Client Tiering by Lifetime Gross Profit: Where Recruitment Agencies Should Spend BD Time

TL;DR

Most agencies spread BD time evenly, or follow whoever shouted last. Profit does not work that way: one recruitment practitioner reports that in businesses he has run, around 70% of business comes from the top 20% of clients and often more than half of gross profit from fewer than 10 companies [1]. Client tiering is how you turn that skew into a time budget. Score every client on lifetime gross profit, repeat-brief rate, fee level, payment terms and time-to-fill, sort them into A, B and C, and give each tier a fixed share of BD hours, a signal-monitoring setup and an outreach cadence. Do the same for prospects using ICP fit, so new BD time goes to lookalikes of your A clients. boilr runs the signal watching, enrichment and drafting side. You own the tier rules and the relationships.

Why Even BD Time Is the Most Expensive Habit in Your Agency

Ask a 360 consultant where last week's BD hours went and the honest answer is usually "wherever the inbox pulled me". That is not laziness, it is the absence of a rule. Without tiers, four things happen:

• Loud beats valuable: The client who emails daily gets the attention. The client who quietly places twelve roles a year gets a Christmas card.
• Effort follows revenue, not profit: Large clients often have outsized sway over pricing and resources, and it is "not uncommon" for a firm's largest clients to also be its least profitable [2]. Billings rank clients one way, gross profit ranks them another.
• New business is chosen at random: Cold targets are picked because they look interesting, not because they resemble the accounts that actually pay you well.
• Knowledge sits in heads: Which clients are worth chasing is tribal knowledge. When the consultant leaves, the ranking leaves too (see Company Brain and consultant churn).

The same pattern shows up outside recruitment. Work attributed to Kaplan and Narayanan at Harvard Business School is cited as finding that the top 20% of customers often generate 150% to 300% of total profits, the middle 70% roughly break even, and the bottom 10% lose money [3]. Treat that as a general business pattern, not a recruitment benchmark, and measure your own book. The point is that "equal attention" is a decision, and usually a costly one.

Tiering Is Not the Same as Concentration Risk or ICP

Three related ideas get mixed up. They answer different questions:

Concept	Question it answers	Output	Read more
Client concentration	How exposed are we if one client leaves?	A cap on any single client's share	Concentration risk guide
ICP	Which companies should we target at all?	A profile of the best-fit client	Defining your ICP
Lead scoring	Which prospect should we contact first, this week?	A ranked list with a reason	Lead scoring guide
Client tiering	How much BD time does each existing client deserve?	A, B, C tiers with hours, signals and cadence	This article

Tiering sits between them. It uses your real placement history to define what "best client" means, which then feeds the ICP, which then feeds lead scoring for prospects.

The Five Metrics That Define a Tier

Classic ABC analysis sorts customers by revenue and cuts the list at cumulative shares. A common version puts the top 20% of customers at about 80% of revenue (A), the next 30% at about 15% (B) and the last 50% at about 5% (C) [4], though the split varies by business. Revenue alone is a weak basis for a recruitment agency, because fee level, payment behaviour and effort all change what a pound of billings is worth. Some ABC guides themselves suggest combining revenue with margin, potential and support cost [5]. For a desk, use five metrics.

1. Lifetime gross profit (LGP)

• Definition: Cumulative net gross profit from the client since first placement: permanent fees plus contract and temp margin.
• Adjust it: Subtract fee rebates, write-offs, credit notes and financing costs. A £20,000 fee that was rebated after eight weeks is not a £20,000 client.
• Why lifetime, not last year: A client that placed nothing this year but delivered £90,000 across three years may be your best reactivation target. A one-off spike should not make a tier A.
• Where it lives: Your ATS or CRM (Bullhorn, RecruiterFlow and similar). Export placements by client.

2. Repeat-brief rate

• Definition: Share of the client's briefs that come from a repeat relationship rather than a fresh cold approach, or simply briefs per year per client.
• Why it matters: Repeat briefs cost almost nothing in BD time. A client with four briefs a year is cheaper to serve than four clients with one each.
• Watch the pattern: Repeat work from a second hiring manager is the strongest sign of a real account, not a one-person relationship.

3. Fee level

• Definition: Average fee percentage (perm) or mark-up (contract) against your standard terms.
• Why it matters: A client at 12% on every role subsidises nobody. Another at 22% with exclusivity earns more per hour of effort.
• Check: Discounts agreed to win the first role that never recovered.

