Why more BD Activity Won’t Fix a Weak Sales Process

For recruitment agencies looking to grow, business development remains essential. Yet when results start to slow, the response can quickly become a numbers game. Consultants are encouraged to make more calls, arrange more meetings, increase their LinkedIn activity and spend more time prospecting.

The problem is that increasing activity does not necessarily improve the outcome. Brad Shackleton, sales leadership coach and former recruitment leader, argues that agencies need to look beyond how much BD their teams are doing and examine how effectively they are doing it.

His starting point is focus. Before increasing activity, recruiters need to be clear about the markets they want to develop, the profile of the businesses they want to work with and the opportunities they actually want to win. Without that clarity, more BD can simply mean spending more time pursuing business that was unlikely to convert in the first place.

There is an understandable logic behind increasing BD activity. If a consultant makes twice as many calls or approaches twice as many prospects, it might appear reasonable to expect more opportunities in return. However, that assumes the activity is directed at the right businesses and that the recruiter has a strong enough proposition and sales process to convert the opportunities they create.

Shackleton believes this is where many recruiters struggle. Agencies can tell their teams to get on the phone more or attend more meetings without being sufficiently specific about the business they should be trying to win. His view is that recruiters need clear rules of engagement around the types of companies and opportunities they are prepared to pursue.

That means BD should begin with a more fundamental question: which business do we actually want?

For an agency, the answer should reflect more than the availability of a vacancy. The likelihood of filling the role, the quality of the client relationship and whether the work can be delivered profitably all need to form part of the decision.

One of Shackleton’s criticisms of traditional recruitment BD is the tendency to accept almost every opportunity. A new vacancy may feel like progress, particularly in a difficult market, but winning access to a role is not the same as winning valuable business.

If consultants continually take on poorly qualified vacancies, they can spend considerable amounts of time sourcing candidates for roles that have a low probability of producing a fee. That time could instead have been spent developing stronger client relationships or working assignments with a greater likelihood of conversion.

Shackleton argues that recruiters therefore need to become better at both qualification and disqualification. The objective is not simply to find a reason to work the vacancy, but to ask enough questions to establish whether there is a genuine opportunity to deliver a successful outcome.

This is particularly important in a model where much of the work is completed before an agency knows whether it will be paid. A busy desk can still be an unproductive one if too much of that activity is concentrated on opportunities that never convert.

The same principle applies to client meetings. Agencies can track calls made, meetings booked and conversations held, but activity measures alone provide limited information about the quality of those interactions.

A consultant may return from a meeting saying that it went well, but the more useful question is what happens next. Has the recruiter established the client’s requirements? Do they understand the problem the client is trying to solve? Is there a clear next action, and has the opportunity genuinely progressed?

This is where Shackleton sees sales as a skill that needs to be developed rather than simply an activity that needs to be increased. Qualification, questioning, pitching, negotiation and closing all influence whether the initial prospecting activity ultimately becomes revenue.

For recruitment leaders, this creates a different coaching conversation. Instead of concentrating only on whether consultants are doing enough BD, managers can examine where opportunities are being lost and which part of the sales process needs improving.

Shackleton also challenges the tendency to start pitching too early. After asking a small number of questions, recruiters can be quick to explain their agency, services and credentials before they properly understand what matters to the client.

A stronger qualification process changes that. By asking more detailed questions first, the recruiter can understand the client’s priorities and shape the conversation around them, rather than relying on a standard agency pitch.

This also makes differentiation easier. Recruitment businesses frequently operate in crowded markets where clients may receive approaches from numerous agencies offering apparently similar services. Simply increasing the number of sales messages being sent into that environment does little to address the underlying problem.

The quality of the conversation becomes more important because the recruiter can demonstrate that they understand the client’s particular situation rather than simply explaining what their agency does.

Shackleton also places considerable emphasis on the time it takes to develop a client relationship. His view is that business is rarely won from a single contact and that recruiters need a combination of online and offline touchpoints that allow potential clients to become familiar with them and their expertise.

That could involve direct contact alongside LinkedIn activity, useful market information and other evidence that gives a prospective client a reason to engage. The aim is not simply to contact the same prospect repeatedly, but to build familiarity and trust over time.

This distinction is important. A higher volume of generic emails is still generic outreach. More calls using the same ineffective approach simply increase the number of people experiencing it.

Productivity in BD should therefore be judged by more than the number of actions completed. Agencies also need to consider whether those actions are building relationships and moving suitable prospects towards a commercial conversation.

AI adds another dimension to the issue because recruiters can now produce certain types of sales activity considerably faster. Research, administration, email creation and content can all be supported by technology, allowing consultants to reach more prospects with less manual effort.

Shackleton sees clear efficiency benefits in AI, but cautions against treating technology as a substitute for the human side of winning business. For him, relationships remain central to recruitment sales, particularly when a conversation moves from initial prospecting towards understanding a client, building trust and securing the work.

This means the ability to generate more activity should arguably make the quality of the sales process more important, not less. If agencies can contact more prospects more quickly, they also need to ensure that what happens when somebody responds is good enough to convert that opportunity.

Shackleton uses five areas to assess business development performance: passion, proposition, profit, productivity and process. His wider point is that weakness in one part can undermine the rest.

An agency may have highly motivated consultants carrying out plenty of prospecting, but struggle because its proposition is unclear. Another may have a strong proposition but target the wrong businesses. A third may create plenty of meetings but fail to qualify opportunities effectively or move them through a consistent sales process.

Increasing activity in any of those situations may produce some additional business, but it does not address the underlying weakness.

For recruitment leaders under pressure to generate more revenue, telling teams to do more BD is an easy instruction to give. The more useful task may be identifying precisely where the existing activity is failing to convert.

Because sometimes the answer to winning more business is not more BD. It is better BD.

• More calls, emails and meetings do not automatically result in more business.
• Agencies should define the clients, markets and opportunities they actually want to win before increasing activity.
• Recruiters need to qualify and disqualify opportunities rather than automatically accepting every vacancy.
• Client meetings should be measured by whether they progress an opportunity, not simply whether they happened.
• Better questioning can create a more relevant pitch and help recruiters differentiate their service.
• AI can increase BD productivity, but agencies still need an effective sales process to convert that activity.
• Recruitment leaders should identify the weakest part of their BD process before simply asking teams to do more.