When you’ve got real pressures on cash flow, or your sales pipeline is looking really sad, it’s very, very tempting to go for quick wins.

If you run a recruitment business, you’ve probably heard your consultants falling over themselves to “please” clients.  They daren’t challenge a hiring manager’s assumptions – they just take the brief and say yes.

So, you’ve upped your BD game. But do you understand how B2B buyer behaviour in recruitment is shifting in 2025?

If you’re in recruitment, you’ve probably felt the pressure mounting from both economic shifts and the growing demands of clients.

Lots of recruiters I know are struggling to build new business at the moment. In some cases, they have a team who have no experience of BD and can’t have a conversation with a client unless it’s about a specific job or candidate.

Every recruiter I know wants more of their business to be exclusive. They know they can give the role the attention it needs because they will get paid. And the client will get a better service.

I have observed a “generation” of recruiters entirely focused on filling jobs. Their tools are speed and technology. I have no issue with both of these, which are sufficient for closing deals and hitting numbers – in the short term.

One of my clients, Matthew, rolled his eyes at our last meeting. “Clients have become such tarts! They’ll engage with anyone these days who promises them a CV.”

In Part One of this series, I attempted to give some broad definitions of when sales-led owners of recruitment businesses should seek to develop a back-office infrastructure.

Several clients have asked me recently, particularly the owners of high-growth recruitment businesses, to explain when they should start hiring their own back-office personnel.