Crawford Thomas Recruiting is a nationwide staffing and recruitment firm connecting employers with hard-to-find talent, with a strong footprint in manufacturing.
Before the engagement, the growth engine was expensive PPC with high acquisition costs — spend that never fixed the underlying problem: the firm wasn’t reaching the employers who were actually in pain. The sales team was burning out working leads that were never going to convert.
Outcome
Over the engagement, Crawford Thomas closed 39 candidate placements — roughly $100K in revenue impact — while cutting its dependence on paid acquisition and giving the sales team a pipeline worth working.
The Objective
Reach small-to-large manufacturing companies at the moment their hiring pain was real — and open conversations about that pain, not about recruitment services in the abstract.
The Approach
1. Target the pain, not the job title
- labor shortages — skilled workers getting harder to find every quarter
- hiring processes that dragged: long cycles, unqualified candidates
- retention problems caused by poor job matches
Companies showing these symptoms became the map. Titles and industries were secondary.
2. Open with the frustration, not the pitch
Outreach spoke directly to the specific frustration each company was likely living with, and used calibrated questions to start real conversations rather than demand meetings.
3. Manage the overflow
When responses came in faster than the team could work them, prospects were prioritized and segmented by urgency and potential — so the best conversations always got attention first.
4. Keep tightening the aim
Responses were reviewed continuously to refine who was targeted and how. Quality compounded.
Why It Worked
- The message met employers inside a problem they were already trying to solve.
- Conversations opened warm because the relevance was obvious.
- The team’s time went to the highest-potential conversations.
- It cost a fraction of the PPC spend it replaced — and out-performed it.
In Short
Thirty-nine placements and six months of new revenue, built on one shift: stop buying attention, start showing up inside the exact pain the buyer already feels. Skepticism at the start; repeat business at the end.
Results from an engagement delivered on the routed-introduction network Orbeon operates within.
