No doubt you have been overwhelmed with high-level forecasts from wise recruiting soothsayers about 2012 being the year of mobile recruiting, the critical importance of building talent communities, the rise of employer branding… and many other trends that, truthfully, you hardly understand and definitely have little control over.

These people are smart, and much of what they say is spot on. But a lot is total hogwash too, no more than a distraction, and certainly most of it, you personally, cannot act on.

So what about the desk recruiter? The person doing the day-to-day slog? What resolutions can you make, today, that will equip you for a better year. Indeed, a better career?

Here are mine.

Fire lots of clients …now.

That’s right. Your eyes do not deceive. 2011 was truly the year of the tyre-kicker. At Firebrand we were overwhelmed with clients ‘testing’ the market, using multiple recruiters on the same brief, comparing our talent with internal candidates, withdrawing jobs at the last minute, even rescinding on offers.

2012 is the year to sort out these serial time-wasters and fire them. Don’t forget, you can choose who you do not work with. You have to prioritise your clients, and triage your job orders. Work on only those where the client is committed to working with you. Indeed you want a laser-like focus on clients who give you a return. The rest? Coach them on ways to work together. Give them another chance. Then kill off those bikers!

Spend less time on social media.

What? This is blasphemy! Spend less time? Who is this dinosaur? Well, I may be a dinosaur, but I am a dinosaur with 10,000 twitter followers, a blog read by 5,000 plus people every week, a busy Facebook page,  and many thousands of LinkedIn contacts.

So I know two things about Social Media.
i) the benefits
ii) how much time it wastes.
And you need to learn from this. Of course social media is a critical channel for recruiters. If you have not developed a social media profile yet, then get going. But don’t confuse the much touted mantra from the ‘experts’ that is ‘all about engagement,’ with banal banter and time-wasting that will lead to nothing. Don’t con yourself. Use social media wisely, with focus, with intent, with a plan …… and with a limit on how much time it sucks up. While we are on this topic, spend less time on your computer.

Spend more time on the oldest social networking tool we have – the telephone.

Yes, I know, seriously old-school. Yet it is a fact that recruiting is still about influencing, connecting, persuading, negotiating, listening, selling and closing. And if you think email or social media can do those things better than face-to-face or telephone contact…you are… how shall I word this? Ah yes! Dumb as mud.

Focus on $ productive activities.

There are so many distractions these days. So easy for a recruiter to ‘be busy’. On social media. On research. On admin. Your goal for 2012 is to spend as many hours as possible on dollar-productive activities. And those are the activities that lead to an invoice. And typically they are the ‘contact’ activities. Talking to, and meeting, with talent. Talking to, and meeting, clients and prospects. They are the money-moments. Again don’t fool yourself. A ‘busy day’ without lots of these activities, is not a dollar-day.

Increase innovation and time on talent acquisition.

Remember, not everyone is looking for a job, but everyone is available to change jobs. 2012 is the year for you to actually do something about tapping into the passive 90%. The future of recruitment is that everyone is a candidate -  all the time. And it is up to us to convert them into active candidates, not wait for them to come to us.

Focus only on things you have control over.

I am sick of hearing and talking about the shaky economy, fickle clients, the situation in Europe, the stock market gyrations, elections in the US, the talent shortage, what the Chinese may do with the currency. I mean seriously, can YOU do anything about those things? Of course not, so don’t waste your energy and denude your motivation with this stuff. Focus on what you can impact and control.

And mostly, those are the things I have outlined in this blog.

Wishing you all a fantastic 2012.

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We don’t mean to be tentative, do we? We want to be bold, strong and confident when dealing with clients. Yet time and again, we use words that are stumbling blocks. Our fear takes over. And we use tentative language. Words that offer the client a reason to doubt us. Phrases that reduce our credibility.

Tentative language: How do you know you’re using it? 

Do you use words like ‘normally’? The client asks you, how much do you charge? Do you start off by saying, ‘Oh, normally’. 

Disaster! Right there. The battle is lost.

You’ve stepped onto a landmine. When you say “normally”, the client knows at once that your price is negotiable. She knows you are not sure of your price. You may not even believe in your value. And hey presto – the client is in the driver’s seat. 

There are many words we all use that prevent us from being in the driver’s seat -  

’Approximately’. ‘Usually.’ ‘I feel that…’  ‘Sometimes’. ‘Our average price’.  ‘Ballpark figure’.  All of these words send an instant message to the client’s brain that you’re a bit unsure. Just a little insecure. 

