Interview on Salesflare's growth with Jeroen Corthout and Gilles De Clerck
Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2024 3:31 am
When did you join Salesflare and what did you do before? I joined in December 2016, after about a year of running my own startup, first at school and then on my own. I was lacking skills, experience and contacts, three key elements that I have since been able to develop at Salesflare.
Can you tell us what Salesflare is and how it makes money? (Jeroen)
Salesflare is a smart CRM built for startups and small businesses.
None of us have time to spend on all the little robotic tasks that go into good customer follow-up. We've built a CRM that solves this. Our goal is to automate more and more of the sales process so you can keep selling more with fewer people.
We make money from subscriptions, just like any SaaS product, following the philosophy of Slack's Fair Billing policy.
How did you come up with this idea? (Jeroen)
My co-founder and I were working at a previous software startup. We came back from a conference and had tons of leads to follow up on. Updating Google Sheets was painful, as was working with any CRM system we tried.
We thought that all the data we were entering manually mexican phone numbersalready available somewhere: in our emails, calendar, phone, company databases, on the web, on social media, email signatures,... We "just" had to extract it from all these places and combine it in an intelligent and automated way. That's where our automation dream began.
How long did you work on it before releasing it? When did you see your first dollar? (Jeroen)
We initially spent almost half a year with mockups and a very basic tracking system, while juggling other side projects.
From the moment we started developing, it took us about a year to earn our client's first dollar. Creating a regular CRM is easy, but creating the system we had in mind turned out to be more difficult. Automated but controllable. Magical but easy to understand. Full of possibilities but quick to handle.
After this, we spent another year in very close contact with the clients, guiding them throughout the entire process. Only when we achieved this, we launched the online business and saw how the income multiplied every month.
MRR: (Jeroen)
We passed the 10K MRR mark a few months ago and are now preparing for a real expansion.
Number of paying customers: (Jeroen)
Depending on whether or not you count AppSumo subscribers, this is between hundreds and thousands of customers.
Who are your customers? What is your target market? (Jeroen)
Salesflare can be used by any company that sells B2B, is in active prospecting mode, and sends a lot of emails in the process.
If you look at our customer base, it’s mostly software companies that are the quickest to find new and innovative software.
We also built some very specific features for SaaS companies, like the ability to track subscription revenue. You won't find this well implemented in any competing CRM.
How did you get your first 100 customers? (Jeroen)
At first, we focused on getting our name out there with PR stunts. In addition, we focused mainly on prospecting and cold calling.
When we were around 20 paying customers, we launched online. Since then, my colleague Gilles has been developing online channels.
What are the top 2-3 distribution channels that work best for you? Which channel didn't work for you? (Gilles)
We don't work distribution channels one by one. Instead, we believe in consistently creating value across an ecosystem of channels to drive organic growth and relationship building at scale. These channels are primarily LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and email.
Quora deserves an honorable mention. The quality and authority of the community there makes people place a lot of value on the recommendations they find and thus drive a high conversion rate. In the beginning, Quora was our main channel, with an incredibly high test conversion rate of around 12%. We achieved this by answering CRM recommendations with Salesflare and the value it can provide to users in a soft-landing way. After a while, I also started answering other questions on various topics to organically increase my followers and authority.
When we launched Product Hunt, we expected a test and a surge of traffic on launch day. What we didn’t expect was the steady traffic generated by it in the months that followed, leading up to today. It turns out that people turn to Product Hunt every day for the best products. It helps that Salesflare is the most voted CRM in Product Hunt history. About 9% of those who visit the website sign up for our test.
Can you tell us what Salesflare is and how it makes money? (Jeroen)
Salesflare is a smart CRM built for startups and small businesses.
None of us have time to spend on all the little robotic tasks that go into good customer follow-up. We've built a CRM that solves this. Our goal is to automate more and more of the sales process so you can keep selling more with fewer people.
We make money from subscriptions, just like any SaaS product, following the philosophy of Slack's Fair Billing policy.
How did you come up with this idea? (Jeroen)
My co-founder and I were working at a previous software startup. We came back from a conference and had tons of leads to follow up on. Updating Google Sheets was painful, as was working with any CRM system we tried.
We thought that all the data we were entering manually mexican phone numbersalready available somewhere: in our emails, calendar, phone, company databases, on the web, on social media, email signatures,... We "just" had to extract it from all these places and combine it in an intelligent and automated way. That's where our automation dream began.
How long did you work on it before releasing it? When did you see your first dollar? (Jeroen)
We initially spent almost half a year with mockups and a very basic tracking system, while juggling other side projects.
From the moment we started developing, it took us about a year to earn our client's first dollar. Creating a regular CRM is easy, but creating the system we had in mind turned out to be more difficult. Automated but controllable. Magical but easy to understand. Full of possibilities but quick to handle.
After this, we spent another year in very close contact with the clients, guiding them throughout the entire process. Only when we achieved this, we launched the online business and saw how the income multiplied every month.
MRR: (Jeroen)
We passed the 10K MRR mark a few months ago and are now preparing for a real expansion.
Number of paying customers: (Jeroen)
Depending on whether or not you count AppSumo subscribers, this is between hundreds and thousands of customers.
Who are your customers? What is your target market? (Jeroen)
Salesflare can be used by any company that sells B2B, is in active prospecting mode, and sends a lot of emails in the process.
If you look at our customer base, it’s mostly software companies that are the quickest to find new and innovative software.
We also built some very specific features for SaaS companies, like the ability to track subscription revenue. You won't find this well implemented in any competing CRM.
How did you get your first 100 customers? (Jeroen)
At first, we focused on getting our name out there with PR stunts. In addition, we focused mainly on prospecting and cold calling.
When we were around 20 paying customers, we launched online. Since then, my colleague Gilles has been developing online channels.
What are the top 2-3 distribution channels that work best for you? Which channel didn't work for you? (Gilles)
We don't work distribution channels one by one. Instead, we believe in consistently creating value across an ecosystem of channels to drive organic growth and relationship building at scale. These channels are primarily LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and email.
Quora deserves an honorable mention. The quality and authority of the community there makes people place a lot of value on the recommendations they find and thus drive a high conversion rate. In the beginning, Quora was our main channel, with an incredibly high test conversion rate of around 12%. We achieved this by answering CRM recommendations with Salesflare and the value it can provide to users in a soft-landing way. After a while, I also started answering other questions on various topics to organically increase my followers and authority.
When we launched Product Hunt, we expected a test and a surge of traffic on launch day. What we didn’t expect was the steady traffic generated by it in the months that followed, leading up to today. It turns out that people turn to Product Hunt every day for the best products. It helps that Salesflare is the most voted CRM in Product Hunt history. About 9% of those who visit the website sign up for our test.