Last year, I started working with a new client. Mike owns a small engineering recruitment business with 18 employees.
In early 2025, Mike noticed that job orders were down. He was concerned, having already parted company with four staff due to poor performance, and he really didn’t want to go through that again. But without a doubt, his people were not bringing in new roles, and repeat business was down.
Mike knew that most of his staff hated business development. When I asked him what he had done about it, he showed me his approach, designed by AI. His prompt had been:
“Show me how to improve business development in my engineering recruitment consultancy.”
The plan he got back wasn’t wrong, as such. It even used some information from my book (which was why Mike eventually got in touch). It offered 10 points, including:
∙ Team “sprints” which could be gamified
∙ Identifying alternative objectives (not just getting a job order)
∙ Refresher training for all staff
∙ Some suggestions for time-limited “special offers”
Mike was really worried. His team were just as reluctant to undertake business development activity, and now it was clear that the changes he had made weren’t having the effect his business needed.
“I’ve tried everything, including threatening them with performance management,” he told me.
“They expect me to invest tens of thousands on automations and outreach for them, but they won’t do what’s in their control!”
I listened to a range of his consultant’s calls. And then I met with Mike again.
The real problem?
He was asking ChatGPT the wrong question.
And that is far from unusual. Mike had diagnosed the “problem” as too little business development activity. But in reality, it was the quality and direction of the team’s activities that were below par. The low quantity of activity was collateral damage, because they weren’t getting results; they avoided almost all business development altogether.
So we started a completely new change programme.
This time, we revised their whole pitch first. For the first time, they had a clear point of difference – and the evidence to back it up.
Then I trained them on the structure of their calls and went into detail on each stage. They stopped trying to slide stealthily into BD and started taking control of conversations.
Consistent activity started with the best (and warmest) call types – account development and placement follow-up. Then we revisited clients who had agreed terms but filled their roles via other means.
We revised what data they were recording and, in particular, created a plan to enable proactive, targeted calls built around specific candidate profiles.
Within four months, job flow was better than it had been for 18 months.
And by six months, we had (mainly) confident recruiters.
There were two who just couldn’t change gear. One moved roles, and one was terminated.
The point of the story is that Mike didn’t know what he didn’t know. He believed the team were making “good enough” calls, so self-diagnosis wasn’t getting him anywhere. Objective, bespoke, and highly specialised advice made all the difference.
Of course, I’m now working with Mike on a programme of continuous improvement across the business. It encompasses financial controls, compliance, technology, HR, and efficiency — and it’s delivering results.
Mike was brave enough to ask for advice – and to take it.
Could your business benefit in the same way?
If you’d like objective, recruitment-specific advice from someone who’s done this many times before, you can contact me, Alison Humphries Hon FREC.