The insecurity spills over.

When the client (or talent for that matter) hears insecurity in your words, they can’t but help simultaneously hear the insecurity in your work and your service.

Don’t say “Firebrand is one of the leading marketing, creative and digital search companies in the world”. You have qualified the statement by prefacing it with “one of the”. Say “Firebrand IS the leading marketing, creative and digital search company in the world”.

When a recruiter says to a client “ For this job, we charge $20,000 and we deliver an outcome in two weeks or less”, your client is instantly impressed. The client didn’t hear tentativeness in your price or your ability.

Talent are sensitive to tentativeness too. Don’t say, “this job might have some of the things you are looking for in a new role”, or “this job is probably worth looking at”. Why would that compel me to go to see that client? Say, “This is an exceptional company with a superb client list and an excellent culture. What’s more it fits all the criteria you outlined for a job move, including more client-facing time and the international travel you are looking for “ (This is an example of course. What you say has to be true!)

Specifics impress. Remember, it’s not just you that’s having the uncertainty in the sales situation. The client is walking in unknown territory as well. As a client what would you prefer to hear? “The job will be advertised tomorrow, my database will be fully searched by Friday night and my research team will map the market in a week, and I will have a shortlist in two weeks or less” or “We’ll get down to it and get the job done soon.”

As a Talent would you rather hear “You have great skills and I am going to market your resume to clients A, B and C by Tuesday.” or  “I will do my best to get you interviews with suitable companies.”?

Think about your words. Think about your voice tone. It can make all the difference. One thing is certain. Stop using tentative language. It isn’t doing you any good.

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I find managing a business really difficult. Seldom a week goes by that I don’t think I could have done something better. And of course as a leader, communicating the vision, communicating change, communicating expectations – these are subtle skills, which I don’t think any of us truly master.

However, developing these skills is fundamental to our success. Particularly now, where so many employees have so much choice, engaging people with the company’s goals is, in my view, perhaps the leader’s primary role.

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You will never be accused of over-communicating. No one is going to resign because you share too much information; be disaffected because you tell them what they are doing well, and how they can get even better.  It’s better to err on the side of sharing the vision and the values too often, than too little. I am forever getting surprised when people tell me they have “never heard that before”, when in my mind it’s been said a thousand times.

Nothing scientific here. Just 10 golden rules I have learned over many years of trial and error.

1. Communicate early and often. Don’t wait till people start to make things up because of a lack of information. Don’t communicate only once and think people will “get it”. They almost certainly won’t. Repeat the message in different ways and at different times.
2. Tell them everything or tell them nothing. I have learned that telling people half the story is dangerous. They will invent the missing information. If you are not ready to tell the full story, rather say nothing. Of course in most situations is better to tell it all, early.
3. Empathise before you communicate. “I understand that cutting the advertising budget is going to make it harder for you to achieve your personal goals in some respects, but it’s not working so we want to spend the money smarter.”
4. Deliver on commitments that you communicate or do not make those commitments. This is likely to be your most costly mistake. Communicating change or promises that you don’t follow-up on. We all get enthusiastic and we want to share positive news, but it is best to remain silent unless you know you can follow through. Not delivering kills credibility as a leader and does irreparable damage to the trust.
5. Use informal and formal channels. Sure, share company news via emails and newsletters, but also take the time to sit at the desk of a key person, or over drinks, or on the way back from a client visit. This is where you will get the questions and be able to really cut through any confusion.
6. Celebrate wins and tell success stories. Small and frequent. Success builds belief. Share the news of Mary’s biggest placement, Fred’s first retained order, our biggest placement ever, a key new client won. People want to work with winners and love to hear positive war stories. They are happening every day. Communicate them!
7. Share confidential information regularly. You have to make this call, but I believe it builds trust and buy-in. The company results, margins, client revenues.  Yes it’s sensitive stuff, but mostly I find people will be mature and will value being brought into the inner circle.
8. Where possible speak, don’t email. It’s a thousand times better and more effective. You can always follow up with an email if you just can’t stand not sending one (see here for my views on technology and communicating).
9. Plan and prepare for delivering tricky news. If you have something distasteful to communicate, for example your company is going to have to close a branch office, predict the questions you are likely to get or people are likely to think. Prepare honest, carefully crafted answers. Be careful of the language you use. For example “we have decided not to replace the consultant who left the perm desk because we see the perm market plateauing for a while and we think the people we have now are fully capable of servicing our current client workload”. That’s a lot better than “We are not replacing her because the perm market is so bad and will probably tank even further soon, so we think it is dangerous to hire someone else because none of you will have enough to do”.
10. Tell the right people the right things. This is key. Don’t have ‘communications favourites’ where you share news first with a selected few. It creates distrust and lack of loyalty. And never talk to one recruiter about the mistakes or weaknesses of another.

