What your top biller does differently and how to find out - Firefish & OneUp
Why agency growth in 2026 depends on the recruiters you already have
It is Monday morning and the numbers are on the screen.
One recruiter has made the most calls but created little movement. Another is carrying a full job list with weak client commitment. Your top biller has made fewer calls and still moved two candidates closer to placement.
You know who is winning. Do you know what they are doing differently?
Most managers can explain the final billing number. Far fewer can trace the choice and habits behind it. That matters because 84% of agency leaders expect revenue growth in 2026, while only 47% plan to increase headcount.
For many mid-market agencies, the growth plan rests with the existing team. Leaders need to know who qualifies jobs, secures client commitment, win more interviews and walks away from work that will not convert.
Your top biller may hold some of the answers. The management challenge is separating repeatable habits from personal advantages, such as tenure or established accounts, and from the inevitable gaps in the agency's data.
“Technology must be a force-multiplier within any recruitment agency, one that affords more time to recruiters to make informed decisions on what to pursue and what to kill, build better relationships and maximise the human elements that drive growth” – Campbell Nelson, CPO, Firefish Software
You know who your top biller is — but do you know why they outperform?
The billing report shows the outcome. It rarely shows the decisions that created it.
The CRM picture will not be perfect either. One consultant logs every call; another records only the conversations they think matter. Notes vary, and some activity never reaches the system.
Start with what the team captures consistently. Stage changes, interviews, offers ,placements and revenue often provide a firmer base than free-text notes.
Suppose two recruiters each create ten vacancies. One moves six to interview and fills three; the other moves three and fills one. A review may reveal that the stronger recruiter confirms budget, urgency and interview availability before committing time.
Firefish brings recruiter activity, client engagement, candidate movement and vacancy progress into the same workflow. Managers can compare like-for-like desks and see where conversion slows or gathers pace.
That matters as 54% of agencies focus on communication quality over volume. Managers need to define quality in commercial terms: did the conversation uncover a real hiring need, move the vacancy or secure the next step? That leads to sharper decisions: coach job qualification, close weak vacancies earlier or redirect time towards live opportunities.
The next step is to put the dependable measures side by side and see what the wider performance data says.
The conversion patterns that separate busy recruiters from top billers
For years, the instinct in recruitment has been to manage what's easiest to count: calls made, jobs added, CVs sent. But 2025 told a different story when performance shifted decisively from volume, to efficiency and conversion.
As OneUp Labs' The State of Recruitment 2026 puts it, growth hasn't come from doing more, but from doing better. Built on a full year of live data from 286 agencies, the report is emphatic: the industry is on the brink of a productivity revolution. Why? Because activity alone is no longer a reliable benchmark. The agencies that obsessed over conversion ratios, fill rates and revenue quality outperformed the ones chasing job volume — and they'll keep doing it.
So here's the uncomfortable bit. Your "top performer" isn't a personality type or a natural-born biller. They're a pattern — a repeatable, measurable ability to turn the same inputs into stronger commercial outcomes.
And that pattern only shows up when you stop reading metrics in isolation. The agencies pulling ahead don't celebrate individual numbers, but instead connect activity to outcomes.
"Any single number in isolation lets you tell yourself a comforting story; put them side by side and the truth tends to fall out." -Derry Holt, CEO, OneUp Sales
That's the real lesson from the 2025 data: your top biller isn't simply doing more -they're converting better, and conversion leaves a trail you can follow.
That trail is a starting point, rather than the whole answer. It tells managers where to look before call reviews and one-to-ones explain the behavior behind the ratio.
How to use CRM and performance data to find where your top biller pulls ahead
So how do you surface what your top biller does differently? Start by resisting the urge to stare at a leaderboard.
First, workout which data you can trust. No agency has perfect CRM hygiene, so focus on consistently recorded fields and stages. System-generated dates, vacancy movements, interviews, offers and placements may be cleaner than variable callnotes.
Use a quarter rather than one noisy month, and compare like with like. Different desks produce different patterns.
Put your top biller next to the relevant team average. Go beneath placements and revenue: calls, BD conversations, jobs, CVs, interviews and the conversion between each stage. As the Busy Isn’t Billing benchmark reveals, any single number is weak on its own and more revealing beside the others.
Look for the divergence.
Does the top biller create similar job volume but fill more? Do they send fewer CVs but secure more interviews?
Then check the behavior behind the gap through calls, notes and the live pipeline. The difference may sit in qualification, client commitment or follow-up. It may also reflect an inherited account or stronger market, which cannot simply be copied.
The aim isa short list of testable behaviors: something the manager can coach, measureand review.
"Those that invest in BD capability, data literacy and real relationship depth will outperform the market." - James Osborne, The Recruitment Network
How to turn top-biller behaviours into better coaching and team-wide results
Identifying the difference is only half the job. The value comes from turning a behavior linked to stronger outcomes into something the wider team can practice.
Take job qualification. Suppose the top biller's job-to-placement ratio is stronger anda review shows they secure firmer client commitment at the start. The manager can define a clear standard: confirm the budget, why the role is live, the decision-maker, interview availability and expected feedback time before committing delivery resource.
Set a baseline, test the standard and watch the outcome. Are fewer vacancies stalling? Is job-to-interview conversion improving? Is less time going into clients who were never ready to hire?
A conversion gap becomes a coaching goal. It appears on the scorecard, shapes the next one-to-one and stays visible between meetings. OneUp keeps the link between behavior and outcome in view.
As AI removes admin, OneUp Labs' The State of Recruitment 2026 finds that human skill, consultant credibility and relationship depth are becoming the real differentiators.
"The future recruiter of tomorrow is far more commercial than they are operational." - Paul Eaton, Resourgenix
Managers do not need every recruiter to copy the top biller's personality. They need more people to apply the parts that fit their desk and test whether those changes improve conversion.
What the recruiter winning in 2026 will do differently
The value appears before the billing result. A manager can see whether a desk is movingreal opportunities forward or simply carrying more activity.
This illustrative 12-week comparison uses two established contingent-perm recruiters in the same market. It is not a benchmark or customer result.
Conversion, rather than activity volume, creates the gap.
The activity and job volume are almost identical. The gap appears after qualification: the top recruiter sends fewer CVs, secures more interviews and makes twice as many placements.
That does not prove the cause. It tells the manager where to investigate: how each recruiter confirms budget, urgency and interview availability; how tightly they shortlist; how quickly they chase feedback; and how they test candidate motivation.
Firefish helps surface where the workflow diverges. OneUp Sales can turn the chosen behavior into a coaching goal and track whether conversion changes over the next quarter.
Managers can close weak vacancies earlier, coach the stage where momentum drops and forecast from pipeline health. That reduces dependence on one standout biller.
Where does your top biller outperform, what are they doing at that point, and which parts can the rest of the team repeat?
Answer that well, and their performance becomes a practical route to stronger coaching, more consistent desks and more revenue from the team already in place.
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