Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Retrained Search, the podcast where we lift the lid on what it's really like to work retained, discuss the stories we've gathered along the way and give you all a peek behind the scenes of our amazing community and how they're getting ahead. Hello, hi Claude.

Speaker 2: 0:22

How are you? How are you?

Speaker 1: 0:23

doing. Yeah, I'm good. I think the last time we saw each other we were in I'd flown back from saw you in Birmingham. I had some feedback actually on that. Sorry I'm jumping in, but people have been watching our behind the scenes videos and saying that they think they're really, they're really good. I know we did quite a bit of that at the Rec Expo.

Speaker 2: 0:46

Shout out to Sarah Chester-Nelson and her wonderful husband Aaron Do a great job. He's good.

Speaker 1: 0:53

Yeah, he's really good. Anyone listening to this and you need video work doing Aaron Nelson. I think he's called on LinkedIn.

Speaker 2: 1:03

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:04

Yeah, very, very good, good, and we're really enjoying working with him. I think you guys we should have him on the podcast. So how did you find the rack expo and speaking on the stage?

Speaker 2: 1:19

good, good, it's a long day, isn't it like? I mean, it was longer for you mind do you had a two and a half hour drive yeah, same thing, that's true, I suppose, um, but I had some company with sarah, but it was a good day, really good day, great to see people, some familiar faces, some new faces, and it's just um. I'm nowhere near as nervous as it used to be. For these things I still get nervous I think that's normal, isn't it? But I'm nowhere near as nervous.

Speaker 1: 1:48

No, we definitely weren't as nervous. I think we enjoyed it more. I think we were both in a good place on that day and we enjoyed engaging with the audience and talking to everyone afterwards.

Speaker 2: 2:00

Yeah, absolutely so when we were there yeah, absolutely so when we were there.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Uh, we were doing our whole purpose was to inspire people that felt that, you know, they kind of look furious or wanted to be a bit retained and, you know, maybe things have held them back.

Speaker 2: 2:19

Um, that's the mission, isn't it? It's not like it's not about us, it's. It's just about helping people realise they can and that it's possible. Whether it's us that helps them do it, or they get there on their own, or it's someone else, like whatever, just to know that you can do it.

Speaker 1: 2:37

Yeah, you can, and there's support for you and there's the ability to be able to do it, but then in the meantime, we got this, didn't we?

Speaker 1: 2:48

we have this posted in our groups, yeah for those of you that are listening to us and not watching the video, it says its subject is analysis and it's by one of our members who is on the board of a group of businesses of about 160 odd recruiters globally under different brands, and it says we've done some analysis this morning between retained and contingent, based on our fill rates and average fees. That would be a lot of data rates and average fees and that would be a lot of data. It says you would need to work on 120 contingent jobs in a year to bill 150k the next line it says based on the same data, you need to build 6.5 retainers, to build 150k.

Speaker 1: 3:41

He. Then he adds a line at the bottom to say and yet I still need to work every day to convince people. And he's, he's, um, uh, one of people. Well, is the first in in his business, who, uh, who found that it wasn't as difficult as some people think, and uh is now at half a million himself, or more, in retained revenue now. But what we, we wanted to do today because there's a lot of um, there's so much in that for me. The biggest thing in it for me, is that statistics you can't argue with. This is an established, long-standing, large recruitment group. Right, these are states you can't argue with. Why on earth would you want to work on 120 contingent jobs to make the same money as you would make if you worked on six and a half? And the reason I find and it's still very difficult to fully understand is that a lot of people have these perceptions or they've got these you know, there's these myths around it and they they put their own.

Speaker 2: 4:51

They put their own barriers up, don't they?

Speaker 1: 4:53

yeah, there's so many um like well, it won't work in my market, or it won't work at the salary level that I work at, or, and there's so many others.

Speaker 2: 5:04

I'm not great at BD or like yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:08

Or I'm new to the recruitment industry right, there's loads of them, and so today we wanted to help unpack those things that stop us from working in a really sensible, proven, uh, productive, efficient and, as we know, george um much more enjoyable way yeah, but we want not only did we want to do that, but we wanted to do it by sharing people's stories.