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Running a great recruitment business is difficult. The competition, the compliance, the cash flow issues and most of all, the people complexity creates an ideal environment to screw up.

Here are 10 of my biggest blunders, some of which I have made several times. I offer them up as a guide on what NOT to do when running a recruitment company.

1. Focusing too heavily on consultant activity levels. Slavishly counting activities, measuring ratios, chastising shortfalls… at the expense of ensuring the quality of those activities was high and consistent. Lots of activity, done badly, will actually send your business backwards, and focusing on activity for activity sake can be tremendously demoralising for the team, and distracting for the leadership.
2. Focusing too little on activity levels of consultants.  This is the flip side of the same coin and it’s just as big a blunder.  Allowing consultants to “free wheel” appearing busy by doing lots of ‘stuff’ without ensuring clarity and focus about what their key activities must be. Letting consultants spend 90 minutes in an interview with a junior person because “they want to get it right” and agonising for hours over the wording on a resume are great examples. Quality is important, but you also have to churn through a lot of the key actions that drive making the match. It’s a management task to keep that on track.
3. Allowing consultants full autonomy over which clients and which jobs they choose to work on was a mistake. Most recruiters are somewhat “tarty” by inclination, trying to work with everyone on everything. Specialisation is key, working with clients who will partner with us is key, gaining exclusivity and working on fully qualified briefs is fundamental, as is working with people who pay our bills. Not prioritising our WIP has cost me plenty, time and time again.
4. Hiring potential consultants because they had a great academic background and fantastic careers in a previous job, which was not recruitment, but in a field we specialise in. I have learned that when hiring recruiters we need to focus more on intrinsic attributes that drive success in recruitment, such as competitiveness, empathy, resilience, listening skills, passion, integrity and work ethic.
5. Opening offices in remote places without strong, committed, proven, loyal local management. Everything depends on leadership and it gets more crucial with every kilometre the remote business is away from HQ.
6. Retaining mediocre people (who may be very nice people) in the hope they will miraculously become superstars despite mounting evidence that they will always be underperformers. This is a massive opportunity cost and I make this mistake even now.
7. Hiring managers and recruiters on massive base salaries on the back of “impressive” track records (which are often not what they seem) or promises of huge performance. I learned that you must always link high earning with high performance. The big money comes after the big delivery, not before.
8. Allowing managers of smallish teams (2 – 8 people) to evolve into non-billing managers. This is a massive mistake.  We need “player/managers,” people who bill, rain-make, business develop and also manage the team. I have allowed managers to become backroom crunchers of numbers and process managers, and that’s not where the value of a leader lies, nor can you secure any leverage out of that kind of role.
9. Assuming that a good recruiter will make a good manager. They are entirely different skill sets. Promoting your highest billing recruiter to Team Leader because she wants a “career” can destroy her progress, dismantle her billings, and disintegrate the team.
10. Listing my own company Recruitment Solutions in 1998. It was too small a business really to be floated. Profit of only $4M.  The IPO was a financial success, but it was not the right thing for the business. It cost a lot to be listed, we lost control to non-executive directors and you have to answer to shareholders and fund managers. Watching share price means you spend less time on the important things like customers and staff. I am immensity proud of Recruitment Solutions. It was stand out business and produced literally scores of people who now own their own successful business. But we should not have gone public.

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This is the fifth blog in my series on great coaching for managers of recruiter teams.

Previously I expanded on the importance of ‘live feedback’, ‘real life coaching’, as well as the tactic of ‘plugging in’ new recruits.

Today we look at ‘role swapping’.

Many managers I have worked with feel that if they are not doing the talking or showing the consultant how the job is done, then they are not providing valuable input.

This is not always true. From time to time, it is highly effective for the manager or coach to reverse roles, providing feedback after the event.

For example, once you have a consultant up to a certain level of competence, or even with your more experienced people, take them on a client visit with you where they lead the discussion, where they take in the job, where they do the selling and you play a secondary role.

