Winning New Business in 2023 – Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t…

The year is 2023. CPI has been running hot for the best part of 12 months; the Fed have been hiking rates aggressively since November 22; banks are breaking; VC investment is ‘apparently’ drying up; pharma and medical device giants are trying to cut unnecessary costs; biotechs are wary of burning through their cash moat.

How does this trickle down into our great staffing business (speaking generally of course…there are always going to be pockets of booming success and spectacular failures to which we are all susceptible to)? Well in drug development/device/diagnostics land; I’d say the appetite to hire is still there, but the trigger-happy and frankly, insane… market conditions of late 2020-2021 are definitely gone, and companies are behaving like it’s a risk-off year. As a staffing partner - If you’re not already ‘in’, you’re ‘out’ for now.

Now YOU take the center stage – yes, YOU – the ‘Business Developer’, the ‘Client Services/Relationship Manager’, the ‘sales’ Leader. If you’re new to this role, the few customers you’ve been working with have (humor me) cooled off – they’re on freezes, they’re laying off staff. If you’ve been doing this for more than a decade, all of your best customers are going through changes…your favorite HR person has changed jobs, your favorite hiring manager is looking for a job rather than hiring from you..

Things are going ok, but they’re not what they were. You’re motivated, you’re ambitious… but, if you haven’t already realized it yourself, your senior leadership team have already told you that you need to win more business.

So here forth, in my mind you have 2 main strategies and man, are they a lose-lose. Will it feel good? No. Will you feel motivated daily? No. But will you put a smile on your prospect’s faces as you do it? Also no…(just kidding. Kind of…we are talking about prospecting here.)

**NB for the purpose of this ‘article’ if you’d be so generous to allow me to call it that, what with my writing ability etc, I am going to make some purposely blunt comments (perhaps even some vaporous ones) some huge industry and personal assumptions and will be commentating using mostly my own experiences. There is an absolute truck load of nuance I can’t physically cover and I know that, so most of this is written from the perspective of a recruiter FOR recruiters, water-cooler discussion style. I’m also purposely not going to comment on what market anyone staffs for, your credentials, your track record etc?-just purely comment and analyze the strategies set forth. I have consulted with many friends on this topic who are in HR/Talent Acq/in house roles to gauge their perspective: to those of you that helped me see your view, you know who you are, thank you! I am writing this with the most love and respect in my heart for everyone who partakes in all of the difficult and challenging roles that I will be breaking down!**

Strategy 1: HR or Talent Acquisition.

“They are guarding all the doors, they are holding all the keys” Morpheus, (1999, The Matrix)

The beating heart of a company’s ‘people’, process and retention strategies: who can argue that HR or, more popular and standard protocol than ever, ‘Talent Acquisition’ (yes,I have been in staffing longer than Talent Acquisition professionals was ever a thing, if not in the US then for sure in the UK) are now a staple in said company’s recruiting lifecycle. I think in 13 years of staffing, I’ve made maybe 2x placements that were not facilitated at least partially by some sort of HR/TA professional. In my 13 years of staffing, my relationships with people in HR/TA have factually changed my life, grown my wealth, created friendships and created opportunities for myself I could never even dream of.

…In my 13 years of staffing, I have never ever successfully contacted an HR/TA professional without a recommendation or referral from a manager and won business from them.

Shocking maybe, but accurate. And no, I’m not telling anyone that it’s therefore a bad strategy or to avoid it.

The results are flimsy…at least for me…well, and mostly everyone I’ve ever managed or mentored. It’s entirely plausible that I have butchered my introductions, I’ve left terrible voicemails, had shaky phone calls, constructed caveman-esque e-mails. I know many people that think this is the only way….but I also know, have managed, and been managed by many, that all agree it is a generally low expected-value activity. This is * mostly * what you are conditioned into expecting:

“Hi Oliver, thanks. We are not looking to engage new agencies at this time. Please only contact me in future never any employees or hiring managers”

“Hi Oliver, we will keep your records on file, please feel free to check in every 12-18 months!”

“Hi, here is how we work: all communication needs to come via talent acquisition, but I won’t be communicating with you. If you want to work with us, contact me, but it’s already a no. So..” (OK, this one is in jest)

Why is that? These people I’ve known for years, met their families, have sent me hundreds of openings to work on, have transacted 6,7,8 figures worth of $$$ with…is it true to think I never would have met any of them, let alone had a chance to nurture business and personal relationships, if I had tried reaching out cold or semi-warm?

Here’s the cliché part: I do totally get it. I actually do. I have close friends that do this job, friends who probably want to kill me for saying the above. Please accept my apology upfront for potentially butchering your takes, but if you are:

·??????Building processes and procedures for a talent journey

·??????Working on candidate experience

·??????Working on employee retention

·??????D&I initiatives

·??????Tasked with saving your company money on vendor spend by sourcing talent yourself

·??????Spending hours each week sitting with, and educating managers on what to do if they have budget to hire etc.