Speaker 2: 5:34

Yeah, real examples of people that have done it are doing it that you relate to.

Speaker 1: 5:43

So the first one was lots of people say to us that it won't work in my market or they've got this belief that their clients won't buy it because they're in a market where retain just isn't done in adverse commerce. One of our clients joined us I don't know six months or so ago, from the concrete industry.

Speaker 2: 6:06

May or may not have been a guest on the podcast at some point.

Speaker 1: 6:09

May or may not have been, and concrete mining, construction, fresh produce, whatever the industry is. There's so many industries where a team just isn't even a thing. Clients have got no idea what it is, not even that, but they don't care what it is.

Speaker 2: 6:31

Normally it's when those leadership teams are old school.

Speaker 1: 6:34

Yes, you know those.

Speaker 2: 6:37

Yeah, you know the type.

Speaker 1: 6:39

I know the type and it's not that they don't know what retainers, but they really don't care either. And the perception from our perspective, as recruiters and lots of people have, is that that will mean that they won't buy it. And tj has basically proved, as we see with lots of other people in lots of these industries, that that's just not the case. He says I took the time tonight. Uh, we got this um a few days ago. As you can see from the date, I took the time tonight to capture the results we've been having on the retained search from this year over the success of your course. As you'll see below, I completed the course around mid-June.

Speaker 1: 7:16

It's been roughly three and a half months, though not even six months and, as a reminder, we were almost exclusively contingent. Apart from one retained search early in the year for an executive role, which is often the case, it's only ever been used for executive positions. Over the last few months we've converted constituent searches into retain to get better results, signed one client onto a monthly retainer, have another new client signing up for monthly retainers a briefing for seven positions is scheduled next Tuesday and have sold several new retainers to new clients, several new retainers to new clients. All told, I'm happy to share. The total amount of retainer fees sold in this time is $588,000. Also, the last 11 placements we've made nine were retained and only two were contingent and the team has increasingly become believers that retainers are the difference maker in getting the level of client engagement to ensure that we achieve a result. He then goes on to say thanks for the support, training, encouragement. It's been a game changer where we'd be without having made the strategy shift. All those other bits aside, we wanted to give you evidence that it doesn't matter what market you're operating in and it shouldn't be a barrier to you being able, or even investigating a move, to retained and also stands out to me as well about tj he had no barriers he was new into the industry he was

Speaker 1: 8:41

the hro didn't come having this kind of preconceived idea of a town yes to it just came with some common sense and a showing that it's possible yeah, but we've also, you know, you look at john butler in mining, general construction, you know all industries that are not particularly evolved or sophisticated from a talent acquisition perspective at all and they've done the same thing.

Speaker 2: 9:11

So that was one of the first things that I wanted to share yeah, this one yeah, I mean one of the other ones we get often is I've never done BD yes, yeah and it's.

Speaker 1: 9:28

It is fairly unusual, but some people have been in the market. It's been so buoyant, and this is the case with uh sabrina. She's been in industry. That's been very, very buoyant. Um has only realized now that she's going to have to start doing business development and lots of people would think that, if that's the case, you've got to. When you work on a contingent basis and and prove yourself on a contingent basis first, and that's a huge misconception, isn't it? Loads of people think that you can't get retained unless you've proved yourself on a contingent basis, and it's absolute rubbish. Like it's just not. It's not true. It's almost the reverse yeah it's.

Speaker 1: 10:06

It's impossible to deliver the kind of service that you need to deliver without financial commitment from your client.

Speaker 2: 10:11

There's a different challenge as well, I think, often say to me yeah, I'm a best. Taking it to a brand new customer or someone that I've worked with before, and I almost feel like they're as hard or as easy as each other. In a sense, customer are going to say, well, we've never had to do this before. Like why now? And a brand new customer are going to have no preconceived idea of how you'd work, but they don't know you or trust you yet. So it's almost like pick your poison right.

Speaker 2: 10:36

Like in a way you're going to have to overcome an objection.

