Every contract you win is already someone else’s.
A shortlist of people who can already do the job, with the evidence on each one written down. You read it and decide who to see.
People already winning contracts against incumbents — and scored on what happened after they won.
Tony Goodwin, founder
SaaS, cyber & AI·MSPs & IT services·Financial & insurance services·Professional services·Marketing & creative·Manufacturing & industrial·Construction & built environment·Logistics & supply chain·Energy & environmental·Facilities & contracts·Medical & life sciences·Food, drink & FMCG·Education & public sector·UK, US & Australia
“I have a mistrust of recruiters, but you’ve restored my faith in the value of getting the right hire.”
“Absolutely delighted with the hires we’ve made. The screening was first class and we had amazing candidates to choose from.”
“After 2 bad hires and months of lost opportunities, you found us an amazing Head of Sales — they’re 140% of quota.”
Six things go wrong when you hire.
Here’s each one, and what we do about it.
You’ll get applications, mostly from people who’ve managed contracts rather than won them. Winning work off a contractor with three years of goodwill is a different job, and the people who can do it are already doing it somewhere.
We map who is winning contracts of your size in your discipline, and go to them directly. You get that map free, before you commit to anything.
| 1 | A. Whitworth | Leeds | Eight years winning hard FM contracts against incumbents. Three of four still with the business at retender. |
| 2 | J. Ferris | Manchester | Currently at a regional competitor. Tender-led, comfortable with PSQ and framework routes under the new Act. |
| 3 | S. Bracken | Newcastle | Fire and security background. Strong on compliance-driven buying and recurring maintenance value. |
| 4 | D. Mallory | Sheffield | Moved from estimating into sales two years ago. Knows what can actually be delivered. |
Yours free, whether you use us or not.
They’re field-based, busy, and get four templated messages a week. Your business is a name they have never heard. Nearly nine in ten smaller businesses say they can’t match the salaries larger organisations offer — on a job board, that’s exactly what you’re competing on.
We market the role properly. Every person we approach gets a page built for the role and addressed to them by name, with a video explaining the business, what the job actually involves and who it suits. It’s the difference between being pitched at and being made a case to.
“Absolutely delighted with the hires we’ve made. The screening was first class and we had amazing candidates to choose from.”
Gary Hall — Managing Director, TQ EnvironmentalNot sure if this is on your radar, but it felt worth putting in front of you.
Anyone who wants to sign it and walk away. Here you stay involved through mobilisation.
A real page, sent to one person, by name.
Interviewing is a separate skill to the job. Some people are polished because they’ve done a lot of interviews, not because they’re any good. Others are awkward in a room and would be the best hire you make this year. And every CV now arrives with an AI polish on it, so the ones that read best aren’t necessarily the best people. You come away feeling reasonably sure — but feeling sure and having evidence aren’t the same thing, and only one of them survives month five.
A long screening interview, conducted by someone who has sold in your market, then a written suitability report on every candidate we recommend — scored against your brief, with the evidence underneath. And a section called Watch Points, where we set out what isn’t proven.
| New contract origination | Strong | 9.0 |
| Bid and tender discipline | Strong | 8.5 |
| Mobilisation and handover to ops | Strong | 8.0 |
| Margin held through delivery | Good | 7.5 |
| Retender and renewal record | Partial | 6.5 |
Thirty CVs to read, eight people to see, half of them a waste of an afternoon. And you’re doing it around the day job, which is why the role has been open five weeks already.
You see the ones worth seeing, and nobody else. No padding a shortlist to make it look busy, and no thirty CVs to sift. The questions worth asking are already written down, because they came out of what we couldn’t close on the screening call.
Five weeks in, the person you wanted takes a counter-offer, or mentions a competing process nobody knew about, or turns out to have been thousands off on salary the whole way through.
We establish what it’ll take to land someone before you meet them — what they’re on, what they’d move for, whether they’re being pulled toward your role or pushed out of their current one, and what else they’re in process on.
Counter-offer. He is on a retention package that vests next year. Establish what happens to it before you make an offer, not after.
Which is the expensive one. You’ve paid a fee, paid five months of salary, lost the ground for half a year, and you’re back where you started with less confidence than before.
If they leave, or you exit them, within six months, we run the search again at no fee. But the real protection is upstream: Watch Points exist so the risks are on the table before you hire, not discovered in month five.
| Bid authorship, end to end | Weak | 4.0 |
| Retender and renewal record | Weak | 4.5 |
Hired, and still performing.
