"Can you do 15 percent?" is not really a fee question. It is a test of whether you believe your own number. Most recruiters fail it by defending the fee with adjectives: quality, service, network. The client hears noise, because every agency says the same three words.
The recruiters who hold their rate do something different. They move the conversation off the fee and onto the vacancy.
An unfilled role burns money quietly. A 90k engineer generating roughly 3 to 5 times salary in value costs the company at least 4k a week while the seat is empty. A sales role with a quota costs more. Nobody invoices the client for those weeks, which is why nobody prices them.
happy to talk numbers. quick math first: this role empty is costing you about 4k a week. the difference between my fee and the cheaper agency is about 6k. i typically fill this profile five weeks faster. that is 20k of vacancy cost saved, minus the 6k difference, so you are 14k ahead at my full fee. want me to walk through where the five weeks comes from?
Adjust the numbers to the role and say them slowly. You are not defending a percentage anymore. You are selling the client a 14k profit on the decision to pay you properly.
A client who will not engage with the vacancy math is telling you they see recruitment as a commodity purchase. Commodity buyers generate shared reqs, slow feedback and fee erosion forever. The strongest pricing move an owner can make is a polite no, and a full pipeline is what makes the no affordable. That is a business development problem, covered in the weekly BD system.
Contingency fees commonly run 18 to 25 percent of first year salary, with retained and executive search higher. The spread inside a market is mostly explained by positioning and proof, not by service cost.
The defensible justification is economic: the cost of the role staying empty, the speed and quality difference a specialist delivers, and the risk absorbed through guarantees. Fee defenses built on adjectives get negotiated down.
Trade rather than discount. Exchange a concession for exclusivity, faster payment terms, a multi-role agreement or a longer partnership. A pure discount with nothing in return reprices every future search you run for that client.
Clientflow runs client acquisition for owner-led recruiting and search firms: data, infrastructure, outreach and reply handling, with a guaranteed floor of held conversations.
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