The 7 Pillars of Effective Recruiting with Ben Browning

Benjamin Mena [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter podcast with your host, Benjamin Menna, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership and placements. A few quick announcements before we get started with this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. First of all, huge shout out to the sponsors. Titan placement group down in Sarasota, Florida. They got some big things happening. And if you're down in Sarasota and you're looking for a career that you can grow with, with a company with great leaders, definitely check out the Titan Placement group. They're actively hiring.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:43]:
And also, thank you guys for sponsoring this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. Secondly, the book of the month 177 mental toughness secrets of the world class by Steve Seebold. And third, the recruiting growth summit is coming back. You should see some updates out about it in a few weeks. Stay tuned. One of the most important parts of your recruiting business and your recruiting career is getting clients. It's the bd side of the house. It's a side that most of us aren't trained up like we should be.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:12]:
But here's the challenge, though. You can't have a job order to work on and recruit for unless you do the front end part. So I am so excited about my guests. Ben Browning. We're going to talk about some of the things that. How you can actually get more business for the rest of 2024. So, Ben, welcome to the podcast.

Ben Browning [00:01:33]:
Hey, Benjamin. Thank you so much for having me on. And it's. Yeah, it's great to see you. Thank you.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:38]:
So I'm. I'm super excited about this for also, because I've been learning a lot more about the UK market. The UK recruiting market. You guys are jumping on things faster than we are over here in the US. You guys are testing things. You guys are. I also have also learned that it's also harder to win work over there. Is that why you guys are accelerating and maturing a little more than us here in the states?

Ben Browning [00:02:03]:
Yeah. Well, as I understand it, and these kind of reports vary, but there's something like 40 to 45,000 recruitment businesses registered to trade in the UK, right? Which is about the same number, slightly higher, in fact, than the number of agencies across the entirety of the US. So we have a massive concentration of recruiters over here. And there's also been a really interesting evolution of the recruitment model in the UK, which I think really differs from the US, which has put us into competition. Not least, of course, because of the way that the whole trade union movement in the UK through the kind of sixties, seventies and eighties really impacted the relationship between employers and employees in a very different way to obviously the kind of the cultural demographics in the US. So, yeah, it's tough. I have clients both in the UK and the US, and the UK market is tough. And we're actually seeing a lot of uk based recruiters trying to break into the US market, maybe make it a little bit more tough for some of you guys, too.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:10]:
Well, and we'll do more of a deep dive on that later on in the podcast. But I'm so excited about you sharing BD strategies that's working. But, yeah, let's just jump in. How did you even get started in this wonderful world of recruiting?

Ben Browning [00:03:22]:
Yeah, right. So my first kind of role in recruitment was with a business, us based business, actually called Robert Half. I'm sure most of your audience will know the business well, right? And I was based in a small satellite office here in the UK, down in Hampshire, as a finance and accounting consultant doing permanent recruitment. Eventually moved up to London. And you know what? I found it really difficult. I found it really tough. It didn't seem to make sense to me, in particular the business development side. So the candidate generation side, the sourcing side, was all kind of relatively natural.

Ben Browning [00:03:59]:
As natural as a recruitment could ever be. Yes, it was damn hard work. Forgetting out and talking to people felt in my comfort zone. But the BD side, the sales side, really took some unpicking and some understanding and really led me to actually seek out business development strategies as much from outside of the recruitment industry as inside the industry. So, yeah, I was classic kind of model, right? Came into Robert half satellite office, moved to a big city, found sourcing candidates quite straightforward. But the sales side was much tougher. And it's.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:32]:
So I've seen this across, like, you know, a lot of people I'm talking with now, tons of recruiters. Like, did you get enough training on the sales side of the house versus the recruiting side of the house?

Ben Browning [00:04:45]:
We got. We got great training at Robert half. We got great training, Robert half and a great methodology and approach that was. That was really well taught. But in large part it was very tactical. It was about. Here's the structure. Here's the structure of how you call somebody.

Ben Browning [00:04:59]:
Here's a structure of how you approach somebody with an email effectively and effectively. The strategy boiled down to find a great candidate and let people know that you've got them. And I started out 15 years ago when LinkedIn was, I think, maybe just coming on. Clistene, certainly not the tool that it is today. And the ability, the access that we all have to talent pools now has leveled out so much that very quickly that strategy of having a great candidate and putting it in front of people became less and less effective. I know it's the classic methodology that most people still use right now, but that's why I'm so passionate about the stuff that I share. It really enables people to sell to more decision makers and more stakeholders, even when they're not hiring, actually, and be able to win business outside of that. So, yeah, I had some good training, but it was very tactical.

Ben Browning [00:05:51]:
And, and in terms of that more strategic element, it was, yeah, it was something that I had to really go out and seek for myself.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:58]:
And then you went somewhere else and then you spent some time as an in house consultant. In house recruiter.

Ben Browning [00:06:04]:
Yeah, that's right. And again, that shaped my experience. Cause I moved to EY, the big consulting firm. Again, I'm sure a name that'll be familiar with lots of your audience. And again, I was working in one of their audit and assurance teams. So again, the finance and accounting space. And one of my responsibilities was to manage the PSL and kind of lead on our engagements with agencies, which meant, for my sins, that I was exposed to probably in the region of 20 sales calls from recruiters each week for about two and a half years and countless emails. So being able to see the difference between the, frankly, 97% that fell into the same category as everybody else and the 3% that really stood out was really formative.

