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What initiatives and projects are you working on or accountable for?

• Employee engagement projects
• Employee retention projects
• Onboarding
• Enhancing talent acquisition
• Leadership development
• Implementing EverCheck

“We used to be highly federated, but now everybody’s under the corporate umbrella—a transformation in terms of day-to-day work, and the reason we need a single recognition program.”

“We just finished our CEO’s annual recognition program and we’re in the early stages of supporting about six different organizations, building out their own recognition program on our rewards site. Those are my two major recognition projects.”

“I’m accountable for recognition renewal, so it’s working with a new vendor and launching a new program in the next 18 months.”

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Will these initiatives change in the next 6 to 12 months?

“No.” (majority)

“As the needs of the business grow and change, the initiatives will change with them.”

“We’re going to look more at what the employee wants, what’s going to give them that work-life balance and the recognition or reward to be happy and want to stay.”

“Perhaps, we’ve been using focus groups to better understand what our employees want.”

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Are there emerging initiatives you will likely be tasked with in the future?

“The changes that I anticipate would be around how we bring clarity into the organization and how we energize and rally people to adopt new behaviors.”

“We’re trying to get better—at a corporate level—at providing guidance that is structured enough to allow everyone to work in a similar fashion, but is also flexible enough to let each business unit have a recognition program with their own look and feel.”

“We’re implementing Pipefy and ON24. Smartsheets, too. Maybe in five years or so, we would look at updating or going out for an RFP for an HRIS system again.”

“I expect an adjustment to our work model—less rigid schedules and more robust recognition and reward features.”

“There will be a lot of engagement and leadership development strategies because we’re launching a new program.”

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What are your key performance objectives?

• Meeting business goals
• Supporting business needs
• Improving consistency
• Increasing utilization of platform
• Meeting hiring, onboarding, accuracy, and turn-around targets
• Increasing engagement
• Reducing turnover
• Improving leadership development

“We’re measured on how we act as a conduit between HR and the business: ‘Hey, we get your problem, here’s a solution that’s already in place,’ instead of reinventing the wheel.”

“Driving a clear and smooth annual recognition program. Last year, there was a deeper focus on presenting and celebrating awards."

What are your aspirations for personal success and growth? (overall)

“I want to continue to grow in the HR space.”

“To own bigger pieces of the business or support multiple lines, as opposed to just supporting one function.”

“To work with orgs that innovate and challenge you every day, that view HR as a strategic partner, as opposed to compliance.”

“I’m really interested in culture and employee engagement. Moving out of this role, where I’m focused on recognition, I want to sit at a higher level and affect how we build culture.”

“Eventually I’d like to be Chief Human Resources Officer.”

INSIGHT: A successful employee recognition program is one of the most effective ways to improve culture—a fact worth communicating to ambitious HR directors and managers.

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What are your aspirations for personal success and growth? (specific to employee recognition)

“I would love the utilization of recognition program to be as close as 100% as possible.”

“‘I want our employees to say, ‘My organization takes care of me, they reward us with monetary bonuses here and there, but they recognize me in a way that makes me feel incredibly special.’’

“My hope is that our new recognition program increases employee engagement, and it gives them more of a sense of ownership in the process.”

“Empowering our people to recognize and believe their voice is just as important as someone in leadership.”

INSIGHT: Improving retention is one of the fastest ways for an HR director or managers to impact their organization’s culture.

What challenges do you face in your role? (overall)

• Retention
• Engagement
• Budgets
• Ineffective programs
• Managerial courage

“It’s a very competitive talent market. Retaining our best people is a huge challenge.”

“The market is just so competitive. If you don’t constantly keep your folks engaged, you risk losing them.”

“Making sure that our people are highly engaged and getting what they need in terms of roles and clarity.”

“We’re always facing budget and staffing challenges. The organization is growing rapidly, and we need to grow with it.”

SALES INSIGHT: If a prospect claims to have too many initiatives, how do we move to the front of the line? Tie recognition to culture and keeping their best people.

PRODUCT INSIGHT: How do we make Culture Cloud so engaging that HR can’t wait to launch it? Make and keep great UX/UI a top priority.  

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What challenges do you face in your role? (specific to recognition)

• Budget
• Ineffective recognition
• Vendor mark-up
• Getting people to recognize more often

“There are few opportunities that every single employee has at their fingertips when it comes to recognition.”

