Paul Noone is the CEO of HireIQ, the leading developer of talent acquisition technology for the customer contact market. Companies that have huge volumes of hires each year rely on HireIQ to prescreen their candidates and hire right. Greg invited Paul because he not only has a long and successful track record in enterprise sales (40 quarters worth) but also because Paul is a proven innovator. Join Paul and Greg as they unpack what enterprise software and technology companies must be doing to support what has become an asynchronous sales process- one where the buyer has already pre-qualified the seller before ever talking to a sales rep.
To use Paul's words, today things are "wildly different." By the time buyers engage, they mainly want to validate everything they have read, watched, and heard. That means content can't be marketing fluff. It needs to give buyers details, facts, and product experiences in order to build trust, digitally. Those that win this battle, find a buyer that in some ways is less aggressive in their approach. It's as if they know you already. And therefore, you get more time with the prospective buyers than your competition. To do this well, you have to do an even better job anticipating wants, needs, concerns, and challenges and the best job communicating how you address each of these, in a way that is convenient! This comes down to making sure you anticipate every question and provide the answers, digitally.
Connect:
Connect with Paul on LinkedIn and check out HireIQ's website.
Connect with Greg on LinkedIn and check out Omedym’s website and their LinkedIn and Twitter
Greg Dickinson: All right. Hey, welcome to another edition of the convenience economy today. I have an old friend of mine on the call named Paul Noone, Paul and I have known each other since 1997. We were together, at Ariba. And Paul was a salesman there. And Paul now runs his own company. And so before we get into the detail, that convenience economy, Paul, introduce yourself and tell people about higher IQ, what you guys are up to. It's so fascinating.
Paul Noone: Yeah, and Thanks, Greg, thanks, for the introduction. And it's been a long time actually, that we've known each other. Higher IQ is a virtual interviewing and predictive analytics company. So what does that mean? We for high volume hot hiring organizations, people do more than 1000 hires for a specific role each year. They want use us to aggregate information about those particular individuals that they're interested in interviewing and hiring. And we not only gather that information, determine whether they have the soft and hard skills that they use, but we can actually predict whether they're likely to succeed. So a lot of customers, particularly in the call center businesses, business process outsourcers, like Teleperformance award attento, those organizations use us in order to do sort of the heart the heavy lifting associated with iron. And imagine any one of those customers that Teleperformance hires close to 350,000 agents every year. So they know when they wake up in January 1, and they go, what do we have here, one of the things they don't want to do is actually interview 3.5 million people in order to staff those 350,000 people. So for us being able to do that asynchronously, wherever those people are across time zones, and not involve a person in those organizations until we know that they're capable of doing the job. They're oriented in the right way in terms of their emotional engagement, that they're demonstrating what we know will allow them to be successful. That's what we do. And that's what we've done since 2009. That's a lot of answer. Greg.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah. No, no, that'I mean, I love it. I mean, now you everyone on the phone knows why I asked Paul right, to be a part of this today. Because you know, that that that whole concept, right? You've been at it for a while, and some people will think, well, you just invented it because of COVID. Right? It's not it's this notion that that your The world has changed, right, the way we do things, you know, has fundamentally changed. So, you know, that's a great segway on what we're talking about. And this idea, that convenience economy, you've been in enterprise sales enterprise companies, since you know, 1997 Yeah. Have you think that our things change? Have they changed? You see a different buyer, a different kind of customer? Do they want to opt in, they you know, all those things that traditionally worked 15 years ago? What do you see today, Paul?
Paul Noone: Yeah, I love that you're only giving me I'm only been around for 15 years. And Greg, I started enterprise selling with a company called planning laboratories in 1983. So that's more like 40 years.
Greg Dickinson: Paul, come on. Half the audience doesn't know that enterprise existed then. Come on now.
