Your Candidate Pipeline Is Full. Your Client Pipeline Shouldn’t Depend on Who BD Called This Week
We build the client-side system that makes hiring managers find you, trust you, and reach out. The website, the positioning, the follow-up.
- 3.4×Buyer-side enquiries after launch
- 11 daysAverage build to live
- 62%Enquiries answered within the hour
- 9 of 10Clients still on retainer
Recruiting and staffing firms we build for
Meet the Person You Would Actually Work With
Rohit on how Wicked ended up specialising in recruiting firms, and a walkthrough of the three builds below: what each founder started with, and what changed. 11 minutes, unscripted.
You built the top row and you run it better than almost anyone. Nobody has ever been assigned the bottom one.
What the Industry Is Reporting
Nearly twice as many agencies now call finding new clients their biggest challenge as call it finding candidates. The constraint flipped, and most firms have not flipped with it. StaffingHub, 2025: 23% vs 12%.
Competition from other firms is now the second biggest obstacle to winning new business, behind only client hiring freezes. The one that looks credible first gets the call. Bullhorn GRID, 2026.
Your Website Was Built for Candidates. Your Invoices Are Signed by Hiring Managers
You already know how this goes.
- 01A req lands. You are one of 4 agencies on it. The client signs with whoever submits first, and half the time price decides the rest.
- 02Monday morning, business development opens a cold list and starts again from nothing. Same as last Monday.
- 033 logos make up most of your revenue. You have thought about what happens if one of them brings recruiting in house.
- 04Every candidate who lands on your site gets a clean, considered experience. The hiring manager who could sign a $30,000 fee finds a careers page.
The Audit Is Free, and It Is Not Charity
Three ways this ends. You keep the findings in all of them.
We Find Gaps Worth Fixing
If you want help closing them, we build and run that system on an ongoing basis, and we will talk about what that looks like.
We Find Nothing Useful
You keep the findings and we part on good terms. The work is done either way, and it is yours.
We Are Not the Right Fit
We tell you plainly, because chasing a bad fit costs us more than losing one.
The Problem Is Not That You Are Bad at This
You fill pipelines for a living. You are better at it than the people who do it in house, which is the entire reason your clients pay you.
That is also exactly why your own client pipeline never gets built. Every hour spent marketing your firm is an hour not spent on a placement that invoices this month. So the hour never gets spent, and winning new clients stays a cold outreach function forever, dependent on whoever is doing the calling.
Meanwhile the buyer changed. A hiring manager shortlists agencies the way they shortlist anything else now. They look you up first. What they find is a careers page, a jobs board, and a contact form.
The DIY site did its job back when referrals did the selling; it proved you were a real business. But one founder can only work so many rooms and send so many LinkedIn messages, and the firms we build for usually reach out right at that ceiling.
The firms pulling ahead did not get better at cold calling. They built something that keeps working while they are busy placing.
Three Steps to a Client Pipeline You Own
It starts with a free audit. You see everything before you spend anything.
Step 1
We Read Your Firm the Way a Buyer Does
The free audit. Your site, your search results, your LinkedIn presence, and a side by side against the firms competing for your reqs. 4 days, and you keep the findings either way.
Step 2
We Build What the Audit Calls For
A site and positioning built for the hiring managers you want to win, as well as the candidates you already do. Sometimes that is a full rebuild. Often it is less, and we tell you which.
Step 3
You Launch, and It Works While You Place
Warm enquiries from buyers who read your case and picked you before they called.
Every Finding in Your Audit Comes With a Number on It
This is what the free audit hands back, and what a finding looks like when it lands.
Your Buyer-to-Candidate Split
What share of your site speaks to the person who signs the contract. Most firms come in around 90/10, and seeing the number stated is usually the moment it clicks.
Your Inbound Response Time, Measured
We sent a live enquiry and timed the reply to the minute, with the trail of what followed after it.
| Criteria | Audited firm | Comp. A | Comp. B |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buyer page | × | ✓ | ✓ |
| Client proof | × | ✓ | × |
| Follow-up | × | × | ✓ |
The Competitor Comparison
Named firms in your vertical, side by side with you on the same buyer-side criteria. Neutral, observed, no commentary. It tends to speak for itself.
