Shopping for a PEO (employee leasing) firm was extremely easy in 1985, when there were only a handful. Today, employee leasing is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it is difficult for a shopper to sift through the masses to find the best PEO for their specific needs.

An all too typical scenario is that you call several PEOs, engage the highly optimistic sales reps to get quotes, and then suddenly you have each sales rep producing mountains of additional paperwork, ever-changing quote timetables, and calls to your office at all hours with underwriting questions, etc. You find yourself wondering, is all this going to end?

Here are four tips to help you reduce time spent trying to distinguish he real PEO players from the overly optimistic sales rep, fine tune your way to the winning bid, and to eliminate redundant paperwork along the way.

1. Communicate Your Needs. Qualify a PEO vendor by visiting their web site to gauge professionalism, and then by asking them very specific and pointed questions about their capability to meet your needs. Do not lead them with the correct answers, but simply ask the questions and await their response.

They will either establish your trust (bidder!), refer your elsewhere (go there!), or respond with ambiguity and over optimism (run!).

2. Consider using a PEO Brokerage Firm. PEO brokers represent a multitude of employee leasing companies. Their services are free to you, as they receive their commission by the PEO if you decide to move forward with their bid.

PEO brokers eliminate redundant paperwork from multiple PEOs by processing your single application to multiple vendors for you, based on your needs. A qualified PEO broker will have enough diversity within their PEO network to be able to accommodate your specific business needs.

Furthermore, their firm will provide comparison spreadsheets to itemize the pros and cons of the multiple bids that they receive, and present the results to you all at once.

Use Step 1 to qualify.

3. Avoid Redundant Paperwork When Bidding Several PEO vendors. Let us assume that you have already qualified the sales agents, using Step 1. At this point, each agent is going to ask you to fill out their underwriting application.

News Flash: 90% of the information is redundant. In your case, you are going to compare each of the underwriting applications, and pick the biggest one to complete. Then, you will send this one application to each vendor. Explain to them that they can contact you in writing with a list of any additional information needed to quote.

4. Avoid Lead Catchers! There are three types of companies advertising PEO services on the internet: PEOs, PEO Brokers, and Leads Catchers.

Leads catchers are simply referral sites that take the contact information you provide and then sell it to multiple vendors. Avoid this middle step and deal with PEOs and PEO Brokers so you can qualify them. If the website looks and feels non-industry specific, and lacks in-depth corporate information, then it is probably a leads catcher.

Besides being inefficient, there is a high probability that the next day you will flooded with requests from salespeople representing 4 times the number of proposals that you requested.

BlueWaterArticles.com: - Is Employee Leasing Right For Your Company

About the Author

Greg Arnold is a PEO broker in Tampa, Fl. Please visit his website to help make you make your PEO selection easy at Axis Group