Speaking to HR technology salespeople can be impressive – they are confident and they know the product inside out. It can be easy to believe they are HR technology experts, but don't be mistaken. HR technology salespeople are just that, salespeople. They are highly skilled at selling products and know how to speak to us to get what they want.

So how do you cut through the sales speak? Here are four common phrases you may hear salespeople say when choosing HR technology, and some ways to translate what it means for you.

This is the old return on investment argument that you hear time and time again. “You'll save so much money by using this, you'll be able to put money back to the bottom line.â€' They'll tell you, “You're not going to be a cost centre anymore, you're going to be a profit centre for your organisation.â€'

Guess what? Your executives don't buy that at all. In fact, one of the reasons they don't let us buy stuff is because we give them these inflated ROI numbers, the soft HR math, and then they just laugh at us. When we leave the room, they close the door and say, “I can't believe Tim is still doing this, and thinking that we're going to save $3 million next year and then we're going to increase our profits by $3 million. And then the next year comes and guess what? We didn't actually increase our profits by $3 million. We probably lost money on whatever we bought.â€'

HR technology salespeople love to use business language when they're speaking to us as HR professionals, and we like that. It makes us feel strategic. It makes us feel like we're all of a sudden part of marketing or finance.
They are very good at giving us the words that they want us to use to our executives. When shopping for HR technology, you're going to hear a lot of finance and accounting language because it's important that they make sure that you have those words to use when you start talking to your executives.

This is called sales peer pressure, folks.

There's a concept within sales negotiation called anchoring. The current product is $25,000, but if you buy right now, it's only going to cost $20,000. Or perhaps you'll hear “If you buy now, I can give you what we have in Beta, which others will have to buy separately.â€'

These special offers should never sway your buying decision. Don't be afraid to tell them your buying timeframe and ask for the price they are offering, otherwise it's no deal. Now I understand when you're looking at a 9 or 12-month process that you can't hold a vendor to that because their prices may go up over time. But I will say within the HR tech industry I don't necessarily see prices going up as much as we see them coming down – SaaS has removed the barrier to entry for a lot of HR technologies which is really forcing HR technology vendors to take a look at their pricing models. Good news for the buyers!

Also remember that some big HR technology companies have margins of about 75%. That means for every dollar you spend with them, they're putting 75 cents in their pocket. So know that there's room to move.

If you've got something that's mission critical for your HR needs, be very wary of a promise of it being on the roadmap or customisable into HR technology. It has to be something that's already baked into the product and something that you can use right now.

Customisation kills really good HR software. We HR pros always want to change HR technology to make it follow our existing processes. Applicant tracking systems are classic for this because they'll tell you that they can customise to whatever process you have, but yet, they were built on a single process. HR technology companies have spent tons of time, money and energy building that process to make their software work perfectly. If you just follow that process, it would work perfectly. But we say “Instead of the step two being the assessment, we want that at step five.â€' And they agree because of course they want our business, but changing this changes the entire workflow of the product so you have to be really careful on the customisation standpoint.

Your goal here is to get a “good enoughâ€' solution that meets 80-85% of your needs with the big bases covered.

Tim Sackett is a HR pro with over 20 years' experience. With a career perfectly split between recruiting and HR generalist roles – (also split between the HR vendor community and the corporate world) – he's seen the HR world from all angles of the boardroom table. You can check out all his other brilliant ideas over at www.timsackett.com or download his free eBook: The Ultimate HR Tech Buyers Guide.

Tim was a popular presenter at HR Tech Fest 2015.