Paul Noone: Think about that. That's like 160 quarters on, you know, our goal. Somebody has been looking at me for at least 160 quarters, on where are we versus the goal we've designed. And this has to be a theme for for your podcast. And that is that we are so different things are so wildly different now. And I think a sink is going to be my, my word of the day. In the old days. I mean, honestly, all the way back when I was a youngster, through all the time, we're at Ariba and frankly, not all that maybe 10 years ago, we're really still the experts. We were we the sales people were where you got all of the information. And frankly, that's what a lot of strength came and all, you know, interestingly enough to think about a lot of the sales techniques and the sale approaches were really related to, you know, how do you leverage what information you have? How do you set up the competition relative to your position? Why is it so important to be first or last in an RFP contest? But today, that's really not the case. customers. By the time the customers come to us, they know who our customers are, they know about our technology. They know more about the website sometimes than I do because I haven't been I've been recently reading it. It's the most interesting thing, that how much free work is done prior to spending time with the vendor. So, interestingly enough, I always feel like what by the time I'm talking to someone, they've actually pre qualified us to some extent. So we're in a different conversation. And we're really about trying to understand if they we have misrepresented something is it actually put some emphasis on some, some weight on the on the demonstration, because you really want to make sure that you can verify that everything that they've read is, in fact, exactly what we deliver. So, again, I think, initially, the first thought is, things are wildly different. Things are asynchronous things are happening behind the scenes that we're not aware of, we get some metrics from our website. But we don't always know which individuals are coming or that email is really the the same email that we are going to be talking to. And then all of that information being gathered, all that information has to anticipate what the question is that that particular person looking for. And then we have put it on the website in a meaningful way. It's, it's really a, you know, it's quite a bit of a difference than than we used to. Yeah.
Greg Dickinson: So agree, I couldn't agree more, right. I mean, I mean, all those things, you just hit on right in the strategy behind, you know, we want to demo last, we want to demo First, we want to do this want to do that. And who's the gatekeeper who's the influencer? Right. And now, you know, Paul, you know that some of the some of the statistics, you read some of the great research done by the gardeners, and the foresters, etc. say that, you know, 70% of the buying cycles are already done. And, gosh, there's 11 places they can go get data, go to Glassdoor and find anything about your company, your application, how you hire, they can go to a bunch of blogs, and find out about your industry and who the market leaders are, and what's important and what's not, they can find out where you failed, right? People are very willing to write down your thing. So I couldn't agree more that that, you know, it really is dramatically different that, you know, 10 years ago, we had all the cars, if you wanted to learn about you know, and I use the car analogy a lot, if you want to learn about a certain vehicle, you have to go to the dealer. Now you go on the web, you go to, you know, Edmunds and 14 other websites about the car, you know everything about the going to do and you just want to test drive, like, like, I'm here to validate whether I'm going to buy or not. So you send something else that's interesting, too. And that is that, you know, this this idea of, of the internet and information, you know, I think what what sometimes people forget is the fact that the internet service, buyers have access to the internet, too. Right. And they have quote unquote, tools at their disposal. And it was pretty interesting, a Gartner research showed that you only get as an enterprise company, you only get 17% of the buyers time during their journey. And what are your three providers, which all of them do at least three, right? That means that all noon, his company gets 6%? You buy that? You think that's accurate that you get 6% of the buyers time? Do you think you're getting to, you know, 90% of it?
