The Power of Differentiation

Summary

In this game-changing episode of Highly Adaptive, Jeff Pelliccio and Erin McKenzie sit down with Kim Henderson, former $100 million agency founder and Managing Director of Cobalt Compass, to decode what it really takes to stand out in today's cutthroat staffing market.

Starting from her unexpected entry into staffing after face-to-face mortgage collections (yes, really), Kim shares the hard-won strategies that transformed her from a newcomer into an industry powerhouse. She reveals how accidental discoveries in government contracting led to systematic approaches for dominating niche markets—including becoming a cleared facility that could obtain secret and top-secret clearances for candidates.

The conversation cuts through theoretical fluff to deliver battle-tested tactics: from joining niche professional associations to building organic referral networks that actually work. Kim challenges the industry's addiction to shallow, transactional relationships and makes the case for deep market penetration—because until you own 90% of an account's spend, it's still just a prospect.

This episode is essential listening for executives ready to stop racing to the bottom on price and start building defensible market positions that competitors can't touch.

Key Takeaways

Stop Chasing Everything, Start Dominating Something – Use quarterly Account Profiles to identify where you excel and double down instead of spreading thin

Client Share is Your North Star – If you have 5 contractors while competitors have 85, you're not winning—you've barely started

Differentiation Through Association – Invest $50 in niche professional associations to meet decision-makers that would take 6 months to cold call

Value Beyond Placement – Send 3 relevant industry articles weekly with no ask attached to stay top-of-mind when needs arise

The Power of Saying No – Politely dismiss C-minus accounts that don't match your capabilities and redirect resources to winnable battles

Make Everyone a Storyteller – Ensure every team member can articulate your unique value with specific case studies, not just leadership

Sponsors

Allied Insight - The Preferred Marketing Partner of Staffing and Consulting Businesses
When differentiation is survival, you need marketing that cuts through. Allied Insight delivers expert-level strategy and execution that transforms staffing firms from vendors into vital partners. Because in today's market, good enough isn't good enough.

All Things Staffing - Expert Resources for the Staffing Community
Your hub for industry insights, proven strategies, and the tools you need to outpace change. From articles to case studies to conversations like this one, All Things Staffing keeps you ahead of the curve.

Jeff Pelliccio  0:01  
Welcome to this week's episode, the power of differentiation. In this episode, Jeff and Erin are joined by special guest Kim Henderson to discuss the importance of standing out and delivering value in a crowded market

Kim Henderson  0:12  
until you own 100% of that account, so you have all the perm and all the contract spent. It's still a prospect. Look at your accounts today. Have you met every single department? Have you met every decision maker in that account? Do you know where all the businesses? Have you hit all the locations? And nine times out of 10, the answer to that's

Jeff Pelliccio  0:31  
no highly adaptive is a podcast where staffing and consulting leaders learn to outpace change, hosted by Jeff Pelliccio and Erin McKenzie. They'll cut through the noise to bring you practical moves you could use right now to grow, adapt and lead. This is exciting from our end of year events episode today, we discuss a session at temp net fall conference with Kim Henderson The Power of differentiation. And let's face it, everyone's chasing the same clients. And here's the kicker, winning client share is now tougher than explaining crypto to your grandpa. So differentiation is not corporate fluff, it's survival, and Kim gets it. Her strategies for standing out aren't theoretical. They're what leaders need right now to secure market share and lock in client loyalty.

Erin MacKenzie  1:19  
Okay, so I'm gonna jump in here, Kim, because I'm excited to introduce you, because you truly have been trailblazing the staffing industry. You've been a leader. You've been a former 100 million dollar agency founder. You are the, now the managing director of cobalt compass. You help firms really specialize scale and like, truly transform client relationships into this major strategic growth. So I'm like, super excited to welcome you here to the podcast, but before we actually dive in, I want to ask you something, because I was reading somewhere that you actually started your career based off of a recruiter calling you.

