• Corporate recruiters have access to tens of thousands of active candidates via job boards and specialized career sites.
• Corporate recruiters have access to information about tens of thousands of inactive candidates via a variety of Web tools ranging from Google to ZoomInfo to LinkedIn.
• Thousands of corporate recruiters have been certified in advanced sourcing techniques from firms like AIRS and the Adler Group.
• ATS and hiring management systems not only house customized resume databases, but they also enable recruitment processes to be streamlined so that recruiters are able to spend less time on operational details and more time delivering value-added services to hiring managers.
• Once the sole resource of search firms, research, and sourcing firms provide rapid candidate generation services to corporate recruiters at affordable prices.

…Why aren’t search firms out of business?

Out of Business? Search is Thriving!

In the face of all of this, the executive search Industry is not only nowhere near close to going under, it’s thriving. (The current economic downturn will temporarily halt this, but overall growth in the search industry has been explosive over the last 10 years.)

Consider this:

• Kennedy Information reports that the global market for executive search services is $6-8 billion annually, and that growth in that industry since 1990 has been “staggering.”
• Korn/Ferry produced record revenues and earnings in Fiscal Year 2008 ($790 million/38%), an increase of just under 50% from 2006.
• The average placement fee at Heidrick & Struggles reached $114,900 in 2007, up from 2003’s average of $81,100. That, coupled with growth in total search assignments, created 2007 revenues that increased 95% from 2003.
• According to ExecuNet, search firm recruiting assignments rose 24% in 2007, and 25% were adding staff at the end of last year.
• Average compensation for a search consultant can range between $200-$600,000+ annually.

That the search industry has been growing may not be surprising, but the speed at which it is skyrocketing is, especially in the face of all the investment made over that same period into internal recruiting functions.

After all, it wasn’t too many years ago that staffing industry pundits were predicting the demise of the search industry, in the same manner that real estate brokers and stock brokers were supposed to disappear, thanks to the power of the Internet and its open access to information. After all, who needs a third party when all of their previously proprietary information is available for free or inexpensively on the Web?

Don’t Shoot the Messenger

There is an old axiom in the search business about competition that goes like this: “Other search firms aren’t our competition — competent internal recruiting functions are.”

When an internal function is competent and able to fill openings effectively, there’s no need to hire external firms. Therefore, as internal competence grows, more and more difficult positions are serviced in-house and fewer (or no) roles require external assistance. As a result, the market for external search shrinks as fewer positions make their way to external firms.

But this is in fact the opposite of what has happened: the demand for external firms has increased exponentially. This phenomenal growth in the search business tell us that search firms do a better job, or at least that they are perceived to do a better job, by the executives who choose to engage them over their own internal recruiting group.

Now before you pummel me with negative commentary, understand that I wish there were another conclusion to draw. But there really isn’t, and facing our shortfalls is the first step toward fixing the problem.

The recruiting service that is perceived to be the most valuable by executives is recruiting the top roles. This is easily proven by looking at the high fees executives are willing to pay for a single hire. The average search fee of $110,000 for one hire is more than most corporate recruiters make in an entire year.

The reason that executives are willing to pay high fees for search services — and worse, to not even consider giving search assignments to many internal functions — is because they perceive the external provider to be a more credible, capable, and more reliable source of talent. Why is this so?

It’s All About the Methods

There are several key differentiators for search firms that clearly distinguish them from the typical internal recruiting function. Although there are more, here are the top five that internal recruiting functions can adapt that will improve their outcomes dramatically. And, these can be integrated into most recruiting functions quickly and easily:

Run the assignment like a project and dictate methods

The first thing that search firms do differently from most corporate functions is to take absolute control of the project. This includes a documented project plan, timelines, and crystal-clear delineations of roles, responsibilities, and mutual deliverables.

It also includes getting the client to agree to follow the search firm’s project methodology, not the client’s. A critical mistake we often see corporate recruiting teams make is asking higher-ranking leaders how they would like to see the project unfold. Expert service providers dictate methods so that they can guarantee the results. Insisting on following the correct methodology is a key step that is too often missed by internal teams.

Force the client to define their hiring requirement in light of market realities

A good search consultant will excel at making sure the hiring requirement is specific, realistic, and actionable in the talent market.