4. Payment terms and behaviour

• Definition: Agreed terms plus actual days to pay and dispute history.
• Why it matters: Credit control providers note that many agencies work with clients demanding 45, 60 or even 90 day terms, and agencies often pay temps and suppliers before client money arrives [6]. Slow payers consume working capital.
• Link to risk: See client credit risk signals for early warnings.

5. Time-to-fill and fill rate

• Definition: Median days from brief to offer accepted, and the share of briefs you actually fill.
• Why it matters: A client with a slow, six-stage interview process and a 30% fill rate eats consultant hours that could close two faster clients.
• Check: Exclusive versus contingent, and whether the client ghosts after shortlist.

Build the Scorecard: A Simple Weighted Model

Keep it boring and transparent. A spreadsheet is enough. Score each metric 1 to 5 against your own distribution (quintiles of your client list work well), apply weights, and sum.

Metric	Suggested weight	Score 5 looks like	Score 1 looks like
Lifetime gross profit (net)	40%	Top quintile of your book	Bottom quintile or net negative
Repeat-brief rate	20%	3+ briefs a year, 2+ hiring managers	One brief, one contact, one time
Fee level	15%	At or above standard terms, some exclusivity	Heavily discounted
Payment terms and behaviour	15%	30 days, pays on time	90 days, chases needed, disputes
Time-to-fill and fill rate	10%	Fast process, high fill rate	Slow process, low fill rate

These weights are a starting point, not a benchmark. A contract desk will weight payment behaviour higher, an executive search desk will weight fee level and exclusivity higher. Change them once, write them down, and stop debating them every quarter.

Cut the tiers

• Tier A: Roughly the top 10% to 20% of clients by weighted score. These are the accounts you would be genuinely hurt to lose.
• Tier B: The next 30% or so. Profitable, with upside if they place more or pay faster.
• Tier C: The rest. Occasional briefs, thin margin or slow payment.
• Overrides: Promote a client one tier for strategic reasons (a logo that opens a sector) but log the reason. Do not let overrides become the system.

A worked example (illustrative numbers)

The table below is a made-up desk to show the mechanics, not a real case study. Same billings, different tier once you look past revenue.

Client	Lifetime billings	Net lifetime GP	Briefs / year	Terms / actual	Tier
Fintech scale-up	£310,000	£74,000	5	30 / 32 days	A
Retail group (volume)	£520,000	£31,000	14	90 / 118 days	C (or reprice)
Regional manufacturer	£140,000	£38,000	3	45 / 47 days	B
One-off hire, SaaS	£18,000	£18,000	1	30 / 30 days	C

The retail group has the biggest billings and ranks third on profit once slow payment, discounting and effort are counted. That is the whole argument for tiering on gross profit instead of revenue.

Allocate BD Hours Per Tier

Now the useful part. Decide the split of weekly BD time before the week starts. Here is a starting allocation for a consultant with around 10 BD hours a week. It is a reasoned default, not a published benchmark. Adjust after one quarter of data.

Bucket	Share of BD time	Purpose	Typical activity
Tier A clients	35%	Protect and deepen	Account plans, multi-threading, quarterly reviews, market intel
Tier B clients	20%	Grow into A	Signal-triggered outreach, second hiring manager, terms review
Tier C clients	5%	Maintain cheaply	Automated check-ins, standard terms, respond to inbound
New prospects (lookalikes of A)	30%	Replace and diversify	Signal-led outreach to ICP-fit companies
Dormant reactivation	10%	Recover proven value	Former A and B clients with a fresh signal

• Protect the prospect slice: Existing-client work expands to fill the week. Block the prospect hours in the calendar, otherwise concentration creeps back up.
• Cap tier C: If a tier C client demands tier A attention, either the terms change or the client is reclassified by data, not by volume of emails.
• Reactivation is cheap: A former client already knows you. See the dormant client reactivation guide.
• Account growth: Moving B to A usually means a second hiring manager or a new department, covered in account expansion for recruiters.

Signal Monitoring Per Tier

Hours are one lever. The other is how closely you watch each client for hiring signals, so you call at the right moment, not on a schedule. Matching monitoring depth to tier stops you paying attention tax on accounts that will never repay it.

