Last week I blogged on how competing on speed and volume alone was not the way to be successful as a recruiter over the long term. Today I turn the attention to price.

The question of fees and margins in our industry is a sensitive and difficult one. The fact is that clients resent our percentage-based permanent fees structure, and it’s easy to see why. What is…

The one word that seems to be synonymous with our industry is ‘competition’. We are forever telling each other how ‘competitive’ it is and how many ‘competitors’ we have.

And it’s all true.

But the areas most recruiters compete on are rarely the ones that truly differentiate us. Going forward, the recruitment industry is going to compete in totally new ways, and that’s going to leave many ill-prepared recruiters far, far…

Last week I blogged about how you need to move the focus away from dollars and percentages when clients negotiate fees, and on to your value and your differentiators.

One of the comments on my blog from Matthew Lancey raised the point that sometimes clients keep pushing, and they say something like “but your competitors charge…

It’s a fact of recruiting life that clients will push you to negotiate your fees. And with so many recruiters quick to drop fee percentages to secure briefs, that can be a hard discussion to deal

with.

The starting point for successful fee negotiations is, strangely enough, to get the conversation off the fee percentage, and on to the question of what it is your fee is actually for.

And of course, bundled up in that conversation, is your…