The Make More Placements Show for Recruitment & Search Business Owners | More Placements | Higher Fees | Less Work | Fewer Headaches |

Most recruitment owners have already decided how this year ends. October is busy, November goes quiet, December is a write-off, and January starts from scratch. That thinking costs real money.

In this episode, we break down the 12-week year and show you how to apply it to the final quarter in a recruitment or search business. Stop planning in years and start planning in weeks.

You’ll learn:

• Why “I’ve got time” is the most expensive belief in recruitment
• The story of a recruiter who set three controllable goals: seven hiring manager conversations a week, at least one retained search, and a 24% minimum fee
• Why he scored himself every Friday on what he did, not on what he billed
• The 85% execution rule, and why you don’t need perfection to hit your number
• How to work backwards from your target to the number of decision-makers you need to speak to

If you run a recruitment agency or search firm and want a stronger Q4 and a fuller January, this is for you.

Walk into a doctor's surgery and tell the doctor what treatment you want. No questions, no examination, just exactly what you asked for. You'd never accept that. Yet that is how most recruiters run their client calls.

In this episode, Terry breaks down why recruiters who hand over a pitch and a fee on request get squeezed on price, while the ones who diagnose first rarely have to defend their fees at all.

You'll hear:

• The "pharmacy with the phone" mistake that kills your credibility on the first call
• How a small agency owner went up against two other agencies on a £22k contingent search, asked one question, sat through the silence and walked away with it on retained
• Why whoever asks the questions controls the meeting, and how to set that agenda in the first 30 seconds
• The questions that make hiring managers talk about the real cost of getting the hire wrong, so fees stop being the issue
• Why the knowledge you pick up from daily client calls gives you more market data than most of your clients have
• Terry's rule: no talking about your service until you've asked at least five questions

If your last client beat you down on fee, ask yourself honestly whether you were too expensive or whether you showed up as a pharmacist.

Listen, then take one number from your last client call: how many questions did you ask before you pitched?

There's a recruiter called Sean.

He built a following on LinkedIn. He collected the interested prospects. He added them to the CRM. He added them to the mailing list.

He never picked up the phone — because he was "warming them up."

Six months later he lost 40% of his business to an in-house team, and one of those warm leads finally said 10 words to him he'll never forget: "I did message you, and you never came back."

In this episode, Terry breaks down the silent revenue leak sitting inside every recruitment business right now — the warm hands that got put in a spreadsheet and left there.

You'll hear:

– The real reason you're not calling the people who already raised their hand (it isn't time, and it isn't laziness)
– The "gym in January" analogy that reframes every prospect who's gone quiet
– Why the fear of "seeming pushy" assumes something about your importance that isn't true

If you've ever told yourself "I'll call them once I've done a bit more research," this is the episode to stop pretending with.

(Re-upload) What does it actually take to build a recruitment business worth selling?

Not just one that runs. One that's genuinely valuable.

Mike Ames has done it twice. First exit: £24 million. Second exit: £15 million. And in this interview, he holds nothing back.

Terry Edwards sits down with Mike to unpack the full story: the strategy, the decisions, the mistakes, and the mindset shifts that most recruitment business owners never make.

In this conversation you'll hear:

How Mike structured both businesses to be attractive to buyers from the inside out

The mistakes he made on the first exit that cost him, and what he did differently the second time

What he still sees holding recruitment business owners back today

Why most recruiters are building something they'll never be able to sell, and the simple shifts that change everything

What the journey from founder to exit really looks and feels like

Whether you're thinking about an exit in two years or ten, this conversation will change how you think about the business you're building right now.

Recruitment and search business owners: if you've hired a consultant who "should have been good" and they still haven't billed, this episode is why.

Watch the free video on how we help recruitment and search firm owners fix this: https://makemoreplacements.com/vsl

In our experience, two out of three consultants hired end up costing the business money rather than making it, once you account for salary, on-costs, and the time spent managing them. Most owners who make a bad hire blame the person, the market, or a lack of effort. It's almost never any of those. The real reason is harder to hear: you hired for the wrong reason, took a claim on trust that was never tested, and gave talent no system to work with. Hiring multiplies what already exists. Hire into nothing, and you multiply nothing.

In this episode:
Why hiring to solve a growth problem instead of a capacity problem sets the whole thing up to fail
Why two out of three consultant hires end up costing the business money, not making it
The claim on a CV that owners never actually test
The difference between hiring for talent and hiring into a system
Why "let systems run the business, and let people run the systems" changes how you hire from here

Watch the free video on how we help recruitment and search firm owners fix this: https://makemoreplacements.com/vsl

This episode is sponsored by PlacementBox, our client attraction platform built for recruitment agencies. CRM, ATS and automated outreach in one system, so you get consistent client flow without living in cold call mode. placementbox.io

Who we are: Drew and Terry Edwards help recruitment and search business owners win better clients, higher fees and predictable pipeline without living on the phone.