Erin MacKenzie  2:06  
So I like want to know the story. How'd you get into this? Like, what happened? Where did it all come? Stories? What? What was that the pivotal moment of change here, it

Kim Henderson  2:20  
was pure happenstance. I'll tell you that I was working as a financial analyst for a company which I'm sure you've heard of, called Trans America. And while it may sound kind of glamorous right out of college, it wasn't we were doing, you know, mortgages at usurious rates of like 18% to people that had like, c minus type of credit. He did everything from like sell the loan, to package it, to close it, to write, to underwrite it, and work up all the debt, to income pieces. And then the funnest part, after you closed it and the people started to slow, Pelliccio had the joy of being able to get into your car and drive over to some of the not so nice areas in Tampa at the end of the month, knock on their door and ask for their mortgage check. Believe it or not, I did that at the age of 2221

Jeff Pelliccio  3:09  
gosh, yes, I can't imagine face to face collections.

Kim Henderson  3:13  
It was you had to, you had to make sure your DSO is under 30. So, long story short, to get to Erin to answer your question, you know, after doing that for two years, right out of school, I was going, oh my gosh, there's got to be a better way. And a friend had been telling me about the staffing industry, and clearly didn't understand what it was, but they referred me into Kforce. And a gentleman from Kforce who was an internal recruiter, great New York guy called me and started to talk to me about it, and I thought, Well, okay, what the heck? You know, maybe I can earn more money and I don't have to go and collect the people's houses in the dark of night, you know, Mr. Mortgage. So I went in and interviewed with a lot of people, even the CEO of K force at that time, and thought, well, you know what the upside potential here is really good. I'm just going to listen to what these people tell me to do, follow it, you know, blindly and and we'll see if it works out. And ultimately it did, but I think it's, it was just kind of that call that was the catalyst. Didn't really know what I was getting into, and really candidly, did it for the upside of money, and then it just kind of went from there, and that was 1994

Jeff Pelliccio  4:24  
Wow, wow. I mean, listen, I guess, like, I guess what we can learn from this is if you could do face to face mortgage collections, then you could do just about anything. Kim,

Kim Henderson  4:38  
like, people do that anymore in life, give me your mortgage payment, or we're starting foreclosure. I don't think that it works that way, not anymore and in 2025 but nevertheless, it's it definitely taught you some resilience, which, of course, you need for staffing, especially when you're starting

Erin MacKenzie  4:54  
in staffing. Yeah, you can do that. I think you can do anything. I mean, I'd probably have a dog with. Me, I'm more afraid of like I have I'm a dog lover, but I'd probably bring a chihuahua with me while I was doing this, because I feel like they're one of the

Jeff Pelliccio  5:08  
scariest. It would be disarming. I feel like

Erin MacKenzie  5:11  
it should be like going up to houses all the time,

Kim Henderson  5:15  
little Pomeranian

Erin MacKenzie  5:20  
purse dog, exactly, I think,

Jeff Pelliccio  5:23  
completely disarming. I'm here actually, for

Kim Henderson  5:27  
your mortgage payment.

Jeff Pelliccio  5:30  
So, So Kim, differentiation, how did this become a passion of yours? Like, how is this sort of, like, one of your cornerstones? How do they become that?

Kim Henderson  5:40  
I think I almost fell into it. I hate to say this, Jeff, by accident, right? So over time, and I think we've all learned this, right? There's 22,000 approximately 22,000 staffing firms that are out there, right? If you can't differentiate yourself and you can't show your unique service offerings, what happens? You become commoditized pretty darn quickly, and then we all know that's just nothing but a race to the bottom in terms of pricing, right? And once you're in that hole, you really can't climb out of it. So I started to realize that, but we're really I think rubber hitting the road was when I left K force with a group of partners. They went first. I came after them, and they said, you know, hey, for come join us and for an equity stake, you know, obviously we want to build this thing for sale eventually, years down the road, why don't you start our strategic accounts and our Government Solutions division? And I thought, hmm, the only thing I really know about selling to government is I hate paying taxes and I hate going to the DMV. That's really the extent of my knowledge.

Jeff Pelliccio  6:44  
Is there anyone who likes the rest of the world here?