- 01Buyer-facing proof
- 02Inbound ownership
- 03Follow-up sequence
Three Gaps, Ranked
The 3 that matter, in the order we would fix them, with what each one would take.
The numbers above are illustrative samples. Yours come from your audit.
This Is Not for Every Firm
Save yourself the 90 seconds if any of these are true.
- You measure a website by how it looks, not what it wins. We care how it looks too, and every decision still bends toward winning you clients.
- Your website is a business card in your mind, and you are content leaving it that way.
- You want someone to promise you a number of leads. We will not, and you should be wary of anyone who does.
- You want help sourcing candidates. That is your craft and you are better at it than we are.
- You are shopping on price alone. We are not the cheapest option, and we are not the most expensive either.
The Three Builds From the Video
Live now, so judge them the way your buyers judge you: click through and see how each one reads to the person who signs the contract.
PeopleConnectRebrand + working lead capture
Talent SDKLogo to full brand, gaming to tech
Signal & StrandNew firm, brand and site from a logo“I wasn’t being sold services or add-ons that I didn’t need, but really the things that would highlight our business capabilities.”
“They were an awesome partner when it came to thinking through the design overhaul itself. I would certainly recommend working with them.”
And the numbers you can verify without us: every line below sits on a platform we do not control.
- Top Rated PlusUpwork’s tier for large contracts
- 100%Job success, across 228 jobs
- $700K+Earned on platform, 2,595 hours
- VerifiedIdentity checked by government ID
Those are the founder’s figures, and they are public. Check the profile yourself.
Where Is Your Client Pipeline Leaking?
6 questions about how you win clients. Answer them and you get your score and your three biggest gaps, with nothing gated.
90 seconds. No sales call attached, and the results are not held hostage to your email.
The Questions We Get Every Time
We already have someone handling marketing.
Good, and this usually still applies. In most firms that person is running employer branding and candidate attraction, because that is what the business has always needed. Almost nobody is running demand at the hiring managers. The audit will show you which one you are actually funding.
We tried an agency once and it went nowhere.
That is the most common objection we hear. Usually the agency treated a recruiting firm like a generic B2B service business and sold campaigns without understanding that you have two audiences with opposite needs on one website. Ask us about that on the call and we will tell you exactly where those engagements break.
Our clients come from referrals and relationships.
They should, and that is a strength. The question the audit answers is what happens when a referral looks you up before they call, which they will, and what happens in the year a big client leaves and referrals alone do not cover the gap.
How long does the audit take on our side?
90 seconds for the scorecard and 20 minutes for the walkthrough. We do not need access to your ATS, your CRM, or your team's time. Everything we look at is already public, which is the point.
What does the ongoing work cost?
If the audit points to a full rebuild, those typically run $5,000 to $10,000 depending on scope. Often it does not. The audit regularly surfaces fixes that cost a fraction of that, and we will tell you plainly which situation you are in before quoting anything.
Do you lock clients into contracts?
No. Some clients keep us on retainer, some hire us once and come back when they need us. We keep the team lean on purpose, no big sales org or ad budget you end up paying for, which is how we stay competitive without being the cheapest bid in your inbox.
I am leaving my firm to start my own. Too early for this?
The opposite. Some of our best results come from recruiters with deep books and 20 years in the industry who went out on their own, because we get to build the client side right from day one instead of undoing years of candidate-only decisions.
Is this only the website?
The site is the visible part. The engagement also covers what happens after someone enquires: lead capture, the follow-up sequence, and the pipeline workflows that keep admin from eating your recruiting hours. Where something can run automatically, we build it to.
Do you work with firms outside our vertical?
We work with recruiting and staffing firms across verticals because the buyer-side problem shows up in all of them. If you run mostly temp, contract, or executive search, we will tell you honestly on the call how well this transfers to your model.