Speaker 1: 10:39

Yeah, yeah, but it all starts with the diagnostic of it, of course. If the contingent model is working for them, then you shouldn't suggest that they do something different. Um, fortunately and normally, that isn't the case, so it makes perfect sense for you to suggest that they should do something different. So, with this knowledge and with the skills that she's been learning with us, uh, sabrina has proven that it is not true. Uh, she had no bd experience before. Uh had six client pitch meetings in the past week, all in person. Four out of the six prospective clients a new and two existing, edited four this week. One of them's led to be doing a full proposal pitch tomorrow, and then she talks about where she's got to. Thank you for all your help with improving my approach. Now I just need to go and close on this proposal tomorrow.

Speaker 1: 11:28

So it just goes to show you, whether you have got existing clients, whether you're brand new to dd, whether you've only ever worked on repeat business before. It doesn't mean you have to prove yourself on a contingent basis first you can go straight to retain, and in fact you should, especially if their previous experience of contingency has not been particularly good. Which is nine times out of ten yeah, okay, another one for you, lee.

Speaker 2: 11:54

I'm never gonna be those big search birds, right? It's just not. It's just not possible. Is it like?

Speaker 1: 11:59

no, and normally I'm not even gonna bother trying because they're so far ahead of me. I'm just little old, me. One man band with my researcher or my brother, in Josh's case, you know in our little office in North Manchester and there's no way that we can go up against a Heidrick or a Russell Reynolds and win.

Speaker 2: 12:20

Let me tell you look, david did beat.

Speaker 1: 12:22

Goliath, he did, he did, and so did Joshosh, so did josh. Um, he I mean not only was he fully contingent not long ago when he first joined the course, but he says a couple of weeks ago I won a cfo search, going up against two others the subjects of this uh message his first time beating a shrek.

Speaker 1: 12:44

So I just found out one of the others was russell reynolds, which means it's the first time I've beaten a shrek firm. He's so excited about it a year ago and I struggled to see how a tiny business like ours would beat one of the big guys. And yet here we are. Needless to say, this group's been invaluable to the journey. Big up for train search big up you, josh.

Speaker 2: 13:02

Yeah, big up you.

Speaker 1: 13:03

Josh, I'm absolutely delighted. And he has proven that you don't need to be alive. And for those of you who don't know.

Speaker 2: 13:12

By the way, the Shrek firm is an acronym for the biggest search firms in the world. So it's Spencer Stewart, Hydrogen Struggles, russell Reynolds, egon Zender and Colton Ferry.

Speaker 1: 13:22

And Josh didn't even know that when he first joined us. So well done. And now he's meeting them, them, I don't know about that well, pistol. So, um, there's other. There's other misconceptions. A lot of people think, well, in my location, and that mean must, might be because they're in I don't know, um, rockshale in Manchester because it's just too small. Uh, you know, in a market. Or it's because they're in zimbabwe and therefore, you know it's too out of mainstream. You know, retained activity. So os is based in, uh, he's based in zimbabwe, but their head office is in Harare in Sub-Saharan Africa. And he goes to show you that it doesn't matter where you're based and some of our members have operations in all corners of the world. He says hey guys, following six months of conversations, dozens of emails helpful, of course, it's very persistent, professional persistence. Ossian. We have just won a project with PE VC back mobility business from Europe for senior general manager in South Africa $35,000.

Speaker 1: 14:42

there's another and I think the middle east is another misconception dubai. People don't attain in dubai yeah, we get lots and lots of that and jonathan's doing a fantastic job of debunking that myth, and lots of others do too. Do very, very well in the police. We've had a few to pick to share with you today. Um, I hope you're well. Uh, jonathan says, of course it's been great, I've won a number of retainers and overall it's had such a massive impact on my billings Fingers crossed, I'm on track for half a million this year.

Speaker 1: 15:13

Nice and they don't retain in Dubai.

Speaker 2: 15:16

There are so many little concerns over that, though. Right, because, yeah, this is the Dubai, don't retain in on.

Speaker 1: 15:27

But also, like he's in oil and gas, that's another old school industry engineering, yeah I think the other thing that we get quite a lot of is I'm I'm new. I'm new to the recruitment industry yeah, about you know like yeah, I'm you know I'm joining from a product management background or an insurance-broking background. We've had all sorts of oil trading and John joined us from FMCG and he was senior, well C-suite, actually winning the FMCG industry and then established a search firm.