Kim Henderson  6:48  
Exactly. So I thought, Okay, well, let me, let me, let me do this, right? And when I got in, I said, Okay, you know, let's face it, we have to get individuals out billing on assignment. You have to pay for yourself pretty darn quickly. And if you went down the wrong rabbit hole, which government can't spin you around in circles, you weren't going to get anywhere. So net, net, I looked at and said, Okay, there's probably three main pillars here. You've got the state side, you've got the local government side, and then you've got your larger DoD integrators. And what I started to find is the more I start specializing. We'll take the local stuff first, like we all have, like, clerk of court, tax collector, you know, county, city, you know, the bus services, water management, Sheriff, all that. And everywhere we live, those places have to stay up and running, and they need it finance and the county resources to do it because they're delivering Pelliccio. So I found that once I got in one and started to collect Case Studies and Results, it was so easy to go do the county, you know, the next county over, or the next clerk of court over, and say, Hey, here's what we've done, here's what we've delivered. And I was able to quantify it. And they all kind of knew each other in a way. So it was like it just started to fall, in a good way, cascade on top of itself. And then at the state level, it was the same thing when you started to work with various state entities. Now on the Fed side, I had to get a little more creative there, right? So what I learned is, fast forward, teaming with the integrators, like your General Dynamics, your Northrop Grumman's, your HP, Federals, was really the way to go. They go out and win a program, and then we come in and service it. And the differentiate, your differentiator that I developed there was, not only can we deliver IT resources, well, a lot of people can do that is we were became a cleared facility. So not only were we able to go and recruit people with secret and top secret clearances. We were able to hold them against our facility cage code, and we were able to take people that didn't have one necessarily, like Jeff or Erin, and go and put them through the process and get them cleared. And that became a huge differentiator that a lot of other IT staffing companies couldn't say. And so that became, again, you know, I was able to get results, start to quantify it, and start to spread that to other integrators, but in and around that guys, I would say, another piece of it that really helped. And I will, and I'll talk about this this week. We've gotten away from it, but joining a professional association that is niche, specific to what you're trying to do, really help move the needle. So one thing I did that I think we've gotten away from, is I started to join these local associations that were tied directly into these particular industries, right? Like National Defense industrial Association, $50 a year, and you go, I joined, join the lunches, maybe join a committee, start to meet people. And what it did was really kind of helped me engage in that thought leadership. Helped me get in front of people that it would have taken me six months on the phone to chase down. And also help differentiate our company, because we kind of became, in a way, one. Of them, right? So it was a great difference, yeah, and it helped me learn about that industry. So I'd say there's so many of those guys, like, there's, you know, ABC for skilled trades, there's, you know, all kinds of them for associations like AHIMA for healthcare. If people aren't joining those and getting involved, at least doing something every six weeks in it, you're really shortchanging yourself.

Jeff Pelliccio  10:22  
The thing that's fascinating about what you just shared Kim is that it's almost like a an organic, holistic build out of your differentiation, and there's almost like a reciprocity to it. So like, not only were you identifying the things that make you different in the field, you were then using your branded data points in order to further express the differentiation you were then tying into local groups, learning from those to then identify greater differentiation, and then leveraging almost that not exclusivity, but that presence as a differentiator. So this is truly like a very holistic, organic build out. And I don't know if that was done intentionally or if it just kind of happened that way, but I do think that today you just said it like this was a much better way to to get to a conversation and build rapport than any cold call. And in today's world, and with the way the technology is with the way that cold calls are providing like a diminishing return on our on our efforts. This is exactly why this is critical for our industry. So I absolutely love that that story as a means of, sort of helping Pelliccio be deriving their differentiation, right?

Kim Henderson  11:40  
And Jeff and Erin. What I would say, it's funny. I almost kind of fell into it, and then it started to work. And I thought, Oh, well, let me double down on this and continue it. As you said, it kind of cascaded in a good way. But what I would tell companies is this, they may be, you know, thinking, Well, gosh, Kim, I'm not going to, you know, just go to one little niche and shut the rest of my business down. And that's definitely not what I'm saying, what I would say is, pick where you're good what, what are you really good at? Do you excel at delivering CPAs? Do you excel at delivering inpatient, coders or or travel? RNs, whatever you're really, really good at. Double down on that and become a subject matter expert in it. You learn again, continuous learning, to where you are viewed, really, as that specialist and as that counselor in that space, to where you know you can go and articulate to your clients. Hey, you know we excel at high level finance and accounting work, from CPAs to controllers to Treasurers and CFOs. Here's the associations we belong to. Here's what we do, here's how we find them, here's how we retain them on assignment. Whatever your differentiator is, you know, know it, understand it, and be able to articulate it with the wins and with the case studies. And one step further, I've seen this a lot. You may be able to articulate it, but oftentimes the Pelliccio that work for you, you know, your account managers and recruiters can't. So what I'd say is, though, whatever that unique service offering is that you and your company possess, make certain that everyone understands that, and everyone can, you know, talk to the results and talk to the case studies, right? Because sometimes I find the trickle down doesn't happen the way it should.