This can be challenging since managers often provide requirements that read more like a wish list rather than a carefully considered formula for success. We have observed internal recruiters accepting assignments that contain so many hiring requirements that they cannot be fulfilled in the market.

Recruiters should take an active role in helping to build the hiring requirement right from the outset. It may be necessary to challenge the hiring manager on unrealistic requirements, too many requirements, or too broad a requirements set.

Secure the proper level of project funding

Why do we fund search firms with high fees, while internal organizations are forced to continually drive down the costs of recruiting to lower levels?

In some ways, internal organizations themselves are to blame because they have positioned their value equation in terms of cost reductions. They brag about reducing cost-per-hire and total recruiting spend. Yet, the reality is that some positions will cost more — and perhaps dramatically more — to fill than the average.

No search firm would accept an assignment for less than the cost of delivery. Internal teams shouldn’t either. To gain approvals for higher levels of funding, make the value of the service crystal clear and avoid focusing on the cost of the service.

Hire top recruiters with deep industry experience/subject-matter expertise

The most clearly visible difference between search firms and internal functions is the level of recruiter working in each.

In the course of our consulting work, we’ve met plenty of excellent internal recruiters. Unfortunately, we have met many more who really aren’t qualified for recruiting roles. Worse, we’ve meet some recruiting leaders who really don’t have much of a background in recruiting.

To really excel at recruiting, internal functions should take a lesson in staffing their recruiting functions with strong, industry-savvy recruiters who possess foundation knowledge in recruiting as a profession. Start by hiring a seasoned recruitment leader who understands talent markets, marketing principles, selling, internal consulting, and knowledge transfer. Select staff members who have been trained in the recruiting industry at some point in their careers and have enjoyed success in contingent/search roles but also understand the realities and limitations of internal recruiting functions.

Continually work a database of industry contacts/potential future hires

This is straight out of Recruiting 101, but let’s face it; search firms do a better job of building and maintaining recruiting networks than internal functions.

Part of the reason, of course, is that fees give them ample funding to do so. But another large part is that they are serious about recruiting for the long haul, and internal organizations are serious about recruiting to fill the open req in front of them.

This difference in focus changes everything about their behavior. When recruiters are pressured to fill today’s openings, they have little time to focus on cultivating tomorrow’s potential hires.

Most companies have plenty of resumes in the ATS/hiring management systems but have not built the capability or the know-how to stay abreast of who’s who and who’s where in the target talent markets critical to their growth. Building a robust database of key talent targets, engaging those targets in meaningful dialogue, and nursing relationships over time will pay big recruiting dividends over the long haul.

If corporate recruiting functions were truly great at recruiting and had the credibility they seek with top executives, then there would be limited need for third-party search firms. Realistically, there will always be a need for competent search firms. But the accelerated growth of this industry over the last 5-10 years indicates that internal functions are failing to deliver the most critical, and arguably the most valuable, recruiting services in a way that puts internal functions on equal footing with our external counterparts.

It’s time we took a hard look at why.

Some thoughts in an email from Marcon on the world’s largest executive search company.

Average fee/search increased a very strong 15%.

Growth is clearly decelerating — from +26% in FQ2, +22% in FQ3, +16% in FQ4.

Futurestep also had a solid quarter, and continues to make good progress of improving its operating margin. Revenue increased 22% and operating margin expanded from 8.1% to 9.2%. (Futurestep is the RPO division; it’s about 14% of the company.)

North America and EMEA, two largest segments, were significantly better than expected, while Asia-Pac was disappointing. The only real negative was Asia-Pac.

South America performed well, but is small.

Korn/Ferry’s top executives also talked about the business, the economy in general, and more, during a conference call.

Here’s a look at Seetoo’s “SWOT” chart when it comes to moving search in.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

This past quarter, I conducted two senior-level management searches. Each one stands out as a shining example of what to do and what not to do. Understanding the differences can double your monthly placement rate in about half the time. Before reading the details, you should benchmark your own recruiting skills using this 10-Factor Recruiter diagnostic assessment to get a sense of what it takes to be a great recruiter.

Here’s a quick summary of what happened. One of the searches was for a director-level technical position for an industrial products company. This is the one I didn’t conduct too well. I had to present seven candidates, and the client would only see four of them. My normally accurate assessments were suspect, and I didn’t have a great deal of confidence in representing either the job to the candidates or the candidates to the client. Making matters worse, it was a long and difficult close with compensation being the primary discussion point. We got very few referrals on the search, and it took about 90 days from beginning to end.