“Budgeting limits how I can communicate and evangelize our employee recognition tool.”

“If there’s a big award or a big ceremony, scripted and put together, then people stand up and take notice. But day-to-day, it amazes me how we’re bogged down by work to get people to take the time to recognize.”

“You have to remind your leaders to walk the floors, to talk to their people. If they see someone doing a good job, recognize them in public, but more importantly, drive the behavior by saying, ‘This is what we mean when we say X.’”

“We know our current vendor is not performing, and we need something more exciting, more innovative—something that will really engage our employees.”

“The difficulty right now is just selecting the right program, the right vendor. But we do it as a team, and that can get complicated.”

INSIGHT: Never underestimate the power of reassurance—that they’re choosing the right product, and that we’re the right partner.

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What types of risks do you face in your role?

• People moving too fast
• Lack of communication
• Leaders not developing their people
• Financial risks
• Employee privacy

“Sometimes people just don’t take the time to think through things. Then when they make a mess, HR is called in to clean it up.”

“When we promote someone and we don’t post the role, we risk people wondering how someone got selected.”

“If leaders don’t have that future lens, the people will likely leave for a place that does. Or they’ll be stuck with them and very soon, the people will be outdated.”

“When you’re dealing with highly compensated physicians, you never want to get on their bad side.”

“In dealing with employees, there are always a lot of risks. So we look at ways to increase retention and develop and recognize so our people will stay and we can all continue to do good work.”

“We deal with confidential data, which is our employee data.”

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What types of risks do you face in your role specific to recognition?

• Recognition impact
• Tax compliance
• Privacy issues

“Tailoring the recognition to the employee. Making sure everyone gets the recognition that’s most meaningful to them.”

“It’s important to understand what your team sees as recognition, and how often they need it to stay motivated. When that’s not there, when your people don’t feel valued, you run the risk losing them.”

The biggest risks are the ones associated with taxes. When it comes to how employees are recognized, in the corporate governance of that, it’s really the big risk.”

“Just making sure that we don’t have any privacy breaches or anything like that.”

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What problems do you face that obstruct your operational and functional goals or objectives?

• Conflicting/confusing priorities
• Changing org structures
• Inadequate resources

“We’ve moved to a matrix organization, so we’re working on maybe 5 different things at the same time, with almost as many masters. You have your boss telling you something but your client telling you something else, and sometimes that causes confusion.”

“We changed the number of levels we had in the organization, so that’s made people very uncomfortable. A new way of working definitely slows you down.”

“Recognition is almost always seen as a supplemental thing. It doesn’t get the time and attention it needs. If my leaders were more engaged in rewards and recognition, we’d be a lot farther along with it.”

“Resources is probably our biggest constraint. And we do have some technology constraints.”

“We don’t have enough resources to support all of the key priorities.”

INSIGHT: To help recognition program owners get “the time and attention they need” from their leaders, we can provide case studies, client testimonials, and data on the effectiveness of employee recognition.

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What problems do you face that obstruct your personal and performance goals?

• Delivering more (or better) with less
• Lack of time
• Size and complexity of the organization
• Getting alignment on recognition as a top priority

“A big challenge is how to be creative, with limited resources, and still deliver excellence while balancing some of the other limitations or guardrails?”

“My leadership doesn’t value rewards and recognition as much. So this leaves me with little time to do a lot of strategic planning.”

“Time, bandwidth, and the scope and breadth of the organization. It’s a relatively flat organization, so even with 4 direct reports, it feels like the other 45 indirect reports are coming at me on a daily basis as well.”

“In an organization that’s big, just getting people to agree.”

What obstacles to your business goals does your organization face?

• Demand for talent
• Employee retention
• Too many priorities
• Misalignment
• Lack of budget
• Government regulation

“There’s a war for talent—that’s a challenge across the board, and that’s why recognition and creating a sense of belonging is so important.”

“We’re a big business with different lines of work, and everyone has different and competing priorities. Combine that with limited time and resources, you can only get so much done.”

“In the healthcare industry, the huge number of alliances and partnerships and government regulations make it complex.”

“At an enterprise level, there is a misunderstanding around the effectiveness and opportunity of our current recognition platform.”

“Because we don’t have a dedicated corporate budget for this, we haven’t used our tools to their full capacity. And our leaders then make judgments based on compromised experiences.”