Erin MacKenzie  13:19  
No, that's so critical for the effort where you really make sure it's not just you that understands it. Everyone needs to be able to speak the same language and be able to say, what's the what's the differentiator that we have here? And I loved your your recommendation of going to different organizations and joining I think that's such a piece that we all forget about sometimes, which I absolutely love. I'm going to ask you something. Kim, I mean, when you think, when you think about differentiation across the board, what's kind of the core of the effort organizationally, like, what where do you have to really kind of grab on to, or the building blocks, per se?

Kim Henderson  13:57  
I think maybe going a little bit back to a couple minutes ago. Analyze your company, right? Like analyze your current book of business and where, where are you trending? Where do you excel? Are you great at finding Java developers? Are you great at finding, you know, ERP specialist? Look at where you're excelling and where you have pipeline and where you do something better or different than all the other staffing firms out there. And I guarantee you, every firm has it, they just maybe haven't identified it yet and take that and build on it and expand like, for instance, I'm working with a staffing company. She is going absolutely gangbusters in a great way, because she is doing nothing but skilled trades, you know, HVAC and plumbers and electricians. And it didn't start that way, but she said, Hmm, we're trending that way. We're good at this. I'm going to double down on it. And now she's got more business, and she knows what to do with right? So I'd say, you know, evaluate where you're trending, where you're leaning, what you're good at, what you're. Service offering is that you think you can capitalize on it and expand it, and that's a great way to, I guess, evaluate it first, not saying, abandon everything else, but look at that, and then, you know, say we're going to go all in on it and become students and subject matter experts in that particular industry.

Erin MacKenzie  15:17  
Do you have, like, a survey or, like, how, what's the best? Because this is something I'd be curious about, like, because I think some people like lose sight of identifying where do they excel, like they have so many different verticals and throw everything in there. So what's like, a recommendation that you would provide for someone if they were to try and figure out, what is, how do they differentiate from someone else? That's that's

Kim Henderson  15:39  
actually a great question. Erin, so I use a tool. It's called an account profile, and it really is, you know, sitting down and looking at each account from the standpoint of, you know, what are their challenges? What are their strategic initiatives? What are some of their other you know, growth or trouble changes, what it is from a client share standpoint, what are is total spend for contract and perm, what it our total number of contractors across the organization, and basically this quarterly tool that we use kind of helped us determine really accounts where we were excelling, or accounts where we were falling down, right? And if we what I learned is, if we were falling down as one of two reasons, a we weren't asking the questions. We were just chasing job orders in a really tactical way. Or, number two, it was an account that we should have never signed on in the first place, right? And there was a lot of that. So that account profile then turned into adding another tool in called a target account scorecard, which basically was an objective tool to say, Hey, okay, we're chasing this account. Here's 1012, questions that we can objectively ask ourselves, and based on the answers, it's going to tell us pretty darn quickly if we should even be chasing them or not, right? Because, let's face it, account managers get kind of, you know, vested and bought in and emotional when they're chasing an account. And I needed something objective versus subjective. So that's probably a long answer to your question, but it started out with two tools, an account profile to determine, where are we doing good, where are we doing poorly, and if we're doing poorly, why is it because we picked the wrong customer and we're just not good at this? Or are we just not even asking the right question? So that enabled us to kind of take some accounts and honestly, politely dismiss them. We did do that. You're basically saying, Hey, we can't be a fit for you based on geography, based on skill sets, based on rates, based on your process. And we had a hard look at ourselves, but we would do that kind of house cleaning type of thing once a year, and look at our accounts and go, Okay, this right over here. This account, for instance, is noise to us, right? Because we can't be successful. We don't match your geography or skills, whatever that is. Let's politely refer them to somebody else and say, We're not the best partner right now. Free up those resources and double down say in these other two areas where we're doing great with telecom companies and grading with DoD integrators. So probably a long answer to your question, but that that annual analysis really helped us kind of refocus, retrench, and, in some cases, clean house with folks that we just knew we couldn't, couldn't make rain with for one reason or another.

