Society, an invite-only group of just 80 of the top billers from all around the world. To even qualify, you need to have billed $500,000 for a minimum of 3 years in a row. The majority of members in that group are billing anywhere between $800,000 and $2.4 million. In Today's episode, we're going to be breaking down the difference between a $250K biller and a million-plus biller. And spoiler alert, it's not working longer hours. Jeremy's going to be sharing his exact top-down and across BD strategy and how he successfully targets 30 dream accounts instead of 500 random ones. And Jeremy's going to be giving us a mini masterclass in how to position yourself in order to win more retained work. Guys, Jeremy is full of wisdom. He is a brilliant speaker, and I promise you you're going to get so much value from this episode. As usual, grab a cuppa or a glass of wine depending on when you're listening to this, and let's jump into it, shall we? Wait a second, guys, quick question for you. If you could land a new client on LinkedIn in the next couple weeks, how much would that be worth to you? 20, 30, maybe 40K? Well, we have a pretty crazy offer on right now. If you are a recruitment business owner, then we will work with you for free and write you 2 posts at absolutely no cost. And here's the cool part— other recruiters that have come through this free trial have managed to win new clients. They've racked up hundreds of thousands of impressions and started conversations with top-tier candidates. It's completely risk-free, so you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. If you're interested, the link's in the description below. If not, no worries. We hope you enjoy the podcast. See you later. Jeremy, thank you so much for joining us today on Top Billers Toolkit. How are you today, my friend?

Outstanding. Thanks for having me.

Brilliant. I am really excited about this episode. I have to say, Jeremy, on the pre-call, you absolutely sold me. Just everything that you said, the way you delivered information, you just spoke with such clarity and confidence. I was like, we've got to have this guy on our podcast. And now you're here. So thank you so much. Let's start with the first question as always, which is what's the number one tool in your toolkit, whether it be a mindset, strategy, or software?

Well, yeah, I am a big believer that the number one tool that almost anyone in our industry could bring to the table is right between their own ears. The mindset. It's the mindset, it's the attitude, because that is what gives you the energy to get up that morning, to get things moving. What you put into this business is also what you get out. So I would go with that, the mental aspect of the business.

One of my biggest— sorry, just to jump in because Jeremy, One of my biggest mindset shifts was when I had kids, a kid, fingers crossed we have more. But that was like by far the biggest rocket up my bum to want to perform every single day and perform to a high level. For some reason, I couldn't do it for myself. When I had a kid, it completely changed everything. I'm wondering, Jeremy, what is your drive or the thing that keeps your mindset rock solid? Is it Is it habits? Is it, uh, is something that you've experienced? I'm curious your, your answer to that.

Yeah. So, you know, we talk about finding your why, right? Finding your why, what's your why? Why do you do this? Uh, what gets you moving? What gets you motivated? And I think for different people that's different. And also it, uh, it can change, right? It can change. Your why could be different 10 years later, right? So, um, my motivation generally has been kids and family. There are times when it had been that I had a short-term why, like, can we, can I work really hard for 6 months to earn this family vacation? So it's tied to family, but like we all want to, we want to do a trip to Hawaii. We want to do a trip to Alaska. We want to do European trip, whatever. But it's something that's out there that says, can I put in more than I normally could? Can I put extra effort, extra energy? Can I be extra focused for this period time. So tunnel focusing and saying, how can I chop that up into something that can really motivate me at least for a period of time? Because I find that human nature is that eventually that flame isn't gonna burn as bright at some point. Mm-hmm. Right? It's just like we can only sprint for so long and then we gotta scale back and jog a little bit. And so riding that roller coaster, especially over a career. Not just being great for a year, but how can you be great for a career without having a significant, um, a drought, if you will?

Yes, a really great point. I love the concept of sprints, of like, I've got, you know, the next 6 months I'm going to put my head down and go for the holiday. Because you're right, Jeremy, you can't sprint for the whole year, and if you try, you'll just burn yourself out. So there's a real— it's really an art learning how to sprint doing it effectively, drawing back and then going for another sprint. I feel like everyone has their own limit, so to speak, but that really is an art, isn't it?

It is. And, you know, I do know people that are more consistent in this business and they're kind of like the, they're like the turtle, right? Uh, that, that's running the race and they're very consistent. And then I do know people that are like the rabbit, right? Uh, that they're just super fast. Uh, but then every once in a while they'll go through a slow period, but they can almost like turn it on like a light switch and then they can suddenly have a huge quarter or a huge month, but then they also maybe have a few more dips. And so I do think there's more than one way to get there in our business. But it's interesting to see the differences on how people kind of have a certain year, if you will.

Pretty interesting. I'd love to talk about the Pinnacle Society, Jeremy, because you were quite involved with that. You were a member for 15 years. You sat on the board. And for people that don't know what the Pinnacle Society is, Um, Jeremy, you'll probably do a better job explaining this, but it's basically a society that attracts top billers. You have— there's an entry to get it. You have to be billing a certain amount to get into the society. So imagine the top billers in the US and the top recruiters you could probably imagine in any given sector. They're probably in the Pinnacle Society. Um, it seemed like a really cool society actually. You were in it for 15 years, Jeremy. I'd love to know what you noticed about the similarities between these top billers, because you must have observed lots of different recruiters at a very high level. What did you observe? What did you learn? What was that experience like?

