As a Pharmaceutical recruitment agency, competition for top clients is tough, particularly at a time when business costs are rising, and many pharmaceutical companies are cutting back on their outsourcing as well as their hiring.
In this article, we explore 9 practical ways of winning and retaining top clients, from building a strong online presence to providing an innovative and evolving portfolio of services. Whether you are just starting out as a pharmaceutical recruitment agency or are looking to improve your current client retention rates, these tips will help you to stand out from your competition and build long-lasting relationships with your prospective and current clients.
Build a Strong Employer Brand
To attract top clients to your recruitment agency, you’ll need a strong employer brand that clearly communicates the value you can bring to an organisation’s hiring process. You might have access to the best candidate database in the Life Science industry, or be using the latest technology on the market, but what do you do as a team that makes you different from other agencies? Answer the following:
- What do you value?
- What is your mission?
- How do you make sure you’re getting the best results for your clients?
- What would your previous clients say about you?
- Do you offer any value-added services?
- How do you foster a positive team culture, and how does this improve your service?
Put your employer brand at the forefront of all your marketing materials, focusing less on the logistics of what you do, and more on the results you can produce, what your clients can learn from you, and how you as an organisation stand out from your peers.
Put Yourselves Out There
No one has time to be at every single industry event or to approach every single prospective client. At the start of the year and each quarter, identify the most important events to attend, and the key prospects you want to target. Focus your time on the events that will get you in front of the right people, and that will give you the opportunity to build relationships and grow your network.
Get out of the office as much as you can but approach each event you attend with a set of goals you want to achieve. For example, your goal at one event might be to set up 5 meetings with prospective clients or to make 15 new LinkedIn connections. Whatever they are, use them to make the most of your time.
If you can’t attend an event, look into media partnerships and event sponsorship opportunities to raise awareness of your organisation. At PharmiWeb.Jobs, we’ve recently introduced the opportunity to sponsor one of our recruitment webinars. These are attended by hundreds of Life Science HR and recruitment professionals seeking help with their hiring. This is an excellent way of getting your brand in front of your target prospects, without having to physically attend an event yourself.
Conduct Thorough Client Research
Really take the time to understand what your prospective clients truly need. Understand the challenges they are currently facing with their hiring, their business goals, the opportunities available to them, and what they are looking for from a recruitment agency. Clarify what their overall mission is as well as what they value, as this will help you to position your organisation as an ideal partner.
If your expertise lies more in general recruitment rather than hiring within the Life Science industry itself, also broaden your knowledge of the types of roles your clients are looking to fill, and what the ideal candidate for these may look like. Being able to speak your prospective clients’ language will help you to build trust, demonstrating that you know what they need.
Offer a Personalised Service
Once you’ve identified your clients’ specific needs during your research and onboarding, continue to provide them with a personalised service. Have regular check-ins with them, and make sure they can come to you with any questions or issues. Every client you help should have their own customised strategy developed in collaboration with them, ensuring you’re doing everything you can to give them the best results and ROI for their organisation.
Provide Exceptional Account Management
If you can, ensure your clients have a dedicated person they can go to with any questions or issues. Don’t keep contact with your clients saved for delivering good or bad news and instead keep in regular contact, ensuring you’re adding value beyond the service they’ve purchased.
For example, you could send over articles, events, news, or webinars that might be of interest to them, as well as updates on how you’re developing as a business. You don’t want to be constantly bombarding them with emails, so be selective with what you send to who, making sure nothing is sent just for the sake of it.
Even if a client decides not to renew their contract with you, keep communication with them open, and check in on them regularly to see how they’re doing. Don’t let them forget you!
Focus on Candidate Quality, Not Quantity
Whilst you want to bring as much talent to your clients’ roles as you can, this will only be beneficial if the candidates are of high quality. Especially if you’re a smaller recruitment agency with less budget to spend on candidate attraction, focus your resources on getting the most relevant candidates to see your roles, rather than struggling to get them seen by everyone.
With PharmiWeb.Jobs, you can benefit from targeted email campaigns, allowing you to send your roles directly to your target audience of candidates. For example, with our Sector Newsletters, you can send an email to an audience segmented by discipline, location, or experience level. This improves the relevancy of applications received from each email send, meaning you’ll be spending less time filtering our irrelevant candidates, and more time nurturing top talent.
Stay Up to Date with Industry Developments
In order to find the best talent for your clients, you need to understand the market they’re competing in, staying informed of the latest challenges and opportunities facing the Life Science industry. Make time in your day to check in on the latest industry news and highlight your expertise by producing thought pieces and other insights to share with your clients.
Continuously Improve Your Services
The needs of your clients will be constantly evolving, and it’s your job to keep up with this change and continuously improve the quality of your services. At PharmiWeb.Jobs, we’ve recently introduced new AI technology to our job board to provide a more personalised experience for our jobseekers.
Through this technology, they will now be shown the roles most relevant to them based on their behaviour and the information included on their profile, ultimately improving the user experience whilst simultaneously improving the relevancy and quality of applications received by recruiters using our platform.
Showcase Your Success
Word of mouth is one of the most important ways to win new business. Share your success stories through case studies and testimonials, highlighting the results you’ve produced with your clients and the positive relationships you have with them.