Speaker 2: 16:03

He was running his search firm and running an FMCG firm, I think, and then for a while he did both.

Speaker 1: 16:09

yeah, he did both, and he set up a search firm to solve a problem that he couldn't solve in his own business and then ended up working and providing search services to the industry, and that's now taken over as his main focus.

Speaker 2: 16:28

Well, he's been doing a lot on LinkedIn, hasn't he? And he said I've been finding that structured outreach through LinkedIn is really paying off, both in terms of both boosting brand visibility and generating leads. One approach that's working particularly well is using a sales navigator to build targeted lists, whether it's focusing on a specific decision maker like a CEO, or or honing on particular industries within my niche, like dairy and fmcg.

Speaker 1: 16:50

In fact, I've recently secured a retained assignment for a cco chief commercial officer entirely through this method, and when you add in tools like dripify, that outreach can really take off he's been working really closely with sarah, who those of you that listen to us or those who are interested in finding out more about how digital marketing works for Retained, should reach out to Sarah Chester-Nelson. She has her own little coaching community and is helping lots of our members to improve, refine and scale their digital marketing.

Speaker 2: 17:27

As we were looking through some of the recent successes of our members, me and Lee were, like Jesus, Sarah's been busy.

Speaker 1: 17:32

Jesus Sarah.

Speaker 2: 17:35

Marketing, marketing, marketing.

Speaker 1: 17:37

I know, yeah, I know Digital marketing is taking over the world. But that's another myth A lot of people think that digital marketing doesn't work for retained and I can tell you right now because we just have to wade through. A lot of people think that digital marketing doesn't work for retained, and I can tell you right now, because we just have to wade through a load of wins, that it bloody does it absolutely does.

Speaker 2: 17:51

Yeah, I just absolutely love this one. Can I just say what a great guy Ryan is. Yeah, such a good guy like so sharing, so giving, yeah, yeah, I mean. And this this makes me laugh, because how many people do we speak to that say, yeah, I've won some retainers? What I do is I tell them it's ex-contingent, but it's cheaper if they retain me it's awful.

Speaker 1: 18:16

It makes my. It gives me anxiety. It gives me anxiety listening to someone say that it's like Jesus Christ, you don't need to make it cheaper. In fact, Ryan says how I negotiated 40% using retrained search training.

Speaker 2: 18:32

It's worth noting he's in Japan, which are higher fees typically, but he did say this is comfortably his highest fee ever.

Speaker 1: 18:41

Yeah, I mean he says the challenge was getting their buy-in at 40% because they were being used to 20% to 30%. They fell off their chair when they saw our proposal. And he's written for those of you that are watching the video you can see. For those of you that aren't probably worth next time doing that too, he's written a post on how he negotiates the 40% and he's reminded and outlined the principles that he's been learning through the program to to do that. And he then goes on to say the feed um well, exactly what he did. He's quoted what he's done, how he's done it, and he says I hope this helps someone out there make a breakthrough too. So I'm not going to read the whole thing out because, you know, entice those of you that aren't watching.

Speaker 2: 19:32

I want to read one paragraph because I've just read it. It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway Defeat is not driven by greed or ego. It's driven by what I know will enable me to deliver an absolutely superb result for you as a client, your particular set of challenges exactly buy it into a raving fan in the market.

Speaker 1: 19:56

Very nice yeah, it is very good. He's very, very good and he helps share his successes with the rest of the community.

Speaker 2: 20:05

So please, you're in our community follow him, look at, look him up follow what he's doing cheaper never make retain cheaper at the very very least, it should be the same price as the contingent offer.

Speaker 1: 20:19

Lastly, there there's a proportion of all the people that we speak to and out there that are worried that working on a retained basis needs fancy tools.

