B2B prospecting for recruitment agencies
How a specialist recruitment agency can win more roles: companies that are hiring, decision-makers to contact, messages and payback.
Lead Matrix for specialist recruitment agencies: AI identifies the companies that match your ideal customer profile and writes them personalised emails, experts run the campaigns, and interested prospects arrive in a real-time dashboard. One or two extra roles a quarter are enough to make it pay. We go out and find them for you.
The challenges of prospecting
Your consultants have to hunt twice
Finding candidates and finding clients: business development comes after the roles you are already working on.
Clients come and go
A company hiring today may not hire again for a year. You constantly need to renew your client base.
A highly competitive market
Companies hear from agencies all week. Only a precise, relevant message gets a reply.
Who to target
| Companies | Decision-makers |
|---|---|
| Companies with 20 to 500 employees | HR Director / HR Manager |
| Your specialism: IT, engineering, finance, sales, healthcare... | Head of Talent Acquisition |
| Region: the UK or the areas you cover | Managing Director (SMEs without a dedicated HR team) |
| Excluding current clients and companies you already work with | Hiring manager in the relevant function |
Your final targeting is built with you during the workshop: sectors, company sizes, regions, roles and exclusions (customers, competitors, partners).
Buying signals to watch for
- Job ads in your specialism
- Roles advertised for several weeks (hard-to-fill vacancies)
- Growth, a funding round, a new site
- A new team or department being set up
These signals make the first email relevant: you write when the need appears, with a specific reason to get in touch.
Example first email
A fictional example, to adapt to your offer:
Subject: Your maintenance engineer vacancy
Dear Ms Brennan,
I noticed Calder Hydraulics has been looking for a maintenance engineer for several weeks. It has become a hard profile to find in the region.
We specialise in industrial maintenance roles, with a pool of candidates we have already screened.
Would you like me to send you two matching profiles this week?
James Holloway
Consultant · Your agency
Short, built around a real fact about the company, with a single question: that is the format that gets replies. Our full method: B2B cold email: the complete guide.
What it could bring in
| Fee for one placement | €10,000 |
| Starter plan (12-month commitment) | €710 excl. VAT a month, or €8,520 a year |
| Months of subscription covered by a single client | 14 months |
Assumption: a €10,000 fee per placement. Replace it with your own average fee. This is an indicative calculation, not a guaranteed result.
The legal framework
The rules depend on the recipient's country. In the United Kingdom, PECR lets you email corporate subscribers (limited companies, LLPs, public bodies) without prior consent, as long as you identify yourself and offer a simple way to opt out; sole traders and most partnerships are treated like individuals and need to have consented (ICO). Because you are writing to named people, the UK GDPR also applies: you need a lawful basis, usually legitimate interests, and you must tell people where you got their details. In France, B2B email without prior consent is allowed if the message relates to the recipient's role, with an unsubscribe link and information on their rights (CNIL). Germany (§ 7 UWG), Spain (article 21 of the LSSI) and Italy (article 130 of the Codice privacy) require prior consent in principle, even in B2B. Target countries are agreed with you and each campaign follows the local rules. Full details: Is B2B cold email legal under GDPR?
How Lead Matrix helps
- A 45-minute targeting workshop to define your target companies, decision-makers and key arguments.
- Launch within 48 hours from dedicated sending domains, with messages written by AI and approved by our experts.
- Qualified replies delivered to your dashboard, with a pipeline to track every opportunity. You can answer straight from the lead card.
- Ongoing optimisation of targeting and messages.
Plans range from €710 to €2,510 excl. VAT a month with a 12-month commitment. Find out more: What is Lead Matrix?
Frequently asked questions
How many meetings can we expect?
It depends on your market, your offer and the number of companies contacted. We do not promise a figure in advance: results are visible in real time in your dashboard, and targeting is adjusted every week.
Do we need to provide a contact list?
No. Companies and decision-makers are identified for you, based on the targeting defined together. You can provide a list of customers and competitors to exclude, which goes on your "do not contact" list.
How long does it take to get started?
Campaigns go live 48 hours after the targeting is approved, following a 45-minute workshop.
Can we target only companies that are hiring in our specialism?
Yes. Hiring in your specialism is one of the main criteria used to build the target list, alongside sector, company size and region.
Sources
- Direct marketing and privacy and electronic communications, ICO
- La prospection commerciale par courrier électronique, CNIL (in French)
- § 7 Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb (UWG), gesetze-im-internet.de (in German)
- Ley 34/2002 de servicios de la sociedad de la información (LSSI), BOE (in Spanish)
- Codice in materia di protezione dei dati personali, Garante per la protezione dei dati personali (in Italian)
- How much does outsourced B2B lead generation cost in 2026?, Lead Matrix