Jeff Pelliccio  18:20  
I love the idea of annuals, right? And so, in fact, I like kind of creating schedules based on what we do from a healthcare perspective. Like, you go see the doctor every year, like we do this every year. We go see the dentist every six months. You go do that every six months, right? So I like this idea, kind of, it sort of bakes in your to do list with something that is embedded in your regular life. You know, you had mentioned that you're kind of going through these exercises on a regular basis. You know, today, we were clearly, we have struggles in this given market right now, and I think that a lot of firms are willing to do the extraordinary. They're willing to go outside of their verticals. They're willing to go outside their industries. The idea of dismissing an incoming wreck is likely not what they want to do. And I exercise exactly what you're saying, right? It's it was so hard for me to say, like, we're just going to do staffing, and then like, something else comes in and I'm like, I'm so sorry. We just do staffing, you know, so it is, it is a really hard pill to swallow. But how do you advise leaders and executives who are looking at the landscape around them and they're saying, I need to take every single thing that possibly comes my way to make sure that the doors stay open. How do you advise them or coach them through that mindset into the one that is better for them in the long term.

Kim Henderson  19:46  
That's a great question. First, I'd say, all right, when you do take that, we'll call it that one off wreck that's maybe out of your out of your niche. What are your fill ratios on that? Right? You know, how often are you actually filling those roles? What are. The resources and time that it takes to actually fill them. In other words, is it taking an incredible lift of recruitment, time and effort that's pulling them away from building their pipelines? Right? So that would be the one of the first things I would evaluate, and then really, again, kind of again, looking at that target account scorecard type of thing and determining, okay out of all these factors, right, pricing, process, customer contact, you know, contractual terms, like, you know, rebates, discounts, all these other things, geographic locations. Do you match? You know, give it like a weighting, a score card rating. Do you match? And if the answer is that it's, you know, a C or C minus, you can take those resources and put them elsewhere. I know it's maybe it's your point. Jeff, hard to sometimes say no, but it's like thinking with that long term strategic mentality. I've done it, you know before, where you maybe you're having a rough month, your team's having a rough month, and someone gives you procurement, you know, type of requisitions, and you're saying to yourself, Well, we, you know, we really only do yt, but I bet maybe I could go find these people. What I learned is the amount of time it would take me to go and find these people, dig them up, have the recruiters dig them up, because we're not, we're in that niche. We didn't know how to find them, how to locate them, or where to look it just we burned off so much time off of the calendar and so many resources that we could have said no thank you. Tried this company and gone and continued and built our pipeline and found another customer or it, or dug deeper in the ones we had and found more business that way, right? And Jeff, I think that's a key point here that I'll cover on Friday. Client share. Getting client chart out of our accounts. We're great at signing paper. We're great at placing five people on assignment, Erin and thinking we're doing a great job. And then we find out our competition's got 85 people on assignment, because we never asked the question and ask questions plural. Yeah, I think that. And let until you own 100% of that account, so you have all the perm and all the contract spend, it's still a prospect. So you own at least 90 some odd percent of it, right? So we don't dig deep enough in these accounts. So Jeff, to challenge that person that would say, I'm gonna go and take this one off wreck over here, because I need the business. I'd say, all right, in addition to looking at your target account scorecard, look at your accounts today. Have you met every single department? Have you met every decision maker in that account? Do you know where all the businesses, have you hit all the locations? And nine times out of 10? The answer to that's

Jeff Pelliccio  22:30  
No, even greater, it's probably even more than nine times out of 10

Kim Henderson  22:36  
is an industry we do a terrible job at that. And you know where I found what to look at was when we took our entire roster of contractors on assignment at one point, right before we sold. It was right around, like 920 and I said, let's look at the number of accounts where we have double digit headcount. There were so many accounts, like a couple 100, where we had single digits. We said, Whoa, let's evaluate this. Why is it a bad account? Or is it we're bad at finding the business in the account, right? Because, again, we just, we don't ask the questions you

Erin MacKenzie  23:12  
said something earlier. Kim too around, like, hey, spending time in areas that are not your niches, that are not your expertise. And so like time is money, but also, if you did hand those over to another staff and firm that you work with, likewise, they're going to send referrals back to you in the areas that they're not great at. So it really, actually helps you drive more business, more relationships across the board, which I think just allows you to even have that organic growth and show that kind of partnership, which makes it great across the board, professional

