Use Software Sales Leads To Screen Out Abusive Users

Posted on November 7, 2012 by

When qualifying sales leads, it is one thing to meet a prospect who misuses software and another who outright abuses it. The former actually makes for a very promising client. The latter is the last person anyone should considering doing business with.

The best example would be HR software. Now one feature application of IT in HR management is actually in recruitment. Though some might point out that HR and recruiting are not necessarily in the same group, it is besides the point. The real point of concern is whether your software will be used only within ethical guidelines and will not violate the rights of aspiring job applicants.

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Make Sales Leads By Making Yourself Relevant

Posted on November 1, 2012 by

In marketing, few things make a product or service more appealing than relevancy. And when you achieve high appeal, you get more sales leads. You can proclaim an endless amount of software features and advantages but those mean nothing if they do not resonate with a prospect’s needs.

Creating B2B Leads By ‘Creating’ Needs

Technically, you cannot really ‘create’ a need so much as you can point it out. Unfortunately, there are some people who perceive this strategy as rather underhanded. To them, ‘creating’ a need implies creating a problem and you are trying to get a fast buck from that problem by solving it.

For example, suppose you are a recruitment software vendor in search of HR leads. Somewhere along the way, you encounter someone who questions the need to point out these problems. They say they have other things to concern themselves with and find no reason to worry about more things.

What do you do? While it is often advised to not argue directly, you should start deconstructing that argument:

Review the consequences – They insist that the problems you are pointing out are a minimum concern. They do not think that digitizing and managing applicant information is a necessity. They even go as far as to say they value the old-fashioned art of making five-page resumes (even though some positions require no more than a name, a picture, and basic background information). But as they are saying this, try and recall the amount of paper and space that such documents occupy. You may not tell it to them directly but displaying such consequences in your marketing materials can surely send a message to all others who think the same way.

Mentally demonstrate how the problem is created – If they insist on accusing you of seeing a problem that is not there, review the actual mechanics behind such a problem. Why do documents create space? How can it grow into a massive waste of paper resources? Afraid of playing the environmentalist card? Why not? It is not like you are the paper manufacturer. Another thing you can suggest is that just because you do not point out a problem, it ceases to exist. The elephant in the room is not going to disappear just because they pretend it has.

Keep it simple – Above all, keep it simple. You do not attract software sales leads by just piling torrents of information be it on a website or directly before your prospects. The best way to send a wall of denial crumbling down is at the basic level. As with the consequences, use your marketing materials to make an easily understood demonstration on why paper applications get cumbersome over time. The business world is in a constant state of turbulence so saving time by digitizing and compressing such information is now a must that many businesses need to accept.

Relevancy requires that you satisfy needs, including ones that are not acknowledged. Needs that are not acknowledged will still result in consequences whether if a prospect was aware of them or not. Hence, make sure that your entire marketing process (from qualification to B2B appointment setting) exposes these needs.

Outsource A Telemarketing Firm That Teaches You To Talk Less

Posted on September 8, 2012 by

If you think the title sounds ironic, please know that in telemarketing, the lesser you spend time on the phone, the more calls you can make.

But more than that, its goal is to connect salespeople with customers much like any other form of marketing. The tricky thing about that job is that it requires you to view things from the perspective of the customer. And more of than not, a customer doesn’t always have the same level of knowledge as your salespeople. This results in telemarketing firms giving the impression that their own knowledge level isn’t any higher.

This is something that salespeople make the mistake of underestimating. Sure, telemarketers may not be able to grasp any better than customers but the truth is that’s actually a good thing! Ask yourself, just why is it that customers can only grasp this or that feature? Why can they not realize the possibilities?

It’s because those are the things that really concern them.

For example, what if you’re an ERP vendor but the only interest that some of your prospects will have is just enough to classify them as possible HR Leads. They don’t really understand why you’re offering the additional tools of SCM or BI. They just want something that helps them manage employees. Why do you persist about talking more when all they want is less?

An outsourced telemarketing firm should play the role of teaching you how accomplish just that. Hence, you need to focus on the following qualities instead of looking for marketers that are ultimately just carbon copies of your salespeople:

Wider general knowledge – While it does seem that marketers have no more a clue about your software than your prospects, the ideal level of expertise should just be a little bit higher. And while it may seem little, that little bit of expertise is what lets them bridge the gap between customers and sales. They may not understand everything but what they do understand is something they know many customers want.

Is comfortable going beyond software – Viewing software in the context of a much larger work culture is closer to a customer’s point of view. You may boast that your software can be implemented and function flawlessly but don’t forget that flaws don’t always have to come in the form of computer glitches or viruses.

Is aware of a prospect’s time – It sounds trivial but as you’re in the business world, time is always critical. With work life always busy, your prospect’s spare minutes will always be on short supply. A good telemarketing firm can teach your salespeople the importance of managing time by helping them organize their appointments more closely along the comfort of prospects.

Today, with information being all the more available, even some customers are more knowledgeable and refined in their buying decisions to the bewilderment of salespeople. Like marketers, their knowledge may not still grasp the finer points but that knowledge is coupled with a firm emphasis on what they want. This combination results in a view that deems anything else unnecessary as simply more talk. This should only make it more urgent for you to find a telemarketing group that can teach you to talk less.

HR Sales Leads – Basic Features And Why Your Prospects Want Them

Posted on August 28, 2012 by

When marketing HR software, your lead generation strategy must utilize a marketing message that’s capable of transforming itself once a particular need has been discovered. This is so that this message doesn’t remain static for all prospects and at the same time, it brings your business much closer to relevance.

Given the usual length of the B2B sales process, it’s easy to make the mistake of having one phase do all the hard work. This usually leads to imbalances like salespeople letting marketers do all the work of influencing the buyer or marketers delivering unqualified software leads to the salespeople. In either case, there’s too much information being condensed into one phase (whether that phase is in lead generation or in the sales appointment).
Instead, that information must be evenly spread out through the whole process. Marketers start with the basics and leave the more technical presentations to sales. These basics, in turn, should be about finding basic needs and molding the marketing message that promotes the basic feature that corresponds to them.

For HR software, these would be:

Recruitment – Many people will say that the HR department isn’t really the one in charge of recruiting. Regardless, recruitment software is still utilized by businesses and might be considered a feature. Prospects demonstrating a need for it must be asked whether they’re looking for something more or less automated. Your marketers therefore, must be knowledgeable about basic pros and cons. You should also be aware of what they’ve been using as an alternative (e.g. social media).

Payroll – There are cases when payroll is no longer within the hands of HR but in accounting but that doesn’t mean your payroll system is no longer needed. Change the target decision maker accordingly. This targeting technique should be applied to all your marketing channels whether it’s the phone or email. Security shouldn’t be neglected either as payroll data is sensitive information. Compliance and database safety policies should also be a matter of concern.

Work time – Monitoring and recording work time has grown a lot more sophisticated than the simple systems of punching in and punching out. Today, newer forms of HR technology are allowing mobile work forces, enabling access to data from outside the office, and even transforming the entire infrastructure of the traditional office work space. These new technologies could be seeing increasing demand some time in the future but all of that depends if the prospects have really demonstrated a need for them. Are they ready to embrace these changes? What do they demand in terms of monitoring access? Knowing these answers could be important for salespeople when they’re finally face-to-face with these prospects.

You can think of marketing as the filter for sales. Information relayed through them helps tackle the more non-software related issues that software salespeople might be too specialized to resolve. However, once your marketers have obtained sufficient information to turn over to sales, salespeople should be ready to elaborate further but based only on that knowledge. One other purpose of covering the basics is to help outline the features that really matter to them so that salespeople have a point of focus during the meeting. Discover the basic needs, respond with basic features, and then start building up a solution from there.

Proof That You Need To Go Straight To The Decision Maker For HR Leads

Posted on June 5, 2012 by

According to this blog from the Wall Street Journal, recruitment tools found in HR software have actually posed a difficulty in the hiring process and has even gone as far to becoming a factor in the rise of unemployment. The blog cites an essay written last fall by Professor Peter Capelli of management and human resources at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

“Not surprisingly, his essay drew a lot of response. What did surprise Mr. Cappelli—as he describes in a book, “Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs,” to be published in June—was the frequency of complaints about the hiring process itself, particularly the now-ubiquitous use of software to screen applicants.”

Further down the article, it goes on to state that increasing automation of the hiring process is actually responsible for turning away people who would otherwise carry the potential to do the job well. It has also been accused of actually mismatching applicants with positions requiring a different skill set.

It’s a classic case of people being too quick to replace themselves with technology. Now this doesn’t mean that HR systems don’t have their place or shouldn’t be developed anymore. It simply means that you should be very careful about assuming what the clients want.