Ben Browning [00:06:50]:
Again, in my understanding of what it takes to be effective at winning new business and recruitment.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:56]:
And so just let's take a pause real quick there. So you were in charge of all the staffing agencies that were coming into EY. And of course, it's a big company. Everybody wanted to work with EY at that point in time. Back in those early days, those 3%, what did they do different?

Ben Browning [00:07:13]:
Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question and just a point of clarification. I wasn't running the whole BSL for the whole of ewire, not even in the UK. I had a small division that I was responsible for managing. But yeah, what did the 3% do that was different? Well, first of all, they recognized that the pressure on me, and yes, I was an internal recruiter, so I wasn't a direct hiring manager, but I had weekly, daily and weekly interaction with the hiring managers that I worked with, the agencies that cut through the recruiters who really landed a good punch on us in terms of winning our attention and ultimately getting on the PSL were businesses and individuals who saw the bigger picture. They recognized that what mattered to us wasn't just getting candidates, because all of like 100% of the recruiters we spoke to were saying, I can fill your jobs. But the 3% were saying, we recognize that for the vacancies you're trying to hire in this area, it's probably quality of hire that's going to be your biggest driver, or maybe for these types of role, it's actually probably time to hire. That's your biggest driver.

Ben Browning [00:08:20]:
Or we're asking questions about the direction and the growth of the team and how they could support that in a broader, longer term capacity rather than in, hey, have you got any vacancies you need any help with today?

Benjamin Mena [00:08:35]:
And I spent many years as an internal recruiter. I can't tell you how many of those emails I've gotten were, hey, you got a vacancy. Yeah. So in you took all that information and all that training and everything that you're doing and then you became a training director.

Ben Browning [00:08:50]:
That's right. Yeah. Like literally teaching.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:53]:
Like, oh, here's what the 3% work did that worked, right?

Ben Browning [00:08:56]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I recognize, you know what? This is part of kind of, this is, I guess the crux of my story is like the juxtaposition of being the recruiter on the front line, trying to generate new business, being given tactics and strategies that I felt were kind of honestly just a little bit hollow. Right. Just to dig into this just a little bit deeper, the, the whole premise of taking a candidate out to market. Right. Here's why that felt difficult for me. And it was because I believed as a consultant, maybe I had a bit of, maybe I had a little bit too much confidence, maybe a little bit of ego going on here.

Ben Browning [00:09:35]:
But my strongest belief is that recruitment can be a competitive advantage for employers. It can transform industries and communities, by the way, that it can add transparency and quality to the way the businesses work and the way that individuals find new opportunities. So I'm really passionate about the value of recruitment, and I just felt that every time I was going out and saying, hey, look, here's a candidate I found for you, I was really kind of talking about a very small slice of the value I can create for business. I know you have, you've recently interviewed fellow Brit over here, John Brooks, who talks really well about the value of recruitment. Right. And I kind of share a lot of John's ethos around this. So it felt really hollow to me to be going out to market saying, here I've got a candidate. When I really wanted to be saying to businesses was, yeah, I can get you a candidate, but what you need to be paying more attention to is the fact that I can really help you with your strategy.

Ben Browning [00:10:31]:
I can really help you actually achieve your strategic goals as an organization by making, hiring quicker, making it more effective, reducing the friction, improving your employer brand or increasing the diversity of your, or removing, helping reduce bias from your process or whatever. That looks like a much more strategic and nuanced approach than simply saying, hey, ive got a candidate. And so having seen that from the consultant perspective and the frustration of not being able to sell in a way that really conveyed my true value, and then going into an in house role and seeing that the people we ended up doing business with had this more strategic view, I was determined then to go back and I guess speak to people like myself five years or ten years earlier in my career and say, look, actually there is a better way. I've experienced it from both sides of the scale and I can help you get to. I can help you in a way that I wish somebody had been able to help me at the start of my career. I guess that's the story in a nutshell.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:34]:
That is awesome. I love that you are trying to talk to you at the beginning of your career, because that's one of the most powerful things. Because how many recruiters out there in America, the UK, across the globe, they're just like, they get into our space and they're like, we see the playbook, but the playbook is working for that person over there. Working for that person, but it's not matching for me. So I got to figure out what works for me.

Ben Browning [00:12:01]:
Yeah. And I got to tell you, I'm certainly in the UK, and I don't know how true this is in the US, but I fear that it's consistent. I see that it's consistent, certainly from the conversations that I have. But it's that the dominant playbook comes from the big. Certainly the dominant sales playbook, particularly in the UK, comes from the big kind of it contract book recruitment companies from the nineties, companies like s three, even hays and Reed to an extent as well. These are high volume contract businesses with relatively low margins. They don't and shouldn't ever have the same sales engine or model as a premium. By which I mean someone placing mid to senior level hires on the perm side.

Ben Browning [00:12:56]:
Right. The way that a premium perm recruiter or yeah, kind of. Placement recruiter is delivering their sales playbook should be necessarily very different from the way that kind of low, low margin contract recruitment is done. And unfortunately, that nuance, I think, often gets, kind of gets really lost. Well, it's.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:21]:
I mean, I think it's how, like, most a lot of recruiters get. Get into the space. They're, you know, young, hungry. Someone's like, hey, do you want to become a recruiter? And they're like, what is, what is, what's recruiting? And the next thing you know, your entire career has changed, and you now listen to this podcast like years down the road.

Ben Browning [00:13:39]:
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I can remember. I can remember that day very well, actually. I remember my first interview in, in recruitment. I'd actually been to the dentist to have a tooth out that morning. So I was like, I was still on painkillers and still managed to somehow still manage to stumble through the interview.

Ben Browning [00:13:55]:
So I don't know what that says. I don't know what that says about Robert Hart's recruitment process at that point in time.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:02]:
Well, let's just go ahead and dive in. One of the things that you've been talking about is that bd strategy is so underdeveloped. What does that actually mean?

Ben Browning [00:14:13]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great question. As I say, like, since shifting into developing individuals and developing with, working with businesses to help them develop their approach to sales, the question that keeps coming up, the question that I often get from recruitment business leaders and recruiters, is, hey, can you train me on recruitment? What they really mean is, can you teach me the tactics? Can you help me level up my performance? But performance and kind of execution should really only be seen as one part of a seven pillar model of recruitment. Right. It's really important that we get our execution and our performance. Right. But, like, really effective sales engines aren't built on creativity and flair and artistry alone. And artistry and creativity might not even be the dominant factor.

Ben Browning [00:15:02]:
The real dominant factor is systems, is a process driven approach, a systematic approach. That's where we get. And this is something that I see recruiters often really asking for, is, how can I be in a. How can, how can I get to a place where I'm confidently and consistently winning new business? And as I say, that really comes from having the right systematic approach, process driven approach, rather than great performance and flair and creativity.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:32]:
Okay, so you mentioned something a second ago about pillars. Like, it needs a pillar. What do you mean by pillars? And what are these pillars?

Ben Browning [00:15:38]:
Yeah. All right, so seven pillars of any great business development strategy. Start with culture philosophy. What are your beliefs? What are your beliefs about selling and sales? What are your beliefs about recruitment? I talk to so many recruiters who say, ultimately, when we get down to it, they really kind of confide in me and say, look, I actually kind of feel like sales is an intrusion. I don't really feel like I've got the right to go and sell to my clients. So first of all, we need to talk about their sales belief. Secondly, we need to talk about their beliefs around recruitment. That culture is their first pillar.

Ben Browning [00:16:09]:
The next pillar are the systems, the processes and the assets that they use. That all feeds into the metrics and measures that. What are they tracking? So an example of this would be if I believe that recruiters can transform industries, that I, as a recruiter, can make a meaningful impact on my client, and that my value isn't limited to place and candidates, then I'm not just going to measure how many jobs I pick up. I'm going to look at the whole process as a piece of a process for client acquisition. So what is my strategy? What are my processes for acquiring clients? And then my measurements become how many clients have I signed to contracts this month? And usually most recruiters can sign one client to a contract per month, and that contract will typically look like a six month exclusivity agreement. So the employer that they're recruiting for will say, hey, we like you, we trust you. We want to give you the opportunity to work on all of our vacancies for the next six months on an exclusive basis. So the measure that we're looking at is that client agreements signed.

Ben Browning [00:17:21]:
So the first three pillars are culture, systems and measures. We then move to the next three, which are performance, which we've kind of touched on positioning, which is who specifically you're targeting to do business with. And what problems do you specifically solve for them? If we take that, again, if we take this idea that filling roles is a given, filling roles is ultimately what we get paid for. But it's not why people choose to do business with you. It takes more than that. The next piece is, the next pillar is prospecting. So that is how do we take our positioning, our messaging, the people we want to work with and the reason we want to work with them and get them on the phone or get them on emails or get them over social media, engaged in the possibility of a meeting. And then the 7th pillar is this pillar of closing.

Ben Browning [00:18:20]:
So how do you take a client from curious in what you do all the way through to committed to working with you for six months on an exclusive basis. So just to wrap up those pillars again, culture systems, metrics, performance positioning, prospecting, and closing, I want to jump back.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:40]:
To the first pillar, the culture pillar. You talked about a lot of recruiters. I think that's one of the reasons why so many people struggle on the sales side of the house, is the feeling of the intrusion, or, we're here just to sell. How can a recruiter completely shift their mindset where it's a belief like, hey, I'm an intrusion to a pure belief and confidence that you're actually making the positive change for the community and for the company?

Ben Browning [00:19:09]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think recruiters, I think there's two answers to that question. There's something about your beliefs around sales, and there's something about your beliefs about recruit. So let's take your beliefs around sales. First of all, the thing that I did was I just spent so much time reading sales books and listening to sales podcasts. And there's a great podcast I used to listen to. It's called the Marketing Book Weekly, American Host, American show, hosted by a guy called Douglas Burdett. So go check it out.

Ben Browning [00:19:40]:
Really interesting podcast where he interviews each week a different author of a marketing or sales book. And I came across this guy, Anthony Iannarino. Now, Anthony is a us based recruiter who's run healthcare staffing businesses for, I'm gonna say, 30 years minimum, and is a internationally highly regarded best selling author in the world of sales. Probably one of those few people that's crossed over from recruiting staffing into being a real renowned sales leader. And Antoni was the first person who I heard talking about sales in a way that I could really relate to. But I encourage every recruiter, in fact, every business person, frankly, to go out and engage in the conversation around sales and listening to sales leaders and reading sales books, because it's not all grant cardone, Wolf of Wall street kind of, you know, very hard edged, transactional type stuff. There's actually some really fascinating consultative sales philosophy out there. The other guy you should check out, actually is a guy called Todd Capponi, who wrote the books transparency, sale and transparent sales leader.

Ben Browning [00:20:47]:
And he's fantastic. I had the pleasure of interviewing him on my podcast last year. So we interviewed him on recruiting better last year and brilliant interview, great philosophy, really. Those two guys in particular really helped shape my thinking and beliefs in sales. So. Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:05]:
So it's really like one of the factors is exposing yourself to more stuff. It really just helped shift the mindset and I want to jump to the last pillar, like, closing.

Ben Browning [00:21:15]:
Sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:16]:
Like, I don't know how to properly say this, but I feel like there's a lot of, like, things that you can do in recruiting.

Ben Browning [00:21:22]:
Mm hmm.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:22]:
But at the end of the day, like, we need to get some. Something, whether agreement or person, across the finish line. And, you know, maybe, like, that isn't as trained as.

Ben Browning [00:21:33]:
Well, maybe that was, like, the.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:34]:
The one page in my training manual that I took for, like, a half hour and just breeze through it.

Ben Browning [00:21:39]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:39]:
Is that why you made closing one of your pillars is just, you saw people, like, doing everything right and then just everything falling apart.

Ben Browning [00:21:47]:
So you're absolutely right. And I speak to this point a lot. Right. There's a diff. There's a really. There's a really big difference, really significant difference, between closing technique. You know, we've used the time based close or the alternative close trial close. All these different closing techniques.

Ben Browning [00:22:05]:
When we talk about closing strategy, we're really talking about everything. Imagine a sprinter prospecting is getting out of the blocks, and then closing is the remaining 85 yards in that sprint. Okay. So it's like. So the prospecting is the start of the process, but everything that happens after that is all part of the closing process, the sales process. And so when we talk about closing, we really talk about, we're talking about discovery. We're talking about building proposals with clients. We're talking about using case studies to articulate that.

Ben Browning [00:22:38]:
We're talking about understanding what is their major problem. How do they measure that problem? What is the solution I can propose in the case study that's relevant for that? And then how does all of that wrap up into a product that I can sell them? So those four pillars of problem, metric solution product, that all is kind of encapsulated in that idea of closing.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:02]:
I love that you did a running analogy. I'm a runner. With running, you see so many people, like, at the very beginning of the race, like, just shoot out of the gate, like, just take off the first quarter mile, and the next thing you know, most of them can't keep up that speed.

Ben Browning [00:23:17]:
Yeah. Right. Hey, Benjamin, what's your, what's your, what's. What's your. What's your favorite distance? Do you have a favorite distance? For Arne, it was always the.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:24]:
The five k was, like, my favorite. It's, like, just enough. It's short enough that I don't have to, like, don't.

Ben Browning [00:23:29]:
Don't.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:30]:
After this, think about the race.

Ben Browning [00:23:32]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:32]:
But it's long enough that I can, like, put myself in a, you know, a good place of like a pain threshold.

Ben Browning [00:23:38]:
Yeah, right. I hear you. I hear you. I'm a half marathon. In a former life, I was a half marathon runner. I still try and claim that badge, but it's been a, it's been a long time since I ran a new PB. But, um. But, yeah, I, I hear you entirely.

Ben Browning [00:23:50]:
And actually, yeah, mapping, mapping out a sales journey like a, like any kind of race is, is a really good way to think about it because, as you say, you know, it's about pacing yourself, but it's also about knowing what you're going to experience at different parts in the journey. And anyone who runs consistently, I think, will recognize that part of the thing about being a great runner is your self talk. Like, what do you. I know, for example, that at some point in a half marathon, I'm going to hit bits that really hurt. Okay. So I'm thinking, right in my planning for that, I'm thinking, how am I going to support myself through that? Same thing applies to a sales journey. Now, hopefully our clients or the employers we're trying to win opportunities with don't feel hurt, but they are going to encounter big decision points. They are going to encounter moments where they really have to commit to working with us to go to the next stage in the journey that might be, for example, we're talking to a hiring manager.

Ben Browning [00:24:47]:
The hiring manager knows that in order to bring us onto their PSL or in order to work with us, they're going to have to get HR involved or bring another stakeholder into a conversation. And that for a buyer, is a really fragile moment, they have to have real conviction that we're not going to end up wasting their time in order to bring other people into that conversation. And so we need, when we think about our race plan or our strategy for this sales journey or for this race, we need to think about what am I going to do when it gets to that point in the journey. How am I going to make sure that person feels confident going into the final leg of the race or the final leg of the sales process? Have I stretched the analogy too far? No, you're not.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:30]:
Don't laugh at this. My brain's just going like, crazy tangents on running analogies now because typically I'm doing half marathon training, I have a coach and my coach is sitting there telling me exactly what I need to do on a daily basis, then look at recruiting, the impact of, like, having a coach and accountability and all that stuff. And then, like, you know, injuries, downtime, slumps in the year.

Ben Browning [00:25:53]:
Sorry, but take the, say to take the recruitment leader as an, as an, you know, as an analogy to your coach. Your coach isn't stood on the sidelines whilst you're running shouting, hey, I need you to run harder or I need you to go faster. Maybe they are, but, like, more often they're creating a plan, and your job isn't to go out and be, you know, they might be saying, be the best runner, but what they're really saying is just. Just do the roth. Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:19]:
Follow the plan. Give me the point.

Ben Browning [00:26:21]:
Exactly. Be the plan. And that's. That's exactly where it comes back to for me, is it's less about, oh, we need. We need recruiters who are extrovert, who are great relationship builders, who are brilliant at building rapport. Most of the time, we just need people who are going to execute the plan.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:36]:
Okay, yeah. Jumping off the running subject. Okay, yeah, I want to jump over to, like, uh, client acquisition. Why is client acquisition. And this is something that we were talking about before we hit the record button. Why is it better than picking up job orders? Because, you know, you think of recruiting like, hey, I'm here to pick up a job order. Or, you know, just in general speaking, you know, without a job order, I can't recruit. Without recruiting, I can't, you know, get paid.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:58]:
But why is client acquisition better than just the. Focusing on the job orders?