The other search was a slam dunk. It was for a director-level project manager position for an alternative energy company. In this case, three candidates were presented, all were seen, all were considered strong, and the company hired one within 45 days. Our assessments were dead-on across all job factors. Making matters better, we had two strong backups in addition to the three candidates, and both were referrals. While the compensation issues were not insignificant, the short- and long-term career opportunity overwhelmed the other two jobs the final candidate was considering.

There are some valuable lessons to be learned here. There are a number of factors worth considering that resulted in a 200% increase in productivity (half the number of candidates in half the time). Here are the ones that made the difference:

• Understanding Real Job Needs. Although I prepared a performance profile for the technical job, it was a battle with the hiring manager (vice president level) all the way. He was insistent on a certain level of skills, experience, and industry background, and it was difficult to get him to change his point of view. The vice president of operations leading the project manager search was a different breed entirely. He quickly accepted the idea of emphasizing critical results and performance objectives as superior selection criteria rather than qualifications. Part of this was that he wanted to hire the best person doing comparable work, and he knew he would be able to find some all-stars outside of the emerging alternative energy industry.
• Becoming a Partner with the Hiring Manager on the Search. I was pushed onto the vice president for the technical job by the vice president of human resources. While a very competent person, he was old-school and he found using Performance-based Hiring to be inconsistent with his old-line management style. Although we got along, it was more obligatory than sincere. The vice president of operations for the alternative energy company sought me out through referrals and wanted to use new techniques to find top performers. We hit it off right away. This alone helped communications and understanding. After preparing the performance profile, he knew I understood the job, and trust and openness instantly jumped up a notch.
• Understanding the Market. I did my homework for the alternative energy company. Within a few days, I knew the players, the competition, how the industry was financed, and the short- and long-term market opportunities. On the other hand, the comparable market evaluation I prepared for the technical industrial products job was superficial at best, reflecting a minimal understanding of the industry jargon. Knowing the industry from a macro standpoint really helps when sourcing and assessing candidates, presenting the opportunity, and getting referrals. When you don’t know what you’re talking about, recruiters come across as a desperate car sales representative rather than an objective career consultant.
• Conducting a Performance-Based Assessment. As you know, I advocate the idea of digging deep into a candidate’s accomplishments (performance-based interviewing) and comparing these to the performance objectives described in the performance profile. The purpose of this is multi-fold. First, to assess competency and motivation. Second, to identify gaps in the candidate’s background that can be presented as stretch opportunities if an offer is ultimately made. If you don’t know the job, you have nothing to benchmark the candidate against. This compromises the assessment and precludes the idea of recruiting on anything other than hot air and promises. Not only do you have little confidence when presenting your candidates to your client, you’re also pretty inept when negotiating an offer. All you have then is compensation as a bargaining chip. So, even though I conducted the same interview for all of the candidates for both searches, I had far less insight and even less credibility with those candidates for the job I didn’t understand as well.
• Sourcing Active Candidates. As long as they can be easily found and are well-written, ads can attract the attention of top people who look on a casual and infrequent basis. With a little research, we found some great niche sites to post a compelling project manager ad. The title was something like “A Billion is a Lot of Green Project Manager Dollars.” It worked. We found a few strong candidates plus garnered a few quality referrals. While the technical director ad was interesting, we had less information and less desire to get creative. The results were satisfactory, but not stellar.
• Sourcing Passive Candidates. Don’t pick up the phone and call a single passive candidate if you don’t understand real job needs as well as have a great understanding of the market. For one thing, without a great voice-mail message packed with insight and some salient facts, few people will return your call. Even those hungry enough to call you back will quickly recognize your lack of knowledge and confidence. While I didn’t actually do the cold calling, our sourcers spent about one-third the time getting the first group of 20 prospects for the project manager search. Within a few days, we had candidates we could present. FYI: We found all but one of the initial prospects on ZoomInfo and LinkedIn.
• Networking and Generating Referrals. If you been to one of our training sessions, you know we spend a great deal of time teaching recruiters how to get great referrals from everyone. While there is much technique involved, if you don’t know the job and market, you come across as both insincere and superficial. It’s difficult to get strong referrals if you can’t build relationships, and it’s more difficult to build relationships if the person called doesn’t trust you. We expect to get 2-3 referrals on every cold call to a passive candidate. For the project manager, we came close to hitting these numbers; for the technical director spot, we were less than half the goal.
• Negotiating the Offer. If you want to place a top person who has multiple opportunities, you’ll need to position your job as offering at least a 30% increase over everything else the candidate is considering. Your objective is to make this 30% a combination of growth, job stretch, benefits, quality of life, and compensation. You’ll be able to prepare much of this comparison by conducting the performance-based interview mentioned earlier, looking for gaps in the candidate’s background. By asking lots of insightful questions, you’ll be able to demonstrate how your job compares to the competition. However, to successfully pull this off you need to know the job, the market, the competition, and the leadership traits of the hiring manager, and have equal in-depth insight into the candidates’ abilities and desires. We did a great job in closing the project director position. The candidate had multiple opportunities, but ours was far superior when compared both tactically and strategically with the others. The technical director comparison was harder to put together and less effective.

