Introduction

So, let’s get straight to the point here because the first thing that jumps out from the latest OneUp Sales data is that call activity still matters.

Of course it does!

But as you would expect, the story is not as simple as “more calls equals more revenue”.  Don’t get me wrong, I was brought up with the mantra of “banging the phones” as many of us were and that mantra still holds true, but with a caveat…

Across the four quarters from April 2025 to March 2026, we can see a much more nuanced picture emerging. Recruiters are still picking up the phone, which is good, but the relationship between call volume, BD intensity, placements and booked revenue changes quite dramatically depending on the size and shape of the agency and what is happening on those calls.

Hardly surprising, but significantly important.

 In other words, the phone is still very much alive and a part of a recruiter’s toolkit, but it is no longer just about how many calls are made. It is about who exactly those calls are made to, what type of conversation is happening, how long the conversation lasts and whether that activity is connected to a commercially disciplined sales and delivery process.

I have been speaking a lot recently about the convergence of both the art and the science of selling and this is it in all its glory.

 …and this is where the real opportunity sits for recruitment leaders.

The headline story

The data shows that smaller agencies are increasing BD activity, enterprise agencies are generating higher placement volumes per recruiter, mid-sized firms are showing relatively steady productivity and larger 50-99 recruiter businesses appear to be under more pressure from a revenue per head perspective.

That does not mean one model is “better” than another.

It means the activity-to-revenue equation changes as agencies scale.

For small agencies, BD call activity rose strongly, from 83 BD calls per recruiter in Q2 2025 to 117 in Q1 2026. Revenue per head also improved, rising from around £31k to £36k across the same period.

That feels like a positive sign and maybe shows that their efforts are paying off, albeit only slightly (£5k average increase in revenue per head is good but certainly not ground breaking).

But there is a warning in the data too.

Placements per head stayed flat at 6 across all four quarters. So, whilst revenue improved, the productivity engine did not necessarily become more efficient. It may simply be that better fee values, better clients or a handful of stronger deals carried the number.

That is of course good news, but not something to rely on.

“I'd gently temper the optimism here. BD calls jumped roughly 40% and placements didn't move at all - so the extra effort largely didn't convert, and the £5k revenue bump was carried by fee value, not a better engine. For a small team, that's a fragile place to be because it's the kind of gain that doesn't reliably repeat. The opportunity isn't in making more dials, it's tightening the bit between the dial and the booked meeting.”

- Derry Holt, CEO & Co-Founder of OneUp Sales

Mid-sized agencies look steady, but need to sharpen their BD discipline

The 10-49 recruiter size agencies are probably the most balanced group in the data.

BD calls per head stayed broadly consistent, moving from 86 in Q2 2025 to 84 in Q1 2026. However, total calls per head increased significantly, from 237 to 392, and placements per head remained around 8-9 per quarter.

Revenue per head also held up well, moving from around £33.5k in Q2 to £36.8k in Q1, with a peak of £38.7k in Q4.

This suggests these agencies have a functioning sales machine / engine.

But the concern is that BD as a proportion of total calls is relatively low compared with other groups. They are clearly active, but not all of that activity is new business generating activity.

That is not automatically a problem. Account management, candidate calls and delivery conversations all matter.

But if a mid-sized agency wants to grow rather than maintain, it needs to keep asking one simple question - are we busy working what we have or are we busy building pipeline (at the same time)?

There is a big difference.

The 50-99 recruiter group is the one to watch

“Bluntly, this is the chart rec leaders should worry about the most - it's the one a basic activity report would never catch. Placements held at 10-11 while revenue per head more than halved, which can only mean one thing: the average value of each deal fell off a cliff. Whatever's driving it (rate pressure, lower-margin clients, leakage across contract and perm), you can't see it if you're only counting calls and placements. The number that matters for this group is revenue per placement, and it needs to be a key focus in conversations.”

- Derry Holt, CEO & Co-Founder of OneUp Sales

The large agency group, those with 50-99 recruiters, is where the data raises the biggest questions.

They had the highest BD calls per head in Q2 2025 at 123, but this fell to 90 by Q1 2026. Total calls per head remained high compared with smaller agencies, but revenue per head dropped sharply, from around £39k in Q2 2025 and £41k in Q3 to around £15k in Q4 and Q1 2026.

That is a significant shift.

Placements per head stayed relatively stable, moving between 10 and 11, so the issue does not appear to be simply about recruiters making fewer placements.

The bigger question is around value.

Are these agencies placing more lower-value work?
Are fee rates under pressure that much?
Are they doing more activity into lower-margin clients?
Are they carrying too many poorly qualified roles?
Or are they seeing more revenue leakage across their contract, perm or blended models?

Whatever the reason, this is exactly where recruitment leaders need to dig deeper. We talk a lot here at TRN about the healthy obsession with productivity that recruitment leaders (and let’s be honest, their recruiters) should have.  This is a classic example of that.

Because on the surface, the activity engine is still running, but the commercial output (the results!) from that activity appears to have weakened.

That is where performance management needs to evolve.

Not just “how many calls did you make?” or “how many placements did you make?”, but “what value did that activity create?”

Enterprise agencies show the power and risk of scale

Enterprise agencies show a very different pattern.

They do not have the highest BD calls per head. In fact, BD calls sat between 77 and 89 per recruiter across the year. But they have the highest placements per head, rising from 17 in Q2 2025 to 22 in Q1 2026.

That tells us something important.