You may be surprised how difficult this is to do! Many managers simply cannot help themselves on a client meeting and leap in to take control. I understand why, but look at the bigger picture. When is the recruiter ever going to learn if you always take control? In fact you are setting that person up for disaster because the first time they actually get to run a client meeting, they really will be on their own. i.e. when you are not there.

So sure, be ready to leap in if it goes totally off the rails, but otherwise let the recruiter run it.

Then afterwards in the cab back to the office, or in a coffee shop, do a full, immediate de-brief, pointing out missed opportunities or where things could be handled differently.

The same role swapping should be applied to interviewing candidates. Your consultant interviews, you observe and feedback afterwards.

The most powerful coaching you will ever do.

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This is the fourth blog in my series on great coaching for managers of recruiter teams.

Previously I expanded on the importance of ‘Live Feedback’ as well as the ‘Real Life’ approach to consultant coaching. Today we talk about effectively inducting new hires through clever coaching.

If you spend all your time training consultants in a one-on-one situation, your own productivity will suffer dramatically, plus we agree ‘classroom learning’ has limited effectiveness. A neat solution to this problem is to plug new recruits into your own desk.

Assign one or even two new people to literally follow you around and listen to every conversation you have for an entire morning. Let them listen to you taking job descriptions, let them come with you on client visits, let them sit in on interviews with you.

This way you expose new people to the full variety of consulting situations, they absorb your style and ethos, and after all they are getting it from the best consultant in the team (hopefully).

You can also plug new recruits into other senior members of your team. One word of warning. If you do plug consultants into yourself or your colleagues, it is very important to have regular debriefs where you ensure that they understand what has been happening and they have the opportunity to ask questions. Three or four times a day, stop and ask them to tell you what they have heard and learned. Then refine their perceptions and explain dynamics they have missed. Maybe set them follow up tasks. At the very least it tells you where they need more input.

You can’t limit your new hire training to this technique, but you can certainly liberally plug new recruits in during their early weeks. It’s much better than have them sit there and read a training manual!

Plugging people in is a highly effective way of getting on with your job, while at the same time providing exposure to the fundamentals of the role.

Over the past week I have committed to presenting at two RCSA conferences in Australia, which by the sound of the program and the quality of the other speakers, will be well worth attending.

Below are details of the two presentations I will be giving, in Sydney and in Hobart, as well as links to the Conference programs

RCSA Sydney Consultant Forum 2010

Tuesday 1st June 2010

“Recruiting Skills for the New Era”

Greg Savage MRCSA (Life) AQUENT
“Restocking the Skills Briefcase”

The fact is that the skills and tactics that got you where you are today, will NOT be good enough to take you where you
want to go! The market has shifted,technology has evolved and client and candidate expectations have risen. This session will uncover the key skills many recruiters lost during the boom years, which now need to be relearned,and will also highlight brand new approaches to client and candidate interaction. Full of practical takeaways and immediately useable tips and tactics, this is session for all would-be top performers

For details Click here to download the event brochure for more information.

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RCSA Conference  – Hobart, Tasmania

25-27th August 2010

“Bridging Connections”

Featured Key Note Speaker

Greg Savage-CEO Aquent International

“New engagement for a new world – A case study in changing the recruitment conversation”

Apart from his reputation as a business leader, Greg Savage is known throughout our industry as a recruiting trainer and coach. His management and consultant skills session sell out all over the Australia and New Zealand. But this session is different. Designed for recruiting leadership, and presented exclusively at the RCSA leadership conference, Greg will share exactly what he is doing at Aquent to change the way his business engages with clients, relates to talent and builds loyalty from their own staff. It’s happening to Greg right now so you will hear the strategy as well as how some of the plans are working out..or not! Few recruitment leaders would share such strategic imperatives, and fewer still will divulge the results, but Greg will outline the Aquent social media strategy, the new customer service charter and a brave new way Aquent are dealing with client commitment — amongst much else.

for details  visit the website  bridgingconnections

Most staffing markets around the world have stabilised. Some have definitely started growing, while others are clearly showing signs of increased optimism.

For recruiting firms, it seems the dark days of 2009, where demand virtually collapsed, are behind us. Many business owners and managers are thinking about growth, reinvestment and hiring staff. However, these strategic and tactical decisions raise the big question of timing. When to spend money and when to invest in people and marketing.

