Buoyant year ahead, says Handle

17-February-2010

Gill Bell told Recruiter that two members of staff who went on sabbatical during this low fee-earning period had returned to the company.

“The great thing is they’ve come back and have immediately picked up where they left off with clients. This is better than someone new to the company coming in where it takes a while to build up relationships.”

Bell said Handle had also invested around £20,000 in consultant training. This focused on building a consultative approach, rather than hard sell, which was not effective, particularly in hard times.

One aspect of the training emphasised the importance of phoning the client “when they really need help, and not for example, when they are about to make people in their own team redundant”, said Bell.

“This much more targeted approach demonstrates that consultants have done their homework.”

Bell said Handle was looking to build on a profitable 2009, and was “optimistic” that 2010 was going to be “pretty buoyant”.