A map, not a checklist

The Commercial Strategy Map

Revenue in recruitment rests on three things: what you say to the market, what you do to win the work, and what you get paid for once you’ve won it. This map shows how those parts fit together — built from patterns seen while generating £78M+ with recruitment businesses over 18+ years.

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Your Promise

Can the market quickly identify your true value and points of greatest impact?

Working

A client can describe your value, why it matters and why it is relevant to them, clearly and accurately.

Self-check: would a client describe you the same way you describe yourselves?

Drifting

Clients struggle to tell you apart from other agencies, or point to people as what sets you apart. They discover your value by accident rather than by design, and your strongest case study is buried three clicks deep.

Self-check: is your greatest value clear in every sales and marketing message?

This usually isn't a marketing problem, it's a lack of clarity. Most founders know what makes them a great recruiter but the promise has become something else — something more transactional and commoditised. They are experts, with a big network, in a tight niche, like everyone else. Then clients compare you on the one thing that's easy to compare: fee. Firms that grow productivity and profit make their unique value easy to see.

PositionMessageAudienceProof story

Reading your map

In practice, most founders score well in one area, honestly shaky in a second, and haven't looked hard at the other two in years. The area with the widest gap between what you'd like to be true and what's actually true is usually the one capping growth. It's rarely the area itself that's the real issue, it's what that area is blocking. A founder who avoids pricing conversations is often also the one still doing all the BD. A firm with generic positioning is often also the one whose delivery never gets the credit it deserves.

Who made this map

Ben Browning

Ben is the founder of Resonant. Eighteen-plus years in recruitment and £78M+ generated for recruitment businesses, working with owners on how they win work, and how they get paid properly for it.

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Ben has been instrumental in changing our thought process of how we generate revenue. I’d recommend him wholeheartedly to anyone looking to up their game.

Reiss McNally, Co-Founder, Molecular

When you’re ready

The Commercial Strategy Workshop is a working session for recruitment founders and leaders: we use this map to find the first commercial gap worth fixing in your business, and what to do about it.

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