These things depend on your local market and your position in that market, but they are absolutely critical. You, the business leader, will be best equipped to judge when your market is ready for investment, so any advice can only be generic. However one thing is for certain. You don’t want to go too early. It will be disastrous if you sink big cost into a business that is unable to generate returns. But equally dangerous is moving too late, as you can be sure that once your competitors get ahead of you they will be hard to dislodge. The prudent approach, I believe, is that you need to be working on aggressive growth plans NOW. That does not mean you have to press the “Green for Go” button yet. So for example, start working on a targeted marketing and sales plan now. Get the ideas in place. Get the timelines in place. Plan now. For example, if you are in accounting and you believe demand for temp accountants will take-off first, get a campaign ready now to launch when the time is right So you invest a little in planning and preparation, but the real investment in media and events and other marketing spend comes when you are sure the upswing is firmly in place.

A related key timing question is when to hire extra staff. We all know how hard it was to get good consultants when the boom was at its height. Yet we also know the devastating cost of mediocre people and highly paid staff who are not billing. Again it’s a matter for fine judgment, but even if you are not ready to hire, you should be planning now. Identify your gaps. Where will demand come and do you have resources to service it? Interview consultants now even if you are not ready to hire. Build a database of potential recruits. Keep in touch with them. In terms of actual hiring, don’t underestimate the lead time it takes for someone to become productive. Factor in training and induction time.

At Aquent we are starting to hire now in selected markets, but I am very mindful of productivity per recruiter as a key ratio in managing my business. I consider “full productivity” for a perm recruiter to be fee production equal to 3.5 times base salary and temp to be 5 times base salary – as a broad rule of thumb. So I am taking the view that current recruiters need to be at eighty per cent plus productivity before we add additional people.

Gear up, but be very careful not to over-hire in your haste to cash in on the upswing. It will kill your profitability in the recovery – especially if that recovery is slower than we would all hope.

Image courtesy of Martin Palmer

I have nothing against bikers. I had a motorbike myself, until I drove it into a hedge at 60 mph on the way back from the rugby club.

Bikers are only an analogy in my tale today so Rev Heads… take no offense please.

But to the business at hand. Consider this and then run the figures for your own business if you need convincing. In most of the recruitment businesses I have run, 70% of your business will come from the top 20% of your clients. In fact, often over 50% of your Gross Profit (NDR) will be generated from less than 10 client companies. Even on an individual consultant desk you will find that a high proportion of fees will come from between 3 and 5 clients.

Maybe we know this already. Why then do we spread both our marketing dollars, and our personal business development efforts, across all our clients and prospects equally?

It’s crazy!

You will no longer survive by spreading yourself so thin. The superficial phone call and the multi-listed, non-exclusive job order – and then we move on, is not a strategy that will work any more.

It’s transactional. It’s superficial. It’s dangerous for your financial health. What we want to focus on now is “share of wallet” not market share.

What is important as the market recovers is targeting long-term clients with fee-generation growth potential. We want to work with companies that will use our services regularly. We want to partner with companies that themselves are growing. The best client is a client that has a need for all or most of your service offer.

But it’s much, much more than that.

We need to understand that the best business is often the hardest to win, but the most profitable once you have it. The future requires us to invest time, resources and brainpower on developing, nurturing and retaining these key clients.

But it’s much more than that too.

We need to build different relationships with our clients. Engage in fresh conversations. This means providing value-added activities for your clients (webinars, blogs, salary surveys, skills testing of candidates). The goal is ensuring a regular pattern of meaningful contact and it also means developing proactive recruitment strategies specifically for them.

But it’s more than that too. Do not try to be all things to all people. Very few recruiters I know, have managed to survive as generalists and it will not get easier.

And the bikers? Well bikers are those hairy, ugly, anti-social clients. Clients who jerk you around with sketchy job specs. Clients who demand the world from you and give nothing in return. Clients who pull jobs half way through assignments. Clients who fail to return your calls and who use three other agencies in competition with you. Clients who unfailingly try to negotiate fees – especially after you have gone to the ends of the earth to fill their job. Clients who show no respect for what you do or say, who abuse your guarantee and who in the end, refuse to pay the bill.

You are smiling as you read this! And yet we still work with these guys. Why? They absorb your time and they torpedo your self-esteem. They take your focus off where it should be – your targeted clients and prospects who can offer you long term, sustainable, profitable business.

