This guy billed £8,000,000 over 10 years and he's mastered landing and expanding!

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 Gulshan Budhu. Gulshan has managed to bill £8 million over a 10-year period, and he is an absolute master at penetrating large accounts. In today's episode, Gulshan's going to be giving us his exact strategies of how you initially penetrate large accounts. He's also going to be covering how you successfully land and expand, and Gulshan's going to be telling us a bit about the mindset it requires to build such high numbers. Hope you enjoy the episode, guys. And as usual, grab a cuppa or a glass of wine depending on when you're listening to this, and let's get 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.

Gulshan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, my friend. How are you?

Very good, very good. Thank you, Ben. Pleasure. Um, yeah, looking forward to it.

Awesome. I feel really privileged, I have to say, Gulshan, because I remember me and Sam have put like 3 or 4 posts out asking for guests, and almost every single time Mark was like, Gulshan, Gulshan. But he literally mentioned you like 4 times, and I was like, oh my God, we gotta get this dude on. So I'm just privileged that we finally got you, and thank you, Mark, for being so persistent. He obviously really believes in you, uh, G, otherwise he wouldn't have spent so much time.

So I appreciate it, Mark. Yeah, we worked together for a long time. Um, I would love to say I've taught him everything he knows, but, um, he's a smart guy, so he's, he's done very well for himself.

Yeah, awesome. So let's jump into the first question, which is what's the number one tool in your toolkit, whether it be a mindset, strategy, or software?

Yeah, see, this, this is a kind of a a tough one to answer because there's not really any one tool. But if I had to say the most important tool, it's a mindset, I'd say it'd be knowledge. And what I mean by knowledge is if you meet anyone who's successful in anything, um, they have a high knowledge of that subject, right? And in recruitment, what that means is it's not only knowledge of recruitment and the recruitment processes and how recruitment works, but also the knowledge of your market, what you're placing, the technology you're placing, as well as the marketplace and the conditions around the market. So knowing if you're working in a, in a particular geographical area or particular niche, just understanding when you're speaking to people what that is about and understanding exactly the conditions of your market. So which companies are based in your location, and you can kind of understand where you know, where people could go, where you could place people, and you can understand what you're talking about when you're talking to people. So I think knowledge is probably the one key thing. I think if you have good knowledge, you can navigate yourself around in recruitment. That's, that's the number one thing for me.

Love that. And I have a feeling it's not— because knowledge, I don't think we've had knowledge before, which is interesting. And yeah, is knowledge— do you think knowledge is only gained through experience, like just the graft on, on ground level, or do you think there's a way to increase or speed up that ability to learn, if that makes sense?

Yeah, so when you start recruitment, you'll always have your classroom-style training. When you join any business, um, recruitment business, they will develop you, they will give you what you need to get off to a good start. But to develop those skills comes from experience. Every experience you go through working with a client, with speaking to candidates, it adds to your knowledge. But There's stuff you can do like research into what companies are in your area, what technologies do they use, how is it relevant to your services. All of this can be done without experience. You can go out and learn this. So when I say knowledge, it's you'll get basic knowledge from your, from whoever you work for through training and whatnot, but you can always develop yourself by understanding, get involved in your market, understand who are the best consultants, understand which are the companies recruiting in itself, which are the companies that use the technology that you're placing. Um, so when I say knowledge is like become an expert, try and understand more about what you're doing and work more about the geographical or technology you're placing. So yeah, of course, experience always, you know, you get more and more experience as the years goes on, you go through more, more different situations and challenges and that builds on it. But I think if you want to be If you have the mindset, I need some more knowledge on what I'm doing, you'll always get better. You know, I think that's, I think that's the number one. There are so many other tools, you know, that can aid you. But I think that's for me, I think that's that mindset of having the right knowledge will put you in a good step for success. Love that.

That brings us into a lovely transition onto question 2. And when you told me this, I was super impressed, Karl-Chan. So you said you've built about $8 million over 10 years. So that's about an average of an $800K billing year on year, which is pretty insane.

Yeah.

And I was going to— I mean, this is quite a tough question because it's probably not one thing that contributed to your success. I'm guessing it was a number of things. But what me and Sam are always interested in are the activities. Like, what were you doing in terms of the activities that allowed you to consistently hit those numbers? Were you just making like an insane number of cold calls every day? Were you learning about your market for 3 hours a day? Like, if there were some key activities that made the biggest difference, what were they, do you think?

