Jeroen Corthout. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Salesflare, the intelligent CRM that startups and small businesses love to use. Prior to Salesflare, he was helping companies to implement their new CRM, marketing and sales. Salesflare kicked off when he and his co-founder, Lieven, found a way to automate their CRM data. Salesflare’s mission is to automate everything in sales, but the irreplaceable human contact.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Alchemist
What CEO do you follow? – Jeroen has been reading the biographies of Tony Hsieh, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos
Favorite online tool? — Zapier
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7-8
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Jeroen wished he had started these bigger projects earlier

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:38 – Nathan introduces Jeroen to the show
02:16 – Salesflare helps mostly startups to make their sales consistently productive, to have the right data, and to communicate and manage the pipeline better
02:28 – Salesflare sells licenses
02:40 – Salesflare’s price point is $30/month when you pay annually and $35 if monthly
02:58 – Salesflare started halfway through 2013
- 03:04 – Jeroen and Lieven were working in a software company
- 03:20 – Jeroen knew there was no solution to keep files automatically
03:28 – Salesflare basically pulls all the CRM data for you
03:49 – On top of a lot of data, Salesflare is building automation and intelligence
- 03:52 – There’s an automatic to-do list and body temperature indicator
04:12 – Salesflare is largely self-funded, some from accelerators
- 04:24 – Telenet Kickstart and iMinds are the accelerators from Belgium
- 04:37 – Salesflare got $25K from one accelerator without equity and the other one had a convertible loan of $50K
- 05:10 – Salesflare has raised a total of $700K
05:28 – Jeroen was in the consulting field
05:49 – Salesflare is currently building a convertible round with investors and has raised $250K; the target is $350K
06:57 – Salesflare has over 100 customers
07:14 – Jeroen believes that people don’t usually trust small companies, even if they have great products
08:00 – Average revenue
08:19 – Salesflare is based in Antwerp, Belgium
08:24 – Team size is 6
- 08:30 – 3 are building the product and the other 3 are sales and customer service
08:55 – Jeroen likes people to think that they are bigger than they are
09:02 – Nathan believes that some people like small companies because of their flexibility
10:40 – Nathan tells Jeroen that his assumption of “it’s not good if it’s free” is a completely false assumption
11:28 – Most people stick to Salesflare after the trial period
11:40 – There’s currently a big market of CRMs
11:46 – Salesflare is aiming at sales automation and there’s very little competition in that space
12:12 – Salesflare is moving faster than their competition
12:17 – Hubspot's distribution channel is huge and Salesflare won’t be able to compete with that
- 12:23 – But Salesflare can compete on the profit side
12:37 – Salesflare has a low churn
- 13:12 – Salesflare got their first customer at the end of 2015
14:00 – Salesflare has a blog, does outbound emailing and builds their online presence for customer acquisition
14:36 – Salesflare does content distribution through Facebook’s paid advertising
14:47 – Most of Salesflare’s recent customers are from Product Hunt
15:23 – Jeroen has no idea of the number of trials they’ve had since the launch
- 15:45 – Jeroen tracks the conversion, instead
- 16:05 – In the past week, there were 250 new trial signups
- 16:15 – The conversion to paid customer is around 10-15%
16:30 – Salesflare tries to show its value as quickly as possible
17:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

If you’re still unsure of starting a new business, find other ways to get involved in that space to understand how it works.
Some businesses offer a free product to show their value to the customer right away.
Competing with a free product with a large distribution channel isn’t easy, but you can generate a higher profit margin.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

673: Getting Your First 100 Customers with Salesflare CEO Jeroen Corthout

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders