With over 10 years of experience, Croatia-based Serengeti Ltd. has been developing custom software applications for product vendors and device manufacturers in Western Europe.
The Challenge
In 2013, Serengeti faced the problem that their relationships and referrals from existing networks didn’t bring enough business to substantially grow the team of 35 developers (Java, PL/SQL, C++, some mobile app expertise).
Goran Kalanj, Founder and CEO of Serengeti, wanted to find a way to systematically sell their nearshore software development services to new customers in DACH but was seeking support for systematic lead generation and German speaking sales representation.
That was the time when Goran met Martin Weiss, Co-founder & Sales Principal at BizXpand.
The common objective was to develop and implement a working process to continuously generate high quality sales leads in a non-organic “outbound” way, convert them into sales opportunities and close new business.
BizXpand is an ideal partner for repeatable and predictable outbound lead generation and value-based sales execution of high ticket software and IT services. High ticket characteristics are:
- Consultative selling
- Multi-touch
- Multiple decision-makers
- Longer sales cycles, no transactional sales.
- Targets in mid-size and enterprise market
The Solution
Outbound lead generation is the only scalable and predictable sales method to grow and export a high ticket business to new geographies and market segments. Selling through personal relationships and referrals is opportunistic and can’t be scaled. For successful outbound lead generation a product-market-fit (value proposition, differentiators, ideal customer profile, needs, pains, desired end results, authority and credibility) is mandatory.
In several workshops together with Serengeti’s management and their customer facing people, Martin identified and worked out Serengeti’s product-market-fit and value proposition:
- Core offer, and positioning.
- Target market, decision makers, decision influencers as well as their needs and desires.
- Problem/solution adoption of that target market.
- Prospect’s alternative solutions (internal and external).
- Credibility, references and testimonials.
The Results
Based on the findings of the workshops and some following first hand market surveys, Martin was able to work out a good product-market-fit for one market segment, at a high confidence level for Serengeti:
Serengeti helps traditional device and machine manufacturers in DACH to overcome their challenges with the growing demand of software within their devices and machines. These companies typically run smaller SW teams, with unscalable development processes, need to maintain 15+ years old legacy products with legacy technologies, want to develop their SW product range and need a reliable partner that:
- Understands what it takes to maintain legacy products with legacy technologies.
- Has experienced engineers who are committed to work on legacy products and technologies.
- Brings expertise also in new processes and new technologies to help them develop in the right direction.
BizXpand tested this value proposition on the German speaking markets by doing some “interview style” conversations and got very good feedback.
Logical next step for BizXpand was to develop all required sales messages and message sequences that articulate exactly this value proposition to this particular market segment. Martin’s team researched companies in this market segment and reached out to their buyer personas over various channels.
With this non-organic outbound sales approach, Serengeti successfully signed up their first customer exactly 8 months after starting the cooperation with Bizxpand.
After that, BizXpand was able to grow Serengeti’s customer base by 4 new customers every year. Year after year. This is around 1.8 MEUR annual recognized revenue – every year!
Serengeti and BizXpand terminated the very successful cooperation by the end of 2019. At that time Serengeti had around 200 engineers and was in the situation to employ their own local sales executives in Germany and The Netherlands.
Ok, but what happened with Serengeti’s first customer from 2014? They still work together in a very partnership mode.
Goran Kalanj, Founder & CEO of Serengeti about BizXpand in 2019
Serengeti went through very dynamic and high growth period in last few years. Around half of our revenue comes from DACH market.
Martin works for us for many years as our sales executive for DACH region. Martin always had very good and reliable results in customer acquisition.
He proved to be able to define a sales strategy and then be very successful in implementing it. We have very successful cooperation and we would always recommend Martin and his team.
