Today’s guest blogger is James Seidel with James Seidel & Associates located in Kelowna, BC, Canada. JSA is an owner-operated firm with clients across western Canada. The firm primarily places candidates in I/T, engineering, and sales. James is a former leader of our IT Trading Group and is currently serving on the NPAworldwide Board of Directors.
In our business, that prize is a placement and a customer who walks away with a product they feel good about for a price they feel was worth it. If you are good at this business, as in any business, you charge more for your services than someone who is average. Your customers expect more from you for that price, and you deliver. That’s how business works.
Expecting more from us means our customers expect us to provide better candidates, faster than our competitors. That’s the service we sell. They’ve generally done their best to fill the role before they reach for the phone, and they expect us to quickly better their efforts.
To be the best, they expect us to have toolboxes with more tools than they have. They have many of the same tools, sometimes more expensive ones, but still look to us with our toolboxes because somehow we manage to produce. Often we have a deeper database, years of experience in a niche, tireless work ethic, boundless creativity, and all that. But we may have something else that they don’t. A really competent group of affiliates who also work in that space. Who also have deep databases, niche focus, and the mindset to succeed in a competitive business. We can instantly multiply our efforts by 3 or 4 or 5 by a few quick phone calls to people we know can deliver. The ones who have done it in the past. In sports terms, your points leaders are generally the same people this year who did it last year. Those are the folks we get involved. Those are folks our clients don’t have access to and that make US look GREAT to our customers. It gives them the knowledge that a supplier can somehow deliver every time. It keeps them coming back and it keeps us separate from the pack.
You don’t lose half of a fee with a split placement. You GAIN half of a fee with a split placement. You GAIN an affiliate who will help you again the next time you ask. You GAIN the chance of the other affiliates helping you again as they saw the success with your client. You GAIN a client who had their order filled by a premium recruiter before someone else did. You GAIN the chance to do it again with them. An added bonus? You will meet some really cool people and you’ll likely GAIN some friendships that will last a long time…
Still worried about splitting a fee? Not if you have your eye on the prize.