That is one of the most common mistakes in any lead generation campaign. Whether you reach out to prospects via telephone, direct mail, or email, you should be very careful that you’re not making any unfounded assumptions on what they want. Furthermore, what they want may not even be what’s best for them if you consider how the cited article shows how quickly companies have become dependent on automated hiring. Capelli himself says, “In many companies, software has replaced recruiters… applicants rarely talk to anyone, even by email, during the hiring process.”

That should already give you a reason to rethink the purpose of your HR system. Does it enable this problem or does it actually avoid it?

The best person to give you that answer is the one who’d be most involved in the process. Unfortunately, this is where assumptions come and you start making the mistake that you’ll know what they’re going to ask before they do. In fact, if an attitude like that permeates your software lead generation campaign, it’s a miracle that your representatives would get past the gatekeeper. There’s a reason why you have two ears and a mouth. You need to listen more often than you talk.

What should you listen for? Look back on what Capelli has been saying. The hiring process has been compromised because computers and software systems have replaced actual recruiters. A balance of man and machine must be struck here.

“As anyone who has applied for a job lately knows, the trick is parroting all the words in the job description but not just copying and pasting the text, which leads the software to discard the application. It’s a whole new skill: Clearing the software hurdle is as important as being able to do the job.”

No doubt you want your software to help screen out the less than qualified but do you really want it to the point that it’s made hiring extremely difficult? Of course not. Make sure your lead generation services are capable of going straight to the decision maker and to find out what they really want (or more importantly, what they need).

Express Genuine Concern When Pursuing HR Leads

Posted on February 7, 2012 by

When it comes to Human Resource Management, there are really times when things get touchy. After all, it’s the department where issues get political, ethical, moral, and as a result, controversial. What else can you expect from the part of the company that deals in managing employees?

This is the world that you will be diving into (if you haven’t already) if you’re going to pursue leads for HR software. Unlike in B2C, yours is a B2B business that can’t just rely on generalized information for your lead generation. You need to take your prospects one by one and treat them individually which in turn means you really need to express concern for how they do HR.

Getting a list of people from a provider does not automatically excuse you from qualifying them and make it absolutely sure that your product can solve their problems. When you’re doing software appointment setting, it never hurts to ask some questions first before making the actual appointment. Sometimes the things you’ve assumed just from viewing your list may not reflect the reality of a particular company’s situation.

You’ll be taking a huge risk if you decide to make a sale out of a prospect and all you’ve got is a phone number and a name. It doesn’t matter what technique you use. You try to use email, they’ll just think you’re spamming because your email doesn’t fully describe the HR problems in their company. You try telemarketing, you might even get an angrier response or at least, have a gatekeeper bar you from going any further because you don’t have anything to say that will convince them that you’re not just another telephone salesperson trying to make a fast buck.

Either of these methods will fail miserably but when boosted with quality information, you can completely reverse the failure rate. Emails that are personalized and inquire about certain issues of a prospect company will at least merit you a glance from your target decision maker as well make it difficult to mark your message as spam. Your telemarketers can then easily bypass gatekeepers by making careful inquiries and citing observations.

In other words, the information will empower you to tell your prospect that you’re talking to them and them alone! You are expressing a genuine concern about their HR and asking if they have issues that could benefit from a software solution.

There is still, of course, the issue of costs. Getting that information will definitely not be cheap. You’ve already seen how buying a list may not be enough. The process of qualification process will be expensive in terms of hiring professionals and data analysts.

Then again, this is what outsourcing is for. Despite what you might have heard, looking to lead generation companies does not mean you’re too lazy or too cheap. It simply means your business will be working together with an experienced firm and in fact, you’ll be doing it closely. On one end, you have your company constantly defining what they’re looking for while on the other, you have your outsourced lead generator diligently getting leads, qualifying them according to your instructions, and sending appointments your way. This sort of close partnership is just as excellent as having your own in-house team ( (and arguably more cost-efficient).

Despite how you do it though, remember that the information you’re gathering should only help you express more concern for the HR issues of each individual company. Stop risking on what’s minimal and get more info!

HR Software Telemarketing: Asking The Right Questions

Posted on January 2, 2012 by

Not a lot of companies are eager to admit flaws in their HR. In our world today, a company with a bad reputation amongst its employees is not likely to last very long. If it’s not ruined by strikes and loss of productivity among workers, it’ll face destruction from the criticisms of human rights and labor organizations. Perhaps the greatest contributor to this hesitation is how owners are faced with their own leadership flaws.