“In the current hiring climate, finding the right number of the right type of people to bring into the organization is a challenge.”

“Right now, we have an employee retention issue.”

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How do you tie your purchase process to larger company goals or initiatives?

“We’re required to look at using small or local businesses—particularly businesses of color—first. For large purchases, where the odds are not as good, we have a procurement process to help with that.”

“If turnover is high enough, and the cost of complaints is high enough, and there’s a product to resolve or prevent these things, then the price isn’t usually a problem.”

“Well, we know that ‘you get what you pay for,’ so we explain that, this is what this product or platform is going to give us, and here’s the return for that.”

“Productivity and efficiency targets are a big part of our strategic priorities. Strategic procurement people help us with that because they have very specific goals for finding and dealing with new vendors.”

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What strategic factors (e.g., business expansion, competencies, cultural fit) impact the purchase decision process?

“Number one: Quality.”

“The product quality has to be high. Customer reviews—what other customers have to say about it and the return on their investment.”

“Implementation and price kinda go together. Price is always last for us. It’s important, but not nearly as important as quality.”

“Our available budget and our ability to integrate our internal systems with external vendors.”

“Our strategic priorities include being streamlined and adding efficiency to the bottom line and productivity numbers.”

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What financial factors (e.g., revenue growth, cost containment) impact your purchase decision process?

“Budget. It’s not really financial if we have to adhere to certain regulations, but I’d say budget and systems.”

“It goes back to managing expenses and reducing costs.”

“None, really. We’re in a good spot financially as an organization, so it wouldn’t be an issue to fund something that is worth it.”

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What operational factors (e.g., workflow efficiency, productivity) impact your purchase decision process?

“Systems integration.”

“Certain state laws for procurement and things like RFPs. Also, our security protocols that all vendors have to meet—they’re pretty stringent.”

“Just the implementation of the product.”

“Any new products or services have to fit into how we operationalize the relationship and what we require as an organization."

What unique language or vocabulary (e.g., keywords, phrases) is commonly used in your job role or industry to describe needs, pain points, initiatives, and challenges?

“We use a lot of acronyms it’s sort of pea soup of letters sometimes.”

“It’s just ‘How do we build a sense of belonging?’”

“Building a ‘sense of connection.’”

“We have a whole group or strategy that’s called the NWoW, which stands for New Ways of Working.”

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How do you use internet searches to learn about market trends, vendors, or products (e.g., keywords about an industry problem or initiative, a specific product/technology category, or a particular vendor)?

“We’d be looking in keywords for solutions.”

“We’ll do an internet search, reach out to the vendor for more information and a presentation, and then we’ll go from there.”

“A lot of times the vendors come to us."

What problems does your current recognition system solve?

• Lack of recognition
• Lack of peer recognition
• Lack of engagement
• Weak service anniversary programs
• Improves Agile workflow

“We know people are working really hard and they’re bringing their best to work every day, so we wanted to recognize that.”

“We wanted employees to know it’s not just what a leader tells you behind closed doors. Your peers recognize good work and they should be able to reward you for that.”

“We defined the behavior we wanted to recognize, and asked people to call it out every time they see it. So today, I can recognize you for that. Our platform engages our people to help us reinforce great work.”

“Our vendor, BI Worldwide, is really our dedicated subject matter expert when it comes to all things employee engagement.”

“In an Agile environment, leaders have big teams and sometimes forget to recognize people, and people were starting to feel like a number.”

“Our new vendor drives our service anniversary programs, building and automating them so now they essentially run themselves.

What alternative solutions did you consider?

• Different vendors
• Greater customization
• Trips

“A way to give everyone a similar experience they could get excited about, and from there we looked at a variety of vendors.”

“The conversation went multiple ways, we explored whether we should customize it or if people would like other things.”

“There was a lot of brainstorming: ‘Do we want to completely change this up? Do we go with different vendors? Do we start giving people trips?’”

INSIGHT: Note how broadly HR directors and managers are looking for solutions to keep programs from going stale. Fresh, even surprising, solutions are well received.

What elements comprise your current recognition program?

• On-the-spot recognition
• Peer recognition without points
• Peer recognition with points
• Service anniversaries/milestones
• Corporate rewards program (annual CEO award)
• Business unit rewards programs (quarterly awards)

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What problem is your current recognition system trying to solve? How well does it do that?