Ben Browning [00:27:02]:
Yeah, absolutely. This goes back to part of the stuff that I learned at ey, right. When I think about picking up job orders, it's very specifically time focused. In order to pick up a job order, you need to be in the right place at the right time. But if particularly, most of my audience will be permanent recruiters. But this also works for contract recruiters, too. In fact, in some ways, it recruits better for contract recruiters. And you'll, I'm sure, see why the businesses that I, as a recruiter, want to be going out and winning will be people who hire, you know, several times through the year, they got significant hiring needs across the year.

Ben Browning [00:27:35]:
Whenever I talk to perm business and they say, most of our clients only hire once per year, I spot a problem because you're constantly going to have to replace those clients year on year. So when we think about picking up job orders, we're saying, look, the recruiter is out there. They're trying to find people who are actively hiring, people who have active. People who are actively hiring have already decided what specific skill set they're looking for what they think they need. They've also decided how they're going to run that process, how they are going to assess that skillset. They've also decided how they're going to sell that opportunity. And so you as a recruiter, take that brief and go and take those details out to market and try and find a candidate. But if you flip that and you win the client ahead of their hiring need and you say, hey, look, Benjamin, I can see you run a business.

Ben Browning [00:28:25]:
I anticipate that a leader with a team like yours, you're probably going to need to make something like three to five hires in the next twelve months. We can help you with that. We can find the talent. And by the way, as we do that, we can make the whole experience of hiring easier for you. And then we take them through the process by acquiring that client before their next hire. I can have had conversations with them about why are you recruiting this role at this level? Why are you paying what you're paying? How have you defined the skills that you need for that position? I can have conversations with the broader business about how are we selling the opportunity? Who's in charge of the employer brand here? How are we articulating this? And I can have conversations with them around. Look, how when you, when you've tried to assess talent before, how confident are you that you make the right hire each time? And is there any scope to look at your assessment process to see if we can help you make more confident hiring decisions, all of which lead you, the recruiter, to be in a position where you've got more control over the vacancy. Your fill rate goes like exponentially up.

Ben Browning [00:29:35]:
But also for every client you acquire, you're picking up three to five jobs versus going out hunting for an individual job. You've got to rework that business, re win that business every time.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:47]:
So how do you really start that relationship? Way before they even have a job order.

Ben Browning [00:29:52]:
Can I share a poem with you? Sure. I think this goes some way to supporting what we the kind of the approach that I teach. Right. So you might have heard it, I expect, being the cultured kind of guy you are, you may well have heard it before. So it's called for want of a nail. And it goes, for want of a nail. The shoe was lost. For want of the shoe, the horse was lost.

Ben Browning [00:30:14]:
For want of the horse, the rider was lost. For want of the rider, the message was lost. For want of the message, the battle was lost. For want of the battle, the war was lost. For want of the war, the kingdom was lost, all for the want of a nail. The reason I share that poem with you is lots of recruiters are out there selling nails. The ability to find a candidate. But the ones who really win have kingdom thinking they're selling.

Ben Browning [00:30:43]:
They're not just saying, hey, we've got nails. Do you want them? They're saying, hey, I can protect your kingdom. Do you want to hear how? And that's the kind of conversation that brings employers into the sales conversation or into the conversation with a recruiter even before their next hire.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:59]:
So what you're saying is recruiters should be focusing on the kingdom and not just trying to sell somebody with a live vacancy. 100%.

Ben Browning [00:31:11]:
100%. And knowing what that kingdom is specifically will relate to your industry, the business, the phase of business. You can see two very similar businesses. One who is, one who's just received funding and is going through that real scale up phase, really on a kind of rocket trajectory, and another client or another business who hasn't got that investment, who's struggling to make ends meet. Two businesses from the outside, same industry, same head count, but one really struggling, the other one really flying. The difference between what their kingdom is like is going to be really significant. So you have to really kind of apply a very context based lens to, okay, a business who's struggling. The thing that's going to matter most to them is replacing anybody who leaves as an essential hire with someone really high quality who can keep that business back or get that business back on track.

Ben Browning [00:32:05]:
Whereas a business who's scaling at the moment likely to just care about getting the right people, but very, very quickly because they need to be able to build, you know, team size is the thing. That's their biggest metric. So, yeah. Does that, does that help?

Benjamin Mena [00:32:21]:
That does help. But I also want to know, like, just for the listeners, like, how do you even start these conversations? Like, is this like a cold call, like email, LinkedIn, influencing, like, multi channel ecosystems? Like, how do I get these. Get these kingdoms?

Ben Browning [00:32:35]:
Yeah, right. So the phrase multi channel, multi channel ecosystems is absolutely a fair point. And you guys have got a couple of great. A great couple of, I guess, peers in your space who do some brilliant work around inbound, thinking of people like Will McGee and Clark Wilmot in particular. I think you guys maybe did the summer. Yep. So they did. They shared some great content there.

Ben Browning [00:33:02]:
And lots of my work, perhaps influenced by the UK market, is much more direct outbound. So it is, yeah. It's about making cold calls. It's about picking up the phone. It's about sending emails, it's about sending DM's on LinkedIn. But it all comes back to one principal thing, which is, do you know as a recruiter, the three major problems or challenges that your client experiences every time they come to hire that will lead them to choosing you over a competitor? So it's, again, it's more than just the problem isn't the vacancy, the problem is something much more than that. And everyone will have their own particular nuance or experience of that problem. But if you can articulate, if I can come to, if I can go to the market, or if you phoned me and said, hey, Ben, I see as you look to grow your business that you're looking to make your first couple of hires in sales, marketing and ops.

