Law firms
Legal services are bought at moments of difficulty, from someone the buyer has been told to trust. Almost nothing about that responds to advertising, and some of what advertising would suggest is prohibited.
How recruitment agencies win more clients
Every recruiter is selling the same thing to the same employers with the same pitch. The ones who win have candidates the others do not.
Where the work actually comes from
Recruitment is a two-sided market and the sides are not equally scarce. In most specialisms, clients with vacancies are relatively easy to find and good candidates are not — which means the agencies that win clients are usually the ones who can lead with a specific person rather than with a service description.
Employers use agencies at predictable moments: growth, resignation, a role they have failed to fill directly, or a skill they cannot assess themselves. The agencies that get called are the ones already known in the specialism, which is why niche depth beats geographic breadth almost every time.
The structural obstacle is procurement. Larger employers work through preferred supplier lists and get onto them at review points rather than on request. Smaller and mid-sized employers have no such barrier, buy on relationship and urgency, and are consistently under-served — which makes them the most winnable market for an agency without an existing PSL position.
The channels that produce work
- Leading with candidates rather than with services. An approach naming a specific, available, relevant candidate gets a conversation where a service pitch gets deleted. It also demonstrates the only thing the client actually cares about — that you have access to people they cannot reach — and it is the fastest way to open an account.
- Specialising deeply in one discipline. Agencies known for a specific function or sector build a candidate network that generalists cannot match, and employers call the specialist first. Depth also raises fees, because a client hiring a scarce skill is not comparing percentage rates.
- Small and mid-sized employers, who have no PSL. SMEs hire regularly, decide quickly, have no procurement barrier and are largely ignored by agencies chasing enterprise accounts. They buy on responsiveness and quality, and one good placement usually leads to every subsequent vacancy.
- Existing placements and client aftercare. Placed candidates become hiring managers, move companies and take suppliers with them. Clients who had a good experience hire repeatedly. Staying in contact after the invoice is the least-worked, highest-return activity in the industry.
The accounts worth approaching
Every trade on this site has a commercial customer base sitting behind the public one — businesses that buy repeatedly, book in advance and pay on account. They are also, conveniently, a list: each one has a website, a phone number and usually a named contact. These are the ones worth a deliberate approach.
| Who | Why they repeat |
|---|---|
| Growing SMEs and scale-ups | They hire continuously, decide fast, have no preferred supplier barrier and reward responsiveness with repeat business. |
| Companies with hard-to-fill technical roles | Scarcity is what makes an agency valuable, and these clients pay for access rather than negotiating on percentage. |
| Businesses with high staff turnover | Hospitality, care, logistics and retail hire continuously, which makes a single relationship a recurring revenue stream. |
| Professional services firms | Law, accountancy and consultancy hire on cycles and value discretion and sector knowledge over fee negotiation. |
| Newly funded companies and new site openings | Funding rounds and new premises produce concentrated hiring bursts with urgency and budget attached. |
Searches that build that list
Each of these is a business type run against the towns and cities you cover. One search per line, every location at once.
- technology companies, software firms, engineering businesses
- care homes, hotels, restaurants, logistics companies
- accountancy practices, law firms, consultancies
- manufacturers, warehouses, distribution centres
- marketing agencies, construction firms
What quietly empties the pipeline
- Pitching the service instead of a candidate. Every competitor sends the same message and clients have stopped reading it.
- Being a generalist. The agency that covers everything has a network deep in nothing, and employers call specialists.
- Chasing enterprise PSLs exclusively. They open at review points, not on request, while SMEs are hiring today with nobody competing.
- Disappearing after the placement. Placed candidates become clients and satisfied clients hire again, and both need a phone call.
Questions
01 How do recruitment agencies get new clients?
The most effective approach is leading with a specific candidate rather than with a service pitch. Employers receive identical agency approaches constantly and ignore them; a message naming a relevant, available person with the right skills gets a reply because it offers the scarce thing rather than the abundant one. Beyond that, specialising deeply enough to be the obvious call in a discipline, and targeting SMEs who have no preferred supplier barrier, are the two structural advantages available to an agency without existing enterprise relationships.
02 How do you get onto a preferred supplier list?
By being known before the list is reviewed, because they rarely open on request. PSLs are typically reviewed on a cycle or when a supplier fails, so the productive approach is to build a relationship with the hiring managers and HR contacts, deliver on any off-PSL urgent role you are given, and be visible when the review comes. Meanwhile the faster route to revenue is the SME market, which has no such barrier and hires just as often.
03 Is specialising in one sector worth it?
It is the single biggest determinant of agency quality in most markets. Specialisation builds a candidate network that generalists cannot replicate, which is what employers are actually buying, and it supports higher fees because the client is paying for access to scarce people rather than for a process. It also makes business development far more efficient — one community, one set of skills, one conversation you can have credibly.
04 How do agencies keep clients from going direct?
By being faster and better at the part employers find hardest: sourcing people who are not applying. Any client can advertise a vacancy; what they cannot easily do is reach candidates who are not looking, assess them properly and manage them through a process. Agencies lose clients when they behave like an advertising channel — forwarding applicants — and keep them when the shortlist contains people the client could never have found alone.
Selling to recruitment agencies instead?
Recruitment agencies buy applicant tracking systems, CRM, job board subscriptions, sourcing and outreach tools, background checking and marketing. They are heavily present on LinkedIn and web search with published contacts, making them a high-yield and highly targetable list.
Compare the eleven data sources →
Guides for building that list
Other trades
Accountants
Accountancy has the best client retention of any professional service and the worst pricing discipline. Clients stay for a decade; the fee barely moves in that time.
Insurance brokers
An insurance book is an annuity that leaks. Everything a broker does is either plugging the leak or adding to the book, and the first is far cheaper than the second.
Consultancies
The consultant's problem is not finding work, it is finding work while doing work. Almost every famine follows a feast that nobody sold through.
The commercial half is a list
The accounts above all publish their contact details. GoLeadX searches a business type across every town you cover, crawls each site for the address, verifies it, and hands you a CSV. A search takes about a minute.
Create an account →