Paul Noone: I don't agree with the 6%. You probably get 6% if you're gonna lose the deal. But I think that if you are going to win the deal that what they're doing is they're narrowing if they're talking to you, generally. So yeah, I guess depends on what that percentage is. But I believe that people quickly narrow or they're quickly validating what it is that they're looking for. And if you're meeting those objectives, they're going to give you a shot, and you may be you might be getting 94% growth, as opposed to 6%. And so maybe they give a head nod to something else that might look or feel like what they're doing. But they're really going to spend more time with them. I really don't feel like we get I don't feel like we get manipulated the way we used to as well. I feel like people give you a chance based on what you've what what work that you've done. And if you've done it the right way. And like I said, you don't have a lot of negativity associated with with your implementations, or the experience, then, you know, the journey goes well for you. Interestingly enough, Greg, I think this is relevant to this conversation, is that we get a whole lot of our business from individuals that have used the tool in a different capacity. So they were recruiters, they were part of a talent acquisition team and another group, they moved to another organization, and now they're pulling their hair out because this is not the way to, you know, to run a business. And so then they tell us, we'll tell them what we do. Some research goes on and then they come to us and say that from a trusted source. We understand that you are the vendor of choice in this particular situation. And I would say also that we've done everything we can to identify the space and to do everything in our power to, to, to fortify our tool in order to, to maintain sort of a leadership role. Yeah, everything we do with audio, everything we do with accessibility, everything that we do. And I tell people when the first time I'm talking, every conversation we have every engineering decision, every customer support problem that we saw, they're all related directly to the business that is related to whoever I'm talking to. So you know, a lot of that focus allows us to in and again, with, if you're, if you're coming to our site for the first time or hearing about us for the first time, it should be clear that we're in this high volume space. And we if you're hiring contact centers, your call center agents, man, you're going to talk to us, and it's likely that we're going to have a process that is favorable to making a great decision from your decision process. So there's a lot in there.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, no, no, listen for what we call that right in this convenience world, right? We live in, you know, the Amazon effect, if you will, right. What Amazon has done is they build digital trust, right? You trust that the price is going to be good, you trust that the service is going to be good, you trust the delivery is going to be there. You don't go talk to a salesperson you trusted. I think what you're walking through right now is, you know, 20 years ago, when you're selling you how to establish that trust, you did the old fashioned way went to lunch with dinner, had meetings went to their environment, you had the right speakers you had to have the right video, you had to have the right everything right, because you were trying to earn the trust in what you just described, is what is that flip that change that you've made it your company? Now you're establishing that trust digitally? Right, what you just said, the information they can get? I know, in fact, on your website, right, they're using a you're using a tool called Omedym, which is our tool, right, which is pretty cool. But it gives your people the chance to ask questions and get answers. That's what people want. You've given them the ability to understand you. And I think what you've established is a digital trust, right? The idea that, that now, people can get there, they want to be on demand, self service, and digital. And you've enabled that, Paul. So now when they do engage with you, they're much more knowledgeable and much more aware. And to your point, now all you're doing is proving out those things they've learned about you that they're true and authentic and real, right. That's what you've done.
Paul Noone: There's so much what you said about trust really strikes and actually I maybe hadn't even I we talk about it all the time. In the presentations and the way we introduce people the way we interact with inside the company, as well as outside the company that trust is really very important. I think that that that is 100% spot on, if you will. The other thing, Greg, and I think this comes to, you know, how we know each other, you know, professionally right now, from the Omedym introspection perspective, is that the way people interact with website and I do have this concern that we aren't keeping up with the way that people are thirsting or you know, are interested in and information. And it's so necessary to anticipate what somebody is asking what is what are people's most current, you know, concerns about either technology or the state of the world. You know, one of the interesting things is pre pre pandemic, we had 3.2% unemployment in the country, and what we are as a selection tool, which essentially narrows what candidates are going to spend time with. And so people would say, well, gosh, I don't mean something that's going to be an obstacle to, to hire. I really, but I want to make sure that I'm I'm giving everybody you know, I'm talking to everybody. In reality, that doesn't work, that it just never worked. So knowing more about somebody, and understanding whether they're going to win or succeed or fail is always important, even if you're just talking to one person. Yeah, that's important. Yeah. We now have a different problem. Now there are you at 1.2 or 52 million Americans looking for work at home employment, and a lot of work saying, well, I need a job. I don't want this job. I need to do something to keep the house over my head. But I don't think I'm going to be very good at being able to identify who those particular people were was something that we are skilled at. But Greg, there was nothing on the website that said there was you know, we've been working with the company since 2012, so being able to tell a story and be able to quickly work with somebody put up four different website, you know, for different, you know, articles that were related to that people would work with us. That was really important. But I think we're gonna have to move faster, we're gonna have to move, you know, it really in a way that we can update the website almost instantly. And that's what we'll be doing with Omedym will be will be able to answer a question I got today I've never considered, but we have a great answer. Right?