On a side-by-side comparison, it required at least twice the effort required to find candidates and negotiate the offer for the director of technology spot as it did for the project director position. While the sourcing, interviewing, and recruiting techniques we used were identical, we lost most of the time due to a lack of understanding of real job needs and the weaker relationship I had with the hiring manager. At a minimum, this required us to source, recruit, interview, and present more candidates. And, even though I believe I’m a very good interviewer, I felt less sure about my assessment of the technology candidates. Collectively, much of what we did for the director of technology job was a waste of time, and eventually it became just a numbers game. Taking the assignment properly and developing a strong recruiter/hiring manager partnership upfront are the real keys to improving your productivity. No matter what else you do to become a better recruiter, don’t ever lose sight of this fact.

“…It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…”

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines research as a “careful or diligent search,” a “studious inquiry or examination,” and “the collecting of information about a particular subject.” Why is it, then, that most executive search and recruiting professionals so often think of research as mere “name generation?” “Name gen” is rarely careful, diligent, or studious. More often, it involves a relatively haphazard scooping up of names and titles, willy-nilly. And that leads to a “kiss every frog” approach to recruiting in order to find your prince.

As the execution engine of executive search, your research can be either a Ferrari or an Edsel, a car that failed spectacularly due to poor workmanship and a failure to understand the American consumer. The Ferrari is Human Capital Intelligence: research that, through analysis, is transformed into actionable intelligence to provide your search with a competitive advantage. When you embed intelligence into virtually every step of your search process, you dramatically improve search performance. I’m not suggesting that you work harder. I am suggesting that by doing the following 10 steps, you can work smarter so you don’t have to work as hard.

1. Link your human capital intelligence strategy to the overarching strategy for the company. A company may be focused on growth and expansion into new markets, or alternatively may be focused on divestiture (selling assets that have been weighing the company down, while at the same time distracting it from its core business). Strategies are as varied as the businesses they inform. Ideally, your hires should provide a strategic advantage linked to that overarching strategy.

   You could, for instance, target candidates who have deep domain expertise in a new market your company is entering, with relationships and knowledge to leverage. Alternatively, you could raid primary competitors to knock them back a rung while you gain the advantage. Your understanding needs to be informed by deep background knowledge of the industry, its history, and its players. So read a few books that bring the history of the industry to life, keep up with industry publications, and continually track business news. (I keep a television tuned to CNBC throughout the day in a room adjacent to my office.)

2. Conduct an internal intelligence review. Critical information is usually scattered like buckshot across departments and teams within companies. Sales departments often have conference attendee lists. Marketing departments often have big market research reports. Your company has already paid for this information. Use it for recruiting, and you increase your company’s return on investment.
3. Study what actually works. Review the resumes of the people who have actually been hired into the position and team into which you are recruiting to determine what, if anything, they have in common. How many years of experience do they have? Is that experience aligned with the job description, or are they expecting more of the candidates than they are of themselves? Is there a cluster of candidates from any one particular company? For instance, check out Microsoft’s Distinguished Engineers and Technical Fellows, executive-level personnel on the engineering career track. What do you see in common? I’ll give you a hint: take a look at Hal Berenson, Dileep Bhandarkar, and Darryl Havens, or examine Technical Fellows Butler Lampson, Charles Thacker, and David Cutler. In fact, about a dozen engineers came from another company. (Have you figured it out yet?) The cultures are a perfect fit.
4. Consult with the hiring manager. Intelligence provides a platform upon which to build out a consultative relationship with an executive who serves as a hiring manager. If that manager is in need of a critical hire, he’s likely overworked and understaffed. The last thing he wants to do is to stop and download the information you need to find the perfect candidate. However, that is exactly what needs to happen. Rarely do position descriptions tell you what the candidate will actually have to accomplish his first year on the job to be considered a success.