Ben Browning [00:33:55]:
Those are really important hires. And we know that getting the, we work with businesses in that space and we know that getting the culture fit right is the absolutely critical factor. So that you don't have to hire and then rehire those roles as the business outgrows those, those people, or you find that there's not a culture fit. So the work that we do then is specifically around those particular challenges and problems. And if I face those particular problems, I'm like, you guys get it, you get it. And I want to have that conversation. It's the problems that sell the meeting, not the solution, actually, so. Well, thank you for that.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:29]:
Well, hey, Ben, before we jump over to the next side of the podcast, is there anything else that you want to share about winning new clients, BD, all this fun stuff?

Ben Browning [00:34:37]:
Yeah, I think that's pretty much it. Right? So we've got the seven pillars, we've got this idea of kingdom thinking, which is a really big element, and it's shifting perspective. And we've got this idea of having the right beliefs and the right sort of sense and philosophy around sales. The one thing we didn't talk about in detail is the piece around your beliefs, around recruitment and how you shift those. But I think we've spoken somewhat to that. A great way for doing this, if you have existing clients at the moment, is going out and having conversation with them and saying, look, I know we filled the role, so you probably feel like we did a reasonable job, or I'd love to get your feedback on how we did. And in particular, the feedback I'd love to take is what mattered most about the work that we did with you. What was the lasting impact of the way we filled this vacancy and the way we went through this process with you so that we're not just talking about filling the role, but we're talking about getting a client's perspective on what else matters to them.

Ben Browning [00:35:37]:
That's a great way to be able to start to unpick and understand the value of the work that you do.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:42]:
So you mentioned something about recruiting belief. So I feel like recruiting is a industry that you learn to love. Mm hmm. Many of us have fell into it because it was a job. So I totally understand why there are plenty of people that hate recruiting and why a lot of people don't make it past like the first nine months. But I remember when I, I shifted my belief into recruiting. That's one of the things that helped me and why I'm still around today. Is there any other ways that you can like, or if your early career and you're listening to this podcast that you can, like, shift your belief in recruiting?

Ben Browning [00:36:22]:
Yeah, I think, again, one of the things that I look to, one of the things that really happened for me was finding people who think differently. And I get messages relatively frequently, and I'm thinking of a message that I got just a couple of hours ago, actually, I mentioned to you that we'd run a live event this morning over here in the UK, and somebody reached out to me, and then I get these messages relatively frequently, which is they say, I feel like there's someone else who speaks my language, and I'd say that to every recruiter, like, there will be people who experience recruitment in the same way as you. Think about the. Listen to this podcast. Listen to other podcasts in the recruitment space. Look to other thought leaders and people with a different slant and a different take because, yeah, my experience was one of frustration with a really transactional model, and there's a piece around a more transformational approach to recruitment and a more heartfelt approach to recruitment that is just as viable, I actually believe is more effective commercially, but is also really, I was going to use the word spiritually, but like, is really kind of coherent with my self view. And I think for a lot of people who come into the industry wanting to do a lot of good, that's awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:42]:
Well, and real quick, before we jump over the quick fire questions, make sure to check out Ben's recruiting podcast, recruiting better. And I'll have a link for that in the show notes. Okay. Okay. Jumping over to the Quickfire questions, what advice would you give to a brand new recruiter that's just getting started in our industry in 2024?

Ben Browning [00:38:01]:
Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. The advice that I would give and do give is actually, let's get really tactical on this one. There's multimedia messaging. Right? And when by multimedia messaging, I mean voice notes and videos. It's so difficult at the moment to stand out in winning new business. Emails and even calls, particularly in the US, getting people's direct numbers and getting conversations on the phone is more difficult than it is in the UK. So we need different strategies. The ability to reach out to people direct on LinkedIn with voice notes and videos is huge.

Ben Browning [00:38:36]:
Lots of people say, I hate the sound of my own voice recorded, or, I feel really, really cringe when I have to record a video or anything like that. For a lot of people, it's outside the comfort zone. But that eliminates about 97% of your competition. So that makes it a really good reason to do it. And the other reason to do it is we like interacting with people who we can see and feel that sense of intimacy with. So voice and video, I would say, yeah, absolutely. Right now, a real game changer in terms of quality of outreach can do.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:09]:
Okay. Part of great advice for a brand new recruiter. Same question for an experienced recruiter, somebody that's been around the block like, yeah, you know, yeah, 10, 20, 30 years.

Ben Browning [00:39:19]:
Yeah, yeah, 100%. I think for those more experienced recruiters as well, it's about really making sure that you're calibrating and taking feedback. I touched on this point earlier, but it's something that I do see missing in a lot of recruitment business strategies in general, is this. Recruiters will always. Most recruiters will say, vast majority of recruiters will say, we're relationship driven. I'm like, cool. So what is your process around taking feedback from the businesses you've worked with around the work and the impact that you've done. And there's often a gap there, which is really interesting for people who say that relationships are the most important thing.

Ben Browning [00:39:58]:
And whilst some of them will take feedback, maybe send an automated review or maybe even go and ask some direct questions, very few have a properly kind of strategic approach around that. So, yeah. And actually, if your audience are so inspired and want to reach out, I have a guide on taking feedback. The way to structure that and make use of that really effectively, they can reach out. Drop me a DM on LinkedIn. I'll shoot that over for.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:25]:
I was like, I feel like that's an sop that many recruiters, it's like, oh, quit.