Yeah, so I wish it was an average of 800 every year, but it was a peak and a trough, right? You have some very good— you have some very good years, and then you have years where are not so good. But I think there's kind of like 4 areas, um, I'd say you could put this down to. 4 key activities. So I'll mention them first and I'll dive in. So first one would be knowing and staying in touch with your market. The second one would be belief. The third one would be hard work and the fourth one will be discipline. So when I say knowing and staying in touch with your market, um, and what I mean by that is like forging relationships with both candidates and clients and understanding who the decision makers are. Now, that's knowing the market, staying in touch with them. So you've got to put yourself in a position to get that, what I call recruitment luck. And that is, you know, you'll, you'll stumble— I say stumble across an opportunity, but if you're always in touch with the right people and making, you know, knowing who your market is and being in touch with them, you'll create that luck and you'll be in the right place at the right time and be able to capitalize on that. you know, on that opportunity that's presented. If you don't know who you're calling and if you don't stay in touch with them, you're never going to get to that stage. So I think that's one thing I did. So if I knew there was a business recruiting and if I knew who the candidate— who the candidates are that works in that particular market, I would know, I would get to know them and I would stay in touch with them because there's going to be an opportunity at one point. So that's, that's the first part. Belief. Now, it's a bit cliché, but everyone who I manage, or even myself, belief changes throughout a whole year, right? You could start the year, put 3 placements in in your first month, your belief level is up here, you believe in yourself. Then sets in the first month of doing a blank, kind of thing. Okay, yes. Then the second month of doing a blank, then your belief in yourself, your belief in what you're doing kind of goes down the trajectory. So when I say belief is you have to believe in yourself, you have to believe in what you're doing, because that's a big part of your mindset to, to keep at that high numbers. Because I've been through a lot of cases where I've seen people in my team where they— that after the second month, their whole demeanor changes, their whole approach to recruitment changes, you know, and they get desperate and they start doing desperate activities. So I always coach people inside to believe in themselves, believe in what you're doing, even if the results aren't coming. So I think that's, you know, that's a big part of it. Now, when I say— people say hard work, um, what I mean by hard work is not what everyone thinks hard work is, where you just constantly— your activity level is just up here. That's not what hard work means. Hard work to me is doing the hard things. So what I used to do is if I wanted to break my day in well, I would take the most difficult phone calls I had to make that day and put them for first thing in the morning. And that would be, you know, calling a really difficult manager or, or, um, pitching a business I knew I would definitely get told, here's the door. It would be all the hard, like, the hard part of, of work. And then the other things would be entwined with hard work would be discipline. So that's the last part. So do the— be disciplined in your activities, which means do your, do your core BD. Even if you've got the smallest amount of business on, you haven't done any deals for the month and you want to close that, don't, don't shy away from the discipline, which is do all your BD calls in the morning and keep your numbers high and speak to your candidates in the afternoon and all of the other parts of admin, sending CVs. Always keep that in your framework. Keep disciplined and don't just throw it out the window just because you've got 2 hot roles that you think, okay, I can definitely make these deals this month, I'm gonna put all my effort into that. And then, you know, if they fall through, then all of the stuff you should have been doing to create more business is out the window. So hard work is doing all the hard parts of the job, the parts which are a bit shy away from, you know, making those calls to clients you know probably don't want to hear from you, who've never heard from you before, those cold calls. Taking some, extracting information from candidates, you know, but when you're building those relationships, trying to understand what's happening in the market, you know, asking for business leads, which is not the easiest thing for people to do, you know, all of that type of difficult activity or hard work, making sure you stay disciplined with that. And I found throughout my career, if I had the belief in myself, if I kept the discipline, if I knew who my market was, if I stayed in touch with my market, with my market, then I would always have an opportunity to make business. And it just so happened, because I was doing that, I came across some fantastic opportunities, um, which allowed me to, to make multiple placements with these customers. So yeah, those are the four areas. So, so staying— knowing and staying in touch with your market, belief, believing in yourself, and hard work and discipline. Keep those four pillars and you should be a high achiever. Love that.

I've got so many questions. I'll let Sam jump in because I've been talking about it. So I want to go—

I want to kind of dissect each one in more detail now. Gulshan, because that's a really great one. So knowing and staying in touch— I would love to know, uh, if I'm a new recruiter and you're coaching me, who do I stay in touch with and what is my process? Because it could be quite easy to mess that— make that a messy process and just call people and be like, have you got any jobs on? Okay, see you later. Like What is the process around that and how do you make it into a system that's not chaotic and just calling people up?

Um, that's a good question. I mean, I've, I've, I'll cover it in more detail later, but knowing your market, um, I mean, there's tools around you can use. Like, I use LinkedIn religiously, as everyone, every recruiter should, but you can do easy, easy searches to know what people sit in your market. You know, and then it's your, for example, if you're, I'll give you an example. If you're focusing on the Benelux or Belgium, for example, you wanna know every SAP program manager in that area. You can forge a list, you can make a list of these and that's you knowing who they are, right? That's you. Then you have to figure out a strategy of getting in touch with them. Now this could be a pure cold call. If you like to get kicked in the face every day, then just do that. I mean, a lot of people don't, But secondly would be like, look, just one thing I would suggest is look at their website, look at what they're hiring internally, as in permanently for their business, to see where they are lacking things, where they need people in-house. And it gives you a kind of talking point with these program managers to say, I understand you're looking permanently for these people. Have you looked, have you thought about contractors first? It gives you something to talk to them about. Or even, you know, if you hear, if you, if you see candidates working at these businesses, call them up and ask them about what their projects were. Can you talk to me about what you did at this customer? So you're gaining knowledge of what that business is doing. So when you go back to the hiring managers, you'll have something to talk about. Now, staying in touch, staying in touch is a difficult one because a lot of new recruiters, they don't know the boundary, right? And the boundary can be difficult for experienced recruiters as well. But what I usually do is, if a client, if you catch them at a bad time or they just don't want to speak, is to, before the phone call ends, is to ask when you can speak again and diary date it and send them an invite. Not necessarily are they going to pick up the phone again, but those points, you've got to kind of stay visible to them. So you've got to keep kind of softly getting in touch with them. And then diary-dacing it so they eventually have a good call with you. So there is— staying in touch is a difficult one. You know, some managers like a phone call and like a NASA, some managers strictly email. So you've got to kind of understand, you've got to ask the questions. How do you like to work with— how do you like to work with your suppliers? How do you like to work with the recruiters? And then tailor your approach to them. But staying in touch with the market from candidates will be just calling them. You know, you can call them for a referral, you can call them to see when they're next available. You can call them to any sort of type of, even a question about the area. Look, I've got a client who's looking at X, could you explain to me what this means? Because I know you're an expert in your area. That just helps build a relationship all the time you're speaking to a candidate because they're getting to know you and candidates like to talk about themselves a lot. So if you ask them stuff about their area, they're quite open to talk to you about that. So that's how I would kind of say knowing and staying in touch with your market.