#RecruitmentBusiness #RecruitmentAgency #ExecutiveSearch #RecruitmentOwner #Hiring #Pipeline

We've all been sold the same myth: that successful people win because they've got ironclad discipline, and if you're falling behind, you're just lazy.

It's a great story. It's also wrong.

In this episode, Terry breaks down why discipline is the weakest tool in a recruitment owner's kit and why building your firm on "just trying harder" guarantees it eventually falls over.

He explains why willpower works like a phone battery: you start the day at 100%, but every decision (chase the candidate, chase the invoice, write the proposal, post the video) drains it until you're running on 10% by mid-afternoon and blaming your own character.

The fix isn't more grit. It's routines and systems that get the work done without relying on willpower at all.

If you're a recruitment or search business owner who keeps starting strong and fading by lunchtime, this one reframes the whole problem.

Topics: recruitment business owners, willpower vs discipline, decision fatigue, business development consistency, systems and routines, building a more profitable recruitment firm.

Most recruiters aren't losing business because they're not good enough.

They're losing it because their market has forgotten they exist.

In this episode, Terry breaks down why 82% of recruiters say they want to post video content: but only around 12% actually do it consistently.

The gap has nothing to do with talent or technology. It's mindset.

Using the idea of a "trust bank account," Terry explains how every video you post is a deposit into your market's trust, and every time you go silent, or reach out cold asking for vacancies, you're making a withdrawal from an account you never funded.

He unpacks the real reasons recruiters stay invisible ("I don't have time," "I don't know what to say," "it needs to be perfect") and the identity shift required to become the recruiter your niche knows, trusts, and wants to work with.

You'll learn:

Why visibility beats being the "best" recruiter in your market

The trust bank account: how to make deposits instead of withdrawals

How to move from perfection to progress, performance to service, and motivation to identity

A simple content system to produce a week of videos in 30 minutes
The exact 45-second video to post in the next 24 hours

If you run a recruitment or search business and you know you should be posting content but keep putting it off, this one is for you.

Recruitment business development, video content for recruiters, personal branding, client acquisition, recruiter positioning, building authority, making more placements.

You don't have an information problem.

You already know how to win retained work, raise your fees, and build predictable income.

What's stopping you is the gap between what you know and what you're willing to do, and that gap is confidence.

In this episode, Terry breaks down why most recruitment and search business owners stay stuck: they wait to feel ready before they act.

The outbound call, the retainer conversation, the strong LinkedIn opinion: all sitting on the "when I'm confident" pile.

The problem? Confidence never comes first.

It comes second.

Terry unpacks the real sequence that works, action, then competence, then confidence, and why the reverse is a loop of your own making.

You'll hear why nerves before a fee conversation aren't a sign you're not ready (even Tom Hanks and Kate Winslet still feel like frauds), why borrowed confidence in a proven system beats waiting on your own, and why somewhere in your market a less skilled recruiter is winning your retainers simply because they showed up and asked while you waited.

If you're tired of knowing exactly what to do and still not doing it, this one names the problem properly, and gives you one move to make this week.

The recruitment business owner who needs the deal often repels the deal.

In this episode, we break down why neediness shows up in client conversations, how hiring managers sense it, and why the strongest recruiters and search firm owners are willing to walk away when the work is not right.

You’ll learn how to shift from chasing the fee to leading the decision, how to ask better commercial questions, and how to become the trusted advisor a client cannot ignore.

If you have ever gripped a deal too tightly, accepted bad terms, discounted your value, or stayed quiet when you knew something was not right, this episode will help you reset your approach before your next sales call.

Are you tired of clients telling you that your recruitment fees are too high?

In this episode, we break down why you should never defend your price tag and what you must do instead to win the business. 

When a client pushes back on your fee, they are usually comparing it to two flawed metrics: the perceived "free" cost of doing nothing or the price of a cheaper agency. It is time to change the number they use to judge your worth!

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

• The "Dripping Tap" Trap: Discover why an unfilled vacancy is like a slow leak that quietly drains massive resources from a business, making the cost of doing nothing far more expensive than your fee.

• Behavior Driven by Fees: Understand why a low contingent fee simply buys a rushed race for CVs, whereas a higher retained fee guarantees research, exclusivity, and true accountability.

• Results vs. Chance: Learn how to reframe the client's mindset so they realize they are not choosing between different price points, but between a guaranteed outcome and a risky gamble.

• Calculating the Real Cost: Actionable strategies to make hiring managers calculate the exact weekly financial impact of an empty seat, instantly making your fee look like a minor, necessary investment.

Stop losing out to cheaper competitors and stop letting clients believe that delaying a hire is free. Tune in to learn how to take control of the conversation, because the expensive thing is never your fee it's the wrong outcome!