Have you heard of Pareto’s Law?

Named after Vilfredo Pareto, it states “There is an unequal relationship between input and output.”

How true is that in recruitment!

It states that 20% of input is responsible for 80% of the output.

The most often cited example of this in the business world is: 80% of sales come from 20% of your clients.

OR

80% of results are produced 20% of the time.

 

Let me ask you two questions.

 1) Do you have clients that you know yield far less business for you versus the time you give them and you sometimes wonder why you work with them or are frustrated at how much time they waste?

2) Would you like to increase your ROI from these clients and overall increase your revenue? Of course, you would.

  

Here’s how to do it.

 

Step 1

Identify the clients delivering 80% of your revenue in 20% of your business’ time and make sure you are doing EVERYTHING in your power to keep them happy.

 

Step 2

Answer the following questions for the remaining clients – HONESTLY

1) Do they pay good fees? Or have the potential to.

2) Are they good to work with? i.e. they don’t waste your time?

3) Is their business in good shape/have potential for growth?

4) Do candidates want to work for them?

5) Do they sit squarely in your niche?

If the answer is Yes to ALL, you have a client with realistic potential for growth. If not, set them free and use them to source candidates from.

 

Step 3

Increase your ROI with lower return clients. My definition for a lower return client for the purposes of this exercise is one that delivers an unacceptable level of revenue when compared to the investment of time/resources to achieve that revenue.

It’s alarming how much time a poor return client can take up.  Particularly if they don’t really get the recruitment process and you or your consultants are not leading them.

The answer to a higher return lies in taking control of these clients; guiding them and educating them.

Educate them on how to get the best out of you so you can get them the people they need.  Don’t assume they know the best way to recruit.  They may not know how to work best with a recruiter and never had it explained to them:

  • Extracting thorough job briefs
  • Setting an expectation of when they will get back to you
  • Importance of detailed candidate feedback 
  • Calling clients directly for references with no permission – god help us!
  • Fully explaining terms upfront to avoid a fee mess after placement
  • Why it’s in their interest to give you exclusivity

This is all recruitment 101 that is second nature to us and we expect our clients to know but sometimes they just don’t and need it spelt out.

By going through this process with them you will identify those willing to work your way for the best results and those who think they know best and ultimately end up COSTING you money.

Focus on those your process has highlighted as most likely to improve and resign the rest.

And that’s it… 

This is so simple, but often in the day-to-day chasing of revenue, we don’t stop to think what these lower billing clients are really costing us.

Give them a chance to improve by running the above exercise and if they don’t, be strong enough to let them go so you can replace them with more high performing clients. You will increase your profits and decrease your stress in no time!

 

Thanks for reading, 

Belinda

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