Jeff Pelliccio  23:45  
networking in our industry, I feel is not really optimized very well. I don't think that we look at like the other individuals that are calling in on the same company that don't compete with us and trying to nurture relationships there in order to like do better. I don't think that we really leverage the cross the aisle, I guess, or I don't know what you want to call it, we don't. We don't leverage, like, the communal space when it comes to networking, either, to be able to say, Hey, listen, I don't do this thing, even though it's in sort of in the world that I should be in. But like this other company does, so, as you said, like handing things off in a CDC kind of manner, you know. And then the other thing I just want to point out, Kim, is, you know, you mentioned certain data points in the conversation with the executive. You mentioned fill rate, time to fill pricing customer contact, and I'm assuming that's the number of contacts, rebates and discounts, you know. I think oftentimes the companies that tend to be willing to go shallow and wide to keep things moving are the ones that are probably not measuring these metrics. Yeah, and so as like a great CTA here, I think you know we can. We can offer some insight to everyone that happens to be listening to this episode that. Data matters, right? And if you collect good data, you could make informed decisions. An additional one that we used to track, or that I even recommend to our clients to track today, is how many managers per billable company are you working with? That's right, if you don't have multiples in there, if I left allied insight today, or if Erin leaves her, if you left cobalt, right? Like, if we leave the organizations that we're in, who, and I'm the only one that you used to call What are you doing next? Where do you go? Like you're starting from

Kim Henderson  25:31  
scratch. Yes, that's exposure. You hit the nail on the head, Jeff, if you're just talking to that one manager, that's your buddy, and that one manager leaves, you're basically dead in the water, right? And I think we have gotten away from getting building using org chart, agree, and I worked for a man once that we sat down every single month, and he's like, Okay, who have you met in application development, who have you met network and infrastructure? Who have you met in the PMO? Who have you met? And you know, the system and database administration. And if that was the same people every single month, you know, I was kind of in a sling, right? He wasn't too happy. So that's getting that chart and working through it, working across it and down it, where it's in an organized format already laid out for you, is gold, and that's what really helps you to understand all the relationships that you need to have and all the people that you need to reach out to, versus just kind of willy nilly random, well, yeah, as an app, yeah, app dev. And, oh, wait, I think I know everybody. I've met the I work with, these three guys over here and and you don't, you can't glean all that from LinkedIn. We really should be getting building and working off of org charts. Really helps you penetrate an account so much easier. It's like, it's getting the answers to the test, right? Cool, yeah, and have to go to it's cheating. It is great.

Erin MacKenzie  26:50  
But you know what the thing with it is? You went back earlier on. You said the power of asking questions and like doing your discovery. And I think sometimes we lose sight, like people don't feel comfortable asking for it, and it's something like, ask for it, ask for the org chart. Like, dive in. Like people are, your clients are going to give you the org chart and say, hey, who have you not met yet? They want to help everyone,

Jeff Pelliccio  27:13  
especially if you've had success there. You've shown value, you've shown success, you've helped you are an asset. You are a partner, right? Introductions all day long around that

Kim Henderson  27:25  
organization, right? And Erin, to your point, you know, sometimes they'll say, Hey, I can't email it to you, but, you know, hey, I can print it or, or they've said, you know, hey, I'm gonna leave the room here for a minute. Go get a cup of water. I'm gonna turn my screen around and whatever pictures you take, you take, that's on a worst case scenario. You know what? I've started to do it, any of it. Start to write it on a piece of paper, and it becomes so painstaking for them, they're like, no, no. They grab it from you, and then they just fix it on their own, right? I love that. It really is a fast track way to figure out who you know, who you're working with at, all the people that you don't know, so you can start to gain the client share, because Jeff and Erin, we know, once you gain client share, you that makes you relevant and significant to that client, which means that you're not expendable, exactly. Yeah, you've got five people on assignment. You're expendable. You're replaceable. That's why we've got to gain the client share. It's too painful to get rid of us.

Erin MacKenzie  28:22  
Yeah, differentiate yourself. Okay, so I've got another question for you, Kim, because I think this isn't important for all of the listeners. Like, we've got all of like, the change makers and the leaders that are all listening in what is one recommendation or action that they can really put into place this week, this month, this quarter. What's something that you would recommend if you pulled one thing away?