Ben Browning [00:40:30]:
Hey, we filled the job.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:31]:
Cool, what's the next one? But then, like, oh, man. Okay. Things to think about.

Ben Browning [00:40:36]:
Yeah, absolutely.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:38]:
And for the recruiters that are listening, where you hear the sound of your voice. For the brand new recruiter, that advice, I was like, I get it. I edit my podcasts, I hear myself, and I'm like, did I just say that? Did I just laugh? Did I use that filler word for the 500th time? So it's all good, guys.

Ben Browning [00:40:53]:
Hey, one little, one little tip on that one is having a scorecard free. Before you go into listening to your calls, have a scorecard and be really objective. Like, all you're listening for is, hey, did I ask an impact question here? Did I ask a comparison question? Did I do my opener in the way I plan to? Did I, you know, and just be really objective line by line, it's just a tick list. And then you can give yourself a score at the end of it so you don't get hung up in all the things that you could have done differently or could have done better. None of that matters. The only thing that matter is what's on your scorecard. Be really objective about it and forget about the tone of your voice and your funny english accent and all the rest of it. All that matters is the things that are on that scorecard.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:34]:
Do you have, like, a favorite rec tech tool at the moment?

Ben Browning [00:41:38]:
I'm really enjoying using fathom. It's not specifically recruitment technology, but it's a AI transcriber, and it has so many uses. So I do most of my sales meetings. Most of my sales conversations happen over Zoom, but it works for any other video conferencing platform as well. And you can clip notes in it. So if someone, if I'm talking to a candidate and they talk to me about their commute, I can just hit the button on the panel that shows up in the top right hand corner of the screen that says it might be pre programmed to say commute. Or if the candidate is talking about their reason for leaving, I can just hit the button and it will record and trim that clip of the conversation where they've been talking about their reason for leaving. Same thing on the sales side.

Ben Browning [00:42:26]:
If my client says, oh, the reason we, well, the reason we're so fed up was using x, y and z, recruiter is because they, blah, blah, blah, I can hit pain point and capture that note as a trim from the video, then post after the session, I can just go back, go back through and see all those key points really easily and effectively, which saves an immense amount of note taking and missing things. And, yeah, a really good tool. So that's fathom. AI.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:55]:
That's awesome. Is there a book that's had a huge impact on your personal career?

Ben Browning [00:43:01]:
Many. I'm fortunate enough to have interviewed many of the authors who really kind of shaped my career. I've mentioned Anthony Ionorino and Todd Capponi already. The other one is a book that I read a couple of years ago, which is a book called Gap selling by Keenan. But actually, one of the other authors that's really shaped my thinking, who I haven't yet been able to bring onto my podcast, is a guy called Cal Newport. And Cal wrote books like deep work and digital minimalism. And he really kind of talks about productivity and the way that we can not just get more done, but live happier, more fulfilled lives by managing our use of time and our energy. So, yeah, for a.

Ben Browning [00:43:44]:
Kind of a tangential one for recruiters, I check out Cal Newport. He's a great author.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:50]:
The deep work book was awesome. One year, I took some advice of what Bill Gates does and kind of goes away for the weekend. So I went to a cabin in the woods and just read a bunch of books, and the deep work book was one of them. And I was just like, oh, my God. Us recruiters were so busy for so many hours a day. What if there's ways that we could compress our productivity and get more done? It blew my mind years ago when I picked that up. I was just like, my God, I'm.

Ben Browning [00:44:19]:
Like that busy guy, 100%. His latest book, slow productivity, is an evolution of those ideas. So it might even be a great starting point for people to start with slow productivity. But, yeah, it's a great antidote to hustle culture.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:38]:
Looking at your own personal success, what do you think has been a big driver for it?

Ben Browning [00:44:44]:
I think in a real nutshell, and coming, you know, being very specific about or kind of looping back to something I mentioned earlier is channeling those early frustrations in my career. And I think, to a degree, they put a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I think. I kind of. I felt like, you know what? I'm right about this stuff. I trust my judgment about this stuff. And I found a way to close that loop. And so, yeah, working for.

Ben Browning [00:45:16]:
Working on behalf of myself ten years earlier in my career, now almost 20 years earlier in my career, has always been a really key driver, and it's really kept me honest, it's really kept me authentic, and it's really kept me true to the path. So, yeah, I'd say it's that.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:32]:
And this is actually one of my favorite questions, like, you talked it with hundreds or thousands of recruiters. Now, like, you've been in recruiting for a good amount of time with everything that you've gone through, the ups and the downs and everything that you've learned. If you had the chance to go sit down with yourself, have a cup of coffee, you're in the UK, maybe a cup of tea with yourself within, like, first month of your recruiting career, like, what would you sit down and tell yourself?

Ben Browning [00:46:06]:
Yeah, yeah, I get stuck on this one. And the reason I get stuck on it is because it's actually quite deep question for me. Like quite an emotional thing because it was such, as I say, I found it. I found that experience so difficult and so frustrating, so challenging that I can really remember that feeling of dissonance and disconnection, this sense of being asked or almost forced because I felt this driving force of motivation to be a great recruiter and do great, do great things. But I also felt this dissonance with the strategy I was being taught. So I kind of felt this huge gap. And I still feel a lot of that emotion now. It goes back to the answer in the previous question.