Yeah. Yeah. So, and you nailed Pinnacle pretty good. One thing I would share for the group is that it's actually a global group now. And so we do have a member that's in Sydney, Australia. There's members in Canada. There's no preclusion of someone maybe from Europe joining the Pinnacle Society. Although it's true that most of the meetings are in the United States, that's true. And the majority of the members are in the United States market. So it's been around for over 40 years and it's, it's kind of a, it's a capped group. There's only 80 members. And so it's kind of hard to get into and it carries, you know, a little bit of pedigree if you are able to get into the Pinnacle Society. So yeah, great group and it's a great opportunity to learn because they have 2 conferences a year. And at most conferences, 60 or more people will be there. Their spouses may come in and it's just, it's immersion training of putting yourself in the same room with lots of other people that are billing $800,000, $1 million, $2 million a year, right? Like big billers. And so yeah, what did I find in common across that group? That is a group for the most part that, um, they're highly motivated individuals. They're self-motivated. These are the kind of people that they don't need a boss to tell them to get up today to try to go earn a living. They're motivated themselves. So they're very self-motivated. Um, the majority of the group has a lot of similarities, but there's, but there are one-offs that are like, hey, that person's different than a lot of people in this room. And so it really taught me, even as someone that will also hire recruiters, that there is more than one personality type that can be very successful in our business. So are a lot of them Type A extroverted, low patience people? Yes, absolutely. So they're low patience. Um, they, uh, a lot of people in that room kind of fly by the seat of their pants and, um, but they, but they are really good at being, um, motivated. They're, they're really good at lots of outbound, lots of outreach, that if I have a good work ethic, that what I put into the business is what I'll get out. I think that they, um, have become really good at how to get good accounts, how to get really good searches. Because to me, one of the biggest differences of people that might not fail in our business, but they, they kind of mediocre numbers or very average numbers versus it's not always work ethic. That's the big difference. A lot of times it's the quality of what they are working on. One of the biggest factors I think in someone that bills $1 million a year, and it's, I'm talking US dollars here, but, or, or someone that maybe bills $250,000 a year, how did this person do 400% more than this other person? And it's not that they're so, uh, inhuman. It's not that they're some superhero that has some ability you don't have. And it's also not that they are working 15 hours a day. Um, what it usually is, is they're working smarter, not just harder. Um, and so they're, they might be having higher recruiting fees. They might be better at negotiating better fee percentages. They might be better at landing searches that are more like director and VP level roles that have an average fee of 75 to 100. They might be extremely specialized so that they can do more placements faster. And they're good at the intake call with the account to say, is this— am I exclusive? Am I retained? And so that the roles that they end up working on have a high probability to close, that the effort that they're about to spend— they're guarding their time like a hawk, that if I'm about to go recruit for a week or two, I only have 49, 50 weeks in a calendar year. So if I'm about to go spend a whole week on this search, they are very diligent about talking to that company. How many other firms are on this? Do I just have to talk to HR only and look at a job description, or can I get on the phone with the actual hiring authority? How many people are in play right now? You know, and the thing about how many firms, because If a, if a recruiter is spending lots of time working with HR, not talking to hiring authorities, and that they are working on searches that other firms are working on, you can do that, but just know that your odds to make that deal might be 15%, 10%, 20%. Whereas if you had exclusivity, uh, and you were the only firm on it, and you knew that they were— client was in pain, and you had preset interview dates, and you knew that they were going to give you feedback within 24 hours of candidate submittals, and, um, you knew you had a direct line into the actual hiring authority. Well, now your odds just went to 80%, right? I think that's one of the biggest differences in the Pinnacle Society. They've learned that the quality of what you work on and the quality of account is directly correlated to the percentage of how many deals you work on are going to get placed in a calendar year.

I love that. That's absolutely brilliant. And on that, so account, choosing the right accounts, being selective, guarding your time, that we hear that. We have heard that a fair amount from top billers, which I mean, it's amazing. It's really important to remind people to focus on those things. And I'm curious about, did you notice there was a common theme between what was being used on a BD perspective? Jeremy, did you notice that like all the top billers were doing cold calls or all the top billers were doing email specs, or was there a common theme between what was working there on that side of things?

Top 3 things that— so I was the education chair, helped me put together conferences for several years. And sometimes we had desk-level training, right? So that's like language and tactics and how do you do BD or whatever. But we— tech stack is one of the top 2. The last 8 years or so, last 10 years, tech stack is very important. We're talking about it every single meeting. You know, what are you guys using in AI? How are you using, you know, ChatGPT or Claude? How are you using sequencing technology? There's lots of them out there, right? So whether you use something like Sourcewell, which I think maybe is a European company, you know, but and then what CRM system do you use? In the US, you know, a lot of people are using, you know, PCR, Relay, Bullhorn, Loxo, you know, so you get in that room and you go, okay, the majority are using these 4 CRM systems and ATS systems. That's pretty standard. Uh, the majority are using some version of LinkedIn Recruiter Pro or Recruiter Lite, but some version of LinkedIn that's a paid version where they have in-mails. But yeah. And how are they using automation? You know, and you will still see some people in that room that don't use much tech and automation, still billing a lot. It's interesting. Uh, but you are seeing that the people that tend to be, when they're legitimately doing $1.5 million to $3 million a year solo, like truly solo. And then there's people that do small team concept. I'm a small team concept guy, like more of a, what we would call a rainmaker model. I'm really good at business development. And then so I'll have 1 to 2 recruiters helping me with candidate sourcing. Some people use internet researchers, right? So team models. And then some people are truly, truly, truly solo. So how do people even in those different team models, how do they get to what their number is, is always a big question. People are like, well, can that— is that person really doing $1 million a year? Really? Well, honestly, some of them really are. Okay. And some of them are really doing $2.2 million with 2 people or 3 people. And so what we do is we consider how many people are— does it take to get to that number? And then what are you doing in that equation? Are you doing BD only? Are you doing BD and recruitment? And so you can get 100% credit on deals that you do that you found the client and the recruiting. And then if you did the BD, but someone else helped you fill, you only get half of the credit. So that's kind of how we work the numbers to figure out, you know, who is, who's the king of the, of the mountain, if you will. Right. Because, because recruiters in Pinnacle are very competitive. And then internally they do a monthly thing. You don't have to be part of it, but in the, they do a thing where they share their numbers, their monthly billings, and it just gives you that competitive edge to be like, where, who, who, who just knocked out a $200K a month? Who just knocked out a $150K a month?

