Selling to HR Professionals

Recruiting, Compensation, Benefits, Learning and Development, and so much more. HR departments control a large piece of the budget pie in companies worldwide. So, how do you create the best possible outcome(s) when selling to HR professionals?

HR budgets are larger than they’ve ever been and with over 8,000 (and growing) HR tech companies in North America, competition in the marketplace couldn’t be fiercer. In order to make an impression on HR professionals, it’s important to know the answer to a few questions:

• What are HR professionals seeking and excited about?
• What problems do HR professionals face in their organizations daily?
• What metrics will the HR professional track to measure success?
• How can someone get the attention of an HR professional?
• What does the selling to HR professionals process look like?

Just like any other department, HR has multiple levels of seniority, differing responsibilities, and purchasing power to name a few.

It’s important to answer a few questions when prospecting individuals within the HR department before you email blast and cold call out of nowhere.

Selling to HR professionals question 1: What are HR Professionals Seeking and Excited About?

In most cases, HR leaders look to their employees when considering a new piece of tech or software. After all, these employees are the ones that, in all likelihood, will be using the technology or software purchased by the HR professional.

For instance, let’s say you’re selling a Sales Enablement Platform. The employees within an organization who use a Sales Enablement Platform are sales and marketing teams. Providing valuable context and examples in your messaging or directing campaigns toward sales and marketing teams within the organization will greatly increase the odds of connecting with the HR professional, who is the ultimate decision-maker in the process.

Creating excitement around your product or service within the teams in an organization that will actually use your offering is a great step forward.

One additional way to gauge interest in specific platforms or software in the industry is through intent data. In short, intent data shows companies who are actively showing intent to purchase a product or service. This data is collected from people at XYZ Company who have Googled “Sales Enablement Platforms” (as an example) within the last month. Campaign success increases by 20-40% for companies who use intent data in their prospecting and marketing efforts.

Selling to HR professionals question 2: What Problems do HR Professionals Face in Their Organizations Daily?

HR buyers want to know how and why your product or service will benefit or improve their existing processes. Let’s use a Sales Enablement Platform as an example. Because HR professionals consider their employees first, provide context to them in your messaging:

• Selling to HR Professionals: Validity

  • Provide context on how the platform will increase communication between teams in the sales process, help them grow accounts, and increase the efficiency of the sales process as a whole.

• Selling to HR Professionals: Impact

  • Case studies, peer reviews, data. Have the answer to their questions involving why or how. Ex. “The average user of our platform sees a 20% decrease in time between the initial contact and sale”

• Selling to HR Professionals: Cost

  • While many HR professionals will be fixated on a specific dollar amount, it’s your job to help them understand the value of the product. Demonstrate how other organizations similar to theirs have worked with you and found success as social proof. How has your platform increased efficiency and helped teams close more sales opportunities? Details with proof will stand out to the HR leader.

• Selling to HR Professionals: User Reaction

  • At the end of the day, the end user– sales teams, marketing teams, etc.– will want your product or service to be easy to use. The more positive an experience is for the end user, the more likely they’ll relay that experience to the HR leader, which in turn increases the chances of a sale happening.

Selling to HR professionals question 3: What Metrics Will the HR Professional Track to Measure Success?

In nearly every instance, a product or service in the B2B space is meant to have a positive effect on the bottom line of that business– it either saves money or increases revenue. Selling to HR professionals is no different. HR leaders want to know how your product or service will positively affect their organization, measuring a few different metrics:

• Reducing turnover

  • Turnover in U.S. companies is about 19%. Because turnover is so expensive for organizations, HR leaders are likely to entertain a conversation where a product or service can reduce turnover, which in turn, saves the organization money.

• Relevant data

  • Data-driven decisions often exist within buyer personas. Selling to HR professionals, having relevant data that speaks directly to their departments will be important in starting conversations.

• Streamlining “x” processes

  • Identifying and addressing pain points is sales 101. HR professionals are constantly analyzing and considering ways to decrease budget spend and streamline processes– it’s a part of their overall job description to do so.

Selling to HR professionals question 4: How to Get the Attention of the HR Professional

Many different factors go into running campaigns directed toward differing levels of seniority. From your messaging to your organization’s method(s) of outreach, personalization in regards to identified need, job title, and industry– just to name a few– are top of mind.

Selling to HR professionals: Sequencing tips

• Seniority-level

  • Differing levels of seniority require differing forms of outreach. While your overall mission may stay the same, your messaging and form of outreach to prospective HR buyers can and should be different. However, remember that the idea is to solve a problem. What problem(s) are different levels of seniority regularly facing and how do you solve that problem?

    • HR C-suite executive and VP personas:

      • These HR professionals are focused on equipping their team with the proper tools to do their jobs, hitting overall targets of the business as a whole, and business ops as a whole.

