

Your guide to selling against Zenefits [pdf] - cgoodmac
http://info.maxwellhealth.com/hs-fs/hub/364947/file-2535768742-pdf/Sales_and_Marketing_Resources/Maxwell_Health_-_Zenefits_Battlecard.pdf

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chetanahuja
_" Give the illusion of self-service, but actually have a very high-touch,
highservice model \- Feedback we’ve gotten from groups that have left Zenefits
to come back to the broker + Maxwell model is the increasingly poor level of
service and responsiveness to urgent issues."_

This rings true for us. We're a small company who would've blindly walked into
zenefits if they had simply walked us through our enrollment process smoothly.
Instead we had repeated paperwork glitches which always left out a few of us
(from a very small group already) employees out of the quote/enrollment
process.

We started looking at Trinet in parallel and to our astonishment found that
the comparable health plans, from the same provider, available on Trinet, were
significantly cheaper... (as in ... ~30%) for our situation. The Zenefits
glitches were really a blessing in disguise for us.

(The key to these discounts was that with Trinet you're getting into a group
plan... while Zenefits simply enrolls you as individuals if you're a small
startup).

~~~
boling11
When we tried Zenefits out last year, they were very transparent about this.
The rep I spoke with told me upfront that a PEO would be more cost effective
for a company of our size.

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cheepin
Is waiting until they implode from bad management a viable strategy? I
remember reading on Quora, a prospective hire had offers at Zenefits and Uber,
and asked for guidance in making his decision and the CEO of Zenefits came in
and publicly revoked his offer.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-rescinds-job-
off...](http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-rescinds-job-offer-on-
quora-2015-5)

~~~
woah
I guess there's an argument to be made against doing things like that
publicly, but the prospective employee sounds like someone I wouldn't want to
work with.

~~~
lambdasquirrel
I agree. It _sounds_ bad, until I RTFA. If I saw what the person said as an
employee at Zenefits, I would've told my boss to rescind the offer.

~~~
jasonmp85
If you expect all incoming outsiders to be excited about your company and have
decided you can't convince those who aren't to become excited, you've got a
cult, not a company.

Dissenting views? Skepticism? Interests that might not align completely with
our delicate, fragile startup? Shun! Shun!

It's incredibly insecure. Maybe for the first ten hires you need that kind of
alignment to get the culture vector pointing in the right direction with a
significant magnitude. But after that? Having to defend your ideas to internal
skeptics makes you stronger. Hiring rose-glasses yes men might let you coast
for a while, but when the end comes, it will be swift (see e.g. RIM).

EDIT: I can _maybe_ see doing this quietly, though it would be pretty hard to
swoop in as CEO and rescind an offer without letting your employees on the
interview loop know. I really think it's the public aspect of this behavior
that bothers me.

Just think: what kind of chilling effect does this have on employee speech
internally? It really projects a "get in line or get out" mentality.

~~~
woah
What are you talking about? The employee's issue was that Zenefits is not
buzzy enough and he wants to work at Google.

~~~
x0x0
The fact is, there are a set of universities and employers that open doors.
Did you go to Harvard or MIT? Grad school at cmu? You get an interview. You're
not necessarily hired, but you get an interview. Google is one of the
employers that open doors in the same way; Zenefits isn't and probably never
will be. There's nothing wrong with employees acknowledging reality and
mapping out a career path.

~~~
lambdasquirrel
We get that. And, don't work at a startup.

------
roasm
I'm the benefits administrator for our startup (ahhh, the joys of being a
cofounder) and we started before Zenefits was available. I might migrate there
for the ease of management...

But I have to say, it really is hard to replace a good, responsive broker.
They don't cost anything (they take the same commission Zenefits takes) and
it's easy to get someone on the phone if the inevitable insurance mishap
occurs. Then dealing with the insurance company is their problem, not yours.

If we started today, we would absolutely be on Zenefits. Now? I don't know if
it's worth the migration.

~~~
ubercore
Honestly, I'd mirror the comments in that PDF. I was one step removed from
dealing directly with Zenefits at a small (<20 employee) company that switched
to Zenefits. The experience was fairly negative overall; lots of manual work
they had to do on their end, outdated plan offerings, broken integrations,
etc. Basically self-serve for us was nonexistent because every time we tried
to do something there was some exception (not code exception, just exceptional
circumstances) that meant we had to contact a person anyway, and they weren't
any more (or less, I guess) responsive than just going directly to a broker.

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nartz
Sigh - I hope this marketing crap isn't what Hacker news turns into, marketing
wars from startups.

If this was some actual customer experience, so be it, but its posted from

cgoodmac - PM from justworks.com - a "payroll and benefits" company...

If you agree with me, feel free to click 'Flag' on the parent post.

~~~
chetanahuja
I agree it's slightly shady for a direct competitor to be posting anti-
zenefits posts (at least without an acknowledgement). But fwiw, this thread is
bringing out a bunch a people's own customer experiences so that's nice at
least.

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MangoDiesel
> _Why would an HR person or a CFO EVER give up 1) expert benefits consulting
> 2) protection against the ACA 3) access to long-standing carrier
> relationships that allow for renewal negotiations 4) ability to support
> complex benefits strategies_

I'm really not buying their case here.

1) Expert benefits consulting seems like something that could be made easily
accessible via research online 2) Obamacare FUD? 3) Haggling is a feature? 4)
This seems like expert consulting re-worded

~~~
FLGMwt
> _Rumor that they may have struck a deal with ADP to be their benefits
> administration system and replace TotalSource_

Heh, guess not
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9679312](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9679312))

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brd529
> Rumor that they may have struck a deal with ADP to be their benefits
> administration system and replace TotalSource

If these discussions were going on, I suspect ADP's move to block Zenefits
today was either a result of these negotiations breaking down, or a bezos-
style move to get more leverage on this negotiation :)

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iblaine
I read this as Zenefits business model is so good that it's pissing off the
entrenched lazy incumbents.

~~~
peteretep
I read your comment as not knowing how sales works. These documents are
standard practice.

~~~
jusben1369
You're both right (without the lazy part) Zenefits is doing so well that it's
now viewed as a direct threat by incumbents who are putting together sales
collateral to compete against them.

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jusben1369
We're using Zenefits and like many of you here super disappointed by the
experience for many of the same reasons listed over and over. The main reason
we haven't moved away is that they've really automated the onboarding process.
Gone are all those email/word doc/PDF's that get passed back and forth as you
manually set up a new employee. (To the best of my knowledge) you can't
replace that via a broker (which we had before)

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hsparikh
Link is broken. Anyone have an archive?

~~~
InboxQ
I too am hoping to access the PDF.

~~~
InboxQ
Here's the battlecard:
[http://cloudoru.com/battlecard.html](http://cloudoru.com/battlecard.html)

