What's Your Pain?

Just like Ice-T said, pimpin' ain't easy, man (origin disputed). You have stuff to sell-stuff that really helps companies attract, hire and retain employees at a time in history when doing so is the single most significant threat facing companies (big and small).

But the buyer is confused. Whether the dude is a Harvard-MBA-golf-on-the-weekends-and-sometimes-during-the-week-three-years-from-retirement-CFO or a school-of-hard-knocks-20-years-with-the-company.. everyone-loves-Darrell-VP of HR, he is confused by the wild menagerie of human capital software and services vendors beating down his door to deliver the next penicillin.

It's getting worse, too. Seems like everyday there's a new vendor in the human capital software and services market segment. Talent Management. Succession Planning. Human Resources Outsourcing. Recruitment Process Outsourcing. Assessment. Benefits. Train. Place. Compensation. Rings and things and fine array; And kiss me, Kate, we will be married o' Sunday.

Here's the deal. The only thing Darrell knows is that he has a problem.Usually, Darrell's problem has something to do with putting a bum in a seat and keeping it there (shout out to London). But all us marketers have come up with a million different fancy names for the problem. And we all read the same book and decided we should create a new category to dominate (cause that dude said if you can't lead a category create a new one) and so now there are a million different category labels to help with a million different problems. And because some dudes didn't read the book, they attached themselves to the categories that the more pedantic marketers made up in the first place. So now you have a million different vendors, in a million different categories, fixing a million different problems. If you're into permutations or combinations or Sudoku, that's 18 zeros on the end of the number you get when you multiply all that up. Damn.

So what's a Darrell to do? Same thing you would do - hide. Block and delete your emails from unknown sources. Screen your calls. Ignore your mail. Fan the magazines on the short table in your office, but never, never read them. Go to conferences, but avoid the expo floor (get drunk, gamble, say “what happens in Vegas…” 12 times, with a heavy slur on the last repetition). Laugh and die a little inside every time you hear a gotta-make-this-sale-cause-Jimmy-wants-a-Wii salesman use a jacked-up acronym like PPF (that's our proprietary implementation methodology… we call it putting people first… or PPF).

Bottom line? Everyone knows this whole “War for Talent” thing is the real deal (please shoot me in the head if I ever use that phrase again … another casualty in the War for Talent … the first televised-made-up-business-war), but it's unclear what to build or buy to solve the problem and who to build it with or buy it from. Darrell's inbox is full, and it's increasingly harder to break through the noise with a message and medium that engages him.

This whole market segment is set to blow up (in a good way, Old Man). But only a few companies are going to catch the wave.No-pimpin' ain't easy, but we can show you how. Just send us a blank check (preferably one of those big charity checks) and wait for a call. And stop blowing up my beeper (in a bad way-sheeeeesh, at least try to keep up).