Recruiting senior decision-makers in staffing and outsourcing

A business research team partnered with CleverX to interview CEOs and business owners at staffing and outsourcing firms. The goal was to test the strategy, the points of difference, and the market opportunity for a new workforce-management and time-tracking product.

• Respondents needed real budget authority, not just any employee at the firm.
• Six different qualifying industries were in scope, each needing its own screening logic.
• Only mid-market firms counted, roughly 51 to 5,000 employees, so both very small and very large companies had to be excluded.
• It was a narrow group, with only 28% of those screened actually qualifying.

CleverX paired its automatic invite tool with a layered seniority screener.

• The automatic invite matched over 3,000 panel members on industry, company size, and job title.
• A role-first screener instantly ruled out managers and individual contributors.
• Follow-up questions confirmed company size, relevant activity, and buying involvement.
• A 22-question conversational guide explored how they really work, without ever selling to them.

• 18 of 20 interviews completed with genuine senior decision-makers.
• 93 CEO and owner-level respondents identified from a single screening wave.
• 67% of those who qualified were the outright decision-maker for this kind of software.

• Screening on seniority, not just industry, is what makes a senior-leader sample credible.
• An automatic invite reaches thousands of relevant candidates with no manual list-building.
• A low qualification rate is normal, and workable, for senior decision-maker studies.