What is the difference in mindset between being a Sales Engineer and becoming a CEO? While talking with our guest today, we’d argue not so much, except that you’re carrying a lot more responsibility and you’re going against a behemoth in sales. In this episode, Jeroen Corthout shares his perspective on building a startup – from leaving his secure job as an Account Manager to leading his own company to build their online presence to getting customers the unusual way (without a dedicated sales team).
Jeroen is the Co-founder and CEO of Salesflare, the intelligent CRM preferred by startups and small businesses that automates data to build better relationships and make more sales. Prior to Salesflare, he was helping companies to implement their new CRM, marketing, and sales.
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Key Takeaways
Listen to our interview and learn more about:
- What he found frustrating in most popular CRMs which gave him and his co-founder the idea to build a simpler, less complicated enterprise solution
- The challenges and the steps they took to build Salesflare
- What his mentality was behind leaving a secure job to go into a startup
- How his perseverance mindset allowed him to succeed even without getting initial funding for his company right away
- Why conducting customer interviews is so critical in building a product
- How open communication is embedded in their company culture
- What incentivizes people to leave a stable job to work for a startup with little to gain early on?
- The similarities and differences between being an account manager and leading his own team
- How Salesflare built an online presence that allowed their customers to come to them instead of the other way around
- Why they don’t have a separate sales function in their company
- How technical support knowledge helps in the sales aspect of his business
- How he empowers his support team to lead with the sales process
Quotes:
His advice for those who want to build a startup but are scared to fail: “If you have the abilities of starting your own company, I don’t see why you will not be able to get another job after you fail. But I would advise people to go part-time, talk to their employers, start working on it at least two days, maybe start in the evenings, and then when you feel that you can make a leap, take a leap. But if you start the company without any salary, the issue is that you just don’t have the personal runway where after a month, year or two years of not really earning much money with your startup because that’s what usually happens in the beginning, you just run out of money and it becomes impossible for yourself to continue.”
On their sales strategy: “What works best for us is grabbing people at the moment that they’re looking for a CRM rather than trying to get to them and pitch our product to them.”
How do you make sure you have a continuous flow of 100 leads per week? “Keeping it that way is not so hard. We have presence built up in many places, we got people coming in just about everywhere, people recommending other people. Growing it is much harder because we are fighting against very big players who have more budgets to get more traffic. For us, it’s more of Step by step building that rather than growing massively.”
On not having a sales team function: “Our sales is our support. We try to be helpful; we get people to understand the product, find all the right things, and we convince them if Salesflare is right for them or wrong for them.”
Not So Fire Round
- What do you love about being an entrepreneur?
Building stuff. It’s been very exciting. It doesn’t have to be the product, it can be building a team, traffic, experience around it, building the website, being able to see progress and something grow is what gives me the most satisfaction.
- What would you change about being an entrepreneur?
The problem that you’re carrying around a huge amount of responsibility often weighs on you, it’s not something you can change, it just comes with the job.
- Tools, Books, and Resources you would recommend for entrepreneurs:
Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott
The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, Third Edition 3rd Edition by Jesse Schell
Zig Ziglar’s Secrets of Closing the Sale: For Anyone Who Must Get Others to Say Yes! by Zig Ziglar
Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need by Blake Snyder
The Hero with A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application Paperback
- How do you define a successful entrepreneur?
I think a successful entrepreneur is anyone who can build something that aligns with their vision, or with an adaptive vision that they got while building. You don’t necessarily need to raise funding or have a massive team to build anything to have a sizable impact on the world or the side of the world that you focus on.
- Where can people find out more about you and connect with you?
Find and connect with Jeroun Corthout on Linkedin:
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And if you’ve been affected by COVID as an SE, please check out our Leave No SE Behind initiative so that we can help you. https://wethesalesengineers.com/no-se-left-behind-initiative/