Was there like one person that always came top of the leaderboard? I'm curious, Jeremy, was there like a group of people that we always see?

In Pinnacle, there are of 80 people, there usually are 4 to 5 that are at the top almost every single time. There is a few, and I will share an interesting thing because I was one of the people in Pinnacle that does a lot of public speaking. So going to the conferences, speaking, it's not always the public speaker types that are the highest in Pinnacle. There are a few in Pinnacle that have never done public speaking at all. They don't do video podcasts at all. Probably get beyond their time and they will just go crank out $2.5 million this year by themselves. And they don't take the time to travel to speak at a conference because they give you a small check to do that in this industry, but you don't make the same kind of money that your time is worth if you are truly a big biller. And so honestly, the ones that tend to be at the top are not the ones that are doing the public speaking in clinical. Yeah, that are in the top 3, top 4. Yeah.

Yeah. Fascinated that you got like a room of like the biggest pillars in the US and there's still like a fourth, there's still like 4 or 5 that are at the top of that top list, which is insane. I just, it's like the elite of the elite. It's crazy.

There are a few that are that way and one or two of them that are super elite like that have mastered the technology side of how our, how you do what we do for some people is different right now than it was 8 years ago. How they've implemented their tech stack, maybe they were pretty good 8 years ago, like maybe they were billing $800,000 or a million then, but because of sequencing campaigns and driving more efficiency in what they do, and using the modern day tech stack of 2026, that they are now pushing $3 million plus. There's a few that are in that, in that.

That's insane, isn't it? Crazy things. Was there one tech stack that everyone— and I know this is a very specific question, you might not be able to answer it, Jeremy, but was there any specific tech stack that people tended to gravitate towards? They were like, hey, you've got to try this, and it tended to work. I know you might not be able to go into nitty-gritty details. I'm just curious.

Yeah, you know, I think I would say that Everyone does use a good CRM, but it's not, it's not like we're 90% on one thing, right? Everyone uses a good, a good CRM system. Nobody's flying by the seat of their pants using an Excel spreadsheet. Okay. Um, almost everyone is using LinkedIn, but varying degrees of which paid service are they going to use? Um, for example, I do not use it as super expensive paid version of LinkedIn. I have what they used to call Recruiter Lite. And so it's like 100 in-mails and it's not RecruiterPro. It's like a lower price point version because we happen to use SourceWell, but then I know some recruiters that tried it and they said, ah, we didn't like that. So no matter which different company you plug in, ABC product, XYZ product, some Pinnacle users have tried it and liked it and stayed on it. And some have tried it and they're like, ah, I don't like them. Like it's very, you can't find anyone that likes everything is what my experience is. Right. And then we have a data plan so that now we can uncover cell phone numbers and we can uncover, you know, real email addresses, both personal email addresses and work email. So I think LinkedIn, we don't do very many in-mails anymore because of our sequencing campaign technology has a data plan built into it to uncover cell phone numbers and it does SMS texting now. So 8, 9, 10 years ago, If I wanted to text someone, I just had to whip out my own cell phone and start typing away. Well, now it's all built into that. It'll do email, then it'll do a text, then it'll do a LinkedIn message. It'll just, you know, it'll do omnichannel sequences. The campaign is what we would call it. But I love the ability to put SMS texting into that because, you know, your people in your 20s and low 30s, Honestly, SMS texting might be their number one way to communicate. Whereas someone that's 50, 55, 60, their number one way to communicate might be email. And so different generations, I think, have different responsiveness based on the outreach type.

Really interesting. I'd love to— oh, sorry, Ben, what are you gonna say? I just said I'd love to get into the B2B side of things. I know we talked a little bit about, about it, Jeremy, but I know you just said there that you, you said you're good at BD, and I love the confidence there, Jeremy, because there's not many recruiters that I jump on a call with and they're like confident they can actually say I'm good at BD. In fact, it's, it's few and far between nowadays, which is interesting if you think about it. But, and what are the, what is the, maybe let's go to your BD. What is the number one way, if there was one or two ways that you go about winning business, Jeremy, what's, what's working for you at the moment?

Yeah. So anytime in my career that it's just been slow, and one of my, when I train recruiters that are having a slump, I will always tell them it's your time and energy is better spent doing business development than working on a bad search. Now what I just told you is liquid gold. If there's any recruiters in your audience that are working on a piss poor job right now, that your client is basically unresponsive and not communicating with you, that you're only working with HR and never had a call with the hiring authority, you've sent people in and tried to put them out and they won't even set up interviews, and yet you are still recruiting on it. Oh yeah, you got to stop. You know, this— your time is better spent going to find a good account than working on a bad job. And too many recruiters that wonder why they're having a slow year, a tough year, a bad quarter, or that maybe they're not going to make it at all. Get a good search, get a good client. I'm telling you. And so with that being said, anytime I've just found myself like, hey, it's slow. I'm not happy with any good search on my desk right now. I shut it all down and I go, I'm going to go find a client. And I can go find 2 or 3 clients in less than 30 days anytime I want to, including Fortune 500, including Fortune 1000. Now I recruit IT. Um, so number one, I recruit top down and across. I do BD. I do BD, top down and across. So, um, I'll, and I do, I told you less is more. Um, so rather than going after 500 clients at the same time, I'm just going to go, I want 30 accounts. Which 30 would I love to work with? And why would I like to work with them? Do a little research. Okay. I've looked at their career section. They have lots of openings that are the kind of roles I fill. I know that this is an A player. Now, a B player in your market, as long as they have B expectations, can be a great account. Meaning if I rate a company an A, a B, a C, if an A client will pay A money and has an A company culture and can attract A talent, great. That's a great account. But if a company is, say, let's say that they're a B client, a B in the marketplace, their reputation's a B, they don't pay as much as an A. Whatever, as long as their expectation is that they can attract a B candidate. Boom, we got, we got magic. Okay. When you have a major problem is when a C client thinks they can get an A candidate and they're not willing to pay for it. That, that's not going to happen. That's not going to happen. Um, but go find a couple of good accounts. They can be some A companies. They can be some B companies. Okay, good. I got 30. I want to go after them. I'm going to do org chart. I'm going to build out an org chart on each one. So just, I want 7 to 8 target contacts within each company. So CIO, CTO, CISO, that's the chief information officer, the chief technology officer, the chief information security officer, VP of apps, director of enterprise applications. And then that's top down in the IT org, right? Top down. And the C-level, VP-level, director-level. Okay. I've got 5 contacts. Perfect. Now I'm going to go across. Chief HR officer, director, or VP of talent acquisition. Director and higher are decision makers. Manager and lower are people that try to filter you out, that don't give you the time of day, that tell you they're not adding any vendors right now. That's, that's the people you're talking about, manager and under. Stay clear of them. Don't even, don't even outreach them at all. So top down and across. And then, um, I'll do a little research. I'll know what openings they have. Taking a great candidate to market absolutely still works. It worked 20 years ago. It works right now. Take a great candidate to market. That works. In the US, we call that an MPC, most placeable candidate. You're taking a real candidate to the market. But the way you do it matters, right? So, um, two little tips for your group. Uh, make a phone call because no one's going to answer anyway. Make a quick phone call, leave a quick voicemail. That sets up your email subject line. That's all it does. No one is going to pick up the phone anymore. The chances of it happening, I mean, be ready, just fall down and fall out of your chair if someone picks that up, but they're probably not going to. But your subject line on your email can be regarding the voicemail that I just left for you. Well, that creates curiosity. That makes people want to open your email. Number one, a lot of emails that people are sending aren't even getting opened. So half the battle, 70% of the battle is just, did they at least open it? Okay. Now, if they open it, what does it say at the very top that hopefully is going to catch their attention? And so, you know, people that are good at marketing have better subject lines and they realize that they have a very limited amount of time to get someone's attention. So if that person's local and came from a top competitor or a company in a similar industry, if it's a food and beverage company and you tell them, hey, this person worked at Nestlé. Or Cadbury Schweppes. Hey, you've given yourself an advantage because I've got a, uh, this is an SAP, uh, uh, leader that coming from a top competitor that lives in your same city. So proximity, industry, um, and you hit it right at the top. I'm representing this person to help them, um, confidentially, uh, make a move in the market. You know, your company came up as one of the, uh, the top 3 or 4 companies this person would be the most interested in. They love to hear something like that. That's a little one-liner that can really help. But the magic of having the right email and setting it up, that's, that's a good golden nugget. The second golden nugget is email multiple people at the same time. And too many recruiters don't do this. They just, they email the CIO, then they email the VP, then they email the director. Not me. I email them at the same time and I put them on a CC. So I'll email the CIO and I will purposefully CC the VPs and the talent acquisition people on the same email. First of all, they know that I know 7 of their key people and I know their email addresses, and you'd rather have a great recruiter on your team than not on your team. And then, and then the other thing is people want to, uh, human nature, understanding human nature is very important to getting a response. So the human nature is that 1 or 2 people on that email are going to want to be protective of those other people. That's what elicits a response, right? And that director of talent acquisition does not want you emailing their people. And so what people have to ask themselves is, do you want to be easily forgotten, easily ignored, and kind of an obscure person in the marketplace? Or do you want to be someone that elicits a response? Well, in my experience, the people that just are easily forgotten, easily deleted, easily ignored, just press delete, press ignore, press block. They're not breaking through in any real way. They're not going to land that account. What do you have to lose? What are you so afraid of when you aren't going to get that account anyway? So do something different. Do something different. You need to poke the bear. And so when you do this email this way, how can you get in trouble when you don't, you don't know their rules yet? And that's what you tell them if they want to slap your hand. I didn't know who the right decision maker was. Many of my accounts, I work directly with the CIO. You're also subtly shaping that you're not a vendor recruiter, that you are a high-level recruiter that works directly with key decision makers. I'm not afraid to talk to VPs and CIOs and directors. Um, uh, because, and those are the kind of firms that are more likely to get an executive search. You want to land bigger searches with bigger fees, or do you want to be in a vendor bucket calling into HR, calling into a low-level talent acquisition person? Because how you, how you go in shapes everything about what they think about you. Right. Everything about what they think about you. So if you want them to perceive you to be a high, um, a high-level recruiter that does executive-level search that works with the VP and C-suite, well then go in that way. Right? Go in that way if that's how you want to be perceived. Do you want to land 30% fees in executive retained searches, getting money on the front end that are totally exclusive, where you have a 97% chance to make the deal? Or do you want to maybe get the table scraps of making a deal 1 out of every 8 against 5 other firms working on the same job? You know, and get very good at your language, uh, your, how descriptive you can be to companies. Because to me, working on a search with HR only, being in your vendor program with zero access to the actual decision makers on this job, um, against 5 other recruiters at the same time, that's like sitting in dirty bathwater. And I have, I have no interest. I have no interest in that kind of a partnership. And that's the language I use, uh, partnership. Um, because when we go in to work with a company, we want to be a partner, not a vendor.