Kim Henderson  28:47  
Okay, so, and this is also, again, it all ties into differentiation and client share, but I'll hit value add, right? We seem to think in this industry that we give a candidate and our job is done. Well, that's what everybody does, right? Pick your take, take your your top clients, or take your top prospect, takes, take both of them and say, Okay, what can we do that would be value add to you, beyond giving you a candidate, right? And nine times out of 10, they can tell you, sometimes they can't tell you. But do this, say, Okay, I'm going to make it a goal of mine to send out, you know, three articles that are applicable to this, this particular client's industry, or a problem that they're having this week, and not ask for anything. Just Hey, thought of you. This was really intriguing. Thought this kind of, you know, hit Well, while you're saying you can't find CPAs, this talks about them outsourcing CPA functions to, you know, the India right, something along those lines. Or if it's a topic your client struggling with, let's say it's onboarding or retention, or how to interview, go out there and set up a LinkedIn live, do a webinar and invite all your clients to it. It's not that hard to do, right? It's free. It's easy. You know, another. Thing that you could possibly do from a value add standpoint, many of us today, you know, companies have their own newsletters, they have their own podcasts, or have their own blog. Beyond sending that to your client, highlight them say, hey, we'd like to interview you for our blog interview for our how'd you get how'd you get that CIO job? How'd you become a CFO? So we can go out there and inspire younger people to do it. So again, we'll figure out today what you can do to add value, I think, to your clients and to your prospects, beyond a candidate, by asking them or just starting to do some of these things. And it really will pay dividends, as far as making you top keeping you top of mind because you're the other staffing companies out there by and large or not doing it. And then the second answer to your question, Erin, and what you can do today, I'd say, is, if you feel like you're in a rut, right? The only, the only difference between, you know, what is it? They say a rut and a grave. It's the size of the hole.

Erin MacKenzie  30:55  
That's a good one.

Kim Henderson  30:58  
If you're stuck and you're in a rut. Sit down. We all have our blind spots. Look at your look at your business mix, like we talked about earlier. Yeah, where are you excelling? Where are your team excelling? Where do you build pipeline? Where are you doing good? Where are you different? And start to go out and capitalize on that and drill down deeper into it. And some of the things that I'll call them noise in the system, you know, things are just taking up your time, and you're not that good at politely move them to the side and go find help, direct them to somebody else, because you it will saying no, we're not a fit for everybody, and saying no, and realizing that really will liberate you and liberate your business, enable you to focus on where you are good two things.

Jeff Pelliccio  31:39  
One of the things, when we're talking to our clients, when they struggle to find value, one of the exercises I have them do is take a look at all of their billable accounts and identify the deficiencies of those clients. Yes, yes. Is it software? Is it strategy? Is it is it is it their go to market plan? Is it their headcount? Is it their capability? Is it the resources? All of them are missing something, right? And they're calling they're coming to you for that reason. And so if you were able to go through and look at all of your billable clients to identify the common thread between them as to why they work with you, and it's not just because you give them a candidate, as you just said, placement is only a portion of this gig, right? But it's the way that you manage them, the way that you handle them, those those intrinsic values that you're bringing to the table, they are serving to fill gaps that those organizations have. Use those as the means to define the value and then love it. LinkedIn, lives, webinars, newsletters, articles, interviews, all those things now have a fantastic like launching point based on the fact that you know your community and so well,

Kim Henderson  32:44  
yeah, it's every industry. Jeff and Erin. You know this, every industry has its own nuances and its own challenges. So, long story short, you know you can even go out there. I mean, my gosh, we have information at our fingertips, right? If you don't know the challenges that they're having with our and case managers, go out there. Go Google it, go on chat, GPT, start to read industry publications, and you'll find pretty quickly what what the struggles are, and then start to kind of answer that you know, with your clients and approach them, hey, you know, here's, here's, some ways other companies are looking through this or looking at this that you could consider. So love it, agreed.

Erin MacKenzie  33:19  
I think that's great. Okay, I'm gonna ask you one last question, and this is gonna be totally unrelated, but are you ready for it? Kim, okay, let's do it. Okay, you've already given us your what's the difference between a run a grave? So this is a good one, the size of the hole. But what do you have, like a quote or a proverb that you live by and help has helped driven you through the years at all that you can share with everyone.