Just for me.

Yeah.

Was there one particular way, Goshan, that— and you may have mentioned it already, but I'm just curious if there was like one way that you found was the most successful to get your foot through the door. Was it— can you let us know, was there one particular way that made up like, I don't know, 70, 80% of the volume of your work, or is it hard to say?

Yeah, the one particular way I, I thought worked well is when I had something to talk to them about which was relevant to them. So I would, before I needed to make an important call, I would speak to people within the business or within their projects. I would do a search for candidates working for that company, and I would gain as much information. And as I did at my introduction, I would just relate it to that. I understand you've recently completed a project in this area. So they were kind of like, 'Well, how does he know this?' type of thing. 'I don't even know who this guy is.' So it kind of put them on the back foot, and that would give me an opportunity to then start asking questions and then start telling them about a bit about me and how I can benefit them. So I think, like, that's what I said, knowledge as my first point. Having that knowledge and having information puts you in a strong position to open a door. So I always— I— there were times where I thought, you know what, let's, let's just do some cold calling today, blind calling. Um, because I like to be abused. No, but that's how it— but sometimes you, you do that and then you would realize that really doesn't work. You can't just call anyone up and say, hi, my name's Joe Blogs and this is what I do. I currently have this candidate available, would it be interesting to you? The phone goes straight down. That's everyone— anyone can do that. So you have to kind of have something for them to have their ears opened and they want to listen to you. So that's why I say that the best thing to do is always go into a conversation with some armory, you know, always go in with something that is going to keep them interested and keep them there. No, if someone called up you guys and talks about your business, I know you've done this with this, this with this person, this with this person, you're instantly going to be, oh, hold on, this, this guy knows a bit, let me spend a bit more time with him. So that's, that's how I look at it.

Yeah, that's a really good point. Um, and absolutely, when someone's DMing me, when they mention the podcast, it's like they've instantly got my attention. It's like, oh, I've seen your podcast. I'm like, state. Um, but that, that's a relatively easy look. They just have to go into our podcast. I suspect it's a little bit harder in your world, Gartan. But what I've always struggled with is like the balance between research and, and activity of like actually calling, if that makes sense. Like, that's the thing, I've— it's hard to know what the right balance is. Um, is there— could you put a balance on it in terms of how much research you do compared to actual calling?

Well, the—

everything is intertwined. So for example, say I wanted to call GSK, because I know they're doing a project. I could, I could entwine my candidate activities, so speak to every— so candidates who have worked for GSK or working for GSK, to get their availability, to get what they're doing, but also to get information on the company, see, and to get also information about the market. So I could do everything together and, and kind of put my research into the actual activities I need to do. So There's ways you can just pair things up together, but there is a chance that you can do a— you can misbalance and spend too much time researching that, that by the time you make that phone call, you don't even get through to the guy. When you do, he tells you that he's not interested. So you have to find the balance. And that's why when I think if you, if you add in other activities whilst researching, then you're, you're hitting kind of killing a bird with— what's the saying?

Killing two birds with one stone.

I was gonna say killing a bird with two stones, like killing, um, Um, what's it, um, killing two birds with one stone.

So that's something.

Yeah, that's what I would do.

Yeah, cool, awesome. Go ahead, Sam.

No, I'm just curious, so that's really, that's really interesting in terms of what you said, Gulshan, which is like everything intertwining everything. So you're trying to, you're trying to get hold of a hiring manager or get into a business, might as well call as many candidates, get, get some new candidates, get some market research and then potentially get some information that you can then approach hiring managers with. Um, what was the most valuable information? Am I right in saying that you would, you would grab, um, uh, information from candidates and then approach hiring managers with that information? What was the most, um, valuable information that you would usually get a hiring manager to be like, ah, okay, I'll pay attention, out of interest?

So I would always look at, so say I was speaking to a candidate who'd been on a project or was working for them, I'd always ask them to, I'd always say to them, look, I'm very interested in what you've done for this company. It seems quite similar to a company, what a company I'm speaking to is about to do. Could you describe to me what you did in this project? So in that way, they're kind of giving me what the project was about. Then I could ask questions about how big was your team, when did the project start, you know, how long was the project, did you roll out to any countries or was it just in that one location? So you're kind of building a picture of that project and you knew the start date, you knew the end date, you knew how big the team was, you knew the successes. So then when you're going, I mean, that's just one part of it, but when you're going back to speak to that hiring manager, you can then go back to that and say, look, I understand you've recently completed this Project X. You know, you started it then, it was successful, went to this time, it went for a year and a half. I understand that the reason you did that is this is what you were trying to achieve. Um, and this, this, um, marries up quite well with what I do. This is what I do. So it gives you a— you're talking to them about something they, they've been through, so they understand, and it gives you a door to open to talk about what you can help them with, but it's always project related, right? Because in contract IT recruitment, it's people have a project they need to deliver within a certain timeframe. So if you're talking to hiring managers about projects and what they're doing, that's— they're interested to understand that you understand what their business is doing. So they give you a bit more time of the day to hear what you have to say.

Cool.

So it'd be more about the nature of the project, the business case behind it. The success of it, the timeline, that type of thing.

Cool.

And I'm guessing, were they always looking for contractors? Like, was that always a pain point for them, that they needed good, good contractors?

