Balance Staffing has been around since 1997, but the company Joel Steadman joined as president in 2023 was ready for something bigger. At roughly $100 million in revenue, it was smaller than anything he’d led before, and that was exactly the point. More clay to mold, owners who were hungry to grow, and room to put 25-plus years of CRO, COO, and VP of Sales experience to work.
What Steadman found at Balance was a company that already understood something a lot of firms are still figuring out: in a market trending toward commoditization, the relationship is the differentiator. Not rates. Not service tiers. The depth of trust you build with clients determines whether they see you as a vendor or as something they can’t imagine running their business without.
In this conversation from the Staffing Sales Summit, Steadman talks candidly about how Balance approaches geographic expansion, why their sales conversations start with questions instead of pitches, how he builds a three-tier sales team, and what he believes staffing leaders most often get wrong about their clients and their people.
Q. The market has shifted significantly in the last five years. What does winning new business look like for Balance right now?
Joel Steadman: It’s really deeply about relationships and having relationships built on so much trust that clients will help you grow as a business. We’ve gone next level on growing those relationships with large enterprise customers and with smaller customers who are on a growth trajectory.
My biggest focus is working with the sales team on building deep relationships throughout the organization, not just in sales. Our account managers are so much better than they were a couple of years ago at making sure clients never think to leave us.
When you’re in a commoditizing industry — which is terrifying to me, because I’ve done this my whole career and I remember when it wasn’t that way — differentiation is the relationship. It’s really not rates or the things people assume it is. The real differentiator is building a relationship where clients know you will do everything and anything to help them succeed. That’s how we’re growing at Balance. We’ve doubled down on the concept that they can’t imagine running their business without us.
Q. You came to Balance in 2023 after executive roles at much larger firms. What opportunity did you see in a $100 million company?
JS: I’d never been with a business that small before, and I was so excited by how much more clay there was to mold. Two really active, good owners, but ones who had never led a business to real scale. There’s something about knowing what it takes to build a half-billion-dollar or billion-dollar staffing company, and getting the chance to apply that from the ground up.
What I loved most: our CEO is serious about our core values. He doesn’t put them on the wall and move on; he talks about them constantly, in every company meeting. Every Monday, we discuss core values. People share moments when they saw someone else living them. I’d never seen that before. Usually companies have values and just don’t live them, especially in tough times. That mattered to me.
And because we were so geographically small, there was a lot of excitement in moving across the country and growing. That energy makes it more fun to be in the business.
Q. What goes into deciding where Balance expands geographically?
JS: We do significant market analysis before we enter any market, specifically around candidate availability. We know we can go land business somewhere. The harder question is whether we’ll have the inventory, the human capital, to be successful once we get there. Some markets are just too saturated. We recently turned down an opportunity in the Midwest because the data didn’t support it.
When you’re deeply focused on the relationship, you can’t take an opportunity just because it looks attractive. You have to know you’ll be successful in it.
We almost always enter with an anchor customer. We’ll go in with one of our large enterprise customers, get five or six hundred people working in their building, then hire a salesperson and grow the retail business around that anchor. Margins are lower with a big customer, so the retail piece helps. In about 18 months, you usually have a pretty nice P&L.
Q. How does your sales approach change when you’re entering a market without brand recognition?
JS: It’s hard. You feel very alone when it’s just an ops person and a salesperson trying to make something happen in a new city.
We blitz the market with marketing so people know we’re there. We invest in community presence — figuring out the important local events, sponsoring them, giving our employees time to be involved. And we send in a larger team than you might expect so the market can feel that we’ve arrived.
But make no mistake, going into a new city organically is hard. Without an anchor customer, it’s insanely hard. For the first six months to a year, we really just focus on that anchor and take great care of them. Then we announce to the world that we’re in their city.
Q. What’s the biggest mistake you’ve seen staffing firms make when they try to grow too fast?
JS: First and foremost, they run out of money. They can’t capitalize themselves, and that’s the worst-case scenario. You have to have someone in finance who understands capitalization before you expand.
Beyond that, you go into markets with optimism and blinders on. That’s why we do so much data analysis now. You’ll jump in with an anchor, and then that anchor gets acquired by a larger company, and suddenly you’re sitting on a two- or three-year lease, losing money overnight.
The other big mistake is moving your own people from one city to another instead of hiring locals. When you move someone from California to Texas or Wisconsin, they’re not focused on work. They’re focused on building a life in a new place. If you hire locals, you’re on the ground moving quickly from day one.
Q. When you’re sitting across from a prospect for the first time, are you leading with Balance’s capabilities or trying to understand their needs first?
JS: We go in and ask questions. One of our owners — Craig Renzulli, our innovation officer — is the best question-asker I’ve ever met. He figures out exactly what a client really wants in a provider, and then we mold ourselves to be exactly that.
We don’t go in telling them about Balance. Nobody’s really excited about a company they’ve never heard of. They get interested when they realize we genuinely care about what we could do for them.