Speaker 1: 20:31

Fancy technology needs, you know, frills and bells and whistles that they just don't have, Particularly if they're operating either alone or as an independent recruiter, or they're in a big firm and that firm only has limited technology, or as an established business, you might think we've got loads of tech. You know we're going to have to change everything, and this guy, Greg, is just such a perfect example of how that isn't true. You don't need fancy tools, you don't need fancy tech, you don't need to change any of your tech stack or anything at all. In fact, because greg lawrence is has got to be by far the biggest technophobe that I think I've ever worked with he self self-proclaimed technophobe self-proclaimed.

Speaker 2: 21:18

That's not us saying that about him. Like he admitted he.

Speaker 1: 21:21

That was one of his biggest fears when yeah journey is like I'm not technical, you don't need so we want to debunk that and and encourage those of you that are worried about tools or tech. You just don't need to. Greg is sharing. I just wanted to share. I just won my first retain search. I pitched face to face. It went so smoothly. Thanks so much for your help. He hasn't had to change anything that he's doing technically. He doesn't have to learn any tools or tech and he's sailing along just fine.

Speaker 2: 21:51

Funnily enough, Greg didn't include a gif or an emoji in his email.

Speaker 1: 21:54

No, he didn't. No, it's always really straightforward. So there's loads more, isn't there? There's loads more barriers that people put up, and we will.

Speaker 1: 22:06

If there's particular barriers for you that you're worried about, um, whatever that might be, it might be about yourself, it might be about your own limiting beliefs or your own personality that is holding you back. If we can help you to remove those or overcome those, or and sometimes we might not be able to might just say, yeah, no, it's not right for you, because sometimes some of them are restrictive, like if actually all you give a shit about is making money and you don't really care about the outcome for your client, then I mean, that's a barrier that you're probably not going to be able to overcome, because retained work doesn't doesn't fit with that mentality. So, but most, but most of them, they're in your way and they're not serving you. If you want to work in a way that needs you work on 6.5 positions a year instead of 120, then we'd really like to help remove them, even if we just have a chat with you and then you decide you want to carry on working on 120 positions a year.

Speaker 1: 23:01

that's fine yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:03

And I love a challenge.

Speaker 1: 23:05

Yeah, yeah, don't we year. That's fine, yeah, and I love a challenge, yeah, yeah. So that's what we want to leave you with today. Um, next week, I think, back to the normal format I've got loads of really good guests lined up for you over the coming weeks.

Speaker 2: 23:18

I don't know what now to come in aaron?

Speaker 1: 23:20

he doesn't know yet, but he did a session internally for our community, didn't he? And people have been raving about it ever since.

Speaker 2: 23:28

Yeah it was really really good.

Speaker 1: 23:30

Yeah, yeah, one of them she said she started doing what he told her to do and she's already got like 10 times the engagement that she's ever had on linkedin just from like a 15. Yeah, yeah, it's funny Full of gold, okay, so yeah if you want to carry on working on 120 positions a year to get the same amount of money as 6.5 would, then you know, just carry on or fool you. But more fool you?

Speaker 1: 24:02

Yeah, we'll let you go and I'll see you soon. Yeah, okay, good, we'll let it go and I'll see you soon.

Speaker 2: 24:09

See you, bye.

Speaker 1: 24:14

Bye. Well, that's another episode of Retrained Search the podcast in the bag. Thanks for listening to our wild tales, linkedin controversies and our top tips on how to sell and deliver Retained Search. Get involved in our next episode. Send in your questions and share your experiences with us by emailing podcast at retrainedsearchcom. And don't be shy. Connect with us on LinkedIn and come and say hi, we don't bite, unless you're a Shrek firm, that is.

Speaker 1: 24:41

We want to say a special thank you to our Retrained members for sharing what's working for them right now and innovating new ways to grow and evolve. It's an incredible community. If you're wondering what exactly we mean when we mention our communities, well, we have two separate programs. Our Search Foundations program is for recruiters who want to learn how to sell and deliver retained search solutions consistently, and we have our search mastery program. That's for business leaders or owners already at 50% retained or more and looking to scale and grow and structure their search firm. We cap memberships to these programs to protect the integrity of the community. If you want access, just talk to us. Okay, thanks for listening. We'll be back very soon with another episode of Retrain Search the podcast.