Or what was—

Yeah, I mean, the thing is, when you— when especially in SAP and IT recruitment, when SAP is a business application, so it's, it's going to be a long-term and quite, quite a niche area. And companies generally, unless you're like a Shell or or a company has used this for years, not, not a lot of them have in-house people because it's just that it's project related. So unless they're doing— nobody wants to sit there and just do maintenance all the time, so they have to hire in contractors. But these large projects, you know, they're going to be gaps everywhere. So it's you just understanding the roadmap of what, what time frame they're going to do this, when it moves on to next, where the resource gaps are going to be. And that's where these conversations open up to when you have knowledge about what they're doing. Love that, man.

And I've got one more question, uh, well, plenty more questions, Gulshan, but thank you for your answers, dude. Um, I— how do you get— because those candidates must get bombarded by recruiters potentially, so I'm wondering how you get them to—

what are—

you must be offering them something that incentivizes them to stay on the phone for those 10 minutes, 10-15 minutes. What is it that you're saying to them that makes them stay on the phone?

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's case by case, right? But, um, obviously the first thing you do is you offer them— you're offering them— you're trying to find out what their situation is. You're offering them opportunity. They might not be available on the market, right? But this is where I say, this is where your personality and your approach comes into play, because you have to kind of find a reason for them to open up about that project. So the way I would do it is say, look, 'Hope you don't mind, I've got this client who's doing whatever.' I'll look at their CV, whatever their skill is. I'll be like, 'They're going to start a program in this area, and what you've done at this customer seems really interesting. Could you just help me so I've got a bit more knowledge to go back to my client? Can you talk to me a bit more about this project?' Because people like talking about themselves. A lot of people like talking about themselves. So if you ask them to talk about what they've done, and you do it in the right approach— it has to be subtle, it has to be soft, you know, you can't be bullish. And then people do slowly open up. And if they say, look, would love to, don't have the time, then just, just, do you mind if I call you at the end of the day? It won't take long, 5-10 minutes. Just book a call back and get— and make sure you make that call. It's not going to happen every time. I don't keep everyone on the phone for ages, but you have to just know when to push and when to lean back, you know. That, that's, that's the art of working with people.

Yeah, cool, man. Great answer. Love that. So You, you, just to recap, you are going in, there's obviously tonality, there's timing. Yeah, but you're going in and, and saying, hey, I've got a similar project on with a client, it looks like you've done similar work, can you just tell me more about it so I can see if you're a good fit, basically? And then they slowly start opening up.

Yeah, but if they have already told you they're not available, then you know it's— you're not gonna have to say— you can say, look, I just want to gain a bit more knowledge when I get back to my client, can you tell me more about what you did on this project? Or you know, it just gives them an opportunity just to open up, and then you're kind of understanding more about the customer and what they've done there. So yeah, love that, dude.

That's great.

I'd love to jump on to question 3, uh, Gulshan, which is you mentioned, uh, landing and expanding as something that most recruiters fail to do properly. In fact, it's actually something that a lot of recruiters tell me as well. They feel like they could just be maximizing more from their existing client base. I know this was a particular skill for you for many years, but would you mind just walking us through your approach to landing, expanding, maybe the key aspects to landing and expanding successfully?

I'll try, I'll try. It's quite a tough—

I know it's not a simple process, but I think every recruiter—

what, when I say land and expand, I'm going to approach this from a new client perspective, but you can apply it to an existing client, but Usually in a contract recruitment, when you get a first placement, it's never through a procurement or, you know, a resourcement desk. It's usually you've spoken to a hiring manager, they've had, they've got an issue or they have needs and you found them a solution, you know, and then what happens is the hiring manager says, look, that's a perfect resource and then pushes you through to procurement. Procurement then speak to you about how to get the deal done. So that's usually the case. So the first step I always thought when I did, when the contractor's feet were safely under the desk, is I would first understand how the business recruits, right? So every business operates differently. Some might have a central recruitment desk that just shoots out to all their suppliers an email. Saying we need this. Some might have the hiring manager has full autonomy, goes out to whoever he feels like. Some, there might be an MSP in place, um, where, um, it's a Hays or a company like that who manage the whole process for them. Or some might have a portal where you log on to look at what requests have opened. So you need to understand firstly the recruitment process of the business, how they actually recruit. That's number one. I think secondly, you need to understand, um, once you've done that first placement, it's the larger picture. You know, you've got to assess the, the scale of opportunity. Um, you need to understand the technologies they use and for what function. You know, businesses are made up of finance, HR, whatever department. What is the tech they use for it? And you've got to assess where your services can fit into that business. Then thirdly, part of the land and expand is you need to understand the players, the shakers and movers. You need to understand the organizational setup from the top down. You need to understand who owns which domain and who makes the decisions. I think you need to position yourself as a partner rather than a supplier. So, and then once you— so that's the first part. That's what I call the gaining knowledge part. When you, when you have this knowledge, you kind of built a picture of how the business operates, then you can start to implement the strategy. So usually the first mistake recruiters make is they do their first placement into a business. Then I think they've got the license to work with that business. The first thing they do is they ask the question, do any of your colleagues need any help? Could you introduce me to your colleagues? That's probably the number one mistake I always see.

Interesting.

