Most new agencies are started by good recruiters, and most good recruiters have spent their career working roles someone else won. Filling a brief and getting one are different skills, and the gap between them is where a lot of agencies stall in their first year.
The uncomfortable part is that business development has no deadline. A live role has a client waiting; a prospecting call has nobody chasing it. So it gets postponed, and the pipeline that determines next quarter is always the thing that lost this week.
Start with the people who already know you
Almost every agency’s first clients come from its founders’ existing network, and that is not a shortcut — it is the most reliable source of business there is. Former colleagues, former clients, candidates you placed who are now hiring.
The candidate-to-client path is the one people underestimate. Someone you placed as a mid-level hire five years ago is now senior enough to sign off a hire. They already know whether you were good to deal with. That is a warmer introduction than any amount of cold outreach.
Pick a niche narrow enough to be known for
Generalist agencies compete on price and speed, both of which favor whoever is larger. A specialist competes on knowing the market, which favors whoever is focused.
Narrow is more comfortable than it sounds. "Backend engineers for fintech scale-ups in the Netherlands" gives you a list of target companies you can actually work through, candidates who overlap between clients, and a genuine reason for someone to pick you over a bigger firm. A niche you can describe in one sentence is one people can refer you for.
What actually works in outreach
Cold outreach has a poor reputation because most of it is poor. What separates the messages that get answered is having a reason to be writing that is about them rather than you.
- Lead with something specific — a role they have had open a while, a funding round, a team they are visibly building.
- Do not open by asking for a meeting. Ask a question they can answer in one line, or offer something concrete.
- Talk about candidates, not services. "I know two senior data engineers in your area who are looking" is a reason to reply. "We provide bespoke recruitment solutions" is not.
- Be specific about your niche. Vagueness reads as desperation and invites the worst-fitting briefs.
- Follow up two or three times over a few weeks, then stop. Most replies come after the first message, not the first.
The single most effective version of this is the candidate-led approach: find someone genuinely excellent in your niche who is open to moving, and take them to the companies who should want them. You are offering a specific person, not a service, and the conversation is about hiring rather than about you.
How do you get a client to try you?
The obstacle is rarely price. It is that they already have agencies and changing costs them effort. Reduce the effort rather than the fee.
Offer to work one role. Not a preferred-supplier agreement, not a full review of their hiring — one role, so the decision is small and reversible. Deliver a genuinely well-filtered shortlist on that one role and the second is much easier to ask for.
Discounting to win the first brief tends to set the price permanently and attracts clients who chose you on cost. A trial role at your normal rate is a stronger position than a discounted retainer.
Keep the clients you win
Winning a client is expensive and keeping one is nearly free, yet most effort goes into the first. The agencies that grow steadily are usually the ones whose existing clients give them more roles each year, not the ones with the busiest prospecting.
- Answer quickly, even when the answer is that you cannot help.
- Send fewer, better candidates. Volume reads as effort to you and as noise to them.
- Tell them when a brief is unrealistic, with what would fix it. Being right about the market is why they keep you.
- Check in when you have nothing to sell. The call with no agenda is the one that gets remembered.
Make it a routine, not a mood
Business development fails from irregularity more than from technique. A few hours in the same slot every week, protected as firmly as an interview, outperforms an intense fortnight every quarter.
It also needs to be tracked somewhere other than your head — who you contacted, what they said, when to return. Conversations that end in "not right now" are the bulk of prospecting, and their entire value is in the follow-up nobody makes.