• Employee retention
• Employee engagement
• Move from a regional to a global, company-wide effort

“Ours was intended to simplify recognition for everyone, everywhere. Say I’m a manager in one country and I’d like to recognize someone in another, factoring in different tax laws, etc. We now have a clear process for recording everything, so it really has achieved that goal."

Which elements of your current solution work well? Which don’t?

Works

• Global functionality    
• Regional fulfillment

Doesn’t work

• IT infrastructure
• No direct API integration
• No real-time employee data
• Customer support
• Lack of partnership

“If employees leave or transfer to different work locations, we’re always a week behind on that data. That causes a lot of issues.”

“We easily spend over a million annually. And I don’t believe we get that level of support. They nickel and dime us for any sort of change and their account management team seems disorganized.”

“With other vendors, it’s more of a partnership where they understand the business and don’t try to sell you unnecessary things. We’ve been with our current rep for three years, and every email is trying to get someone’s information so she can sell to another part of our business. It’s not the right approach.”

INSIGHT: Those who administer the program are our “canary in the coal mine” and will alert us to issues before the issues get too big. If we keep them happy, we keep their bosses happy.

What else do you wish your current solution could do?

“Our budgets expire at the end of the quarter, so my team has to run reports and remind people to use their points. I wish our system could do that.”

“What we really need is the ability for users to customize. Think of Microsoft Forms, or SurveyMonkey, or any tools that let you build things on your own.”

“I wish we could avoid the constant back and forth with the vendor—requesting, building, testing, fixing. I wish more of it was self-serviced. If I want to build out something, I should be able to do that, easily."

Are you the key sponsor or champion for the purchase of a product, service, or solution?

“If what we have wasn’t working, it would fall on HR’s plate to replace or fix it—me and eight others—with the Senior VP of HR.

“Yes, I was the key sponsor, meaning the one running things.”

“Yes, I managed the process.”

“No, I wouldn’t be the key sponsor. The key sponsor would be the CFO, or possibly the controller.”

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Do you make the final decision for the purchase of a product, service, or solution?

“The CHRO makes the final decision on this.”

“The Head of Total Rewards and Compensation is the decision-maker.”

“Normally, because we’re such a large organization, we’ll have a small committee evaluate the vendors and the RFPs, and I would lead that committee.”

“I’m one of the key decision-makers, but I’m not the final decision-maker.”

INSIGHT: While HR directors and managers don’t make the final decision, they often play an important role early in the process, researching and recommending the initial list of vendors to consider. It may be beneficial to tailor marketing to this group because more senior members of the buying committee engage less with marketing campaigns and instead often follow the recommendations of those who do the research.

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Do you use the purchased product, service, or solution on a day-to-day basis?

“Yes. And as an employee, I’d be a user, as well.

“Yep, me and our 46,000 employees.”

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Do you handle procurement and negotiation, or manage the settling of terms, conditions, and pricing?

“No, our procurement department does that.”

“No, it’s a specialist from the procurement team, to just ensure that we check off all the boxes acquiring a new vendor. They’re there at the beginning.”

“Procurement will have a checklist of things that we need to ask or be mindful of in sourcing a new vendor.”

“Before any vendor is approved, they go through a vetting process and get a vendor code and all of that.”

“Not by myself. A team of nine of us is very involved until it’s turned over to procurement, and our supply chain folks, too.”

“No. I’m involved in the process, but I rely on my strategic sourcing partners and our legal team for that.”

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In what key stages of the purchasing process do you play an advisory role?

“In the initial stages, I play an advisory role whittling down the number of vendors we put forward.”

“I think all of us on that team will play advisor if we have personal experience with the platform or firsthand knowledge of it.”

“I own that process and would advise whoever is making the decision, providing the background and reasons to switch vendors.”

What is the purchase decision process at your organization (e.g., discovery, evaluation, commitment)?

“If I have somebody who’s already an accepted vendor, and I know them, I won’t look much further. It’s so much more work and time to set up someone new.”

“Our leadership team starts the process, and our executive director of global compensation programs has the final decision, with the oversight of our VP.”

“I did the legwork for the demos, built the decks and the business case, and presented it to my VP. So, at my level, we had full trust to make those decisions and take the reins with their oversight.”

“It was a large effort to source our current rewards and recognition vendor. I worked with our HR operations team and our HR information systems team. Our IT team ensured the vendor met our security and information protection requirements. Our payroll and tax teams ensured that from an employee pay perspective, we were keeping all this in mind. And the procurement team helped make sure we followed the right steps to vet a vendor in an ethical and responsible way.”

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Who’s involved in the buying process? Who has decision rights? Who influences?

• Executive director (decision)
• Senior vice president (influence)
• Vice president (influence)
• HR directors (influence), Operations and Governance
• HR IT team (influence)
• HR information systems team (influence)
• Tax team (influence)
• Strategic sourcing team (influence)
• Procurement (influence)

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Did you engage a consultant or other external parties to inform or validate the decision?

“No.” (majority)

“We did not, as far as I know, engage any other consultants.”

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What was the catalyst for your buying process? What problem were you trying to solve?

“Negative feedback through our employee surveys.”

“A bad experience with our vendor, but we were also at risk because we had no corporate governance around reward and recognition.”

“Our CEO sent an email to all 28,000 employees: “I just got an email from a nurse that said this business doesn’t feel the same anymore, she’s resigning, and she’s going to work for another company.” That opened a lot of discussion. We had to do something.”

“We needed to reduce turnover.”

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Please rank your involvement in the discovery (early) phase of the buying process from 1 to 5.

Avg: 4.5

Range: 4–5

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Please rank your involvement in the evaluation (middle) phase of the buying process, 1 to 5.

Avg: 4.5

Range: 4–5

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Please rank your involvement in the commitment (final) phase of the buying process, 1 to 5.

Avg: 3.7

Range: 3-5

What strategic factors (e.g., business growth, competencies, cultural fit) drove your purchase decision process?

“How much could the vendor drive this for us versus how much work would we have to do ourselves. Particularly, for service anniversaries.”

“Finding a vendor that saw there was an opportunity to grow with us. We weren’t going to be a Nike or a Starbucks. We wanted to start small and scale from there.”

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What financial factors (e.g., revenue growth, cost containment) drove your purchase decision process?

“The biggest factor was our budget—we didn’t have to nickel and dime this purchase.”

“We were lucky because my business was ready to fund it, so that wasn’t a big fight.”

“Understanding the markup aspect of points. And ensuring that we weren’t buying something that wouldn’t benefit us in the long run.”

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What operational factors (e.g., workflow efficiency, productivity) impacted your purchase decision process?

“Really understanding the backend support of the tool was important.”

“There’s a huge workforce behind this on the vendor side, as they’re one of the biggest players in the business. So it feels like I always have support.” (BI Worldwide client)

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How do you evaluate vendors to choose one over another?

• Capability and experience
• Ability to solve a problem
• Ability to operate with our current systems
• Customer support
• Reputation
• Strategic thought leadership
• Technology
• Global presence
• Cost

“Understanding what we need to do as a culture. That’s number one.”

“Some of them are startups, and somebody has to vouch for them.”

“Can they get us strategically where we want to be?”

“If they’re not able to work with our current systems, that’d be a dealbreaker. We don’t need another system that doesn’t talk to other systems.”

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How important is post-purchase support in your decision? How do you evaluate a provider’s ability to provide ongoing support?

“It’s important, particularly in the implementation phase. We evaluate their performance against their agreed timeframe. We look at their data integrity. And a soft performance metric would be how quickly they get back to us when we identify problems.”

“We need to know that they aren’t just going to sell this to us and then drop us off. We’ll fight to terminate the contract immediately if that happens.”

“After a year, we do a review. If the support has been good, we’ll usually continue.”

“We always start new vendors with a one-year contract. If it goes really well, we’ll sign a three-year contract.”

“100% important! Throughout the RFP process, we ask if they can meet requirements and how we’re going to sustain a program.”

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Is it important or helpful to understand the provider’s long-term plans for the offering? How would you want the provider to share that information with you?

“Certainly. If they’re going to make a big change or have a timeline for enhanced functionality, that’d be important.”

“Definitely important.”

“A 100% ‘yes.’ We like to know what’s on the roadmap. What are the future trends? We want ongoing reviews of the program.”

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How important is a provider’s reputation for corporate social responsibility in your decision process?