Why do we keep on giving these pseudo-clients another chance? Why do we defend them within our companies? Why do we say “they are not so bad –they will get better – next time we will earn a fee”?

Frankly, trying to pretty up these bikers is a bit like putting lipstick on a pig. A pig is still a pig with or without makeup!

Kill off these bikers – fire these so called clients –these renegades and buccaneers – and put your effort into those key prospects and clients who you have identified as the sorts of employers you want to do business with.

Business is like dating – you do have choice who you go with.

If you have ever managed a team of recruiters for any length of time, this topic will resonate with you, I am sure.

Inevitably, within a group of recruiters, one, maybe two, will rise to the top. These “Big Billers” either inherit a great desk or, less often, they build it themselves, and soon they are consistently out-billing everyone else. Sadly, in many cases it seems with good consultants “the higher the fees the bigger the pain in the butt”. It’s not always the case, and I have known many great recruiters who are humble and willing to share, but with many high billers it seems it is no longer possible for them to operate without making it perfectly clear to their colleagues that they are not quite on the same consulting planet. Smugness sets in. Lack of cooperation on new initiatives becomes the norm. The “Big Biller” comes late to meetings because, you know, “I bill a lot, you know”. Administration is suddenly beneath them. Ironically, as the Prima Donna gets more complacent and more arrogant, complaints from clients and candidates about the ” Big Biller” start to rise.

And boy, if Prima Donna gets a headhunting call from a competitor, the whole world knows about it in three seconds flat.

Now this is a management challenge. And over many years I have noticed that managers of Prima Donnas fail miserably to address the problem because they allow themselves to be held to ransom by the “Big Biller”. There is an action-stunting fear that the fees will be lost if the Prima Donna is offended in some way, and heaven forbid, resigns! It seems many managers put up with a thousand varieties of bulldust from Big Billers because, “we can’t afford to lose them”.

This is a massive mistake and one a good manager must avoid at all costs.

If you allow top performers, who evolve into Prima Donnas, to blackmail you because “they bring in all the money”, you are setting yourself up for a life of pure hell! The first rule, and the non-negotiable rule with these guys is this. Do not allow different rules to develop for Prima Donnas because they are “special”. It is a slippery slope you are creating if the perception exists that as long as my fees are good, I don’t have to attend meetings on time, or do my admin like everyone else. Do not compromise the type of team you are trying to build, the culture you are creating, for the short-term benefit of one high-production consultant.

If you do this, the problem will multiply as the Prima Donna takes even greater liberties. You will lose respect from the rest of the team, and ultimately you will lose your team.

The best strategy for Prima Donnas is to confront their behaviour head-on. And the way to do this is to keep raising the bar. The psyche of a Prima Donna is based on a belief that “they are the best”. Turn that label back on to them. Your communication is along these lines. If they are as good as they think and say they are, then they will want to achieve higher activity levels and quality standards than the rest of the team.

So with a Prima Donna, you must specifically tell them what they are consistently doing well. Compliment them and encourage repetition of that behaviour. But also very importantly let them know what they need to do to be a truly excellent performer. What they must do more of and less of. So for example you might compliment your Big Biller on a quarter of great fee production. But then go on to point out that 40% of the jobs he took in, were lost to competitors. (Not an uncommon figure for contingent perm recruitment.) Focus on this. If possible compare it to other recruiters with better ratios. Set the Big Biller a goal to reduce jobs lost and increase their fill rates. These guys are so used to praise and fawning from leadership, it actually stunts their development.

I never met a recruiter in 30 years who could not improve. With your Big Biller, focus on that. Areas for improvement. Bring them down to earth. Set goals which while fair and business critical, you know they will struggle to meet.

It gives the old Prima Donna a wonderful sense of perspective.

On behavioural and attitudinal matters, I recommend a zero-tolerance policy. After a few normal warnings and coaching on areas the big biller must improve, it has to come down to this, “BB, your fees are excellent and we value your contribution greatly, but one of the non-negotiable aspects of working in this team, is we all attend daily meetings on time. We have spoken about your lateness several times and now I have to tell you that if you wish to stay on the team, you need to be there on time, every time”.

And be prepared to follow up on that threat.

You see, Big Billers are important, but more important than their fees, is equity in the team, co-operation, and an environment of mutual respect. Don’t trade off the long term harmony of your business, for the short term hit of the fees provided by a toxic Big Biller.