Why would anybody who doesn't— who's basically just found a solution from you, doesn't know you really that well, doesn't really trust you that much, why are they then gonna give you their network, their colleagues to work with, right? It's a new relationship. So this kind of over time will build, right? So I wouldn't suggest doing that. What I would suggest is you need to go out then and kind of use the tools around you. I mean, LinkedIn and Sales Navigator and all the tools, they can help you look at who works well in the business. And you can have conversations with your contacts to find out what these people do. But the part of the strategy next would be, like I said, I do with candidates, is to kind of speak to people on the ground. So, and that's it, that's internal employees. I would approach this quite cautiously. So you just want to kind of have a chat with them, maybe even in a way to like find out what their situation is. But your, your aim is to find out more about who runs what, you know, you can name drop a bit, but to find out what's the lay of the land, right? Yeah. And so that's, that's the first approach. Then I would focus once you've built these, these contacts, right? Once you've built the list of contacts, and you need, you need to get in touch with them. It's about telling a story next, right? So you have to, you have to clearly articulate the work you've done already and the business you've done so far, and show an understanding, and then show an understanding what their business, what their business does and what, what they're trying to achieve with this program. And then you need to pitch yourself where you can add benefit to them. And the benefits always, always come down to two things: saving them time and saving them money. But you have to understand how your services can reach that, reach what they need. Um, and, and then you've got to come out and kind of, you've got to kind of understand what, you know, how they work as well. You've got to kind of build a relationship with them. So you've got to understand when you can speak to them next. Are they, uh, can you diary date speaking with them? But all of this land and expand happens over time. The more— the better the job you do with a candidate— with a— sorry, with your contact, um, the more effective it is for them to introduce you to people. So I always look at it as get the information, understand how the business works, understand who you need to speak to, and then, and then tell your story. And then the more placements you do, the more stories you have to tell, and you just repeat this method with decision makers. Now, land and expand doesn't take You know, it's not a quick amount of time. Like, if you want to work with a company for years, you have to spend time building relationships with different hiring managers. So you just repeat this method, method. And also, you know, when you're speaking procurement, every contract recruiter doesn't like procurement because they don't like us. Their job is to facilitate a process. Our job is to push the process. So you need to kind of put find a relationship with them as well, right? So you need to, you need to speak to them and position yourself as a partner. Make sure they understand that you're not just somebody who's here to make some money. You're here to work with them and solve, and solve their problems. So it's quite a difficult one to answer, but I think if you, if you start with gaining the information and don't just head into it head-on— a lot of people, when they've done their first placement, they feel like, let's just call everyone in the business now. And you, what you do is you just ruffle feathers and end up pushing yourself away from the business. So you want to learn about the business, understand who the players are, and have the conversations and explain the benefits to these managers of working with you and what success you've already had with the business. You keep doing that and repeat that over various decision makers, eventually the opportunities will open up. And, you know, they might even start talking about you to each other. You know, I work with X, have you worked with them yet? No. Maybe you should. And that happened with me with one customer. I mean, I had, um, probably why Burgess recommends me, because I had 81 contractors in one client, and they didn't just come like that. I spotted an opportunity with one manager, and, um, I asked him what was needed. I asked him why. I did all the qualification. I placed 5 or 6 people in, um, I then did my research. I found a few other managers. I then told them my story, what I've done for them, found out if they ever needed anything. A couple of them, no. And, and then as more placements happen, I had managers from the business calling me saying, I've heard you've worked with my colleague here, well, I actually need this. So you, you need to just be able to, to tell your story to the right people and, and, and kind of have your your work spread around, you know, have people talk about what you're doing.

Really interesting.

Now, you did map that out really well, Gulshan. Yeah, absolutely. Difficult things.

My brain didn't think so.

No, no, it did. And my— so in my brain, it kind of— I was trying to think of like, if I was a recruiter trying to duplicate that and I had to jump on a phone right now, it would be You know, do penetrate one hiring manager, do a really good job, map out the lay of the land, as you said. Once you've done a really good job for that hiring manager, you then have ammo to potentially approach another hiring manager, but you do that in good time and with the right tone in the right way. Is that kind of what you did? And then you had some ammo to say, hey, I just did a really good job for Sally. 'Just wondering if you want to have a conversation about XYZ.' Yeah, correct.

That's, that's how it works. And you'll get, you'll get push internally from your business to say, 'What else are you doing with this business?' And it may force recruiters to, to push it too quickly. But the whole point is you've got to go off your merits of your work. So when you start doing a good job and you start telling other managers, 'This is what I've done for X,' or, 'This is what I've done for Sally,' then they can start listening. And then you can— it's just, it's down to you to map out where the, where the, um, requirements will come or where the opportunities will come. But it will come over time. So it's all about, it's all about the, the base work you put in, and then you can expand. You have to land properly.

Yeah.

When—

let's say you go back, let's say you're, you're— you've, you've just made that first hiring manager happy, or you've, you've delivered that result. You're now trying to get into you know, trying to get into the good books of a second hiring manager or someone else, another decision maker within the business. Is it normally as easy as mentioning— I say as easy, I know it's not an easy process— is it normally just a case of mentioning you've done a good job, you've helped fix these problems, and you've worked with Sally? Or are there any other key pieces of information, Gulshan, that typically sway the decision maker, if that makes sense? Is there anything else that you have to go out and find that makes a difference?

