Main Insight Event 2016

On Thursday May 26^th the sixth edition of the Main Insight event took place. This event is organized annually for the Dutch software industry. Each year a relevant topic is discussed by interesting speakers who share information from the experience they have gained in their field of expertise.

This year’s theme was Sales Performance Improvement and Sale Effectiveness. The do’s and don’ts in increasing sales and improving sales organizations were the central topic. With 130 CEO’s of Dutch and German software companies attending, the event was again bigger than previous years.

Charly Zwemstra (Managing Partner of Main Capital) opened the event and kicked off with the latest developments at Main Capital Partners. He showed that, on average, 30% of sales growth at software companies comes from upselling. This makes customer contact and creating customer success functions (account management) extremely important. After the opening, Charly Zwemstra gave the floor to Pieter van Bodegraven (Partner of Main Capital), who was the chairman of the day.

As the second speaker, Hayri Culum from Simon Kucher & Partners, gave a presentation on Best Practices in Achieving Excellence. Hayri told more about the roadmap which can be followed to create the perfect sales organization. He also gave more insight into sales and pricing techniques.

Erik Charles, VP of Product Marketing at NASDAQ listed company Xactly, showed that the use of Sales Improvement Tools can help accelerate revenue growth. Xactly is the leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Sales Performance Management. The use of a tool like Xactly pays off from a sales organization of 10 FTEs. He also showed that by rewarding your sales people the right way, one can  reach a performance increase of 20-30%.

After the break Johan Wolthuis, Director Sales & Marketing of Main Capital portfolio company Sofon, took the audience further into the techniques he uses in his daily work, and which led to winning an international Philips SaaS deal of competitors like Salesforce.

The last speaker was Greg Brown, Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) of Achievers. This is a SaaS-based HR software company backed by Sequoia Capital. Greg showed how he forms scalable software sales organizations that are able to grow from EUR 10 million to EUR 100 million turnover. The role of the Sales Operations (functional management based on data and KPIs) has been a crucial element in scalability.

The Main Insight event was again a big success. We thank our speakers for sharing their interesting insights and we look forward to the next edition. Pieter van Bodegraven closed the event with a number of key takeaways:

1. Form your customer success teams in an early stage (customer adoption management and account management).
2. Invest in an early stage in Sales Operations functions. Sales Ops provides data for better management decisions about sales. This is increasingly important in driving the sales organization.
3. Investing in Sales Performance tools contribute to scalable revenue growth. Examples of tools are: Outreach (prospecting), Xactly (compensation/incentives) and Marketo (leadgen/marketing automation)
4. The right way of rewarding increases the engagement of sales people and contributes to sales growth.