·??????Training managers on how to communicate with an existing pool of vendors to be more efficient

You probably don’t want to sit on the phone or meet with someone that pops up every 6 months to “connect on our staffing capabilities” right? You’re trying to do a million other things. It isn’t deep or personal. Hey, maybe if someone persists for months and years and does what you ask, you’ll give them that shot.

We (recruiters working for firms) should probably be more patient and play the long, multi-year game….that would likely yield better results. Except (perspective shift)…we can't really afford to wait too long…literally. We need to deliver too - after all, we are the Sales department if you strip it all back, and all sales departments have to perform. In relation to winning business, the pressure in all industries will *typically * start to ramp up the longer that your book of business looks and feels underwhelming. This isn’t always conducive to the long game and is arguably out of our control unless you work independently or are your own boss.

In summation: the upside is if you succeed here, you can go on a customer journey, you may be so lucky to get access to more reqs than you anticipated, you’ll likely have everything done correctly and by the book. The downsides: it may not ever happen (major); although highly knowledgeably and technical they are in explicit terms relaying information from the source rather than being the source; they will absolutely air on the side of caution and process before pulling the trigger…. over-governance, if you will (literally, it is their job to do so, fair play…).

Strategy 2: Hiring Managers

“I’m a hazard to myyyyself. Don’t let me get me...” Pink, (2002)

So now we are left with the actual hiring managers themselves. Team leads, Directors, VPs, heck even CEOs. They know what they need, they know what they want, there is no one better to articulate to you what it is. “I needed someone yesterday!” is a claim I regularly hear. They are the science, the math, the engineering, the people walking the walk and talking the talk, in the trenches and are the source! What could possibly be a better strategy than this?

In relation to winning new business, I have * mostly * been successful using this route (Again- I am not a model example at all, just calling it how it is for me personally. There are many better and more experienced people out there than I for sure.) I find hiring managers to *typically* have more urgency, provide better feedback and be open minded to better processes. Intuitively, you’re at the source, you’re not having your communication possibly filtered or passed through and if you can’t demonstrate enough quality and credibility to engage this particular person, none of your efforts really matter anyways. Harsh but true, IMO.

We do, however, also need to consider the challenges, too. Firstly, in well oiled machines, most of our beloved hiring managers know in the back of their minds they have to get HR/TA involved at earliest, and are very happy to – thus, you are back at the mercy of strategy 1.?Some hiring managers, conversely, aren’t even aware of if they have their budget approved or not (can lead to going through a 8-12 week process to find out the company couldn’t even make the hire in the first place). It can be a bit frantic and a bit scrappy to say the least.

Some hiring managers can be a hazard to themselves…it’s not their fault either, staffing is probably 10% of their brain capacity in a working week at most and let’s face it, it can be arduous at best.

Furthermore, most hiring managers are happy to make decisions within the confines of their world and department but may be more tentative to recommend you to other areas. Unknowingly, you run a risk of siloing yourself into one niche area accidentally and never truly being able to work with a company holistically. Just something to consider.

Conclusion: (call me a cop out, but this is truly the only way I can slice and dice it)

At the end of the day, whatever method you choose you have to try. No one ever won any business by doing nothing, and us leaders can never fault someone who is trying and trying hard. You’ll have to make connections with both parties, try and fail, and ultimately see what works for you whilst trying to come across like a decent, knowledgeable, and well intentioned professional. I’m a lot of bad things, but one thing I know is that I try and be those three in my job every day, particularly when I’m trying to win new business.

If I may be so bold: with hiring managers, *usually* conversation about technical/scientific skills, more granular nuances, market information and of course any mutual connections is usually a more winning formula than a losing one. Keep it direct and on topic – these people have big jobs to do for the other 90% of their weeks.

With HA/TA professionals, the above is definitely still applicable, but also knowledge and confidence when discussing topics like suite of services, commercials (fees, guarantee periods, payment terms, non-solicitation & representation etc.), performance, process, broader capabilities, unique selling points, diversity & inclusion and so forth. If you don’t have it, don’t bluff it – go away and learn first because you might only get one shot at making a good impression.

In an ideal world, fate will lead you down a path where hiring manager vouches for you to HR/TA, or vice verse, and you’re able to build both relationships concurrently whilst developing a deep understanding of the company, their values, their expertise and their raison d’etre.

Lastly, I think it also important to mention that whilst the number of people in the US who enjoy being prospected or canvassed for business is ever diminishing, your target stakeholder are human beings and ?at their core probably understand what you are trying to achieve – furthermore, the HR/TA professionals have usually had varying degrees of staffing experience themselves, so typically will relate to what you are trying to achieve.

Whatever you choose, do it with Credibility…Integrity….Knowledge and ”Noble Intention”, to steal the Tom Hardy TikTok quote. You shouldn’t be led too far astray if you do…