Rainmaking is crucial to long-term survival in the search business.  Your ability to generate new collaborative relationships with clients who will pay your fee is what distinguishes a marginal biller from a big one.  This section covers the twelve common, and not so common, approaches to developing new clients.

Your challenge as a recruiter is to bridge the gap between the professional fees you charge and the value or perceived value that you provide for companies.  One of the best ways to bridge the value gap with both clients and candidates is to develop true expertise in a very specific industry or niche:  this is called Market Mastery.  By gaining in-depth industry insight beyond the obvious, you position yourself to bring unique knowledge to the marketplace – knowledge worthy of your professional fees.

The MPC Approach works very well not only for a brand new recruiter (because of lack of market knowledge), but also for the veteran recruiter (because of excellent market knowledge).  The presentation itself should cover three things – current/past responsibilities, specific notable achievements that will demonstrate the credibility of the candidate, and (most importantly) the benefit to the prospective employer for bringing this individual on board. 

Flipping a recruiting call to a marketing call can be one of the most comfortable ways to ease into a marketing presentation, especially for those who are just learning how to market.  The key to this approach is to flip the call when you have identified that you are speaking with a decision maker; otherwise, you are qualifying someone who ultimately cannot move the process forward.

Reference checking is a great way to make a warm call into a new company.  The process begins as a reference check call but with a dual purpose to ‘flip’ into either a recruiting or marketing call for new business.  The call itself is one that is easily executed, because you will not encounter much resistance when you are calling to facilitate a reference check.  You then build credibility because this prospective client now knows the caliber of both candidates and opportunities that you represent. 

You surely have heard the phrase “act as if”.  Act as if you are a leader, and you will become one.  Act as if you cannot fail, and you will not fail.  This same principle can be adopted from a marketing perspective as well and is called the Assumptive Approach.  Act as if there are open positions, and you will bypass the typical smokescreen resistance that other recruiters will encounter. 

In essence, the second angle to approaching calls as a consultant allows you to operate as a true mid-management consulting firm.  There is no better organization to provide your clients real-time market intelligence, whether it pertains to salary surveys, business development, or strategic organizational development.  By means of leveraging your current search, you are able to gain additional insight and information that you can provide value back to the client – all through the course of executing your normal recruiting and marketing calls.

An indirect approach when recruiting a candidate, we can use this same approach when pursuing new client development.  This approach can be used to demonstrate market mastery and consultative questioning, as well as allows the opportunity for a client to volunteer themselves or their own needs.  This is a great approach to use when you have a specific client in mind that you would like to target and partner with. 

The Follow-Up Marketing Approach is truly a two-step process.  The heavy lifting is done on the first call, setting the stage for any follow-up calls to be targeted and value-added.  If you’ve ever called a client just to ‘check in’ or ‘touch base’, you have done a poor job of creating a value proposition for your subsequent calls.  You must ask the client sophisticated questions to solicit specific answers regarding what information will get them wanting to answer your calls in the future.  When they tell you they are interested in new business development ventures, and you call back two months later with a prospective introduction for business, the call will surely be returned.

No different than Jell-O is synonymous with gelatin, and Kleenex with tissue, you want your name to be synonymous with recruiter.  This is a long term strategy that is tied in to the in-bound marketing approach.   This effort can range from hiring a third party PR firm to constantly keep you in front of major media outlets, to simply creating a stellar website that truly encompasses the caliber of recruiter that you are.  Your marketing outreach should not be limited to only a phone call once every few months, but staying in front of your audience through newsletters, participating in industry associations, and penning articles in trade publications.  This section will give you a variety of ideas from big to small to allow you to create a consistent branding effort.

The merger and acquisition marketing approach is one that delivers strategic growth solutions to firms who are interested in gaining a competitive advantage in the marketplace through M&A services to grow their market share. Instead of placing a single candidate, you can facilitate an introduction for an entire organization to integrate their business into that of your client. Your fee is based on a percentage of the overall sale of the firm. Not only does this approach lend itself to large fees, but it also provides a platform for some high-level strategic business conversations with the ultimate owners and decision makers.