“We want to make sure the third parties they engage fit with our corporate ethics.”

“Very, very important.”

“It’s important, but it doesn’t usually influence the RFP process.”

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Do you consider the provider’s supply chain and distribution partners when making a purchase decision? If so, how?

“Yes, it’s part of our whole due diligence that we look at third-party suppliers, in terms of any privacy or security issues. If it’s fulfillment of symbolic awards, we want to know if that company can do custom solutions.”

“Not particularly.”

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How do you justify your recommended vendor to move the purchase through the approval process?

“We’d look at overall cost, speed of implementation, return on investment, and the employee experience of the solution.”

“Once we’ve made the choice, we set them up with procurement, so they get that done very quickly and go through legal very quickly.”

“We create a recommendation with our rationale, and our senior HR leadership team vets the business case.”

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Can you think of instances in which gaining approval for a purchase was more difficult than you expected? Why was it difficult?

“Nearly all the time.”

“Being part of such a large organization with so many cooks in the kitchen, we have so many different layers. We have an IT layer, an HR layer, a finance layer, a procurement layer. And each one of them need specific information, so I think we do it to ourselves.”

“When you have a group of nine people that has to agree on a direction, and go through all of this process, it’s challenging just to get us all together. We’ll need several hours. That’s always hard, with so much going on.”

“We even made a decision, we had the green light, but it got delayed and had to be reprioritized. So that complicated things.”

INSIGHT: Most HR directors and managers have not gone through the process of buying an employee recognition solution before and will be unaware of the internal pitfalls, surprises, and stops and starts of their own buying process. We can be very helpful and gain trust by coaching them about what to anticipate. It can also serve as a dress rehearsal of how it will be to work with us. Remember, the most helpful vendor usually wins the business.

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How do you tie your purchase process to larger company goals or initiatives?

“I see the purchase process more as a renewal, implementing with a new vendor. We need to align to our ambition 2025 goals, which include building a winning culture. Part of that is amplifying recognition.”

“We tie it into our current goals and initiatives. And we correlate how this platform and this new agreement is going to address them.”

“If we’re under a certain dollar amount, we’re required to use local or small business vendors. That’s the one that springs to mind. But it didn’t apply in this case.”

Do you strongly prefer (or dislike) particular products or providers?

“There’s not one that sticks out as being so horrible that I would never implement it.”

“Having gone through an RFP, yeah, there were some I was not impressed by. And we were honest and had debrief sessions with all of them.”

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Do you have strong feelings about how providers in this category have responded to your needs?

“I wish a vendor could give me everything I need to meet all my criteria: strategic thought leadership, experience, people that have been doing this for a long time.”

“The vendors have been pretty responsive to our needs. I think it’s a feel-good category and our experience has been generally positive.”

“There’s been great progress. Most of the vendors we look at, that can do what we need, have really ramped up in terms of technology.”

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Do you have any trust issues or frustrations with the buying process?

“Not really. It helps that we ask clear questions.”

“The vendors, because they want our business, are very good about giving us information that we need.”

“The complexity of our organization is the frustration.”

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What category-specific sources do you rely on?

“Talking to others in our category is huge, and that’s why I’m here at the O.C. Tanner IG Conference.”

“What we found with RPI is that usually their advice is for companies smaller than us—it’s not apples to apples”

“Peer organizations. If one of them implements an employee recognition system, we know they’ve gone through the process, we know that vendor has met their security requirements, and we get honest answers about their experience."

In the discovery (early) phase of the purchase decision process, what type of content—or contact—informs or influences your thinking most?

• Vendor websites
• Testimonials
• Case studies with problem/solution
• Reporting demos
• ROI calculators
• Best (and next) practices
• Informal conversations with vendors

“We find that vendors promise the moon in presentations, so we prefer additional case studies from similar organizations. That’s more helpful in the early stages.”

INSIGHT(S): Marketers should continuously provide a broad range of relevant and compelling case studies, so buying committees can find success stories “from similar organizations.” And HR directors and managers are the most receptive group to target.

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In the evaluation (middle) phase of the purchase decision process, what type of content—or contact—informs or influences your thinking most?

• Market research
• RFP preparation
• RFP answers/information

“Our sourcing guidelines say we should go through an RFP process at least every 5 years to make sure we’re in line with the industry and what we need to do internally.”