So where does this leave you as a supplier of software that helps streamline and organize HR? Frankly: Not in a good position. Why? Because chances are, few people would want to openly expose the flaws of their HR. Sure you’ll occasionally get a small company who wish to start out with some decent software but remember, this is a B2B industry. There is a risk of incoming prospects coming too far and few in between. As a matter of fact, you’ll find a lot of people saying that you’re better off approaching these people instead of the other way around.

Still, how do you that without raising any alarms? As stated before, it is highly doubtful that decision makers will take kindly to tactless inquiries. What you need is a method that is both direct but at the same time flexible for each one. More importantly however, you need to find ways to refine that method into a tool that can coerce the necessary information out of a prospect.

Let’s have telemarketing as one such method. At times it’s better to actually converse with a phone when things like unsolicited e-mails can quickly come off as too suspicious that they just hit the spam filter. However, be warned that there is still the issue of knowing the right questions to ask to get the right information.

Training such people in such tact as well as knowing some effective telemarketing tactics yourself requires a certain time and experience that no amount of investment can buy in an instant. Realistically speaking though, neither can you afford to not make use of it so what do you do?

Simple, why not just use outsourced telemarketing? Unlike most fresh, in-house teams, professional telemarketers can boast a considerable amount of years in the industry as well a certain familiarity with yours. That experience comes with the very tactics and careful communication skills you need for a successful lead generation campaign. It also demonstrates their reliability. How else would a firm succeed using a method that the general public disapproves of? It’s because they actually know how to use it in ways contrary to their perceptions.

You think these people are dense towards their critics and that they don’t consider the factors that stigmatize their practice? Well you thought wrong. Plenty of telemarketers invest in technology and training that helps them redefine what they do, and get past prejudices and gatekeepers alike.

What’s wonderful is that those same investments Is what makes the outsourced variety a cost-efficient choice. They’ve gone through all the trouble of going through that for anyone in need of their services. Contact them now so you can start asking the right questions!

Prevent Scandal By Pursuing Hot HR Software Leads

Posted on November 3, 2011 by

Strikes. For businesses, those are guaranteed financial nightmares no matter what the size. It’s not even just obvious to economics experts. Common sense alone can lead to the conclusion that when a company’s workers refuse to work en masse, trouble is already speeding from around the corner. Production is brought to a deadly halt. The protests smear the company’s face in the eyes of the public. Put those together and one can only expect the profits to come in smaller numbers.

Another obvious conclusion however is that causes of strikes are easily attributed to bad HR management. Wages are not paid. Promised benefits are not granted. The labor itself is infested with unethical practices. Management is clearly lacking in organization. This is not even considering the suspicions of corruption.

Now how can HR software developers play their part in preventing these evils? Clearly the answer lies in their technology. By computerizing the means companies conduct their HR management, they speed up plenty of processes such as recruitment, performance evaluation, and payroll. They also assist in organizing such processes, making them transparent for employer and employee alike. Means that prevent tampering are also taken into consideration for both internal and external security. Thus, it’s a preventive measure against corruption.

Still, is it enough? Surprisingly no. Whilst developing the software is admirable, developers still need to find companies that may (or even may not) realize the poor state of their HR. Even companies who claim their own home-made HR software might find themselves admitting deficiencies when experts ask them the right questions. Therefore, marketing is just as urgent a task as developing a competent software.

A good deal of HR software companies however suffer from a lack of manpower and other resources to generate decent leads. This is why telemarketing firms still exist to help them pick up the pace. A special emphasis should be made on finding software telemarketing groups experienced in marketing software for HR management. These firms have invested time, technology, and resources solely to the task of generating leads for companies involved in the software business. Their agents are trained to specialize in marketing HR software to companies in danger of bad HR management. Developers who outsource to these telemarketers as part of their marketing campaign can be assured they will only deliver the latest leads.

Their business database is so vast, well-accumulated, and frequently updated, that a reasonable amount of product information is all they need to kick off at high-speed and find the very companies who need exactly the kind of tools and technology developed by the client software developer.

HR software manufacturers can not only expect promising profits from the leads generated by telemarketers. Their software can play a significant role in maintaining public order and the common good by assisting companies whose HR management are in need of serious upgrades. The more time wasted on pursuing bad leads, the more chances that somewhere out there, a company is suffering horrifying dealings with its own work force. Outsourcing to at telemarketing firm can help locate these companies faster and save them from the brink of financial disaster.

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