After years of 'fiddling' with vendor systems, Sales Gurus owner Maxim van Dam changed tack in spring 2020. With the advice of a competitor friend, he decides to switch to Salesdock with his 35 independent salespeople. We, Guido (content marketer) and Suzanne (UX designer), visited the new office in Hilversum to see Maxim and his colleagues working live with Salesdock and ask them how they like it. When we arrived, the moving boxes had just been unpacked and the place smelt of new carpets.

As soon as you enter Sales Gurus, your energy level doubles within seconds. The diverse club of mostly young salespeople welcome you in an atmosphere where you can feel the ambition burning. Pictures of proud sellers of the month adorn the wall. Successes are not swept under a Calvinist carpet here. If there is any ground level here, you don't have to worry about rising above it, gladly. During our conversations, the attendees appear to be a close-knit team of friendly, good-humoured salespeople who talk passionately about their craft.

Fellow competitor

How the partnership came about

In early 2020, Maxim spoke to a colleague friend about his frustrations with supplier systems and cumbersome administration. "He immediately showed me that his company now works with Salesdock. I was immediately convinced and contacted Mark Hekkelman (CEO of Salesdock) the same day." It clicked between the two entrepreneurs and it didn't take long to set up the Salesdock environment for Sales Gurus. "Never regretted it for a second," Maxim smiles at us.

SEPA Green works with agencies that have contracts with customers. A working method that Berntzen says is in line with the personal approach they pursue. "Our customers sign the contract with the agent. And that is someone they trust. Someone they can turn to if there should be any problems". Over the years, the sales network got bigger and bigger. Marco Vink: "At the beginning, we were happy with every contract that came in. Customisation? No problem! Actually, we kept working like that, but in time we ran into ourselves. Customisation for 30 customers is very different from customisation for 1,000 customers."

Independent agents delivered contracts with a 'wet signature', which were then typed over to be processed in the system. "Quite analogue and out of date," laughs Berntzen. Back office employee Bryan ter Braack worked his ass off to manually process all the individual agreements. Vink: "The number of clients increased and sales continued to rise with contracts with positive margins. No contracts cast in concrete, no tacit renewals or other 'purple crocodiles'. We noticed that it was appreciated by our customers". Yet the realisation dawned that things needed to start standardising and digitising to continue growing healthily. Success could become a pitfall and, sober as they are, they fortunately recognised this in time.

The green energy supplier went in search of a suitable solution that made processes more efficient. "For us, it was crucial that with a new system we did not have to make any concessions to our flexibility and personal approach," Berntzen explains the challenge. Ter Braack: "With most systems we looked at, we had to make too many concessions to our working method. A devil's dilemma, since on the other hand it was simply no longer manageable to keep doing everything the way we did."

Solution

Efficient customisation

During the search for a suitable platform, Theo Berntzen's paths crossed with Mark Hekkelman, one of the founders of Salesdock. "At that time, Salesdock was still in its infancy phase," explains Theo, "but when we spoke, my interest was immediately piqued. He seemed to understand exactly what we were looking for." Although Salesdock's existence was still early, SEPA Green had the confidence to partner with this software provider from the same region. "There was an immediate click with Salesdock: doing business based on mutual trust. Honest and committed".

The two parties worked together intensively to achieve the desired digitisation and professionalisation within SEPA Green's unique and personal working method. In small steps, the processes were digitised and the salespeople switched to the system. "The agencies now easily create beautiful proposals from Salesdock, which the customer can digitally sign," Berntzen says of the solution. Vink adds: "If the customer agrees then everything is automatically processed via Salesdock in our energy system KAS from EABO". Agents are free to modify the quotation themselves within agreed frameworks. "This way we continue to offer customisation without having to check and enter everything manually," adds Vink.

Results

Growing together

Berntzen does find that he has to "educate" agents to make full use of Salesdock. "Because we work with external sales people, it is not easy to get everyone on board with the new way of working all at once. They are generally top performers, but some are still 'of the old school'. We don't want to force anything, of course." Fortunately, he gets mostly positive reactions to the new platform. "Most agents are very happy with the new system. We have made it even easier for them to sell our contracts." "And we have made it easier for ourselves to process everything," ter Braack adds. At the time when SEPA Green stepped in, Salesdock was still in development. Vink says that SEPA's needs were being listened to carefully. "I really feel that we have grown together. Salesdock is getting better and more advanced, such as the Energy Flex Flow with which many parties now work together efficiently. We can continue to grow partly thanks to Salesdock".