There was so— you dropped so much gold there, Jeremy. I'm wondering where to dig deeper into. Well, I've got a question. Now, just wondering, I really am curious because the sending, you know, all the decision makers in one email is like, I've never heard that before, Jeremy. And you said the human nature is that one will come in to protect the other. So can you play out what happens past that point and like what the strategy is? Because in my brain, the bear, and it's going to be hard to now turn it around, but you obviously have a strategy. And so what is it?

Oh, when I, when I train, it's not as invasive as we think it is, right? We're so worried about calling someone and we're so worried about getting in trouble or crossing a line or whatever. Stop that. They don't know you, you don't know them. And how can you get in trouble yet? You don't know anything about them. You don't know who the decision makers are. And some companies do. In fact, work where you can work directly with the, uh, the VP of that group. But then some companies it's all HR driven and it's very talent acquisition driven, but you don't know that right now. Right. Um, so I have actual screenshots where I've landed accounts with this exact strategy and I show it when I train in public. I just, I'll show them the actual screenshot. Uh, so how it oftentimes it plays out. Um, I've had, I've had VPs and C-levels forward it to the appropriate person. And say, hey, this is a firm I want you to work with. Can you call them? When it, when it comes from the VP, from the C-suite, and they tell, they tell talent, talent acquisition serves, they serve the departments of the company. They, they, their, their customer is that CIO. That's the customer of internal talent acquisition. So when they tell them that, and it's also their budget, it's not a general HR budget that pays a recruiting fee. It's that IT budget that pays it. So when they say, hey, I want you to call that person, so that often happens. And then also I've had directors of talent acquisition immediately reply back and say, I'm your person, let's set up a call. It's not always negatively received. And occasionally someone, occasionally someone gets a little twisted and they get all, get all huffy on you, right? And when that happens, you just say, look, I have no idea who to work with out there. That's why I included several of you. I don't know who the best decision maker is to assign a new partner. We're a specialty firm that does exactly what you guys are needing. And a lot of the clients we work with, we work directly with the VPs and CIOs on the IT side. But if you guys are a company that's more talent acquisition, I'm happy to work with a partner, you know, with whoever I need to, you know, and then you're off and running, right? But, but now you've gotten a response. Now you're in a real conversation. And in the day and age that we're in, you know, 20 years ago, you, someone would just pick up the phone and you could have a call. You could work your magic on all your objections and all your verbal, you know, whatever your magic. Well, now it's like, how do you even get someone to respond is, is really what it is because you have to get into a conversation. So that way that I'm showing you is, is the cold outreach way to get communication. The other thing that people do in 2026 that we didn't have to do 25 years ago is branding. So firms that are really good at building a brand, because I have companies that just find our website that, that they just know that we're one of the top SAP recruiting firms in the, in the world or in the country. But that took 20 years to build a brand. It's hard to build a brand in 6 months or 12 months or 18. So if you're a rookie, brand building ain't the way to go. Now you could start trying to do podcasts and build your brand, but your, your brand is going to take a little while. That's a long-term strategy. That's a, that's an over-time strategy. But this, if you're a rookie, this is how you get in companies right now.

Love it. And so out of all the successful clients that you've won, Jeremy, would you say the majority of them are using that strategy where you're copying multiple people and it's not like a one-on-one basis? Am I right in saying that?

Yeah, yeah, I've been using this technique for over 10, 15+ years, and I've landed a lot of accounts this way. Uh, whether you'd say that, what was the magic that landed the account? Taking a great candidate to the market. That has worked a lot for me, knowing which openings they have. Um, and then having a, telling them of, uh, how you've placed that exact role, how many times in the last 2 or 3 years, which companies. So we will name drop the company, uh, the successful placements because The more that they know you've filled exactly these roles for other companies that we're aware of that are similar to us, similar geographies, similar industry vertical, we know your rep is checkable. The more that you can answer the things that they might rule a firm out on. So the more that you can hit that and answer that for them right away, like, hey, we're the firm. We are the firm. We're the most known firm that does these kinds of roles. Let me tell you why. You know, this is how many times we filled that role. This is who we filled them with. If you need references, we're reference checkable with, you know, I just, it might seem overkill, but I just want, and rather than tell them the 40 or 50 companies we've worked with, I just cherry pick. I look at, cause I do national, we do national and we even have clients in other countries. But, um, so let's just say in the US that I'm going after a client in Chicago. I would pick, um, 2 or 3 companies that I've worked with in Chicago to say that we work with those accounts. And then I'll also pick, uh, let's say that I'm going after Pepsi, which is in Chicago. Then I would also pick 2 or 3 food and beverage companies regardless of where they're at to let them know, hey, by the way, I work with this food and beverage company and this one and this one, and we really understand CPG, right? So I would say proximity, proximity and industry vertical. I like to hit them both, uh, in any BD email that I'm putting out.