   So ask. And don’t accept a simple explanation. Get granular detail, starting with the 5 Ws: Who (org chart), What (tactics), Where (travel), When (timetable), and Why (strategy). And, while you’re at it ask, “How?” Then, test the requirements by inquiring, “If I find someone who has successfully done what you need to have done, and if he only has eight instead of the required 10 years of experience, do you want to see him? What if he’s successful, but has only an undergraduate degree?” Start knocking out unnecessary requirements until you get to the core “must haves.” Review the compensation, and ask, “Are you confident the salary and scope is competitive when compared to other opportunities in the marketplace?” Set expectations and describe how you will provide him with actionable intelligence from Step 5 to make the search bulletproof, while at the same time find the candidates he needs.

5. Conduct market intelligence. Conduct research to capture and report out the number of similar openings against which you are competing. Find out what your competitors are offering in the way of salary, benefits, and relocation. Often, hiring managers and the financial personnel controlling the purse strings assume that the salary is competitive when it doesn’t offer a candidate enough of a difference to warrant making a move. You know it. The hiring manager knows it. Almost everyone within the organization knows it, but weirdly, everyone remains stuck for political reasons or simply through inertia. A market intelligence report serves as a powerful wake-up call for everyone involved and provides hiring managers with the hard data they need to go to bat for an adjustment in compensation, title, or scope.
6. Develop a search plan and work the plan. In Steps 1 through 5, you have gathered a great deal of potent information. Take a moment to analyze what it all means. Resist the impulse to dive in and scoop up big buckets of candidates from target companies. There isn’t enough of you to go around. Instead, work your sources to find out who the best people are. Report out a list of initial target candidates with biographies, and incorporate the feedback into your plan. Look for patterns upon which you can capitalize. Ideally, cherry-pick the rock stars. Never target entire companies. Rather, track specific luminaries or specific teams that are outperforming. To avoid wasted time calling the wrong people, reverse engineer the titles by examining job postings to determine what precise titles at each target company map to your opportunity. Prioritize the best targets and push less likely suspects further down on your to-do list.
7. Set news alerts for opportunistic swoop-ins. Visit the news page in Google and set alerts relevant to your search. Track RSS feeds. Scour blogs. Track reports of layoffs, mergers and acquisitions, and earnings disappointments, events which often make candidates a little more willing to make a move. If a company or an entire industry goes into free-fall (as was the case with subprime), it offers a significant opportunity to capture talent at virtually every level and function.
8. Develop a bench of executive candidates and candidate pipelines for staffing level. If you find yourself recruiting similar senior-level executives, it makes sense to proactively recruit a bench of candidates in advance of a role opening up. Building out candidate benches or candidate pipelines across a range of positions offers you the opportunity to drive time-to-fill to near zero.
9. Demand superior research and transparency from search firms. Retained search firms often tout their personal networks and proprietary databases as the reasons why you should choose them over their competitors. But those advantages have been largely rendered irrelevant by social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook and by the proliferation of candidate information on the Internet. There is no shortage of candidates or of networks. What we have is too much information, too little intelligence. So before you waste your time with shootouts between firms vying to win a retained search, simply check the websites of Egon Zehnder, Heidrick & Struggles, Korn/Ferry, Spencer Stuart, or search firms of your choosing. If their definition of search process makes no mention of intelligence and revolves primarily around target company and target candidate identification, walk on by.
10. Conduct intelligence on intelligence: Share best practices. There is no one association for you to join that will help you leverage intelligence in search. The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals will teach you about competitive intelligence, but it is not specifically focused on search. The Association of Independent Information Professionals will teach you about research, but not necessarily intelligence. David Lord has built a network of corporate talent officers for the sole purpose of advocating for best practices in search, but it is not focused on intelligence, and the same goes for the IACPR, an organization committed to that same end. As a result, we at The Good Search have had to build out our own roundtable. Collaboration speeds innovation and when done properly, all participants stand to benefit from the collective knowledge.

