Selling to HR: recruiters and CHROs live in different realities

This summary follows the source workbook, “5 HR & Recruitment”. Pains, greatest fears, proof requirements, time horizons and preferred routes are condensed from its original fields.

Recruitment cost savings matter to a recruiter when they help produce suitable applicants and shorter vacancy cycles. The same savings may do little for an HR manager if implementation lands extra work on a stretched team. For an HR director, the proposal becomes persuasive when its contribution to broader business outcomes can be defended to the executive team.

For a CHRO, the question widens: does this help talent, succession and leadership, or create another programme with no ownership in the line? The People & Culture lead looks at whether a more efficient process will undermine employee experience or cultural identity. All five may agree with the financial assumptions yet judge the result differently.

Evidence should therefore not be a generic appendix. It connects a specific claim to the uncertainty the buyer is trying to resolve.

Recruiters work with open vacancies, candidates dropping out and hiring managers demanding results. The source profile links those pressures to reactive sourcing and an undifferentiated employer story. It also records strong approach motivation (BAS 8), lower inhibition (BIS 4) and the highest short-term preference in the HR set (k 0.45).

Do not lead with a twelve-month transformation roadmap. Show a comparable vacancy, quality or time-to-hire outcomes and a light initial trial. Someone who sees useful early results may become an internal supporter, but the card also notes that larger systems and agency spend are escalated to HR leadership.

“We already use job boards and agencies” is an invitation to demonstrate incremental value, not to repeat product features.

The HR manager holds operations together with a relatively small team and many requests from line managers. The card mentions fragmented systems, administration and tools that fail to gain adoption. The greatest fear is choosing something that line managers do not use and having to justify the mistake to management.

BIS 6, BAS 5 and k 0.20 sit alongside a very practical question: how much additional implementation work will this require? Offer a reference from a comparable HR team, explain how managers will adopt the process and show exactly which tasks the customer must still complete.

A good-looking demo without a plausible adoption plan does not address the biggest concern.

The HR director wants HR to be recognised as a strategic partner rather than a cost centre. The source profile describes difficulty defending HR investments, a need for strategic recognition and anxiety that a weak case could cost the function its budget.

BIS 6, BAS 6 and k 0.15 fit a role that weighs opportunity and defensibility within annual planning cycles. Specify which HR KPIs move, how that connects to business outcomes, what the research supports and what finance will need to accept the argument.

The strongest material is often not a sales presentation. It is a concise, transferable argument the HR director can present without the supplier in the room.

The CHRO oversees talent strategy, leadership, culture and organisational change. The card flags slow adaptation, transformation programmes without line ownership and the risk of harming culture or reputation.

BIS 7, BAS 5 and k 0.08 represent the strongest long-horizon, risk-aware profile in this HR set. A recruitment case study alone is unlikely to carry an enterprise-wide decision. Use research, board-level references, senior guidance, phased deployment, ownership and evaluation milestones.

Ask which strategic priority the initiative serves and which risks the executive team needs to contain. A CHRO needs to know not only whether something works, but whether it can keep working responsibly at scale.

The broad profile places People & Culture close to founders and growing teams. Rapid onboarding, inexperienced managers and disappearing rituals put cultural coherence under pressure. The greatest fear is a bigger organisation that has lost its people and distinctive culture.

With BIS 5, BAS 7 and k 0.30, opportunities to develop people can be attractive, provided the approach fits the company’s pace. Show employee experience, scale-up references, cultural fit and a way to involve the team in the decision.

A standard corporate rollout can trigger resistance even when the product works. Evidence must demonstrate that more structure does not automatically mean a less human organisation.

The values below come directly from rows 44 to 46 of the HR source card. BIS and BAS use the internal 0-10 role-profile scale; k uses its own source scale. They support interpretation alongside the remaining card fields and are not individual test results, purchase probabilities or brain scans.

A recruiter sees results in individual vacancies. An HR manager feels the implementation workload every day. An HR director has to defend outcomes in the annual plan. People & Culture sees progress in teams and culture. A CHRO thinks across multiple years and organisational systems. The right proof therefore differs not only in quantity but in the order in which it matters.

Within the source framework, a higher k is associated with a stronger preference for earlier outcomes; a lower k with a longer horizon. That is not a direct measure of approval speed. A CHRO can approve a multi-year initiative quickly, while a recruiter may wait months for authorisation to buy a platform.

Confusing time horizon with purchasing authority creates the wrong message and the wrong sales process.

Consider a fictional platform combining recruitment, onboarding and leadership insights. The supplier uses one proposition with everyone: “More control over your people and processes in one platform.” It sounds relevant to all five, but their first questions will differ.

Recruiter: “Will I find better candidates and reduce drop-off this week?” HR manager: “Who will implement this, and will our line managers actually use it?” HR director: “How can I demonstrate an impact on retention, cost or productivity?” CHRO: “What does this mean for organisation design, leadership and risk in three years?” People & Culture: “Will our culture remain recognisable, and will employees benefit?”

This is an illustrative sales scenario, not a verbatim research transcript. The questions are editorial translations of the original profiles.

Before the first message, ask who owns the problem and who can approve the solution. Then look at the job to be done, decision horizon and current alternatives. A single HR proposition can serve several stakeholders without beginning with the same claim and the same proof for all of them.

These are editorial examples derived from the source cards, not tested winning copy. A specific product and sector require their own validation.

With bigger HR purchases, the problem owner, sponsor, budget holder, user and final approver may all be different people. A recruiter can surface demand without being authorised to buy an HRIS. An HR manager can run a pilot but need an HR director’s budget approval. A CHRO can sponsor strategy while People & Culture and team leads test cultural fit.

Build a simple buying-group map: who experiences the problem, who checks the evidence, who bears implementation risk, who owns budget and who can block the decision? Then sequence your contact and evidence accordingly. A coherent core claim can be demonstrated differently to each stakeholder; five conflicting promises will undermine the purchase.

The recruiter may value this week’s result. The HR manager needs workload relief without new implementation trouble. The HR director needs a defensible contribution to company outcomes. The CHRO needs a responsible long-term path. People & Culture needs growth that strengthens people and culture.

Sending all five the same HR pitch treats five different uncertainties as one. Effective B2B communication starts not with changing the title above an old deck, but with the question each role must answer and the evidence that makes the answer meaningful.