Interesting. I love that. Yeah. It's funny because a lot of people would just go MPC and that's it, but I feel like you're taking it to another level by going into more specificity there, Jeremy, and kind of framing other competitors as well. I think that's very clever. Yeah.

And I think the language of, you know, my firm is confidentially representing this person in the market. Your company was really highlighted as one that they would be highly interested in. That language is very good. It really works. And the other thing is all of us know that, that have worked the phones and that have lots of calls is you get market intel. Like you get intel on who just left a company, who just resigned. They went from this company to that company and you know, right when it happened, you sometimes know that they've accepted a job before their employer does, or you know, before it's public knowledge. Also, you will use those golden nuggets on BD for sure. When you know something that people shouldn't know yet, like the other day, I knew that a CIO had resigned. A contact at SAP America had let me know about it. And it wasn't even public knowledge. So man, I was doing BD that day, talking to some key players at that company. And I said, it's my understanding that you may be looking for a new CIO. And, but they, I don't tell them how I know that. It's like you're a journalist and you're protecting your sources at this point. But when you know something that most people are not going to know, that is another really good way in. And they're like, oh my God, how does this person know this information? That is an insider. That's an industry insider. And that's exactly why you want to be partnered with us as a search firm. Uh, we, we know information like this all over your industry. Uh, this is just one nugget I knew, but that, that we're filled with that kind of information. And that's the— that's why you want to be working with a search partner that really knows your space.

Love that. And I was thinking the other way to do that as well, because a lot of recruiters have said this in the past, is, is just speaking to candidates in, in different businesses and getting that intel and then maybe taking that intel to the top or to other people. Um, but yeah, I love that. I think that's a really good— I think that's a brilliant strategy.

It's a lost art, but in my original training which I was MRI, Management Recruiters International. They had 1,200 offices in the world, 800 or 900 in the US, 300 international. But they trained us way back when to squeeze the orange, squeeze the orange, squeeze the orange. Any live conversation is, is a rare opportunity. You know, most, most great recruiters have 8 to 10 live calls in a day. We have tons of voicemails and tons of emails and tons of whatever else is, but how many live calls do you have in a day? And so squeezing the orange when you have a great candidate on the phone that you know is highly placeable, like this is someone that someone would pay a fee for. And not all candidates are like that. In fact, I would say less than 10% are like that. That their job stability is good. They've worked at some great organizations. Their soft skills are outstanding. Uh, they have a true motivation to make a move. They're very reasonable in their expectation. They, there's, they fit every little thing that this is a placeable person for a fee. But when you do, ask them, what 10 companies would you love to work for and why? Do you have any friends that left that used to work where you work that went to somewhere else that you stay in touch with? Oh yeah, tell me who they are. They're giving you a recipe of 10 target companies to literally take them to. And then when you take them to market, you can honestly say, not fake say, you can honestly say your company was one of the ones they are the most interested in. Uh, we talked earlier about, in fact, I know that, I know that so-and-so joined your company, used to work with them. And then boom, you're connecting the dots. That's the, it's a more sophisticated approach that a lot of entry-level recruiters aren't going to take.

Yeah, brilliant. I absolutely love that approach. Um, it's brilliant. And it's also, it shows the power of a good, when you have one good candidate and as you say, you're squeezing the orange, shows you actually how much leverage you have. If you have one good candidate and you ask the right questions like you do, Jeremy, it's like you're right. You've got like 10, I don't know, you've got 7 to 10, maybe even more accounts that you could start conversations with that you never would have been able to previously, which is great.

And you're only limited by your creativity of the questions you can ask these folks, right? Because you can say, where else are you interviewing? Oh yeah, I just want to know because I don't want to take you to, I don't want to get involved with a company that you're already, you know, in at. But it's telling you that they're interviewing people exactly like that. Well, how many other people like that are you also talking to? Now, you know, another, you know, 2, 3 companies that they're interviewing with and that they're also looking for someone. So you're, you're getting real-world, real-time market intel. Um, are you, are you being represented by a recruiter? Okay. Now, you know that whichever firm is willing to pay a recruiting fee. Okay. How many times have you been put to work by a recruiter? You talk about a question I don't know very many recruiters ever ask. And how many of us know for a fact that there's a lot of people that can get an interview that can, that just aren't worth a fee. They're not worth a fee because the minute a company's gonna pay a fee, that person needs to be a top 10 percentile type of candidate. And some people are always bridesmaids. They always get the interview and they never get the offer. And then there's other people that if they do 10 interviews, they get the offer 9, 9 outta 10 times. Mm-hmm. Right. And so a very Interesting question to just ask people is, have you ever been placed by a search firm before? Oh yeah. Really? How many times? Oh, oh my God. So you know the value of working with a recruiter. That's great. Really what you just found out is that's a candidate that's been placed 4 times by a recruiting firm already. Wow. That, that person knows how to interview. They know how to get the offer. That's, that's an A-player. And, and, and a company has sized them up because if I hire someone, a risky hire without a fee, HR found them, found them at a career fair, unemployed person, whatever, they look pretty good. Let's hire them. There's not a big risk because I'm not paying a $50,000, $70,000 fee. Okay, lower risk, would take a chance on them. All of a sudden they're paying a fee. They're being real picky all of a sudden, right? And you're like, you're telling yourself, if HR had found this person, they'd already been hired. Why are they, why are they not hiring my person? Yeah, well, they have a different bar, believe me. And there's a recruiting fee involved. And so that is just a magic question. How many times have you been placed by a search firm?