Clearly, harnessing the power of intelligence is a best practice that has long been embraced by other industries such as finance and marketing. Its arrival in the search business is long overdue. Recruiting that fails to leverage human capital intelligence is like searching with your eyes closed, with far too much stumbling around in the dark. Search that harnesses the power of intelligence continually scans the competitive landscape. It is as if the scales have fallen from your eyes.

I once was blind, and now I see.

Two recruiters called me last month to offer recruiting assistance on a particular project they heard my company was working on. This was a routine search in the $50,000 to $60,000 range that we had filled hundreds of times before. In this particular instance, however, we were caught in a backlog.

The recruiters were right about the period of time being longer than usual. Since both were esteemed individuals I’ve known and respected for well over 10 years, I decided to invest about a half hour with each to fully explain the search.

I should emphasize that both of these individuals travel through recruiting associations, attend conferences, keep their skills sharp, and represent that single-digit minority I would entrust sensitive projects to.

You could understand why I was frustrated when both said, “We’ll get right on this” but proceeded to not call back for one week. Then two weeks. Then three weeks.

Sadly, this is the manner in which many recruiters treat their clients. This type of behavior is not limited to recruiter-versus-recruiter relationships alone. And this is why most clients and hiring managers develop a disdain for recruiters.

At the very least, one could have called back after two weeks and stated something along the lines of, “You know, Frank, I really worked hard on this but could not find anyone suitable to refer.”

Or something such as, “I’ve had some other commitments come up and can’t work on this. I wanted to get back to you rather than leave you with no follow up communication.”

There’s nothing worse to a hiring manager (I consider myself a hiring manager as well as a recruiter) than long periods of dead silence after a recruiter is enthusiastic about helping you out.

It would be best had you not called at all. Now not only did you not perform up to your expectations, but you actually fell short of your previous image and brand you created.

The Grace Period

Is there such a thing as an appropriate “sound of silence” timeframe? And if so, is it one week? Two weeks? One call per month?

I say it depends on the level of a search and specificity of the industry and skill set.

For a few exceptions, when you are dealing with positions in the under-$75,000 per year range, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t call your client and provide feedback on a semi-weekly basis.

I have one account that demands we conference every Friday. We did just that until there was an ample pipeline of candidates and the conferences were no longer needed.

I like clients who demand action, because I usually get reaction in return for our efforts.

In my real-life experience, whenever I have actually called a client and “fessed up” that their search is proving to be more time and effort than what we had anticipated, they have always appreciated the information. This is especially true if there are particulars that go with it.

Sometimes by providing feedback, the client relaxes criteria or increases salary. Other times they have decided to rearrange the retainer so as to not have my firm walk away.

But to not call back at all is inexcusable, unprofessional, and a complete waste of valuable business time. I’m just as mad as any client would be not hearing back from a recruiter for three weeks after being promised action!

The Missing Recruiters

As it turns out, our organization finally found the “right candidate” within the next week or so after sharing this search on a split arrangement with my two trusted colleagues. So the subcontracted assistance was thankfully no longer needed.

Trouble is, they don’t know that due to their own inadequacies.

You see, I decided to call them to notify them of our success. Just in case they were working late into the evenings making dozens of calls and foregoing golfing on weekends on my account, I decided to advise them their services were no longer needed and that our candidate had been selected.

And the real punch line to this story? When I called and left a message, they still did not call back!

This tells me that they:

• never took the search seriously.
• lacked respect for my time.
• probably never spent more than one hour once they got off the phone with me.
• probably treat their clients the same way.
• have little regard for their image.

In a recent Fordyce Letter column, more than a few recruiters from around the country reported they had no qualms “walking away from difficult clients” if the search proved to be no longer worth the effort.

Walk away? Just like that? And leave another client scratching his head as to what’s wrong with our industry?

To walk away with no explanation tarnishes the search industry. To walk away and explain why this is necessary is a much better choice.

Please don’t give the rest of us a bad name through your long periods of silence! Call your clients. Call them weekly or semi-weekly. But please let them know something rather than handing them long periods containing nothing but the sounds of silence.