DUMBING DOWN BD
The Real Danger of Oversimplifying Your Sales Process
The Business Development Myth: What You're Missing
Is your recruitment firm's approach to business development fundamentally flawed? The hard truth might surprise you.
Let me start with a bold statement:
Most recruiters don't understand business development.
What they call "BD" is often just an endless cycle of candidate specs and follow-up emails—tactics without strategy, motion without directionable growth.
Did you know? 76% of Recruiters have no clear plan for BD.
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A Leadership Issue
Your sales director might excel at tracking KPIs and motivating managers. They may be brilliant at analyzing numbers and occasionally raising their voice when targets are missed. But here's what I've discovered after countless conversations with recruitment leaders:
they rarely drive actual sales strategy.
How do I know? They tell me themselves.
When recruitment firms approach me for team training, I ask one simple question that exposes the gap: "How does your team go about winning new clients?"
The silence—or the vague, tactical responses—tell me everything I need to know.
The Three Critical Problems You're Facing
This fundamental misunderstanding of BD creates three major problems that are likely plaguing your business right now:
Insufficient placements - You're either not working with enough roles, working with unfillable roles, or competing as one of several agencies for the same position.
Team resistance to BD - Your recruiters actively avoid business development because there's no clear plan. No amount of motivation will drive consistent action when the strategy is muddled.
Declining profitability - Despite making placements and maintaining a seemingly content team, your EBIT is shrinking year after year. The trend line points downward, and you know it.
If any of these scenarios sound familiar, your conception of BD is likely the limiting factor in your growth.
Redefining Business Development
So what is BD, if not speccing candidates and persistence?
Business development is an intricate system of integrated sales and marketing strategies designed to generate sustainable revenue. It encompasses both new and existing customers, balances short-term wins with long-term relationships, and requires both tactical execution and strategic vision.
In short: it's complex. But that complexity is precisely where opportunity lies.
The Resonant Model: A Framework for Excellence
Our approach at Resonant breaks effective BD into four crucial areas:
Clarity: The decisions you make about how you sell, what to measure and why.
Precision: The decisions you make on who to sell to and what to say.
Campaign: The decisions you make on how communicate, when and where.
Conversion: The decisions you make on who to work with, what to offer, and what to charge.
Until your organization addresses all four levels, and the decisions behind them, your business development efforts will remain stunted and inconsistent.
The Danger of Oversimplification
There's a profound difference between simplification and dumbing down.
Simplification distills complexity to its essential elements while preserving value. Dumbing down strips away nuance until all that remains is an ineffective shell of what could have been.
In their quest to make BD accessible, too many recruitment firms have stripped away everything that makes it effective. They've reduced a sophisticated business function to a handful of disconnected tactics that leave both clients and consultants frustrated.
At its core, sales is our attempt to inspire and empower others to take decisive action. It's not about pressure or persistence alone—it's about creating the conditions where clients recognize value and choose to engage with you.
The most successful recruitment firms understand this. They build comprehensive BD systems that address all four elements of the Resonant Model. They embrace complexity rather than running from it.
And the results speak for themselves: consistent client acquisition, higher fees, exclusive relationships, and steadily increasing profits.
Where Do You Stand?
Take an honest look at your business development approach. Are you stuck in the spec-and-follow-up loop? Or have you built a strategic system that consistently delivers new, high-value clients?
The answer to that question may well determine the future of your recruitment business.
If you're ready to transform your approach to business development, I'd love to hear from you. The gap between where most recruitment firms are and where they could be isn't just significant—it's the difference between survival and dominance in an increasingly competitive market.
Please leave a comment.
And if you have any questions for me leave a comment and I’ll come right back to you.
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Thanks,
Ben
P.S. We surveyed 500 business about their approach to BD. We reviewed the data and identified 35 unique insights. We then asked 5 leading experts for their view. You can get the full report, The State of BD 2025, here: