Selling into HR

I am often asked to take calls with companies who are selling into HR for the first time and are trying to figure it out. I thought I’d put the information that I normally share down in a post, so more people can benefit.

Who Is Your Buyer in HR?

Figure this out first. HR is broken up into many teams:

• HRBP - the HR business partner works with cross functional team leaders to advise them on their HR needs within their team

• D+I - responsible for diversity and inclusion

• L+M - responsible for learning and management systems

• Analysts - responsible (often) for assessing costs

• Benefits - responsible for employee benefits

• Total Rewards - oversees all benefits (health care + bonus + retirement + other benefits)

etc… etc… know who you want to target in HR!

HR Groups You Should Know

• Resources for Humans

• Hacking HR

• People Geeks

• SHRM - Society of Human Resource Professionals - find your local chapter

• Disrupt HR

Sales Groups You Should Know

• The Enterprise Sales forum has great events and an even better newsletter to keep you up to date on enterprise sales strategies

• WISE- Women in Sales

• Sales Tech Meetup

Sales Strategies

• Outbound emails - the cheapest thing you can do. See How To Set Up Sales Emails (The Right Way)

• Channel partners (for example, if you are selling into HR Benefits, you should look at partnering with benefits brokers and consultants)

• Events- go to HR conferences or meetup groups and network, network, network

• LinkedIn - there are several tools that will help you to sell over LinkedIn

Books You Should Read

• Traction

• The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need

• Predictable Revenue

Sales Tools You Need

See my list of sales tools. I recommend, at a minimum, Apollo.io for prospecting and DRIP campaigns, a CRM (I use Zoho). But as you can see from the list there are many, many other tools you can use to help with things like call recording, LinkedIn outreach, etc…