Leading the way to the holy grail of sales, with LeadX
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We’re proud to announce our first Norwegian seed investment — LeadX, a B2B SaaS company that empowers employees to contribute and be compensated for posting warm leads to the sales pipeline. Having a growth engine where each of the company’s stakeholders are motivated to participate in growing the revenue, a holy grail of sales in a sense, is what many organizations have been looking for.
Launched by the former Norwegian defence officer Tom Aas in Q3 2019, the firm is scaling fast with more than 30 people and 12 initial customers that include world-renowned companies like HP, ATOS, and Accountor. In addition to partnering with international investors, the team has had active support by 3 leading incubators/accelerators: Smart Innovation Norway, Simula Research Laboratory (both Norway) and TINC (Silicon Valley). Headquartered in Oslo, Norway and offices in the Netherlands, the US, and India, the new investment round will be used for product and channel development with the prominent Salesforce Inc. cooperation having a special focus. (P.S. They’re also hiring in multiple locations.)
Untapped potential inside organizations
As a former consultant in Deloitte and Arthur Andersen and later VP of Sales in companies like SAP and CSC, LeadX founder Tom Aas saw firsthand how much untapped potential organizations have when it comes to generating new business opportunities. Lead generation is typically being limited to specific positions and many warm contacts from other stakeholders end up not getting captured into leads.
There are a couple of main reasons why firms are not able to tap into the networks of their stakeholders in an effective way:
- Lack of focus on lead generation from everyone — lead generation is handled by a few appointed representatives.
- Lack of appropriate tools — CRMs are too complex for casual or serendipitous use for other stakeholders who are not operating with them daily.
- Lack of recognition — when someone outside of the sales team shares a new prospect or lead, there is usually no great way to create ownership and give recognition appropriately.
Getting everyone to post hot leads
In many organizations like for example HP — one of LeadX’s first customers — the installation technicians are separate from sales but it is they who very often talk to decision makers and see the need for products on site. The question arose: what if these needs are registered with warm approval by the client for the sales team to execute?
This is precisely where LeadX will step in and help companies — their solution helps to capture the value from already existing connections and align the organizations towards common goals. Companies using LeadX have their own sales community where news and automatically generated feeds are shared and the built-in incentive system motivates stakeholders to contribute.
“As a result of the Covid 19 crisis we have seen an increase in the interest in our concept and product. In a few months the world has gone through a digital revolution, and people are more open to connect via digital platforms. LeadX is the lead generation tool for this decade, and we are well positioned for meeting the needs of the upcoming economy.” — Tom Aas, Founder & CEO of LeadX
Here’s how the typical process of posting a lead works: whenever John in the reception posts a lead, the lead will automatically appear in the Sales Feed. He can already be proud of contributing. The lead is qualified by sales, and a handshake is made. Whenever a salesperson closes a deal he or she will be allowed to ring a digital bell. A sales bell sound can be experienced, and notifications go to the mobile phones of all members in the Sales Society. When clicking the notification you are taken to the Sales Feed. You can then see that a deal is signed. By clicking the feed you will also hear the sales bell, and information about the deal is quickly spread across the organization adding an emotional motivation boost to all involved.
It is the essence of a positive feedback loop for the company: energy is spreading throughout the organization, revenue is growing, the quality of the sales pipeline is increasing, customer acquisition cost decreasing and employees and customers are happier.
Spring Capital is an early stage investment firm active across the Nordics and Baltics.
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