Greg Dickinson: And that's the that's the world point, you're starting to, you know, again, right? You, you you've you've changed your business, because the convenience economy. The other thing you're you've started to embrace, right? Which a year ago, even you were hesitant to embrace, which is video, right? And you kind of come to the conclusion that a lot of people have that if people want to learn, they want to understand how you work, they want to understand that Paul is real, they want to watch not read. Right? Right. And that's what you guys are starting to do to be able to articulate you know, in video and you started to adopt video, more and more video we were talking with that just, you know, before this podcast started about, you know, you want to learn how to change oil in your car, you want to read about it, you want to watch how tos. And that's what you guys are starting to do.
Paul Noone: And we'll do more of it. It's it is fascinating how important that is. And again, you know, I think what you and I know, you know, at the core, probably from decades of learning this is that we have to be able to build and understand the customer journey. So what are they doing every day? What are they spending their time on? Where are they failing? Where is it? You know, interesting, from a sales perspective people decision makers are, they're not traveling all the time. They're not out of their office, we know they're at home. Yeah, but getting their attention doesn't mean that we just make a phone call and we get their attention. So being able to answer a question, a very specific question that you may have had in a meeting. But you you need to do some research, being able to capture that answer. And for you to express that answer in context, I think is going to be really important, and I think is important now, and we're going to start leveraging that as well. So imagine someone asked me a direct question about something and I go, you know, I hadn't thought about that. Let me get my engineers managers go, that's perfect. You know, it's not exposed, but it's in the tool right now. So for me to be able to get into a video and say, Hey, by the way, ask the engineers, here's the greatest effect to provide. Here's where you go. Here's the you know, I can show you this in five minutes, if you want to get online. But I'm gonna send you this video just to answer your question. Anytime. They don't have to deal with me, they'll know niceties on the phone, nothing like that. They get a question answered. And I might get a response back saying, I love you. But I'd much rather work with one of your customer success managers. Let's do this. We can move forward.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah. And Paul guess what? You are offered that up to them at their convenience. Our data shows that 44% of all interactions on for our customers are before nine after six and on weekends, right. So that that executive had that question, there's no way you would have tried to schedule that meeting with him or her right, it would have been a week or two out, lengthening your sales cycle. Now, you got the question came in, you're aware of the question, you recorded an answer you put in the platform, the next second, that person is able to do it at night or on weekends. Wow. And now by the way, every other person has that question. That question is answered for them. It's not like we're gonna redo it over again, that that's the mentality you now have is I am making it convenient removing friction and helping my buyers buy, right?
Paul Noone: 100%? no, I know, all of these things is the convenience of it. The trusted source, the you know, the the availability of information, the learning as we go, right. So I learned that and then I learned something else. And then I bring in another employee on they can go through all of these questions that we've answered, and really get up to speed faster. But then, as well, every customer potential customer comes online and said, you know, here's a question I've been thinking about my typing with it, or, like the tool provides, you know, this ability to see here are questions that people have been asking your popular questions. Those kinds of things are really relevant to how we're selling these goods.
Greg Dickinson: And it's important use the questions right. I've started this pre sales engineer that I've known for a long time, just last week, and he said right here, here's a here's a classic story I just had. This happened about six months ago, nine months ago, before the before before the pandemic, we had a meeting. There was like 10, 15 people from the customers in the room. Me and the sales guy left she High Fived me in the in the elevator. Great demo great meeting. And and and then we got a call the next day from our coach saying, hey, you didn't demo these three features, and they didn't really want to ask the question. So the team thought you don't do that. So again, right, the they thought they did a great job. Someone didn't ask the question, therefore, they didn't cover the material. And again, kind of a video convenient way that you that you're using allows that person that may be shy, maybe just doesn't want to ask the question, maybe thought it was dumb question, whatever. They're by themselves. They're not afraid to ask that question. They get the answer. They get two or three questions answered. And they move on. It's such a different experience. Paul, again back to what you said. You know, that's not how it was 15 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago.
