Inside the Mind of a ￡1m Biller - ft. Max Cullen (Vol 8)

Welcome back! It’s the final edition of the year and we’ve decided to go out with a BANG… to all recruiters reading this, this is my present to you, merry Christmas!

In this edition, we've got Max Cullen , one of the leading recruiters in the SaaS Sales recruitment space from Strive - GTM Talent Partner to share some incredible tips enabling all recruiters to polish some of their old and rusty weapons whilst adding a few new weapons into their arsenal…

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Who is Max Cullen?

Born in Brazil and raised in Paris, Max comes from an athletic background having played at an academy level in France, prior receiving a sports scholarship to play University football in the US, then playing semi-pro football in the US and France. After having decided to stop playing football, he then moved onto Dubai to work with Emirates Airlines and travel the world, then finally to Manchester. What brought him to the UK? Recruitment. A sports-recruiter encouraged Max to relocate to the UK to help them recruit players and to secure the talented players sponsorships to move to the US. Later, Max took a call from a recruiter that made him aware that Strive needed a French speaker for their team and he then joined Strive as one of the first employees. ??

In that time, he began as an Associate and progressed 5 times in 4 years and is now their Sales Manager. Max admits that it wasn’t all easy, as covid hit within his first 6 months, a few newly made friends left the business, he was forced to work remotely and then the roles in the SaaS market began to decline until the market was practically at a standstill. Fortunately, he had the resilience to stick through the tough times and began offering prospect clients value to set him apart from his competitors, which we’ll discuss in more detail. The resilience, the value that he adds to his clients amongst his motivation to financially secure his mum is what fuelled him to become a ￡1m biller in his third year in recruitment. His methods? You’re about to find out.?

Maximising Accounts

Max follows the land and expand method with clients in his ICP (ideal customer profile). ?

66% of his billings came from existing business in 2022, he firmly believes in having repeatable and scalable business, where he lands an account and does the first placement as a proof of concept with view to demonstrate value and quickly expand into other business units of the same organisation to maximise his billings.

Max like most recruiters, uses spreadsheets that are flooded with candidates relevant to each niche and to each role within the SaaS space, ultimately it consists of every single person that is applicable to his searches. He then uses these lists to identify relevant candidates every time a relevant role pops onto his desk, he’ll then touch base with these prospect candidates and offer them insights into the new roles on a regular basis. He will also spec the best candidates he believes could be the right fit for his clients even if they aren’t hiring.

The difference in Max’s spreadsheets and the common recruiters spreadsheets are that these specific talent pools he creates are broken down to the minute detail, such as candidates deal sizes, and sales methodologies. This is one of his many ways of providing value to into the clients that he works with. ?

When Max pulls a role from a client that meets the criteria of those within his talent pools he’ll use a super targeted approach and personalised outreach to find the relevant ICP’s and then delivers the results to the client in a timely manner.

Max’s key tips for maximising accounts?

• When prospecting, show your credibility to the firm by providing evidence of the value that you’ve already offered and delivered to their competitors / other companies in the same space (use cases / market reports)?
• Have a clearly defined Ideal Customer Profile, and focus your time on finding clients and candidates that fit your ICP. This means you’ll always have readily available recyclable candidates, and will drastically reduce your time to hire, getting more buy in from your clients. ?
• Be a partner, not just a recruiter – try to truly understand your client pain points, objectives for the year, and how you can help them achieve those. This will naturally translate into hiring plans, but it cements your relationship with the client. For instance, a sales leader looking to achieve $5M in revenue might have a lot of pressure to find 5 sales reps, and get them started rapidly. If you hire the right people in a timely fashion, it will help them achieve their goals for the year, and make them look good internally. Chances are if they hit their target, the team will grow again next year and the Hiring Manager will be working with you again to expand.
• Set an upfront contract with your clients at the beginning of the search – if you do xyz, and help them achieve their hiring goals, what can they do for you? For example, could they introduce you into other hiring managers within the organisation or even other hiring managers in the same space?
• If a candidate isn’t placeable right now, but you know that they could be further down the line then keeps tabs on this person, touch base with them regularly, even for a market update, don’t always look to sell. If a suitable position lands on your desk, then this should become a relatively quick role for you to fill.?

