Many HR tech firms and large consulting firms find this a difficult question: How to segment your market when you have national and international clients?
Unlike consultants who live and work locally, HR tech firms operate on a national or international stage.
This can make things a little tricky.
It’s hard to win new clients (especially in
Most tech companies handle this issue in two ways:
- Put lots of impressive client logos on the home page.
- List out all the industries they’ve helped.
The problem with listing clients and industries is that sometimes the approach helps but other times it actually turns sales prospects off.
Why?
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If you work as a Human Resources consultant or in an HR tech startup in recruitment, training & development, employee engagement, HR consulting, employment law, employee outplacement – my HR marketing update will help.
Now, i
Your page or Business Development Manager tells the prospective client that, yes, you know the FinTech industry really well and, in fact, PayPal Corporation use your HR Tech solution.
That should do the trick, right?
I’ve said variations of those words in different sales scenarios over the years and I’ve found it to be a 50/50 win-loss ratio. Some prospects love it but the other half hate it and say:
“That’s great for PayPal which is a global corporation but we’re a FinTech startup with 130 people and we’re very different to PayPal.
“I’m sorry , I don’t think this is the right HR solution for us.”
There’s an interesting solution to this problem . . .
Are You Using Use Cases?
There was a time when I was managing both HR and inbound marketing for my friend’s new FinTech business.
At one point, we’d received around $15M in VC funding and were being mentioned in the press all over the place.
Cue endless sales phone calls from HR vendors.
All of the sales calls focussed on price: “We love what you guys are doing – we’ll give you a discount if you choose us.”
What none of them realised was that, at that stage, I was still doing two full-time jobs and was swamped.
I didn’t need a discount; I needed my time back.
I didn’t need a discount; I needed my time back.
Enter: Use Cases.
From a sales call perspective, my industry was FinTech. Ok, fine.
However, more powerful for an HR vendor would have been this:
Use Case: Overworked Head of HR in a rapidly-growing, VC-funded tech startup needs to offload time-sucking admin work.
In my many discussions with B2B buyers over the years, at no point did any of them tell me: “We signed up because they have other clients from our industry.“
No, it was the Use Cases that came to the fore.
They said:
“We had X problem which was fixed by the HR Tech solution.”
“We had Y problem which was fixed by the HR Tech solution.”
“We had Z problem which was fixed by the HR Tech solution.”
Now, imagine the Head of HR of a FinTech company is reading your website.
Will they see all the same old sales spiel about how you help their industry or will they see how you’ll solve their exact problem?
“Will your sales prospect see how you’ll solve their exact problem?”
Clear identify the specific problems you solve (Use Cases) and explain it to that Head of HR in such a way that it sinks in.
Unlike all the tech websites that drone on about their mish-mash client list from every industry under the sun, yours can explain how you’ve helped other Heads of HR to resolve the same specific workforce-management problem.
You’d walk them through all your case studies, blog posts, ebooks, interviews, webinar recordings, client testimonials, etc – all of which were specifically tailored to their use case.
You want them to go to their boss and say something like:
“I’ve researched all the relevant HR Tech vendors and the only one that specifically addresses our [X] problem is {$first_name}-HR-Tech Co – they really take the hassle out of managing {X} problem. They already have clients in the [X] industry companies and I think we should talk to them. Want to sit in on the demo call with {$first_name} next week?”
You’d stand out beautifully.
But you can only do all that if you’re clear on your use cases.
Before you go, be sure to join my private HR marketing newsletter for consultants and tech companies in the Human Resources industry.
If you work as a Human Resources consultant or in an HR tech startup in recruitment, training & development, employee engagement, HR consulting, employment law, employee outplacement – my HR marketing updates will help.
All the best,
Ben