    • HR Director personas:

      • These HR professionals are focused on generating revenue for the business, create lead flow, equipping their sub-teams with tools, and hitting benchmarks for the organization.

    • HR Manager personas:

      • These HR professionals are generally the ones who are in the trenches of the business executing outreach, selling, building books of business, and executing the company’s offering on a day-to-day basis.

Here’s a collection of short videos that describes selling to HR professionals in different niche categories and seniority levels, such as:

• How to prospect Learning & Training leaders
• How to prospect L&D and Talent Development
• How to prospect e-Learning & Digital Learning leaders
• How to prospect Diversity & Inclusion leaders
• What we’ve learned targeting the Recruiting department
• What we’ve learned cold calling into HR 
• How to prospect VPs of HR 
• Targeting the VP of HR’s admin

• Selling to HR professionals through cold email

  • In most cases, you won’t book consistent meetings from 1-2 cold emails. In fact, in a study conducted by Hunter, email sequences with 4-7 emails get three times more engagement than sequences with less than 4 emails. That same study states that only 23% of cold emails even get opened and only 8% get a reply. In some cases, your sequences may require 15-20 touches to close a deal— with a number of different mediums of connecting with prospects (LinkedIn, phone, email, etc.). These HR professionals are sent cold emails on a daily basis– be original, be memorable, solve a problem, and have a clear CTA. Do that– and you’ll have new opportunities to work with.

• Selling to HR professionals by cold calling

  • Contrary to popular belief, cold calling is very much alive and well. At the end of the day, just like email, it’s a numbers game. You won’t convince everyone in a 20 second pitch, just like you won’t book a meeting from every cold email you send. Here’s some Key Points When Cold Calling HR Prospects.

• Selling to HR professionals on LinkedIn

  • There’s plenty of ways to grow and access new accounts with LinkedIn. After all, LinkedIn has 700 million users in 200 countries. Do you think there might be a few people who are interested in purchasing what you’re offering? Connect with decision-makers, follow up after connecting, and interact with your connections in a number of different ways. Here’s a more in-depth look at How to Grow Accounts Using LinkedIn.

Selling to HR professionals question 5: What Does the Selling to HR Professionals Process Look Like?

Because HR is a somewhat niche sector in B2B sales, selling to HR professionals may look slightly different based on title, HR function, specific product/service the company sells, and much more.

• Buyer Persona

  • We touched on different levels of seniority, but prospecting by specific buyer personas can filter your prospecting efforts down to specific personas such as VPs of Marketing or Directors of Business Development, as an example. Different approaches such as a “bottom-up” approach may look like contacting Inside Sales professionals to sign up for a newsletter or as a way of introducing you to a person inside of an organization that has purchasing power. Whereas other approaches focused on buyer persona may involve connecting with CHROs to set up for product introductions and discovery. Here are a few positives and negatives to a buyer persona approach:
    • Positives:
      • Personalized messaging– i.e. VPs of Marketing– touch on main pain points
      • High conversion ratio– i.e. through personalized messaging and addressing needs
      • Valuable prospecting metrics– i.e. what works in your A/B testing
    • Negatives:
      • Time/Resources– i.e. big lists take time, resources to manage effectively
      • Constant movement– i.e. depending on job change, role change, etc.

• ABM

  • According to Hubspot, ABM (Account-based marketing) is a focused growth strategy in which marketing and sales collaborate to create personalized buying experiences for a mutually-identified set of high-value accounts.  So, in short, the marketing funnel and sales funny effectively work together to meet at the same goal.
  • This process may be longer than others, but can most certainly attract clients you’ve had on your radar for a while. The key components of ABM are identifying customers/accounts, engaging with these potential customers through both sales and marketing teams, and tracking analytics of what is working vs. what isn’t working.

• Multi-channel and multi-touch sequencing

  • Multi-channel sequencing refers to a combination of outreach by different channels such as email, phone, social media, direct mailer, and more. Multi-touch sequencing refers to the amount of times you reach out to a particular individual. So, for instance, a multi-channel/multi-touch sequence may look like cold calling, emailing, and LinkedIn requesting a prospect on the first day of targeting them. In our experience, 15-20 touch points is often necessary to close a deal. There’s outliers of course, but in general, 15-20 touches through multiple channels is the most effective.

Wrap Up

When selling to HR professionals, it’s important to answer the five questions we laid out above. Let’s recap:

• What are HR professionals seeking and excited about?

• What problems do HR professionals face in their organizations daily?

• What metrics will the HR professional track to measure success?

• How can someone get the attention of an HR professional?

• What does the selling to HR professionals process look like?

Remember, these are general questions to get you started. Factors like what you’re selling, the target company size, objective audience, and so on can affect who you ultimately are selling to. However, taking the time to understand what these professionals are seeking is a great first step in achieving your ultimate goal which is to serve your customers by addressing their pain points.