Yeah, I think you need to find out what they do. I think you need to find out first, um, you know, if they sit in another part of the business, you have to kind of— what I usually do is I kind of look through who their connections are, see if we're connected to any of the same people. Firstly, I kind of look if there's anyone, any candidates who, who, um, who are connected in that I've placed, for example. So when you go into that conversation, you can start, you can start your conversation as, look, I'm working with you guys now, I've signed an agreement, I've just done X amount, X work with your colleague. Um, but there's other things to talk about. I've seen, you know, we're not connected on LinkedIn. I've sent you a connection, but I've seen you've connected to X, Y, and Z. Um, do you, do you know them? You know, there's other things to talk about. You just got to build on that relationship because they need to know that you're credible because this is probably the first time, um, they're ever gonna— they're speaking to you. But what, what I also would do as well is, but when I've done the good work for that one hiring manager, I would say to them, if any of your colleagues do need my assistance, are you happy for me to just rely on you as a reference if they need to find out what I've done? So that way, when you're speaking to them, you can say, look, if you need a reference on what I've done for you, please speak to X. They kind of backstop what you're saying.

So I think— yeah, that's quite a strong little addition at the end, I think, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah. Having a reference point does kind of give them a bit more confidence to work with you.

And it kind of all stems from doing a good job though, doesn't it? Because none of that works if you don't, if you don't do a good job for the first hiring manager. So you actually have to be good at what you do and deliver a good service.

Exactly. But I think if you made the placement and you've done everything right and you, you place the right, the right person to the job, I mean, the proof is in, in the products you give, right? So, you know, as long, as long as you're not annoying them, as long as you're following a process, as long as they think they've got value for what you know, working with you, then I think they will always— well, in my experience, I've always been recommended because, um, you know, you've got— you've understood how they want to work and you provided them a good solution. So as long as you don't push it and get too overexcited. Yeah, awesome.

Yeah, really interesting.

I've got to jump into— Sam, did you have another question? Go ahead, go ahead. I would just love to, because I feel like spec CV is very popular they work. I feel like it's probably the most common method that has been consistent across every single top biller we've ever spoken to, and everyone has a slightly different way of doing it, Gulshan, but I'd love to hear what worked for you with spec CVs. How did you do it, um, when you were kind of trying to get your foot through the door?

Yeah, so it's, it's a good one, that. So I think, you know, every, every recruiter puts out a post or an advert and they get a lot of available candidates, and when they have a good one the first thing they want to do is spec them to clients who have bought before. And I think that, I think some companies call them mail shots, some, I don't know, spec CVs, whatever. I think that's a quick way to annoy a client, you know, because, because not everyone's receptive to it. I mean, I recently had a phone call with, with a consultancy, and, uh, this manager said, I said to him, look, I know you're doing, you're going to be doing this work in the future. I've got some people coming available. Would you like me to send you their CVs once they're available? He said, if you do, I won't work with you again. So I know he must get them all the time. He must get inundated. And I know there's some, some recruiters out there— is it— we're talking a few years ago, but some recruitment agency out there, which metric was you need to send X amount of CVs out, and people end up sending them blindly to the wrong people. So what works for me is whenever I'm having a pitch, whenever I'm pitching a client, there's a, there's a question I ask them at the end, and I can ask it in a couple of ways, but it would be Is if there's one area that would add value to your project, would it, what would it be? Or if there's one area that would add value to the team, what would it be and why? And then what I would do is I'd ask relating questions. So if they say, look, I would love, um, an SAP finance consultant, um, say why, you know, because we're starting a project. It's okay. I just got a few other clarifying questions. So you'd go through the the normal questions, you know, do they need to be based from a certain area? You know, what is their experience? Um, you know, do they, do they need any industry experience? Then I'd ask questions like, what's the makeup of your team? What type of personality would fit into your team? And I'll record this somewhere. So when you have that candidate, when you have that CV that they're potentially interested in, and you've asked all the qualifying questions, when you call, when you send them that CV, You can write a nice synopsis with everything they said they were looking for. And I find when you send CVs like this, it— when you send CVs in this way, when a manager receives it, he understood that you've listened to him and you've provided him with something he's looking for. Whereas people send spec CVs these days because they, they know, you know, it's a good candidate and they're just kind of like a you know, just a luck, you know, will they hire, will they buy on this, are they going to buy on this one, you know, they don't really have any knowledge. So I think you need to prep the spec CVs, that involves having a lot of different conversations with hiring managers. But over time, you'll, I have a spreadsheet where I know if I found this candidate, I've got about 10 managers I can send them to. And then I can, I can whittle down even more if, if I know he's in a certain area, or if there's something specific that manager is looking for that he has. So It's all about the groundwork again, like what questions you ask. And with my team, I always relate this, this cliché to mobile phones. I always say to them, look, you're not— you're only ever going to be looking for a mobile phone at a certain time of year. And you're always receiving emails or marketing emails saying this brand new phone, these X minutes. I said, if you receive one phone call from a sales guy saying You know, I'm selling my mobile phone, the new contract, you know, are you looking at the moment? No. You say, okay, when are you looking for your next contract? So it's up for this date. And they ask a load of clarifying questions. If they called you 2 weeks before your contract's ending and said, look, this is— I found you this deal and went through all of the things you wanted, you're more likely to buy from that person. You're gonna be like, this guy listened to me, he's given me exactly what I wanted. He's answered, you know, he's come with everything I want in a phone. And so you're probably going to lean towards actually, yeah, let me look at this deal. I'm seriously considering it. It's the same in recruitment. If you qualify everything properly and you send them something relevant, then you will get the interest from them. So I think spec CVs have to be tailored. Don't flood your client with CVs and make it relevant to them. Those are the ways that spec CV works. Love that.

I love that. Really valuable. Sorry, I just want to clarify because it's a little detail, but I think it's really useful that you have a spreadsheet, Gulshan, of like— yeah, I'm guessing all the conversations that you've had with hiring managers with all those little details are saved somewhere so you can always refer back to them. And then if you find a candidate, you can kind of match it. I think that's valuable.