Ben Browning [00:46:50]:
The thing I would say is, like, given that opportunity is kind of what I did, which is stick with it, work it through, find the solutions here. The recruitment industry is a fascinating, incredible industry to work in, and it's also incredibly valuable. I rarely meet a leader who wouldn't agree with the statement that the people around you are any business's greatest asset. But I rarely meet a leader who can say hand on heart that the way they hire is a competitive advantage. And if we as an industry can close that gap and close that loop and help those businesses who know that people are their greatest asset turn their recruitment strategy into their biggest competitive advantage and the opportunity. Bloomin fantastic. So, yeah, wherever you are right now in that development curve, like, stick with it because it's great work, it's a fascinating industry and you'll absolutely take masses from it.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:54]:
So you said you tell yourself to stick with it. Were you thinking about quitting during those early days?

Ben Browning [00:47:59]:
Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I felt kind of trapped because, I mean, first of all, I didn't know what else I was going to do. Like, I didn't have a plan b. I don't think many people's recruitments, many people's plan a, right. You either didn't have a plan or something else went, arrived. I was in, I was in the former category.

Ben Browning [00:48:22]:
I missed a bit, but, but, like, I didn't have a plan b. I didn't really believe. I trusted the people around me, I trusted the leaders around me, and I had some goes. I benefited from having some great leaders around me, but I didn't trust the strategy. I didn't feel. It didn't feel intuitive, it didn't feel right. Something felt wrong. So I felt this thrust to be, yeah, let's go and be a great recruiter, but also this resistance around, like, but that's surely not the way to do it.

Ben Browning [00:48:53]:
And ultimately the, what's the phrase? The immovable object, the irresistible force meets the move, the immovable object, something like that. That's kind of where I. That's kind of where I felt my life was stuck for a long time as I kind of developed this. This path forwards. And, yeah, ultimately, not only has it helped me get to where I've got to, but the real joy and the real love that I still find in the work that I do is, you know, working with a UK based recruiter who's selling into the US market. And he texted me last night at midnight, and I was laying in bed, should have been asleep hours earlier, anxious about this live today. And he texted me talking about the figures that he's done, the incredible figures that he and his team have done, using the strategy I taught him. And it's like, oh, I can go to sleep now, you know, it's just really great to be in that position.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:48]:
So you completely took the challenges that you dealt with and redeveloped your entire career because you also didn't quit. If there's a recruiter that's listening right now that is dealing with the, I want to quit this industry, what advice would you give to them?

Ben Browning [00:50:09]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The first thing they can and should do, if they feel so inclined, is to reach out to me and I'll really happily talk to them about this, one to one. Many people won't do that for, you know, that won't be the right route for everybody. I think talking to the people around you, especially talking to your clients and candidates and really understanding what they want and what they need, and it's very difficult if you work in a recruitment business that has a very transactional model to say, hey, I know the strategy that you're teaching seems to work for all of my other colleagues, but I'm going to do things completely differently. That's a very hard conversation to have, but if you can go to your clients and say, look, I really want to understand what motivated you to work with us, I really want to understand what motivated you to shift away from other suppliers. I really want to understand what makes us the business you trust and choose. Then you build up kind of a. An arsenal of examples and research and feedback that you can then share back to your.

Ben Browning [00:51:14]:
Your seniors, your. Your directors, your leadership team, and say, hey, look, the things that my clients really like about us are x, y, and z. I want to go out and tell people about those things, rather than the fact that we can find candidates for them, or maybe both. And then to interweave the two things together. But don't get so hummed up on, hey, we're a recruitment agency, so therefore, we just have to talk about our ability to find candidates. Like, that's in the name, you know, it's what else you do that really matters. And it sounds as though that speaks to your experience as an internal recruiter as well. Benjamin.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:48]:
Oh, crazy world. Okay, that is awesome. Well, Ben, before I let you go, is there anything else that you'd love to share with the listeners?

Ben Browning [00:51:57]:
No, I think you've done a great, good job of this interview because these questions have taken me to places I didn't expect to go today. So that's really cool. We talked about the methodology. We've talked about the why. We talked about some tactics that recruiters can try out. Obviously, there are places people can find more of my content if they're so moved to the recruiting better podcast, the substack recruiting better community, and of course, my LinkedIn, which is full of content on a daily basis. So, yeah. And people should feel encouraged, genuinely feel encouraged to reach out.

Ben Browning [00:52:36]:
So, yeah, I really appreciate being able to share all of that with the audience.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:41]:
I was just going to ask you how people can follow you. So there's the perfect way. The podcast hand your LinkedIn profile and the LinkedIn profile of the podcast I'll have in the show notes. So you could just scroll down, click down on that, and, uh, say hi to Ben.

Ben Browning [00:52:52]:
How's it?

Benjamin Mena [00:52:53]:
Well, Ben, I. Like I said I at the very beginning of the podcast, I was excited about bringing you on. Like, we can't, like, as recruiters, do our recruiting job and fill positions if we don't first have the positions to fill. And BD is one of those things that so many people struggle with, struggle with mastering and struggle with, you know, really just how, like, they're. How their business is built. So, thank you for coming on and, like, talking about the pillars, talking about.

Ben Browning [00:53:20]:
The things that need to be here.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:21]:
But also, at the same time, talking about shifting the belief that you have as a recruiter on both the recruiting side of the house and the sales side of the house, and really just see the value that you give to the community, to the industry, and to the companies that you work with. So, Ben, thank you for coming on.

Ben Browning [00:53:38]:
I appreciate it. Thanks very much for thanks so much for having me and for the listeners.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:42]:
Guys, I want this to be your best year yet. Keep crushing it, guys. 2024 a year. 2024 is a year that you are going to make it your best year yet. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.