Building Solid Client Relationships

Max emphasised how vital it is to stick to your word. If you tell your client you’ll give them feedback at 8.44pm, then do it. If you tell your client that you’re going to find them that magical unicorn, then you better go ahead and do it, but is equally as important to manage expectations if they are unrealistic. Following the first point, Max moved on to explain how important it is to be super responsive he highlighted how recruiters mustn’t “leave clients waiting around on replies, show them that you care and that you’re genuinely there to partner with them and provide value to them and their business”. Moreover, work with urgency, be opportunistic, and deliver on your shortlists - this is how you’ll prove your worth to them.?

Something that Max believes recruiters don’t do enough is influencing the client and encouraging them to change the process where and when needed, obviously as recruiters we all want a 0.5 stage interview process, but it’s important to be careful here, be genuine, show your support and discuss with the client exactly why the process must change if needed. They’ll respect you if you carefully highlight the problem and offer a solution that’ll help decrease their chances of missing out on hiring talent they’re keen to land.?

The final point here is, understand your clients projects, know what their long-term outcome of the project looks like, for instance: do they want to build a big team long term around this person that you have in process with them or do they want to scale in x or y directions based on this person in process. Understand your client and their goals, then re-engineer this process by providing value and helping them achieve their goal over the duration of the projects, this’ll build solid relationships over time. On a side note, Max asked ‘what else can you do with the information when you find out the end goal to your clients project’? Have a think… Use that information and give it to your candidates, if your client plans building a bridge to the moon in 9 months and achieve ￡2m in sales within that period then equip your candidates with this information, not only during the interview process, but when they’re in the role too.?

Max’s key tip to building relationships

• Understand how to make the client look good, this’ll always offers brownie points once it gets back round to them
• WORK WITH URGENCY FOR YOUR CLIENTS

Placements

Max emphasises that you must have some metrics in place to monitor your progress to achieve and exceed your targets. Understand what it takes for you to do one deal and reverse engineer the whole process; for instance, if on average it takes 6 interviews for you to get 1 deal then take a seat and breakdown what you need to do to achieve the target of 6 interviews: X cold calls, X video outreaches, X voice notes, X personalised messages, X conversations, X fully qualified candidates all within X amount of time – and then send the 6 qualified candidates to the client to book in and then get 1 deal out of it. Once that is complete, continue to do the same breakdown for the other roles that you’re working on and continue to do the planning until you hit/exceed your monthly target.?

Inputs. Max follows the AOR structure, ‘Activity’, ‘Objective’ and ‘Result’, which are all broken down quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily to achieve his desired results. Activity is the most important pillar, you must focus on this as is the only one you can control, and it’ll keep you closer to achieving your results monthly. Objective, you can influence them through activity, but cannot control. Use your objectives to monitor your activity and also use it to ensure that you’re staying on-track. Results, these are uncontrollable unlike your activity and objectives. However, if you focus heavily on your activity and be ruthless with this, work in blocks, work in sprints, ensure all work is completed within these time periods you’ll be likely to achieve your desired results. ‘Clarity’ is the key word here - understand what you’re doing, who you’re going after and why you’re doing it; this’ll encourage you to stay close to the money at all times.?

Obviously, you need to check in with both candidates and clients throughout your candidates rebate period. However, use this as a reason to catch up with your clients and continue building the relationship.?

5 Tips for Recruiters Adapting to the Shift in Market Conditions

1. Stick to the basics, don’t steer away from the fundamentals and get lost by trying many different and new techniques to achieve your desired success.
2. Whether on BD or on candidate work, understand your activity and metrics and focus on improving your ratios i.e candidates to interviews and interviews to placements and ultimately improve your craft by working on your quality ?
3. Be a memorable person in the right way, ensure that your prospects, candidates and clients remember you for all of the right reasons. Always provide value, be genuine, be authentic and be credible?
4. Be ruthless with your time, don’t let any distractions intervene with your sprints and ensure you’re hitting hourly goals?
5. Ask yourself ‘how can I add value to my clients and be different to my competitors’ get thinking outside of the box or think of how you can change and improve current methods within the recruitment process to benefit both yourself and your clients?

Max’s Key Ingredient

Time management. Max finalised the meeting by stressing what truly helped him become a ￡1m biller was “time management” he said this was conclusively the key – “focus in blocks and be strict with achieving the desired outcome”. Through carefully managing his time, Max made 30+ placements in one quarter, with one client – this equated to ￡400k in billings. ??

Work with ruthless discipline, understand your metrics and activity, provide value and maximise accounts.?

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