Two firms, same city, same money through the door last year. One sold for three times what the other was offered.

The difference was not the billings. It was what a buyer thought would still be there a year after the owner walked out.

Most owners only think about this when somebody puts an offer in front of them, and by then it is years too late to change the answer.

WHAT IS IN IT

What a buyer is actually buying, which is not what owners think they are selling. An owner believes he is selling a business that bills. A buyer is buying revenue that survives him leaving. The gap between those two is the whole valuation.

The four things that get taken off the price, in the order they usually get taken off.

One, you. If you are the best biller in your own firm, that is the largest single discount on the offer. An owner I worked with billed $480,000 a year personally. The whole firm did $700,000. He thought that made the firm look strong. A buyer sees 68 per cent of the revenue walking out of the door on completion day.

Two, where the relationships live. If your clients are held by individual consultants, in their heads and their own connections, you do not own them. You are renting them until somebody resigns. What gets paid for is a named client list in the system, with the conversations logged, that any consultant could pick up on Monday.

Three, the shape of the revenue. A dollar of contingent revenue and a dollar of retained revenue are not worth the same, and it is not close. Contingent has no contract behind it and arrives because somebody won a race that month. Retained has terms, and a client who committed before the work started. A buyer looking at three years of retained work with the same named clients is not buying your billings, they are buying a pattern.

Four, concentration. If one client is 40 per cent of your revenue you have a very good relationship with one company and some overheads. Every buyer stress tests it.

Then the part that matters most, because everything above is defence.

A busy desk and an owned market look identical on a monthly billing report and are completely different assets. A busy desk is a team working whatever came in, and nobody can tell you where next quarter comes from. An owned market is a counted vertical, every company named, every decision maker named, and the firm able to say how much of that market it has touched this quarter and how much it has not.

Why spreading across niches feels safer and values lower. Every niche you add is another market to map and another entire build paid for from zero. Shallow in six is a busy desk with extra overhead, and it is the most common shape in this industry.

What a buyer pays more for: a document that says here is our market, every company in it, every decision maker, what they paid, and the 30 per cent of this market we have not touched yet. That last line is growth the buyer gets without changing anything.

ONE THING TO DO THIS WEEK

Three numbers, and it does not matter whether you are selling in two years or twenty.

What percentage of last year's revenue came from you personally. What percentage came from clients who have paid you in each of the last three years. What percentage came on retained or exclusive terms rather than contingent.

Most owners have never put them side by side. Together they are a rough version of what somebody would offer you. If the first is high and the other two are low, you have a busy desk.

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The front end, and the one measurement almost every recruitment firm has wrong.

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There is somebody inside your client who is paid to keep you away from the one you need.

That is not a criticism of them. It is their job, and most of them do it well. And it is why good firms sit at the bottom of an account for years.

Last episode was the first call. This one is the problem that sits in front of it, because you cannot run any of it at somebody who is following a process.

WHAT IS IN IT

Who is actually who. There is somebody who owns the problem: a division is short, a project is late, a leader has gone, and it is costing them. That is the budget holder, almost always a line director or above. And there is somebody who owns the process: a fair, compliant search, a tidy supplier list, the best price. Two different jobs, two completely different conversations, and firms send the same approach to both.

What that looks like from the other side of the desk. You send your market view to the process owner. They are not comparing markets, they are comparing suppliers, so the only part of your message they can act on is your rate. You get added to the list. Nothing happens for five months. Then a brief arrives, already written, already priced, already with four other firms. And the firm concludes that account is hard work. It is not hard work. It was entered at the wrong floor.

The mistake most owners make, which is to go round talent acquisition. That gets you one conversation and then it gets you blocked, and in a small market it follows you. The answer is not around them. It is above them, openly.

Three ways up. One, a trigger: a contract win, a funding round, a new site, a leadership change. You go to that director with what it means for their hiring, not with your credentials. Who is available within reach of that site, what those roles pay there now, how long the last three searches like it took. A trigger is public, so the advantage is never knowing it happened, it is being the only one who turns it into something useful inside a week. Congratulations is not a reason to reply.

