Know-How Exchange : Other

For B2B, the risk of trying something new is slightly different than B2C. In B2C, if the buyer makes a bad choice, the risk generally is limited to the cost of buying and using. So a free offer often does well, as that really minimizes the risk.

In B2B, the buyer is trying to do what is best for the company, but also what is best for them personally. So they want a product that saves them money, but doesn't risk making them look bad. So even if you bring the cost to the company down to zero, they are also considering the risk to themselves personally. There used to be a saying (many years ago) "You can't go wrong buying IBM" - this came from IBM's strong support and reputation - they removed the personal risk to the buyer.

So, you need to do what you can to remove the risk from the buyer. Make them more comfortable with the product by showing how it has worked for other, letting them try it with a demo, etc. Minimize the amount of non-monetary involvement in using your product (time installing, getting up to speed, etc.).

Hey Dave!

Here's my take on the situation based partly from experience in helping an associate of mine create a very succesful temp agency here in OK. I'll just address your questions and give my 2 cents in the order asked.

1. Quite simply and frankly, as mbarber well-described, I don't believe free trials are very effective for this industry and yes, they can lead to a certain level of devaluation and headache. A "free trial" employee/staffing service doesn't sound very appealing at all. Makes me wonder why they are so desperate to go as far as giving away labor.

2. ABSOLUTELY!!! My favorites are How-To Guides and Survey results. I think the Hot-To guides will be more effective as a promotion versus survey results. The survey results could be implemented as a standard service feature, whereas the guides can be viewed as something of value. Consider a guide that is counter-intuitive such as "How to reduce turnover", or "Guide to employee hapiness". The strategy here is the folks that need temp staffing on a regular basis, may see this as an identifiable problem within their organization, but will be be just as likely to continue down their current path...kinda a reverse psychology thing. The upside is they may find it extremely helpful and and spread the word about "the staffing company who helped me keep from using staffing companies". I think you catch my drift.

3. You know, one of the best strategies I witnessed is not necessarily a promotional gimmick, rather a company attitude/branding/policy structuring:

A. Pay employees more, charge employers less.

B. Tkae care of your temp staff. Give them company shirts, bring them drinks on a hot day, give them a ride to work, bring them lunch, basically make them feel appreciated. A happy employee tends to perform well and the clients will see the difference between your staffing company and the others.

C. Include, enforce, and inform the companies of pre-employment screening/testing. Make it one of the USPs. Implement appropriate testing for each industry and "certify" the workers with a money-back gaurantee. The refund policy helps keep the staffing company honest and instills a sense of "risk-free" service without devaluation.

I hope this helps give you some ammo!

Good Luck!

D@H,

My company is tagged as a promising venture here in Houston, so we get weekly calls from assorted recruiting/temp firms that want to provide us their services.  I'm running out of polite ways to say "Leave us alone!"   None of them have a unique proposition to hold my interest.  Those with charming salespeople have nudged their way into an appointment, but the time was mutually wasted.

Although you said you're not interested in specific "free info" topics to promote, I can think of a couple that new or small businesses might latch onto...

- the bottom-line value of HIRING certain talent (sales?) vs TEMPING talent (bookkeeping? data processing?) vs OUTSOURCING talent (programmers? marketing experts? HR?).

- the clear relationship of employees' roles to revenue. This is related to the point above.

- the local salary trends for professionals your clients typically provide.

An aside note.... I get brief emails about once a month from a local recruiter that simply announces a succesful placement of "Frank Jones in a CTO position at a global energy trading firm," and thanks its clients for "another opportunity to bring talent where it's needed."   Their verbage is more concise, humble and sincere than I'm conveying here, but it's enough to make me *bookmark* this recruiter as a future resource for my own biz.  Maybe because these success stories are the ONLY communication I receive from the recruiter.

Perhaps these random thoughts will make some sense to you. Hope so!

- Shelley

It's probably just me, but, how often do companies call a temp agency at the last - emergency - minute? I'd guess quite a few, if not most.

How do they choose who they should call? If they're not meeting with prospective agencies to evaluate them for that emergency, how can they not be nervous, and pessimistic.

How many agencies might they have to call to find someone with specific skills in _____________ ?

How many agencies take into account, or at least talk about, the fact that most companies may not really believe a temp can fully assume the subject role, including the in-house policies and procedures, nuances and other "local" variations, fast enough to be effective?

Peter's earlier, and excellent point about the 2 risks reminded me of something someone drummed into me 2 decades ago. Many, maybe most, B2B sales contain at least 2 vectors of objections or fears; those that involve or contain risk for the company itself, and the professional risks of the person who is making the decision.

A deeper survey looking at more subtle issues such as these might be very useful. And offers containing buttons about "making risky decisions during staffing emergencies with an agency you don't really know"... etc. may open the door to a series of information pieces or meetings where they can get to know your client, as well as letting the client determine and handle these types of concerns.

There's no risk in "getting to know us first". Lot's of validators (success stories, etc.). This sort of approach could help prevent discounting to get in the door.

Plus, I would think this type of approach would be useful for those companies that systematically staff up for various short-term projects as well.

Jett's #3 list above seems very powerful to me in many ways, not the least of which is a very happy temp worker who is promoting the agency virally, simply because they're so happy and productive.

I wonder if "selling people" shouldn't be pursued as a "people business", high touch, not mail order. It seems to me that discounted special offers not only seem to cheapen (so to speak) the company, but tend to remove the selling process to a more impersonal stance. Adding that kind of distance seems to me to increase a sense of risk, rather than alleviating it. Even if someone gets a free trial, they still have other risks.

In your original message, you talk about 'valuable information offers'. Is this like white pages and articles? If so, I find them to be very useful.

Using the startup I work for as an example, I wrote an article which was published on HR.com. This article talked about how to do the same thing helpUhire offers, but without using our service - so basically gave away many of our secrets. I saw a large jump right after that in hits to our web site, so it definitely drew some eyeballs to us.

Added to the benefit of people seeing your name, you also get benefit of being perceived as more of an expert in your area.