Paul Noone: Oh, just imagine, you know, being able to take that situation. Do a quick video, do three minutes of video and send it to the whole group. There's something I forgot. Finally, one more. No. What about one more thing? You know exactly what you were looking for. We do that too. Yeah. But you know,
Greg Dickinson: Because, listen, if I ask you to present to me higher IQ, and do it in, you know, let's say it's an hour meeting, we started five minutes late. We in five minutes early, you got an introduction, you go around the room, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So Paul, actually gets, like, 10 to 30 minutes, Paul, you can't rehearse your application meets so many needs in so many areas. A half hour doesn't do it justice, but that's what you get. So that's the world that face to face meetings, maybe remote selling with the right tools and the right, you know, kind of digital friends and digital assistants and digital portals is actually helping you not hurting you? Yeah
Paul Noone: Well, I think, you know, you probably understand this more than, you know, a lot of other people too, which is, you know, customers need to, you know, oh, i'll take a step back. There is a deck that I have that I love. I made it, Greg, it's mine, of course, I love the deck. It's 33 slides long, I'm telling you will go into audio Linux, which is the AI component, which talks about emotional aspect, and it talks about, you know, active and passive language and precise elements of voice. You know, I just love to talk about that. It's not important. So here's the 33. This is how it really goes down. All right, let's talk a little bit you guys were dropped right into a demo, because if I showed you this deck the entire time, you're going to be asking the question, you're gonna be asking yourself, I hear why they did this. I hear what it does. What does it look like? How would I use it? Yeah. And so what we've done now is we go, here's Here it is. Nice to meet you. Here are the people who are on the call from our side. clients, the people on your side are on the call. Now let's go into a demonstration. And at the end, people are so engaged. And so they're able to ask questions and things like that. But then at the end, I go, Greg, I have a huge deck here. Does anybody want me to go through it? Would you like me to foward that deck to you? And everybody goes, Yeah, just forward that deck, if we have questions, we'll ask.
Greg Dickinson: Exactly what you're hitting on. Listen, we all have that deck, right? And you know as well I do that, even though you love it, you're still editing your three minutes before the free.
Paul Noone: The security one. It covers everything.
Greg Dickinson: But But people today, right? You, me and everybody else were what they call experiential, right? We want we we really, it's proven right? We want to see the product a year, you know, a number of years ago, the product could be held at ransom. It could be Hey, I'm not gonna show you a demo until we get all this stuff. You know, who's the decision maker, what's the budget all these things? Today? No more people won't. They won't tolerate that. If you if you try to do that. They'll swipe left to go someplace else. So that product needs to move further up into the sales cycle, because people are experiential. They they already learned what you said 15 minutes ago, Paul, they've already done the blocking and tackling of who higher IQ is. Now it's, it's and here's how I say it. Early on, when they're doing their own research, they're trying to find out, can higher IQ do X or Y, when they meet with you. They want to know how you do it. And that's your job and that demo that's experiential. So they want to see it. They want to see themselves using it. They want to see if they could use it. That's what you just said.