Kim Henderson  33:47  
So I actually have three, and they really are kind of intertwined, right? The first one is, and we've seen is the Henry Ford one, right? You know, whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right. So you know, if you think that this is a horrible economy and you're never going to make placements, and you know, woe is me, I'm a victim. Then, you know, you're probably right, you know. But if you're going to be resourceful and try some things and get out there and make it happen, your chances are you're going to be successful. And then the second one, I got this from a gentleman that I worked with. He was a C level guy at K force, and he's written five books, tremendous resource, and he always said he's like, you know, Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work that hard. And it's basically saying that you don't have to be the absolute best, the number one person in the entire staffing industry. You just have to really, you have to work hard. You have to step to the plate. You have to have a game plan, right, and swing the bat right, over and over and over again, and do the things you can't you can't build you can't replace ambition. You can't instill ambition in somebody, right? Be willing to do the things in this industry. You that other people aren't willing to do some people aren't willing to join a professional association and go to a meeting once every six weeks. Some people aren't willing to go and put a CIO on a podcast, or some people aren't willing to put together a webinar on LinkedIn. Well, okay, then they may miss out the fact that you're willing to do those things, it's setting you above. You don't have to be the smartest. You don't have to be number one. You just have to go and put in the repetition and put in it in a pointed, you know, way, right? And then the final one definition of insanity. We've all heard that one is doing the same thing over and over again, and it applies to this environment, guys, if we don't adapt and we don't pivot. I mean, we've all adapted and pivoted because staffing in 1994 was dramatically different than it is today. And 10 years from now, it's going to be dramatically different than it is now. So we've got to continually be students of the business, continuous learning. Adapt, pivot, be resourceful. Think of things you know, don't get just in that blind spot, in that rut, right? Adapt.

Erin MacKenzie  36:04  
So, so true, like, ADAPT is obviously big for us as well. And Kim, thank you. That's right, that's really exactly commercial. This was great,

Kim Henderson  36:19  
perfectly, and I didn't, I didn't really mean for but it fit in perfectly. But you're right. You're right. It's if we don't, then then, you know, we we go the way of the dinosaur,

Erin MacKenzie  36:28  
right? Yeah, you have to keep your mind open and continue to adapt. And with that, Kim, thank you so much for truly being a part of highly adaptive and thank you for everything you do for this community for everyone, for all of us. And I have one other question, like, aside from temp, net and staffing world, where else can people find you? I know you said LinkedIn, but is there other ways that folks can get in touch with you as

Kim Henderson  36:53  
well? Sure. So I am a member of a ongoing there's a podcast that's out there that I do every other week on just kind of a recurring guest. And I'm not going to say the name, because, hey,

Erin MacKenzie  37:11  
please share. Okay,

Kim Henderson  37:13  
it's called staffing playbook, and I'm on there every other week. And then I do have my own podcast with a leader in the staffing industry called juggling chainsaws, and that's a little bit more life mixed in, you know, with staffing so and then obviously, you know, involved in ASA such as you Jeff and Erin are always can be found at ASA and a lot of the state associations as well. But I have to say, I want to thank you for inviting me in to have this discussion. And you guys are doing tremendous things in terms of the marketing space within the staffing industry, because staffing industry needs it. They need people like you to understand marketing, understand staffing, to take that as a tool and complement it with sales. It takes both today, and a lot of staffing companies are finally starting to realize that. And you guys that, and you guys are making them realize that in a great thank

Jeff Pelliccio  38:06  
you. Honestly, I've been looking forward to this Pelliccio episode because, like, it really, like it is near and dear to my heart, this differentiation in value and stuff. So this has been excellent listen. If people want advice from the source, from Kim herself, they should definitely make time to reach out and connect with you. This has truly been an insightful discussion about differentiation, and I want to thank everyone out there who's tuning in. Have a great rest of your week, and we will see you on the next episode.

Kim Henderson  38:32  
See you. Erin. See you. Jeff. Thank you for inviting me, and I appreciate it. You guys are great. Thank you.

Jeff Pelliccio  38:37  
Big thanks to allied insight, not just our sponsor, but an industry leader and preferred marketing partner to staffing and consulting businesses nationwide. If your firm is looking for expert level support that goes beyond the logo, you know where to go. Allied insight.com if this episode helped you share with your friends and colleagues and subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts and Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts while you're there, consider leaving us a review, and when you're ready for more Industry Insights, articles, case studies and more, find it on all things staffing.com this episode was produced and edited by Allied insight and the Music provided by home music stock. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.