Yeah, so I've got this spreadsheet and, you know, you can filter down from country, you can filter down from, from skill, you can filter down to you know, um, anything from sub-modules in it. So if I ever get a manager who said, look, if you ever find someone in this area, I'd love to see their CV, I'll just go to my spreadsheet and I'll, and I'll, and I'll do a search on it. And I might have one, I might have 10, you know, but at least that way I can, I can even give them a call back saying, look, I've got 10 people that can do this, can ask you some further questions. And you know, that it's a really— it's, it's something you build over time, but I think recruiters should, should be doing that. I call it the magic, the magic CV spreadsheet.

That's brilliant. And it's funny because most recruiters would just like send the CV and use the CV as a way to get their foot through the door. But what you're doing is you're calling them first, I'm guessing, getting your foot through the door with— well, that's actually another good, another good point is like, if the CV is the thing getting the foot through the door, what is the best way for you to Is it through that same process we mentioned prior to that? Is that gathering information and then going and kind of rounding it off like that?

Yeah, I mean, look, you're always going to be speaking to managers. It's just a question you ask on every call with a manager because, you know, more than likely they're going to have something missing for the team or they're going to be interested in something. So just add it into your, to your pitch or your telephone calls with hiring managers. And that just gives more substance to your spec CVs. Some people just love sending CVs blindly, and, you know, it's a numbers game at that point. And I just think, I think you, you upset people more than you help people. So I prefer to do it this way, you know. And you probably have a metric, send 10 CVs out a week, well then you might, you need to have 100 phone calls during a week to say, you know, where these 10 CVs are going, you know. It's all about the groundwork. But if you build this list over time, as soon as the CV comes into your inbox, you know where to send it, right? So over time it becomes easier.

That's really interesting. And then just for the volume, because I, I get this is, this is a very different approach and it's very research-based and research-heavy. What would be the number of calls? Can I— we're kind of going on to the activity piece now, but what would be like a good number of calls that you would make on a daily basis, say? Gosh, and like, what would that, what would that look like? Anything?

The attempts versus the actual calls are massive, but the actual What I would say is a successful day, if I had 10 productive phone calls with a client in a day, I would say that's a very successful day. If I had 15, yeah, I'd be very happy. Usually you average out about 5, between 5 to 7 calls a day, you know, because people are busy unless they're diary dated. You're never really going to get, keep people on, on the line. But the point is to keep attempting to make the calls, you know, the activity the effort you put in and just being— especially, I don't want to go into it too much, but being prepared for when they do answer. Because most of the time when you don't have anyone answering, you're just calling people, then someone answers it and then you're shell-shocked. So, so just be prepared when you're making these calls. But you have to just have a preparation done, like a list. Have a list of like 50 to 100 clients that you need to call throughout the week. And get through as many of them as you can. Or, or if it's a business, of a specific business you're, you're, um, trying to open, then making sure that you have a list of all of the people you need to speak to within that business. So, yeah, I think, I think 10— if you do 10 successful phone calls in a day, and, you know, you speak to any successful recruiter, they'll say high, high successful activity will, will lead to that. So I think as a, as a aim, go for 10 a day.

So, any awesome— I think that's a good metric. And I'm guessing not all of those calls could be research heavy. Gosh, I'm guessing there's maybe some companies where you're like cherry picking the research. And yeah, yeah, well, the ones that are lighter on research, what's the kind of bare minimum that you go for that's kind of passable to still get a good conversation going, do you think?

I think that's all about approach, to be fair. Oh, you need to know You need to do research on them, so you need to have a look at their LinkedIn page, but you need to pitch yourself in a way that's relevant. So if they're a pharma business, maybe say you're working within the pharma industry specifically, but it has to be a short, succinct, strong intro and with a reason to call them, you know. I've always said to anyone who's in my team, if you have nothing to talk to them about, just make sure the way you introduce yourself and, and the way you ask the question is confident enough that they're going to give you an answer. You know, don't sheepishly go into the phone call and try and make a half-assed call. Like, have a solid intro, tell them where you're calling from, tell them what you do, and ask a decent question. And then you can go into questioning, you know. So I think, I think there's, there's a lot of cold calls I make where I look at their profile first and I think, uh, this guy could be hiring for something, let me go and find out. And I'll just make my my call, right? But I don't really know much about the business or what he's doing, and it's my, my opportunity once I've got— get him speaking for me to find that out.

So interesting. And, and that question, I'm sure it varies a lot, but would it be something like, are you hiring for X, or would it be problem-based, like, are you having this problem? Like, what would be the main focus, focal point for the question, do you think?

Uh, it depend— I mean, Well, it's a difficult one because you don't just want to ask, you know, what are your potential— what, what gaps you have at the moment, because they're gonna be like, well, who are you? Um, it, it depends on what their job title is, I think, as well. It depends on what, what their last blurb is on their, on their LinkedIn. I kind of tailor my question to what I see they're doing. Um, if they're working on a particular project, I would generally go in and say 'Look, I've just recently completed a project in a similar area you're working, and I'm having a few resources come off my project. I wanted to understand, would this be relevant to you, or understand whereabouts you are in your project? What is the stage? As I might be able to add value or benefit, you know, give you some benefit with the resources I have.' You know, one of the things I do, I do generally say if I've got nothing to say, is I say, is my pitch is, 'Look, I've got a project which Generally is usually the truth, coming to an end and contractors have been there on there for the last year. They haven't been available to the market. And I'm doing a, I'm running an activity to help them find their next contract. So I'm giving you a call to find out what opportunities you might have in these areas as these candidates are, you know, they're highly skilled. They haven't been on the market for the last year. Uh, and it's my job to help them find new opportunities. Could you talk to me about what you're doing at the moment?

