Last month I put a deceptively simple question to three people who win clients for a living: how do you actually get a staffing or recruitment agency in front of a new buyer in 2026?

What came back wasn’t a tidy list of tactics. It was closer to a warning. The generic sales pitch is dead and the agencies still leaning on it are quietly burning the one asset that brings clients back: their reputation.

In this edition: the full recap of our “Winning New Clients in 2026” panel, with the sharpest lines from Delfine Van Boxlaer, Tanguy Pensaert and Tim Dhondt. An agency spotlight on Bright Plus. And three places I’d like to see you next: a French-language livestream on 24 June, two executive dinners in September, and an afterwork in Paris.

— Jeroen

We put the question every agency leader wrestles with to a panel that sees it from all sides: how do you get on a buyer’s radar, open the first real conversation, and grow from supplier to preferred partner?

On the panel: Delfine Van Boxlaer (HR director at Smappee, twenty years on both sides of the agency relationship, ex-Randstad and Hudson); Tanguy Pensaert (founder of Pensaert & Partners and 2025 Talent Business Leader of the Year); and Tim Dhondt (founder of Goodshift, bringing a B2B go-to-market lens to the recruitment sector).

Four lines worth keeping:

You get two sentences. Open with “I’ve been recruiting in this space for years…” and the buyer is already gone. Lead with a problem you’ve seen in their market not your tenure.

Don’t oversell, it’s a two-year mistake. Tanguy once promised a major account ten profiles a month his four-person team had no hope of delivering. The result: two years on that client’s blacklist. Set expectations low, then overdeliver.

Buyers shortlist before they ever call. Delfine rarely goes shopping for agencies; by the time the need is real, the list is already in her head. The whole job is being on it before the vacancy goes live.

AI search is a channel now, but only one of them. Buyers do ask ChatGPT for “the top five recruiters in niche X”, so it’s worth showing up. But word of mouth still wins, and one genuinely useful touchpoint beats eight generic ones.

Bright Plus is a Belgian specialist in multilingual office professionals, part of RGF Staffing Belgium, 17 branches, around 100 office staff and 500 project consultants. In November it won the 2025 Talent Business Award for Best Talent Business to Work For.

Managing Director Linda Cappelle traces the win to a decision made in 2016, when a colleague she admired fell ill: wellbeing had to be structural, not reactive. What emerged was the “High Five”: five plain goals any employee could name (happy, healthy, talented, informed, motivated), with a sixth, “sharing is caring”, added in 2023. She runs the company by proximity: no fixed office, working from a different branch each day, asking people how they actually are.

“Every one of us is responsible for the happiness and success of the colleague to our left or right,” she says. In a tough market, that’s the bet, invest in people precisely when it’s hardest.

A recruiter’s day still looks a lot like 2015: screening calls, voicemails, WhatsApp follow-ups, reschedules. A cluster of European startups is betting that first phase, everything before a real conversation, is the next thing to be automated. Talio, founded in Belgium by Jarne Verstraete and Stijn Bruggeman, is one of the more focused bets: white-labelled voice and chat screening that sits on top of Bullhorn, Salesforce, Workday or Carerix, in more than two dozen languages.

The sharper argument isn’t the product, it’s Verstraete’s warning to any agency tempted to build its own. You can reach 80% in a weekend; it’s the last 20% about compliance, security, and scale that takes forever, and the model has moved on by the time you’re done. The first phase of candidate contact is going to be automated. The only call left is whether you run it, buy it, or watch a competitor do both first.

Last year, 150+ recruitment and staffing leaders joined our “Winning New Clients” session. We’re bringing it to the French market with a sharper question.

In 2026, anyone can find candidates. Inboxes are overflowing and LinkedIn is saturated with AI-generated outreach. So why do some agencies still win clients without ever sending a cold message? Three speakers who don’t always agree will pull it apart: a positioning and training specialist, a founder who rebuilt his business development through community, and an ultra-specialised agency betting on themed events. On the table: is community-led BD a real strategy or spend with no visible ROI? Volume or specialisation, or can you still run both? And what if your real problem isn’t acquisition, but retention?

Live polls, no-filter exchange, and time for your questions.

Wednesday 24 June. In French. Free. Speakers announced soon.

Two Talent Business Club executive dinners in Brussels, on Tuesday 15 and Wednesday 16 September. Ten seats each, by invitation only. The 15th is co-hosted with Bullhorn. Off-the-record, peer-level, no pitch — here’s how the last one in Antwerp went.

Talent Business Club returns to Paris on Thursday 17 September — recruitment and staffing leaders, drinks, and one sharp topic, in partnership with HRFlow, Skillee, Pass Interim, Ideuzo and Index. Here’s what the last Paris afterwork looked like. Sign-up opens soon.

Thanks for reading Talent Business Insights. Hit reply and tell us — what should we cover next? Your answers shape future editions.