We’re small enough to be super nimble, and that means we can get creative in ways the big nationals can’t. We recently did a deal where a client wanted an upfront rebate, something their procurement department needed to show as a profit center. We’d never made any money with them yet. But we got creative and carved one out. It was one of the world’s biggest automotive companies, and nobody had ever done that for them before. That’s the kind of thing that wins relationships.
Q. What do clients most commonly get wrong about how they’re using staffing?
JS: A few things. First, they assume we make a lot of money. It’s a thin-margin business, and that misconception shapes how they negotiate and how they value the relationship.
Second, they think using a staffing firm protects them from their responsibilities as an employer. It doesn’t. They still have to be good to the people working in their buildings. There’s no protection from being a bad employer just because those workers are temporary.
And third, many companies still treat staffing as a last resort, a buffer you call when you’re desperate. The companies I love working with see us as a strategic part of how they run their business. We try to do business only with companies that think of us that way.
Q. How do you help clients see those blind spots?
JS: Straight honesty. One of our core values is authenticity, and we tell the truth.
We’re based in California, which has a very high bar for employer compliance, very little room for error. Early on, I found all the California requirements frustrating. But over time, we let those standards spread across the entire business. We treat every state like California. We’re as safety-conscious in Texas as we are in California, even when we’re not required to be. That’s an added level of service, and it makes us a better staffing company everywhere we operate. If you can do it well in California, you can do it well anywhere.
Q. Has that consultative approach actually moved the needle on close rates and deal size?
JS: Absolutely. We recently competed for a major opportunity with a car manufacturer. We were at the table with all the big national players. We walked in and said: “You probably love the big guys. We get that. But if you could dream up your perfect staffing company, what would that look like?”
We got a monster deal. A lot of the big nationals didn’t get a piece of it.
I know we came in three points above everyone else on price. But Craig builds so much trust, and we do creative things on the front end, that it almost doesn’t matter. Small firms — and I know $100 million sounds big, but in this industry it’s not — can be very adaptable. That’s our edge.
Q. How do you build a sales team? Are you hiring for experience and letting people run, or building a system and coaching people into it?
JS: Both, and it depends on the tier.
We hire three types: national salespeople, regional salespeople, and business development managers. That combination builds a really strong P&L.
My nationals are always staffing veterans, people who’ve done it for years and can walk into a big room and own a presentation. They’re hard to find. I have one national who’s been with me for 22 years. She did $22 million in new business last year. For that caliber of person, I’ll use a headhunter. My regionals cover a state or two, handle mid-market deals, and get more active coaching from me.
Then there’s the BDM team, and this is honestly the most exciting part. I look for people right out of school, maybe with a year of door-to-door selling under their belt. They’re hungry and want to prove themselves. We do strong sales training, and they’re mentored by the veterans. That combination — hungry entry-level energy, shaped by experience — is where I see the real growth happen.
Q. What’s the biggest gap you see in how other firms develop their salespeople?
JS: They don’t train. We have a very specific sales system, one I built from the best methodologies I’ve encountered over the years, not just from my own head. We talk about it constantly. We have a sales language that everyone in the organization speaks.
The staffing sell has completely changed in the last five years. It’s an entirely different conversation than it was. Firms that hire for experience and assume they don’t need to train are working with outdated approaches.
Every other week, we have a team meeting with training built into the start of it. I delegate a lot of that training to the veterans, because I want the BDMs to look up to them and be inspired by them. The discipline to train and train again — that’s the real difference.
And CRM discipline. Great salespeople don’t always love the CRM, but you have to help them see the value. My best national salesperson wants everyone to know her numbers are untouchable, so she documents everything. Her dashboard is a thing of beauty.
Q. Sales turnover is a persistent problem in this industry. Is it a training problem, a hiring problem, or a compensation problem?
JS: Yes.
In staffing, you really don’t start making the real money until year two or three with a client. I’m always stunned by commission plans that start declining after year one. The second year is the money year. The third year is the money year. If you’re pulling commissions back by then, they’re going to leave — and then they’ll wait a year and go steal that book of business and make the money they should have made with you.
Training matters for the BDMs who actually want a career, not just a job. They want mentorship. They want someone invested in their growth.
But one of my approaches that makes the biggest difference is being extremely specific about expectations in the offer letter. I lay everything out — not just performance targets, but all the ways we’re going to help them be successful. I want to be the same person on day one as I am if they ever have to leave. That clarity, combined with genuine care, keeps people. I’ve had almost no turnover on my sales team. It’s hard to leave when you know the person you work for actually cares about you.
Q. What’s the one thing you’d tell the staffing leaders reading this to focus on first?
JS: Be who you say you are.
The worst thing that can happen in this business, or any business, is when your team discovers you’re a different person than the one who hired them. They will find out. And they’ll tell each other.
My family motto raising four kids was “no facades.” I believe it at work to the core. Be authentic and genuine, someone whose behind-closed-doors conversations sound exactly like your face-to-face ones.
If you’re that person, your team will work incredibly hard for you. It’s amazing what people will give when they genuinely esteem who they work for.