Technical B2B businesses. The method is constant — the criteria change with the sale.
“The quality and speed of the process has been outstanding. I have a mistrust of recruiters, but you’ve restored my faith in the value of getting the right hire.”
“After 2 bad hires and months of lost opportunities, you found us an amazing Head of Sales that not only is a perfect cultural fit, they’re 140% of quota.”
Commercial roles in businesses that win work and then have to deliver it.
Where the sale is a contract, the revenue is recurring, and operations lives with whatever was promised.
Contractors, service providers and installers on recurring revenue.
- Typically 20 to 200 people
- The person hiring is the person who’ll manage them
- Revenue held in contracts, not transactions
- Sales and operations close enough that one affects the other
Facilities & building services
Hard and soft FM, M&E, cleaning and maintenance. TUPE, mobilisation and self-delivery versus subcontract decide whether the margin survives year one.
Fire, security & compliance
Installed base plus recurring maintenance. Standards and inspection regimes drive the purchase, and the service contract is worth more than the install.
Outsourced & business services
Longer procurement, often framework-routed, won on solution design and SLA. Retention depends on whoever inherits the account after the sale.
Most clients don’t stop at the role they came for.
We’re usually brought in for a commercial hire. Then, once we know how the business works and what it takes to succeed in it, clients ask us about the roles around it.
The method doesn’t change. The criteria still come from your brief, and where the assessment needs technical depth we bring in someone from our bench who has done that job.
One client has had us fill four roles across commercial and operations. Another started with a Head of Sales and is now three roles into a technical team. If we can’t assess something properly, we’ll say so rather than take it on.
You don’t pay unless you hire.
No fee unless you hire.
Most clients start here. We ask for 21 days' exclusivity so we can invest properly in the search rather than race three other agencies to the same active candidates.
Six-month replacement.
If the person leaves, or you exit them, within six months of starting, we run the search again at no fee.
We’ll tell you when to stop.
If the market for the brief isn’t there at the package you’re offering, you’ll hear it early — and we’d rather send three people we’d back than four to fill a shortlist.
Full terms confirmed in writing before any search begins.
Sold them.
Hired for them.
Tony Goodwin has built, scaled and exited B2B businesses — selling them himself — and spent the years since rebuilding the commercial function inside more than 170 companies. He designed the way we screen, and he still runs searches.
What we assess against comes out of your brief, not a template. And where the assessment needs depth we haven’t got in-house, we bring in someone from our bench who has done that job — a sector specialist, an engineer, whoever the brief actually demands.
Most screening tests whether someone can talk about the job. Ours tests whether they’ve done what your role actually requires.
A generalist recruiter can check a CV against a spec. Only someone who has sold in your sector can tell whether the numbers were earned or inherited, whether the accounts they name are the ones that matter, and what they’d struggle with in your business.
The things people ask before they call.
If yours isn’t here, ask it on the call. We’d rather tell you no early than sell you a search you don’t need.
We ask. Most CVs in this market are written entirely around wins, so what happened at mobilisation and whether anything has been through a retender is the question we spend the most time on.
Enough to know they decide whether a contract makes money. We score for whether a candidate stays involved after handover, because that’s usually where margin and the relationship are lost.
We work on contingency for most roles — no fee unless you hire. The fee is a percentage of first-year salary and we agree it in writing before anything starts. We aren’t the cheapest option in the market and we don’t try to be; what you’re paying for is the research, the screening and the report.
Tell us on the call. If you’ve someone promising we’d rather pressure-test them than run a search you don’t need. We’ll be straight with you about whether it’s worth doing at all.
For 21 days, yes. It’s what makes the approach possible — nobody writes a page for each candidate and records a video on a role four agencies are racing. After 21 days the role is yours to run however you like.
If they leave, or you exit them, inside six months of starting, we run the search again at no fee. Full terms are confirmed in writing before we begin.
The UK, the United States and Australia. Most of our searches are field or hybrid roles outside the major cities, which is where the agencies chasing volume tend not to look.
A limited number. The research and the reports take real time, and doing eight searches badly is worse for everyone than doing three properly. If we can’t give a role the attention it needs we’ll say so.
Tell us the role.
We’ll show you who’s out there.
A researched Talent Map for your role, built from scratch, and fifteen minutes to walk through it. Yours whether you use us or not.
No fee, no obligation.
The map takes days. The search starts the moment you say go.
No sales deck. No hard sell. Just an honest conversation about the role.