At scale, commercial performance is not only driven by outbound BD call volume. It is often driven by brand, account penetration, embedded relationships, existing client demand, delivery infrastructure and the ability to monetise large accounts.

That is why enterprise agencies can produce high placement volumes without necessarily having the highest BD call intensity.

However, revenue per head was volatile, moving from around £63k in Q2 2025 to £33.6k in Q3, then up to £73.4k in Q4 before dropping again to £36k in Q1 2026.

“The enterprise headline looks fantastic! 22 placements per head is stellar, but I'd point leaders at the volatility, not the average - £63k, then £34k, then £73k, then £36k in consecutive quarters is the hallmark of account concentration. Boards might celebrate great quarters but a revenue rollercoaster isn't good for anyone. Operation Goldmine works, but as noted it MUST sit alongside deliberate new business creation, or one lost account rewrites your year.”

- Derry Holt, CEO & Co-Founder of OneUp Sales

Enterprise agencies clearly have an advantage due to their size, brand and scale but potentially a concentration risk where a few large accounts or big projects can move the numbers dramatically. That can make the business look highly productive one quarter, and exposed the next. 

The lesson here is not that enterprise agencies need to behave like small agencies.

They do not.

But they do need to protect themselves from over-reliance on existing account momentum. Operation Goldmine (TRN’s account penetration programme) is highly powerful and it works, but it still needs to be supported by deliberate new business creation, something that will be faltering in some of those larger agencies.

Duration matters more than volume alone

If you want to get even more micro on all this, one of the most interesting parts of the data is the call duration.

Across OneUp’s dataset, revenue per head appears to be more closely connected to total call time and placements, than to BD call volume alone.

That makes sense.

A two-minute call and a twenty-minute call are not the same commercial event.

Longer conversations are more likely to involve discovery, qualification, objection handling, relationship building, role shaping, candidate discussion and commercial negotiation.

We talk a lot about the difference between having a meeting in a “meeting room” and in a “board room”, and the same principle lies with a 2 minute phone call over a 20 minute phone call.  You simply cannot unearth the real opportunity unless you are doing the latter.

That does not mean, of course, that recruiters should aim for longer calls for the sake of it.

But it does suggest that recruitment leaders should be careful not to over-manage surface-level activity.

A team making lots of short, low-quality calls may look busy but a team having fewer, better, more commercially valuable and deeper conversations may produce stronger revenue.

This is where the best agencies are now moving their sales coaching.

Not just call volume but call quality.

Call purpose. Call outcome. Call impact.

“This rings true with what we see across the OneUp platform - total talk time tracks revenue far more closely than dial count does. But a warning for any leader about to set a "minimum call duration" target: the moment you manage to it, people pad calls and you've learned nothing. Duration is a symptom of a good conversation, not the cause of one. The agencies pulling ahead aren't coaching length, they're coaching what happens inside the call.”

- Derry Holt, CEO & Co-Founder of OneUp Sales

BD intensity is not the whole answer

The data shows that BD calls per head vary significantly by agency size:

Small agencies averaged around 98 BD calls per recruiter per quarter whilst the mid-sized agencies averaged around 83.

Large agencies averaged around 104 and their counterparts at the Enterprise agencies averaged around 83.

But the highest BD call group did not automatically produce the highest revenue per head and that is the key point.

BD calls are the start of the sales process, not the whole sales process.

Revenue comes when BD calls drive the right next stage action, such as setting up those meetings in the board rooms. Your recruiters need to have a clear goal and a compelling reason for a prospect customer to move from a BD call to a (face to face) meeting.

If they don’t, then we stop at BD calls. Short, 2 minute BD calls that may pick up an order (all very transactional), but that’s it… and that is not going to cut it any more in this market.

That is why the future of recruitment BD is not about less calling, but about better calling, better targeting, better conversations and therefore better conversions.

Then more of it!

What recruitment leaders should take from this

For me, the big takeaway for agency leaders is that activity targets need to become more intelligent.

Basic KPIs still have a place. They create rhythm, consistency and accountability.

But on their own, they are not enough.

The agencies that win more in 2026 will be the ones that connect activity data to commercial conversions and outcomes. They will look at calls per recruiter, BD calls as a percentage of total activity, call duration, placements per head, revenue per head, type of revenue and type of call, and fee value all together.

That is where the real insight sits. Not in one metric but in the relationship between the metrics.

The question is no longer simply “are our recruiters doing enough activity?”

The question is now “are we doing enough of the right activity, with the right people, in the right way and is it creating enough commercial ROI”?

That is the shift.

And this latest OneUp data gives recruitment leaders a very useful benchmark to start that conversation properly with your recruiters.

“The temptation with a benchmark report is to find the one number you beat and feel good. That's not what this data is for. The insight lives in the relationships between the metrics - BD as a share of total activity, call time against revenue, fee value against placement count. Any single number in isolation lets you tell yourself a comforting story; put them side by side and the truth tends to fall out. Be honest with where you have gaps and start a conversation internally about it. Good luck!”

- Derry Holt, CEO & Co-Founder of OneUp Sales

Written by James Osborne, Chief Growth Officer at TRN (The Recruitment Network), featuring commentary from Derry Holt, CEO & Co-Founder of OneUp Sales.

Methodology

This report is based on performance data from 330 recruitment agencies between 01/04/2025 and 31/03/2026.

Financial figures have been normalised to GBP using monthly average exchange rates.

Outliers exceeding three standard deviations were excluded.

Thanks for reading and we hope you enjoyed this content!

For help building a sales floor powered by live performance data, get in touch with the OneUp team.