I love that question. Never heard that before. I really I really love that, Jeremy. Um, I was going to go back to the pinnacle for a second. Ben, have you got any other questions before I kind of did? Yeah, I did want to go because Jeremy's got a really good framework for helping recruiters to sell retain, which I think could be really, really valuable. If we could tap into that, I'd really appreciate it. Um, Jeremy, what's your— because, you know, there's a lot of recruiters that swear by contingent. There's some that want to do retain but don't know how. I think one of the biggest issues I come up against is recruiters don't know how to sell it, they don't have to position it, they don't have the confidence. And I feel like a framework would be helpful, or some sort of like step-by-step system. What is it? Maybe you could share us, what is it that you're doing to sell retained?

This is a really simple framework that I think anyone could try. And even if you're unsuccessful in selling retained, this framework will give you really good information, right? And so You really just want any given company that you're talking to, to list in order of importance, 3 things, right? And people love 3s, right? And they love little rankings, right? So you can write this down on a piece of paper. Rank in order of importance these 3 things. Um, sense of urgency to fill. So that's time, right? That's time. Sense of urgency to fill. And then ask them questions. Oh yeah, really? Why? Tell me more about that. What would happen if you didn't fill, have this role filled by X time? So now you're squeezing the orange for information around pain. The number one motivator that companies and that people have, they have, they're more motivated to remove pain than they are to gain pleasure, right? So pain points, right? How does this create challenges and problems for your company, for your department? So that's the first one is, uh, time and sense of urgency. Number two. Is how important is it, how critical is the role to your organization? And I think younger recruiters, less experienced recruiters will think, well, those two sound very similar, don't they? No, they're totally different. How critical a role is to your organization is how much damage could be done if you hired the wrong person, right? A critical search oftentimes is director, VP, or C-level. And that we cannot afford to get a mishire on this one. Your janitor, you could have no custodial service at all. And you have a big event coming up a week later. That is an extreme sense of urgency to fill, but it's not a critical role to the company. Okay. That's an example. All right. And I love to have analogies and metaphors when I'm talking to companies, it really helps them to understand what are we talking about here. Right. And then the third thing is perceived cost per hire. And that's exactly how I say it. And there's a reasoning for that language. You know, what is your perceived cost per hire? And so they'll, they'll say, what, what do you mean? What do you mean perceived cost per hire? I said, well, cost per hire, they usually just think that's a recruiting fee, right? And that's part of the formula to figure out a cost per hire for sure. But how do you quantify the financial damage that it does to the department or the company if that role is open for 3 months, 4 months, 5 months, as opposed to 30 days?

Right?

So that's part of your perceived cost per hire. If, if you create stress and anxiety on a very lean team that's understaffed and overworked, and then you don't fill this role for 5 months because you go, well, our small team can handle it, they'll just have to work harder. Now you have retention issues and you push other people out the door. You have potential to lose other people, right? Because, uh, that role shouldn't be open. It needs to be filled so that it can, uh, bring the team up to the size it should be at, right? From a workload perspective. That's, that's part of that. And then your internal, your internal people, uh, you're paying your internal recruiters and they're using ads and they're paying for Indeed and they're paying for LinkedIn and they're paying for tools. Well, what about this? If your ratios of, let's say that your internal team As 10, they've had 10, 20, 25 people interview over the last 45 days and none of them are getting to offer stage. Well, when you have ratios that bad, you have internal people at the director and VP and C-level. What is their time worth? Wow. You're talking people's time that are sitting in there doing 10, 20, 30 interviews. It is worth $300, $400, $500 an hour. And they're doing all these interviews, not getting to offer stage. Wow, that all of that goes into your perceived cost per hire, right? When you use a great recruiting firm, they find 5 people that all hit the target, right? That when you interview them, like, wow, we could have hired 2 or 3 out of that group. And then your time and energy spent way lower. And then we use our tools and resources that we pay for, not you. And then, and then sense of urgency and time. But the reason we just asked those 3 things is it doesn't matter what order they put them in, guys. You're not trying to convince them of what order they should put them in. And you don't care. I just want to know realistically, what order, Mr. Hiring Authority, would you put them in? Uh, is, is perceived cost per hire number 1? Okay, let's talk about that. Why? Um, oh, I have a very limited budget and I know that we don't pay recruiting fees very high. At least you know what you're dealing with now. All right. And so I've learned over the years, no matter what order they talk about, I've now got information as to how critical the role is, the pain points, the sense of urgency, the why. And if you don't seem like a salesperson, if you're in a conversation where they told you all that information and you go, this is how you close based on what you said about how urgent the role is. And how you said that it's a critical role to the organization and you can't afford to get it wrong and you need it filled quickly. And you did put perceived cost per hire last, but based on what you said, I highly recommend that you go with an executive retained search on this one. Does that make sense? Shut up. Based on what you said, I highly recommend. And shut up. Does that make sense? And then if they go, yeah, you're in business. And then if they go, well, I'm still not sure because we haven't paid, you know, retainers before. And our firm, I know for a fact we don't pay retainers. You say, hey, look, we don't even call it that. You know, we call it an engagement fee and it can be a small nominal amount. The point is skin in the game. and that we're the only firm working on this. Now I can go to market. This is a very high-level role. When I can go to market saying that I've been retained, I don't have to play hide the client. I can go into the market leading with the opportunity in the company. It empowers the recruiter to do their job better. Um, I, uh, my reputation's on the line. I can't fail on a, on a retain search where over 98% fill. And so, um, uh, you have invested in my time where Rather than work on 10 clients' opportunities and do 10% on each, that is basically in effect what is happening when you go contingency. I have 5 clients, 20% across 5 different companies. You're paying for 20% effort from 5 different companies. And here you are thinking that it's 5 is better. No, 5 is not better. And when, when 5 different companies go into the market and in less than 3 days they hear Oh, I've already been contacted by XYZ company about the same job. It only takes 2 or 3 times of that and then they stop calling. They're like, oh, there's too many other firms on this. I'm going to go put my attention somewhere else. So you wonder why you get this sudden influx of candidates and then it drops off. You're describing to the company, you're educating them as to this is what happens when you use 5 different firms at the same time, right? Mm-hmm. The language of retainer versus engaged doesn't matter. So when they seem very skittish about retained, just say, look, engage, engagement fee is fine. $5,000 engagement fee. It's not a problem to us. We aren't getting rich off of the $5K. We just need the ability to go into the market to say you've been retained by, and we need to know that we have exclusivity because now my reputation's on the line. I'm 100% all in. We're going to go knock this search out for you. Right. If it's that big of a deal to your group, I don't mind putting some language in where I will give you a guarantee, uh, on your engagement fee. Meaning if we fail to deliver 5 candidates that meet all of your requirements, genuinely interested to talk to you, in your comp target, if we fail to do that, I'll give it back to you. Does that sound fair?