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In the commitment (final) phase of the purchase decision process, what type of content—or contact—informs or influences your thinking most?

• White papers
• Testimonials
• Demos
• ROI calculators
• Conversations with vendor

“When I bring in procurement or legal or IT, they have all kinds of different questions, so just being able to reach someone easily.”

“Demos help, but more than the tool piece I think is someone who’s well-informed and can talk you through some of that stuff, that’s definitely helpful.”

“Nothing in writing per se, because we have to complete our due diligence process—the information security, privacy, all those things. Can this vendor support us in doing that?”

INSIGHT: We have an opportunity to make our buying process easier than our competitors’. It’s always worth learning where the pain points with competitors exist in the buying process.

Where do you start your search for information when considering a purchase (e.g., search engine, vendor website, industry website, industry peers)?

• Google
• Vendor websites
• Review sites
• Industry peers

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How do you compare similar products?

• Functionality
• Systems interoperability
• Customer service
• Ease of integration
• RFP scorecard
• Vendor references
• Cost (if all else is equal)

“Deciding between products, we’ll try to get a little more granular with functionality. We’d also look at systems interoperability, customer service, and security.”

“We have very specific criteria to evaluate each vendor and make our decision.”

“That’s what the RFP is all about.”

“We ask the vendors to give us references.”

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How do you prefer to receive or interact with vendors’ marketing and promotions (e.g., email, direct mail, high-impact mailers, phone call)?

• email (majority)
• don’t call us, we’ll call you

“It’s mainly email. Because then I can get to it whenever.”

“We get so many emails that we don’t pay attention to a lot of them. But when I’m looking, if it’s concise and the solution is clear, then that works.”

“I have relationships with most of our vendors, as well as others we’ve considered in the RFP. So just an email is fine.”

“As long as you’re succinct and put your information out there in a few different ways so it’s easy to find, that’s what matters most.”

“We prefer to reach out to vendors because we have so many vendors reaching out to us.”

“We’re constantly bombarded. So normally, we’ll define a need and then we’ll solicit more information from industry leaders.”

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What triggers a response to a marketing message (e.g., relevant to my job role, an initiative I’m working on, or a problem I’m facing)?

“Just knowing when they administer some of your solutions, that’s definitely helpful. That’s kind of what triggers a response really.”

“If it’s something targeted and it makes sense that I talk to them, they’d get a response.”

“If it specifically addresses one or more of our needs.”

“A very simple email about something relevant to us.”

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Do you prefer to meet with a vendor’s salesperson or sales team by phone, video conference, or in person?

“If we get to that point, then in person”

“In person would be the preference, if possible. Video would be a close second.”

“A call on Teams or another video call is good.”

“The best meetings are often lunches. If you say, ‘Let’s have lunch or coffee and discuss this, and I only need an hour.’ That type of thing, it works.”

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What prompts you to take a meeting with a vendor sales rep (e.g., recommendation by a direct report, boss’s suggestion, significant financial investment, or high risk)?

“Are your solutions creative? Do you offer something that five other companies don’t? Or even if it’s similar, can you make it easier for me?”

“Their initial ability to solve a specific problem that we’re experiencing.”

“Information about success with comparable institutions is always helpful before we have a meeting.”

“Good interactions over email or phone can lead to a meeting.”

INSIGHT: Focusing on how we can meet the specific needs of prospects better than competition is a more effective approach than talking about our strengths in general.

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What does a salesperson do to win your trust (e.g., demonstrate expertise in my industry or company, show they care about my success, cultivate a personal relationship with me)?

• Honesty
• Listening
• Responsiveness
• Transparency
• Clarity

“Just be honest and upfront. Don’t tell me, ‘Oh, we can do it, we can do it.’ And then later, ‘but there’s an additional charge.’”

“It’s critical to be candid with what’s possible and not possible.”

“Some vendors generalize. They don’t really listen to your issue. Understanding and demonstrating that you understand is extremely important.”

“Being responsive, being transparent, admitting to strengths and potential weaknesses of the solution. That’s always refreshing.”

“Just be transparent, be able to answer the question, and follow up if needed.”

“Be very clear. If you speak in circles or you’re not knowledgeable about your product, that’s a big problem.”

INSIGHT: Note that Honesty is at the top of prospects’ list. Trust is critical for success. Greater candor and knowledge than competitors pay off.