That's a good one. Yeah, I feel like that's quite a natural, um, quite a natural opener. And it's like, if you kind of sell the fact that you have great talent, it's like, why wouldn't they be open to kind of talking?

Um, exactly. And surprisingly, I haven't had much pushback on it, you know. I might have some people say, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, not keen right now. Um, but some of them ask me straight away, can you tell me what you have available? And when they say that, I think, well, If you're asking me that question, there must be something you, you're looking for. So I kind of say, look, I, I always kind of make it vague. I said, look, I've got across a few, few areas. Can you tell me specifically what you're looking at? And then I can, you know, you have to kind of switch it back to them, you know, because—

yeah, interesting.

Yeah, they'll always ask. If someone says, what do you have available at the moment, you know that there's something that they're missing.

Awesome. I feel like a lot of it is tone as well, because— yeah, it's funny, we We had another top biller on our call, on our podcast, um, a couple of weeks ago, and it was amazing. Like, the first 10 seconds of his pitch based in the UK and the US, like, varied quite drastically, and it was very much to do with tone, funnily enough. So I'm feeling that's probably a big part of it.

I think when I'm, when I'm speaking to people in Germany compared to people in the UK and compared to people in Netherlands, my approach is quite different. We're in Germany I'm, you know, I add a few, um, German nuances to, to what I'm saying, but I'm very direct with them. Yeah. And in the UK, it's more conversational, you know, ask how you're doing, you know, maybe give some chitchat about the weather, as everyone in UK loves. But I would never do that in Germany. If I did that in Germany, they'll be like, what the hell are you talking about?

Go away! Good accent, Sam.

Well done. Thank you. And, and fine with the Dutch, they love a bit banter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they do. You can have a joke about— because the, the weather in Amsterdam is always the same as the UK but an hour later. So I always, always have a little banter, say, oh, by the way, it's going to rain in about an hour because it's raining here. That's a good one. But, but you just have to learn. I think that's, that's the kind of thing with experience, learn more about your tone, the tone you use in certain scenarios and with certain people. Like, you'll find that recruiters, especially junior recruiters, if they're told to, to call a program manager, the way they approach that call would be very different to speaking to a candidate, right? And I say, well, why don't you just approach the program manager like you speak to a candidate and see how different you'll make the phone call? Because if you're, you're, you'll change the way you shouldn't really be different to either. You should be the same to both. But you always find those junior recruiters, they get very nervous before they speak to their first manager. Like, I'll be like, look, just pretend you're speaking to your mates. Like, but not like, not like you speak to your mates, but on that same how you feel when you speak to your mates, you know?

Yeah, just relax.

Yeah, confidence.

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, cool.

I, uh, I cannot believe how quickly this podcast has gone. We've already come up to an hour and I feel like we haven't even got through everything we need to.

I did, I did say that to you. I said that. Yeah. There's just one thing I wanted to cover before we close off. Um, and that, uh, that was about becoming an expert. I just wanted to speak a little bit about that, how to be the go-to guy, right? So I think I'm going to keep this quite brief, but first thing is you need to create a network and stay visible. So on LinkedIn, you should have, you know, get towards the thousands and thousands of people within your area. So create that network. And when I say stay visible, I use Mark Burgess as a perfect example. I probably get— I probably have to mute him sometimes because he comments on everything, right?

But the good thing is he's a prolific commenter.

Yeah, he's visible, right? So all of his network see him. So you know what, if one day someone gets told, oh, we need to let you go, he's probably seen a post from Mark that day. Let me give Mark a call, maybe he can get me a job. You know, stay Stay visible and also connect to other recruiters on LinkedIn because you get their second connections, right? So it gives you a bigger network. So stay connected. I think the second thing is, um, every, every software company, if you work in IT recruitment, they're evolving, right? So understand what the, what tech you're working with, how it's evolving, what, what new things you can talk to a client about who's using that tech. Um, the third thing is, I used to do it, I haven't done it for a while, but It was something told to me from an experienced recruiter, is especially SAP, try and build relationships with SAP salespeople because they sell licenses to businesses. And when you understand where licenses are sold, you understand that they're going to have to be implemented. So you're going to understand where the opportunities are coming. So try and forge some relationships with sales guys within the technology you're working with in the actual software company. And then I think the last part is being able to talk about the technology to your market. So I would spend a lot of time speaking to SAP consultants to have them explain to you what they do and more about the tech. So when you go back to speak to clients, any of our other SAP consultants or IT consultants in your area, you gain knowledge about what you're— you have an understanding about what they do and what the technology does. And I think if you keep doing that, you do generally become kind of dominant in your space. And, you know, people will start recognizing that you're good at what you do, you know what you're talking about, and you'll become kind of a go-to guy in that niche. So those are the 4 or 5 things that I would, I would suggest for anyone who wants to kind of dominate their space or become prolific in their space.

Love that. Love that. I mean, sorry that you had to kind of rush through that. Not that you rushed it, but I feel like there's probably so much There's so much we could dissect in there, but I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it for another session. But I would like to say that this has been super valuable and I would love to have you on for a second time if you're open to it, because there's so much more to go into.

Yeah, there was stuff about client retention we didn't speak about and keeping out the competition. So another, on another session we can do that.

Awesome.

Thank you for coming on, mate. Really appreciate it.

Oh, lovely. Lovely to speak to you guys. And yeah, thank you.

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