Tier	What to monitor	Response rule
A	Everything: funding, new executives, job-posting velocity, office expansion, M&A, layoffs, credit and payment warnings, contact job changes	Same-day review, call the named contact, escalate to the account owner
B	Hiring-intent signals: funding, new executives, job-posting velocity, expansion	Review within 48 hours, personalised email or call
C	Only strong signals, such as a funding round or a new head of function	Weekly batch review, light-touch message
Prospects	ICP-fit companies showing stacked signals	Follow your signal SLA, see the signal SLA guide

• Contact job changes (tier A): If your champion moves, you want to know the same week. That is both a risk and a new-account signal.
• Risk signals count too: Layoffs, a hiring freeze or a late payment pattern on an A client change your plan. Tiering is not only about growth.
• Signal stacking: Two or three signals at one B client in a short window is a reason to promote it to the A routine for a month.

Outreach Cadence Per Tier

Cadence is how often and how personally you reach out. The pattern is simple: the higher the tier, the more human and the more multi-threaded.

Tier	Rhythm	Channel mix	Who does it
A	Contact every 2 to 4 weeks plus signal triggers, formal review each quarter	Calls, meetings, tailored market notes, introductions	Senior consultant or owner, 3+ contacts per account
B	Every 6 to 8 weeks plus signal triggers	Email, LinkedIn, calls on trigger	Account consultant
C	Quarterly check-in, otherwise inbound only	Short email, newsletter-style market update	Mostly automated, human on reply
New prospects	4 to 6 touches over 2 to 3 weeks, triggered by a signal	Email, LinkedIn, phone	BD consultant, drafted with AI help and verified

Common sense applies. A tier A client should never receive a templated "just checking in". Tier C should never consume a Tuesday afternoon.

Feed Tiering Back Into ICP and Lead Scoring

A tier is a label on what already happened. Its real value is as training data for what should happen next.

• Profile your A clients: Look for what they share: sector, headcount band, funding stage, geography, who the buyer is, which role types they brief. That is your evidence-based ICP, rather than the one you wrote on a whiteboard. See how to define your ICP.
• Add a tier prediction to lead scoring: A prospect that looks like your A clients and shows a live signal outranks a bigger name that looks like your C list. The mechanics are in the lead scoring guide.
• Learn from the C list: If most tier C clients share a trait (for example, 90 day terms in one sector), turn it into an exclusion or a pricing rule in the ICP.
• Check against the cap: Pair tiers with the concentration thresholds. One tier A client above a quarter of billings is a diversification task, not a reward [7].

Where boilr Fits (and What Stays Human)

boilr is your AI sales employee for recruitment, one per consultant. It does not replace the tier model, which comes from your own placement data and judgement. It makes the tier-specific work cheap enough to run every week.

Tiering task	Manual	With boilr
Watching tier A and B accounts for hiring signals	Alerts, LinkedIn checks, job boards	Monitors 10,000+ sources for funding, new hires, executive moves, multi-turn and custom signals, with a link to the original source
Finding lookalikes of tier A clients	Spreadsheet research	Companies module finds and enriches target clients filtered by your ICP: industry, size, geography
Turning a signal into outreach	Hours of research and drafting	Signals become Tasks with a decision-maker contact and suggested opener; you review, edit and send
Remembering what works per segment	In consultants' heads	Company Brain records winning messages, high-ROI ICPs and signal patterns from every verified send
Knowing which ICP delivers	Manual CRM reports	Analytics on which ICP delivers results
Onboarding a new consultant to the tiers	Weeks of shadowing	New hires start with the agency playbook, best angles and sequence data

Keep human:

• Tier definitions: Weights, cut-offs and overrides are commercial decisions.
• Terms and pricing: Whether to reprice, renegotiate or exit a C client.
• Account plans: Relationship strategy for tier A.
• Sending: boilr drafts, the consultant verifies and sends.

Six Tiering Mistakes to Avoid

1. Tiering on billings

Why it fails: It promotes slow-paying, discounted volume accounts. Fix: Use net lifetime gross profit as the anchor metric.

2. Tiering once and never again

Why it fails: A B client that doubles its briefs stays under-served. Fix: Re-score quarterly and let signal stacking trigger early reviews.

3. Firing C clients by reflex

Why it fails: Some C clients are one signal away from B, and others deter rivals or open sectors. Research on customer portfolios finds that a customer who looks less profitable alone can still have strategic value [8]. Fix: Reprice or automate first, exit last.

