The first client call goes well. You understand the vacancy, send an introduction and agree to stay in touch. The useful question is what happens next.
Client acquisition needs a clear audience, a specific reason to choose your agency and follow-up that belongs to someone. These five checks can help you review that process.
1. Sending the same message to everyone
Choose the employers your agency is equipped to support. Consider sector, location, business size, hiring pattern and the type of roles they need filled.
Write to that context. A manager covering recurring shifts has different questions from a founder making a specialist permanent hire. Explain which need you can help with and ask a relevant next question.
2. Listing features before explaining their value
Connect your process to the client's work. If you describe your candidate database, explain how consultants check relevance and availability for a brief. If you describe technology, explain what the client will see or receive.
Support claims about speed, cost or hiring outcomes with evidence. State the scope and period of any result you use so the prospective client can judge its relevance.
3. Making your positioning hard to understand
Make your specialism easy to recognise. Name the market you know, the work you handle and how the client relationship runs.
Use a concrete example of your process or a permissioned customer story. Give a prospective client enough detail to decide whether a conversation with your team is worth their time.
4. Leaving follow-up vague
Record the next action, its owner and the agreed date. Keep the conversation with the client record so a colleague can pick it up with the right context.
Send something relevant to the discussion: an answer to a question, an agreed proposal or information about the market they hire in. Check the current conversation before another message goes out. A recruitment CRM keeps those records and follow-up actions together.
5. Treating networking as a separate activity
Bring introductions, events and referrals into the same follow-up process. Record what the person asked for and who agreed to respond.
Give colleagues enough context to make a useful introduction. Ask permission before publishing a client's name, testimonial or results, and agree the wording with them.
Review the route from first contact to a qualified hiring conversation. Count relevant opportunities and completed follow-ups alongside activity. The next call should build on the last one.
Editorial review: September 2026.