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Besides the sales rep, which other vendor representatives (e.g., product manager, solutions specialist, executive) do you meet with during the purchase decision process?

• Back-end/Tech expert
• Software solutions manager
• Implementation manager/team
• Client support team
• Product manager

“We want the one that’s very knowledgeable of the product and can speak to it in detail.”

“I like to hear ‘I’m bringing these two people because they’re experts in this area.’ That’s smart because then they’re geared for the questions we have.”

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What type of group interactions (e.g., webinars, seminars, conferences) do you find impactful during the purchase process?

“Conferences are great because you actually get to speak to the experts and talk to other people and network with people that are in roles like mine.”

“A demonstration of the solution itself is always helpful, and a demonstration with our data or our test data is the best.”

“It’s not as useful to look at someone else’s solution that’s already been built.”

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What third-party influencers (e.g., industry analysts, consultants) do you interact with during the purchase decision process? Which ones are most impactful?

• Consultants
• Peers at other companies
• Similar organizations

“We worked with McKinsey this year to look at renewing performance and recognition, best practices.”

“In terms of third party, we’re mostly looking at experiences from comparative organizations or organizations of the same size.”

INSIGHT: Third-party consultants are a growing part of the buying process. Find out early on whether or not a third-party is part of the buying team. If so, get with them early to avoid surprises toward the end of the process.

What professional associations do you belong to? Do you listen to or follow any industry peers, authors, bloggers, or analysts to support your purchasing process, and would you recommend any to colleagues?

• SHRM
• RPI (Recognition Professionals International)
• DMAC, a disability management consortium
• AHA (American Hospital Association)

“I follow Zenger Folkman and Marc Effron.”

“On LinkedIn I follow peers. Analysts, not so much.”

“Yes, but I don’t use them to support the purchase process, just sort of for general knowledge.”

“If I saw something on LinkedIn and I participated in something and I really liked what I was hearing then it would probably influence my purchasing in terms of learning more. But it wouldn’t determine my purchase decision.”

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What conferences or events do you attend and why?

• SHRM conferences
• Vendor conferences
• The Center for Creative Leadership

“Definitely the SHRM conferences, to network, see what’s new, and stay ahead of the curve.”

“We attend a human resources kind of consortium, once a year, where HR professionals get together.”

“I have a recognition roundtable with our competitors.”

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Do you go to vendor websites and, if so, why?

“If I find what I think might be a solution, I’ll go to a vendor website to get more information and see about bringing a vendor representative in for an initial presentation.

“Yes, 100%. Because depending on the vendor, they have great strategic insights there.”

“The better providers do a lot of white papers, so, yes, it’s a source.”

“Once they’re a vendor, no. We have a contact person and she’s fantastic. If we have any issues or glitches, then she’s the one I reach out to.”

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Do you participate in or belong to any online communities or forums (e.g., LinkedIn groups)?

• LinkedIn (majority)
• AHA forum
• Unleash (UK-based HR forum)
• Twitter

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In which social networks are you active for business purposes (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest)?

“LinkedIn, primarily.”

“We kind of follow LinkedIn. It’s really good because we use them as a resource.”

“Just LinkedIn.”

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How do you use social media when making your purchase decisions?

“I don’t use social for that.”

“If it’s someone I’m not connected to but they’re using a vendor of interest and they say, ‘Hey, we got great results,’ that’s helpful.”

“I’d definitely connect on LinkedIn to get more details and just create a conversation around it.”

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Which trade journals or publications do you read?

• Harvard Business Review
• Center for Creative Leadership
• Talent Q
• Marc Effron
• Inc.com
• Bloomberg
• SHRM HR magazine

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Do you consider channel partners (e.g., resellers, systems integrators, distributors) useful resources for gathering information, advice, or recommendations? If so, how do you use them when considering a purchase?

“No.” (majority)”

“We normally don’t for projects of this size.”

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What sources do you trust?

• Organizations of similar size
• Organizations in same category
• HR leaders at those organizations
• Internal partners

“Our internal partners. We have some very specialized privacy people and strategic sourcing. We rely on them for sure.”

“I would trust Bloomberg and US News”

“Business bureaus.”

INSIGHT: Another reminder that case studies and referrals from “companies like us” (size, scope, category, philosophical approach, and results) are effective in moving the buying process forward.