That's a pretty good, uh, yeah.

Yeah.

So you can't really say no to that one, isn't it? It's like, um, I've only had to give one back in 15 years.

It was a search that we did. for a pepper sauce company in Louisiana, in a very small city. And it just wasn't any target companies that close. And, um, let them, let them see you be human. I have failed one time on a search and I had to give the money back. But the good news is I'm reference checkable that I actually paid them back if you want to call me, you know, I mean, uh, the, the truth of the matter is if you, if stats help to sell as well, that, um, 97% of our placements, uh, 97% of retained searches have been placed by our firm. Um, whereas on contingency, it's roughly 30%. And that's not because a firm is bad. There's a variety of factors, right? Uh, one factor is that, um, contingency doesn't cost a company. It costs them nothing to waste your time. Think about that. It costs a company nothing to waste your time. That's so true. They will sometimes tell you 2 weeks later, oh shit, I forgot to tell you that that role was filled. 2 weeks? You kidding me? Of your time and energy? Wow. And it happens, right? So just remember all of that about the contingency versus the retain. And so even if you're unsuccessful, right, I'll tell you 2 ways that you can still use this to your advantage. When they say we won't pay, if price is number one and that's their biggest issue and they say, we know that our fees are low and Jeremy, honestly, we can't pay more than 20% fee on this. And I know a lot of recruiters want, want that bigger fee. You say, look, I don't, I can't guarantee that I can get my boss to approve this. Okay. But if I could get my boss to agree to a 20% fee, this is an if I, will you close. If I could get my boss to agree to that, would you be willing to do a $5K engagement fee and do exclusive? And I, if I could get it at 20% total fee, uh, we'll apply the $5K to the, as a credit to the invoice. So it's a 20% fee. And I don't know that I can do it, but if I could, would you? And then now you, you, you framed yourself as that firm that they really want. I want that. Oh, I wish I could have that firm. I just know, I don't know if we can afford them. That's the kind of firm. See, lawyers are really good at this. Lawyers. Uh, that's, that's professional services. They, um, they do not work for free, right? Lawyers get retainers all the time and lawyers are very good at, like, you'll sit with them and you're like, oh my God, that's the firm I need. I want them. That's who I need, but I don't know if I can afford them. So recruiters need to be better at how do we pitch why you should be working with us. We need to be better at educating them at these different models and the behaviors that the, the, the effort of the search firm is directly reflective of the pricing model, you know, and they don't oftentimes know that they need people to tell them that the effort of the search firm is directly reflective of the pricing model. So when you put people into vendor programs and don't allow them to talk to hiring authorities and they get to see a job description on email only, and they're in the vendor portal, uh, working with HR against 10 other firms, don't be surprised when the behavior matches exactly what you put in place.

Hmm. Well, that was a mini masterclass in positioning and retainer and how to sell. Jeremy, thank you so much for that. That was epic. I was gonna ask one more question, but I know you have a call, Jeremy, in 4 minutes. So I think we probably—

we can always do a part 2 later on. I'd love to, you know, let the audience really, you know, digest all of that information. You know, and we let several months go by even, but if y'all ever want to do a part 2, man, happy to do it.

I think we should—

Sam and Ben, definitely thanks for having me on today.

Yeah, thanks.

You do.

I mean, this was an epic podcast. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on, my friend. And I'm sure the guests listening will leave with a ton of value. So really appreciate it, mate. Hey guys, thanks for tuning into 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.