Two, the search that has already failed. The process owner is managing it, the director is living with it. You say plainly why it is not filling: the pay band sits below where the movers are, the location rules out the pool, the title means something different in that market. Uncomfortable, which is exactly why it works. And you need to be right, so it only goes out when you have genuinely counted that part of the market.

Three, being known before you ever get in touch. The one that takes longest and is worth the most. That is what the publishing is for. Not likes. The entrance it buys your team eighteen months later.

The rule that sits over all three, because it is what keeps you in the account. You tell the process owner what you are doing. Not permission, information. Then you ask where they want the work to sit. Done that way you have not gone round them, you have brought them something they did not have.

Two things never to do. Never criticise the process owner to the director, it comes back and it marks you as hard to work with. And never let the director hand you straight back down without a named next step and a date.

ONE THING TO DO THIS WEEK

Take your three largest accounts. For each one write down two names: who owns the process, and who owns the budget. If you cannot fill in the second name, that is the whole lesson, and it is not an unusual answer. Most firms cannot.

Then look at which of the three ways up applies to each of them right now. A trigger. A failed search. Or neither, in which case the answer is the long one, and it starts this month.

NEXT EPISODE
What a firm is worth when it sells, and why a busy desk is worth so much less than an owned market.

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"Send me something over and I will take a look."

That is how most first calls in this industry end, and every recruitment firm owner has heard it this month. It sounds like interest. It is the politest no there is.

By the time you are on that call the hard part is already behind you. A director who had never heard of your firm has handed you their time, and that is the scarce thing in all of this. Not the list, not the document, not the sequence. Their attention, once, for twenty minutes.

Most firms spend it describing themselves. The consultant opens with the firm, then asks whether the director has anything live. Two moves, and the call is finished. The first gave the director nothing they could use, the second put the firm in a queue with every other firm that rang them that month.

This episode is the shape that works instead. Three moves, in order, and the order is the whole thing.

WHAT IS IN IT

Move one. The first sentence out of your mouth is a fact about their market that they did not have. Not a question, not your credentials. How many firms within reach employ the role they are hiring, what it pays two towns over, which competitor has been to market twice this quarter. One sentence, and the call changes category.

Why that works, and why it is not a trick. A director can see their own hiring and cannot see the market around it. Nobody in their week brings them that.

A worked example. A search firm placing senior engineers in one region, converting about one first call in ten. One page built on their market, one new opening line, and the director's next sentence stopped being send me something over and started being how do you know that.

Move two. The second thing you say is not whether they have anything live. It is what has already failed. How the last search went, how long the seat sat empty, who turned it down and why. The written brief says what they want. The failed search says what the market will give them, and the gap between the two is the only thing you get paid properly for.

Move three. You do not leave with send me something over. You leave with a named piece of work, on a named day, that you own. Why a piece of work beats a proposal: a proposal asks them to decide, a piece of work asks them to turn up.

The two things that never happen on a first call. You do not quote a fee, at any level, because the moment a number is in the room the only thing left to discuss is the number. And you do not send a CV or offer to, because a CV on a first call turns you into a supplier the instant it lands.

The real test of whether the call went well, which is not the one most owners use. It is not whether you walked away with a brief. It is whether the director took your view of their market seriously.

ONE THING TO DO THIS WEEK

Take your last five first calls, yours or your consultants'. Write down the first sentence that was actually said on each one, and count how many of the five were about your firm. If it is four or five, you do not have a conversion problem. You have an opening problem, and that is a far easier thing to fix.

Then ask the harder question. Could your consultants open with a fact about their market tomorrow if you told them to? If not, it is because those facts do not exist anywhere in your firm yet, and that is the real job.

NEXT EPISODE

How to reach the director who owns the budget, when the firm's own process is built to keep you away from them.

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