How we won our last 3 cases?
Analyzing how we get customers is always interesting --> You can learn so much from doing this.
This time I thought of making it super open, so let's see how we closed the last three deals.
First, let me share what kind of companies they are:
1) A SaaS company from the Netherlands that has just raised +10m€ in funding
2) A SaaS company from Finland which a bigger Finnish company backs
3) A SaaS company from Finland that has raised its seed round of funding
Let's analyze one by one how we ended up working with these companies and how we are about to help them.
Company 1
First point of contact: Their Head of People visited my LinkedIn profile in November / 2022 --> I sent a message and chatted for a while on LinkedIn and suggested the meeting.
The main problem of customer: Their brand isn't well-known, and it's creating a challenge in hiring people --> They wanted to buy Employer branding services (discussion in 11/2022)
What we learned about the discussion with them: They also need help with recruitment
What happened next: We built an offer around Employer branding & recruitment for them.
Decision: No --> Market situation is challenging, so we need to see where to invest. (In 01/2023)
Follow-up: We continued to follow up with the customer in multiple ways - E.g., by commenting on LinkedIn, emails, etc.
New case: They had failed in one recruitment and needed help with that fast --> They came back to us and wanted to do a project around that with us.
Current situation: Contract signed & new customer started (our first customer from the Netherlands 🚀)
Up-sell: It's crucial for our business to be able to upsell our services to our customers, so now we are keeping up the discussion around employer branding & ongoing recruitments with customer while doing this project.
Sales Cycle Length: 94 days
Company 2
First point of contact: I posted to LinkedIn that I'm looking for a pilot customer to do a sales recruitment. One of my past customers introduced me to a CEO of a SaaS company.
The main problem of customer: They needed a Head of Sales to scale their business and haven't found one yet.
What we learned about the discussion with them: They still had a few candidates in the pipeline that they wanted to go through.
What happened next: They failed the recruitment --> The chosen person didn't accept the job (Acceptance rate is a big challenge for many companies --> Luckily, we have something special to this!)
Decision: Yes
Current situation: Cooperation started with a profile definition of the role, and we have a kick-off next week! (Ps. If you have experience in Sales Leadership & SaaS, I might have something for you!)
Up-sell: To be honest, I don't see super much potential for up-sell for this customer at this moment, but in the future, for sure. However, I assume to get a great reference case & some intros from this customer when succeeding.
Sales Cycle Length: 16 days
Company 3
First point of contact: One of our VC friends introduced us to the founder of this company. We mainly work with VC-backed companies, so this is a great channel for us, but VCs are also happy because they can refer to someone they know and have helped other portfolio companies when scaling the team.
The main problem of customer: Scaling their team, and they don't have anyone in talent acquisition.
We learned from the discussion with them: We need to build things from scratch, and they want to build a fully-functional talent acquisition engine. This means that we are working with them on building talent pipelines.
What happened next: We built up an offer for them and, based on their feedback, made some changes to that.
Decision: Yes
Current situation: I just sent the contract for signing, and waiting to be signed. Cooperation will start in April!
Up-sell: There is a lot of potential for bigger cooperation because they are growing rapidly.
Sales Cycle Length: 28 days