Thinking of starting a sales recruitment agency?

You may be an experienced recruitment consultant looking for adventure, or a Director looking to 'go it alone' or perhaps a manager in an industry on the receiving end of recruitment services. If you are considering setting up your own sales recruitment agency there's plenty of things you'll need to think about to plan for success, or indeed to decide if it's the right move for you. Here's some of the most basic areas you should be thinking about to avoid unpleasant surprises.

• Where will you get your initial clients from? You may be the greatest sales person in the world, but building clients for a new sales recruitment company from scratch is a tough task. You really need so form of a head start, whether it be industry colleagues who can give you a foot in the door, or existing recruitment clients that you can 'legally' take with you when you go from your present company. If you can create any immediate cleints, you will need some associate arrangements with other sales recruitment agencies with whom you can split fees if you fill their vacancies.

• Where and how will you advertise your new sales recruitmentbrand? Advertising is always a major recruitment cost. Remember, you will be trying to compete with companies already established with a database in place, who are also advertising. If you under cook your advertising budget this is likely to be a fatal mistake. To reduce risks, your business plan should be bold with initial advertising rather than timid.

• How much money will you need to get started, and how much have you got, or can you get? You need to be honest here. You need to work out how much money you would need to run the business for 6 months without much income, and run it properly without short cuts. If you can't raise this amount of money you're taking a huge risk if you go ahead. Most new sales recruitment agencies that fail, do so because of cash flow issues early on, not becase they couldn't do the recruitment.

• What grants can you get hold of? If there are grants available you need to get in early, it may effect your whole model if there are finds available, it will very much depend upon your area and local government policies.

• Where are you going to run the business from now, and in 3 years? Many sales recruitment agencies are born at home, but you do need to consider future plans. If you plan to grow and want offices, where will they be. Should you start with portable phone numbers (eg 0845) and a BO Box address to avoid having to pay for a whole new set of stationary. If you need staff, where will you look to recruit? Is your geographical location going to be limiting?

• How well do you handle pressure and failure? Starting any new business is tough and sales recruitment is no different. No matter how successful you are going to be in the long run, you will experience a whole load of difficult emotions in the early days. When candidates turn down jobs after they've been offered, and you needed that placement to pay the gas bill, it can all get really uncomfortbale. You need to be the sort of person that digs deeper in these situations rather than one who folds up.

Starting a sales recruitment agency may well be the most exciting and rewarding thing you've ever done. As with so many things in life, success, or not, is often determined before you start through paying attention to the right things and planning properly. Hopefully these tips will give you some ideas as to where to start. Good luck