Tactical and Strategic BD for recruiters (and why you need both).

The Mike Ames Recruitment Show

Recruiters, did you know there are two kinds of BD: strategic and tactical.

You need both, they’re very different and most recruiters only do tactical.

This show is on this subject but let me quickly explain the difference between the two.

TACTICAL BD Is either, “giz a job” or “I’ve got this great candidate…” by message or phone. In other words vacancy scraping or candidate speccing.

You need this because when done properly it can make money in the short term.

But there are 5 drawbacks with tactical BD: -

❶ It rarely wins high value clients who value their agencies.

❷ It’s a treadmill you have to stay on – hunt vacancy, fill vacancy, repeat.

❸ It only works well when demand outstrips supply.

❹ Few people are really good at it. Most recruiters hate and avoid it.

❺ If you make contact when there are no vacancies you get nothing.

STRATEGIC BD Focuses on building relationships with buyers who prefer your flavour of recruitment.

It works with high value clients regardless of the state of the market and whether there are live vacancies or not.

Also, when organised properly, one strategic BDer can feed a medium sized company.

Process and tools make it relatively easy to do.

On the downside it’s a lot longer conversion process so the results take longer to show.

Why bother then?

BECAUSE YOU WIN MORE HIGH-VALUE CLIENTS WHO FEED YOUR ORGANISATION WITH VACANCIES INSTEAD OF HAVING TO CHASE THEM ALL THE TIME!