Paul Noone: yeah. Yeah. Well, I have another belief too, which is, which is interesting, right? When we do we do politics right so we do politics, which typically are right to cancel. It means that you can start right now in production. We're going to treat you like a customer. We're going to get it scheduled we are gonna have a customer success manager work with you. And you're going to start hiring people using this particular process using our AI using the you know, we're going to integrate to your entire process but Greg, my belief, my true belief is not that they're they I think most people believe what we say we do. And they believe that the structured process and approach that we're taking, we can do, what they're trying to test is that they're not going to have a negative that if I can have any negative repercussions, yeah, it's not going to mess something else up in the process, what they're trying to do is prove that their team is capable of using the tool. And I don't mean that negatively, because if it, if it got worse, employees or it it was tedious, or everybody was, you know, remember when Salesforce sales tools came out, and everybody wanted to spend 50% of your day updating the current state of every account, that was actually counterproductive? And so what our customers or prospects are doing is they're using the demo and the trial in order to as a way to say, Okay, I actually know this will be fantastic course, I just now need to prove that there's nothing that's going to be that I'm going to miss. So I think I would say, that's telling me that everything's accelerated people or buyers, before you know that they're buyers. Yeah, we're treat we're calling them prospect, but they're likely buyers, if they can get it into their hands. And then you can make them they can validate that they can trust you, and come in with some amount of trust. You've said likely the things that that happen, the market has taught us. And then now we're even in a trial, it's a window into, I just need to make sure that there's nothing I'm missing in this process. So
Greg Dickinson: Well, Paul, I mean, I love that company, right? You're doing you know, on your website, people can get their own demo, right? They can self service themselves and learn about it. So what you're doing, you're saying, hey, if this isn't for you, I don't want to waste your talent I don't want to waste my time so your using the pre qualification process so that when they do engage with Paul, did your point what you just said, Paul, the reason you feel that they are already buyers, is because those that aren't a buyer went away. That's okay. Right? You're not them. That's okay. You use technology using Omedym, you're using video to prequalify. So that Paul's team focuses on those that think hierarchy, you can solve their problem. Gosh, what's wrong with that?
Paul Noone: Well, and I love what you said there too, because I think this is the key to some of the heat of our successes here. I mentioned this to Greg, we've doubled our revenue this year, we've doubled the number of accounts, asynchronous this, this can talk about convenience, right? What we're doing for people who are applying for work at home jobs, we're making the interview, we're giving them the ability to advance with any company that's hiring. available around the clock, we're doing it online, using voice over IP with the web or on your cell phone or on a tablet, if you've only got a closet available, when there's not a human being running around your house, you can take that interview, talk about convenience, right, and that information is available to them instantly, again, around the clock, we those people get a chance to make your best decision on those particular individuals. And what we want to make sure that we're doing is we don't get far afield, right, we really want to this is a huge market for us. So being extra careful about listening, being extra careful about what we're talking about in terms of listening to the questions that we're getting, and making sure that we give the the the answer that we're capable of giving. We do this this way, because we've found this reason, so that people are as smart as they can be, and you're there where we you are wanting to be they want we want them to be in a position say if this works way, I believe it works. Based on my research, we're going to be doing business. So let's figure out how that works. And yeah, and how it was great. I just corrected, we don't actually have a self service component of that today. It's It's not complicated. But today, we do like to at least make sure that we're talking to people that are, you know, that are in the right, that are in the right space. Absolutely. There are things that people shouldn't do without tools.
Greg Dickinson: It's not robotic robotics, right? We're not talking about the robotic engineering here, we're talking about how do you give that buyer that that suspect that prospect the ability to self serve on their own on demand? 24/7 to get that, can they out of the way, right? They're going to go to Glassdoor and learn about your organization, going to LinkedIn learning about your company or going to go to blog sites and learn about the space and so on. So they're not going to call you and say Paul, how are you today? Please tell me from the very beginning, what you do, how you do it, where you do it who you do. They're not gonna do that. But what they are able to do now is experience your product understand a bit more about you so that they can say, Hey, this is pretty interesting. It fits our criteria. Let me engage with Paul. So hey, you and I could talk for 50 hours.
Paul Noone: We could.
Greg Dickinson: Right? Because it just you're you're so brilliant and you're onto something so intriguing around this idea of AI and helping right to find people jobs and find the right job. Paul, I appreciate your time today. We got to wrap here because we could go on forever. But incredible topic. Thanks for being a friend and thanks for being on the podcast.
Paul Noone: You're the best anytime, Greg. Awesome.
Greg Dickinson: Take care.
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