Lesson I’m Learning: How to communicate my value to potential clients and maximize discovery calls

In today’s client driven market, we’re all working hard to uncover new BD opportunities. 

It can be a slog.

But the moment we engage with a potential client on a discovery call, everything can magically change. 

And I’m not talking about just closing a deal.

I’m talking about the magic when we close a lucrative contract that pays us our full value as a strategic partner.

IF we know how (emphasis on the IF).

But before I dive into this week’s learnings, I wanted to share a little story from the early days of building Spring Search.

Cue the music 🎹 and start scene 🍿:

I still remember that car ride to the office in 2012, exchanging shocked and excited looks with my business partner.

We had just landed our first retained client and, honestly, it was way easier than we expected!

Just an hour earlier, we had walked into that meeting with sweaty palms and a simple intention: The only difference between the contingency work we were doing and landing retained work was asking for it. 💡

So we did. We gave that meeting everything we had and made the ask.

The client didn't just say yes - they were excited to move forward. 🙌🏻

Looking back, we didn't really know what we were doing. 

But we did know one thing:

We were providing tremendous value, and it was time to start asking for more. 💰

End scene 🎬

That was 14 years ago. 

Since then, I've learned countless lessons about articulating my value in discovery meetings. 

And this week, a podcast episode and conversation between Jon Brooks and Greg Savage continued to transform how I think about these crucial first client conversations.

I bet it will change your approach too so I wanted to summarize what I learned from this conversation.

And, if you find this valuable, listen to the full podcast. The link is at the end of this article. 

I found value in 3 lessons from the conversation:

1) What is the value of a recruiter?

2) Why saying “recruitment isn’t rocket science” is a terrible way to describe recruiting.

3) The “Iceberg Metaphor”

Lesson #1: What is the value of a recruiter?

Before we dive into maximizing a discovery call, it’s important to remember why our work matters so much. 

Greg Savage puts it perfectly:

“Recruiters help their clients win the only battle that's worth winning - for top talent."

This resonates deeply with me. 💚

In my 15 years recruiting, I've watched talent acquisition transform from a side-job of HR into a strategic function that often reports directly to the CEO. 

This shift wasn't arbitrary - it happened because executives finally recognized a fundamental truth: 

You can have the best products, marketing, and sales processes in the world, but it's the PEOPLE who make the magic happen. 🪄

🔥 TLDR: As recruiters, we're not just filling seats - we're architecting the future of our clients’ companies. Let’s NOT forget our incredible ability to affect change within an organization. 

Lesson #2: Why saying “Recruitment isn’t rocket science” is a terrible way to describe recruiting

While we’re not saving lives or launching rockets, Greg makes two very important points here. 

1) Comparing recruiting to a hard science can leave us and our audience feeling like recruiting is not hard. 

We all know that it can be brutally hard. So let’s not demean our profession and let’s find ways to communicate how challenging it is to do what we do really well.

2) Recruiting is HARDER than rocket science in many ways. 

We work with people. We can’t just wire a bunch of elements together to test the next rocket, launch it and hope it doesn’t explode. We don’t have that luxury. 

Our “ingredients” are fragile and require us to be highly trained people leaders to do our job well. 

🔥 TLDR: Recruiting is HARDER than rocket science in many ways (and rocket scientists couldn’t do our job). 

Lesson #3: The “Iceberg Metaphor”

The concept here is simple - clients don’t see the vast majority of the work that goes into recruiting and it’s our job to walk them through it, especially when we’re pitching for new business. 

I fall into this trap all the time.

🤔 I assume clients know how hard our work is. 

🤔 I assume they aren’t interested in how the sausage is made. 

Because, at the end of the day, they just want us to find that magical person and hire them, right? 🧙🏼

But it’s our JOB to make them SEE us, our process, our intense commitment to our jobs and what it takes to produce that one magical person they hire. 

Because if clients don’t know what we’re going to invest in them, how could they possibly invest what we deserve in us? 💰

🔥 TLDR: How will we ever be paid for our FULL WORTH if we don’t take the time to communicate it?  

Actionable tips on communicating our value to clients

• Use specific numbers and data points vs. generic claims.

• Describe your process, team, tools and what you’ll be doing for them EXACTLY, before getting into fees.

• Differentiate yourself with tone/voice/personality, process DNA, market expertise, track record of delivery and many more elements.

Advice for New Recruiters

• Stop saying “recruitment isn’t rocket science” - it diminishes the profession.

• Learn to articulate value beyond just “making introductions” or “screening candidates”.

• Build self-belief in the value you provide.

• Focus on quality over speed.

• Take time to properly qualify roles.

• Learn to walk away from bad business.

Advice for Experienced Recruiters

• Move from contingent to exclusive work.

• Move from exclusive contingency to retained work.

• Charge for each stage of the process where possible.

• Build and leverage deep market knowledge.

• Focus on selling the full “iceberg” of services.

• Be prepared to walk away from low-value work.

• Lead by example in valuing recruitment expertise.

🔥 TLDR: If you’re ready to close more discovery calls, increase your rate, ask for retainer/container work or create stronger engagement with clients from the first call, this advice from Jon and Greg can be a goldmine for you. Study it and put it into your practice. 

Listen to the full conversation between Jon Brooks and Greg Savage here (and have your notepad ready!)

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Advice I’m Implementing

Mark Howland shared a simple and novel question he asks candidates on their first call:

"When do you prefer I share feedback with you, especially if it may not be news we want to hear"? 🙋🏻

My POV - This has (at least) three outcomes:

❤️ It shows deep empathy for the candidate’s experience. Just asking the question creates a moment of connection. 

🙏🏻 When Mark needs to let them go, he can do it in a way that works for his candidate.

➕ And, bonus, it reduces Mark’s anxiety around letting them go. He’s already set the stage. (This is important to me because I hold a lot of anxiety when preparing for these conversations.)

Read Mark’s full post here. 

Mindful Minute

This is one of my favorite quotes, I try to read it every few months.

As a solo recruiter running a business, I often have to be my own motivator. It takes awareness and effort. 🏋️ 

One of my tests is asking myself, “am I on the court”?

Am I taking the risks and actions that drive real results - or am I on auto-pilot watching from the stands?

This quote from Theodore Roosevelt is a classic that I read and think about during these moments.

I hope it moves you like it does me. 💚

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

― Theodore Roosevelt

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