4. Ignoring the prospect tier

Why it fails: All hours go to existing accounts, and a single client concentration grows. Fix: Block the 30% prospect slice and review it weekly.

5. Letting overrides rule

Why it fails: "Strategic" becomes a label for the owner's favourites. Fix: Log every override with a reason and review them each quarter.

6. Tiering without a system of record

Why it fails: A spreadsheet on one laptop dies with the consultant. Fix: Store the tier as a field on the company record in your ATS or CRM, and keep the rules shared.

KPIs to Track

KPI	What it shows	Direction
Share of BD hours by tier	Whether time follows the plan	Matches allocation within 10 points
GP per BD hour by tier	Return on attention	A above B above C
Tier A count and share of GP	Strength and dependence of the core	More A clients, no single client dominant
B-to-A promotions per quarter	Account growth	Rising
New prospects matching A profile	Quality of new business	Rising
Weighted days to pay	Cash drag from client mix	Falling

A 30-Day Plan to Tier Your Book

Week 1: Pull the data

• Export placements per client for the last three to five years from your ATS or CRM.
• Add rebates, write-offs and actual days to pay from finance.

Week 2: Score and cut

• Score each client on the five metrics and apply the weights.
• Draw the A, B and C lines and sense-check the list with each consultant.

Week 3: Set the rules

• Fix the weekly BD hour split, monitoring depth and cadence per tier.
• Write the tier as a field in your CRM and set a quarterly re-score reminder.

Week 4: Point BD at the profile

• Profile the A clients and update your ICP.
• Set up signal monitoring per tier and start the prospect slice with lookalikes.

Want the signal watching, enrichment and drafting for each tier handled while you focus on the relationships that matter? Try boilr or book a demo.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is client tiering for a recruitment agency?

Client tiering is the practice of ranking clients into groups, usually A, B and C, according to the value they create, then giving each group a defined level of BD time, monitoring and outreach. For agencies the most useful basis is lifetime gross profit combined with repeat-brief rate, fee level, payment terms and time-to-fill.

Why use lifetime gross profit instead of annual billings?

Billings ignore rebates, write-offs, discounting and slow payment, and one strong year can mislead you. Lifetime gross profit shows what the relationship actually earned you. It also exposes dormant clients who were once highly profitable and are worth reactivating.

How many clients should be in tier A?

There is no fixed rule. ABC analysis often uses roughly the top 20% of customers as the A group [4], and one recruitment practitioner reports that often fewer than 10 companies produce over half of gross profit [1]. Start with the top 10% to 20% by weighted score and adjust to your own distribution.

Should I drop tier C clients?

Not by reflex. First reduce the cost to serve: standard terms, automated check-ins, inbound-only. Reprice if margin is thin. Exit only when a client is net negative after payment behaviour and effort, or actively harms the desk, for example by cancelling roles midway or refusing to pay [1].

How often should I re-score the tiers?

Quarterly is enough for most desks. Add a trigger for events that change a client's value: a funding round, a new hiring head, a payment dispute or a layoff. Those are the moments to review ahead of schedule.

How does tiering connect to lead scoring?

Tier A clients define the profile that lead scoring rewards. A prospect that looks like your best clients and shows a fresh signal should outrank a famous company that resembles your C list. Tiering gives the scoring model real evidence instead of opinion.

Does boilr calculate my client tiers?

No. The tier rules come from your placement and finance data and your commercial judgement. boilr takes over the repeatable work around them: watching signals, finding and enriching ICP-fit companies, drafting outreach as Tasks you verify and send, and keeping what works in the Company Brain.

How big does an agency need to be to tier clients?

A solo desk can do this with a spreadsheet and twenty clients. The larger the team, the more it matters, because tier rules make BD behaviour consistent across consultants and survive when someone leaves.

Sources

Information sourced from public industry articles and research as of October 2026.

1. SRA - Fire unprofitable, deadbeat clients right now
2. Parakeeto - Client concentration
3. SupplyChainBrain - Are your biggest and most loyal customers making you money? Maybe not
4. Dinmo - ABC analysis for customer segmentation
5. eWay-CRM - Classify your customers using the ABC method
6. QX Global Group - Outsourced credit control for recruitment agencies
7. Meade - How to know when clients are too big or too small
8. Management Science - The Strategic Value of High-Cost Customers