Expnd

Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) & Co-Founder

Clay

Partner

HYPCCCYCL

HYPCCCYCL [haɪpˈsaɪk(ə)l] is a challenger community of over 15,000 innovative C-Levels & VPs from the likes of Cisco, Okta, Salesforce, DocuSign, Gong, and many more.

Member

RevGenius

RevGenius is a group of revenue-generating sales and marketing professionals brought together to learn, share, support, and grow with each other. You can consider us your alt work family!

TheValueChain

Human Capital Accelerator

SAM Recruitment

Recruitment Consultant | Sales IT Professionals

Sinds 2007 heeft SAM Recruitment zich ontwikkeld tot dé specialist in Sales en Marketing binnen de Benelux. Door onze expertise in Sales & Marketing beschikken we over een brede marktkennis, wij begrijpen wat bedrijven zoeken en spreken dagelijks de beste kandidaten. Deze combinatie stelt ons in staat om kwalitatieve matches te maken.

Inmiddels hebben wij al ruim 2000 Sales & Marketing professionals aan een carrière-switch geholpen bij meer dan 800 bedrijven.

Ik zie het als mijn persoonlijke missie om sterke (Digital) Marketing kandidaten in contact te brengen met straffe bedrijven.

Meer weten?
Neem zeker contact met mij op via +32 3 808 29 45.

Tot snel!

Recruitment Consultant | Online Marketing Professionals

Direct Result Marketing

Sales Coach

Qiwie

Als Adviseur Rekruteringscommunicatie gids ik u door het web van jobsites, social media, jobmagazines, regionale kranten, nieuwskranten, vakbladen, tijdschriften en alle andere mogelijke on- en offlinemedia.

Steeds meer mensen zoeken een nieuwe job via het internet, online rekrutering wordt belangrijker en het is noodzakelijk om uw vacature via de juiste kanalen zichtbaar te maken.

Ook de manier waarop kandidaten zoeken naar opportuniteiten via kranten en tijdschriften is veranderd en ook hier speelt Qiwie op in.

We creëren een doeltreffende campagne die uw jobadvertenties en uw employer brand via de juiste kanalen tot bij de gepaste kandidaten brengt.

Qiwie neemt u verder heel wat werk uit handen gaande van het opstellen, de opmaak en het plaatsen van uw vacature tot zelfs het filteren van de binnengekomen cv’s.

Dit alles met een doel voor ogen: van uw rekruteringscampagne een succes maken.

Adviseur Rekruteringscommunicatie

Comopolis

Financieel adviseur

June

Business Development B2B 

Growing GTM teams 🚀 | Co-founder @Expnd

I help tech start/scale-ups get traction with top-tier GTM talent.

I'm the founder of Expnd, a GTM recruiting partner for tech companies. We specialize in finding the sales, marketing, and support talent you need to ignite scalable growth.  

What sets us apart:
✅ Speed + Quality: We fill key GTM roles fast, with talent that delivers results.
✅ Focus: Operational GTM roles are ALL we do.
✅ Confidence: Strong guarantees back up our work.

Follow me for insights on accelerating your GTM strategy and building an exceptional team. DM me to explore how we can partner for growth.

You don't need 10+ tools in your sales tech stack.

I see too many sales stacks using way too many tools and overcomplicating the sh*t out of it. So here's a sales stack MVP:

Build a list → Enrich → Outreach

Current tools we're using:

Sales Navigator → Clay → lemlist

What would your sales stack MVP look like?

The tools in the visual:

1. Build a list
- Apollo.io - Great tool BUT in EMEA I still prefer sales nav.
- Lusha - Best we've found for EMEA data (especially great in getting accurate phone numbers/ email in EU).

2. Enrich → Clay is still the best tool I've come across so far. 

3. Outreach 
- lemlist - Tool to sequence both Email/ LinkedIn/ Cold calls... 
- MailReach - Cold email outreach tool
- HeyReach - LinkedIn automation tool (most advanced I've come across so far)

Laurens Nys

GTM Accelerator for Tech Start-Ups | Co-Founder @Expnd

I quit my job to work 70-80 hours per week for 6 months without any pay.

That's what starting a company is like. 

Or... that's what starting Expnd has been like for the first 6 months.

Would I trade it for anything else? No. 

Here's our journey: 

September 2023: start of Expnd, excitement at an all-time high, we were gonna be rich in 12 months, for sure! 

October 2023: ok might postpone being rich by a few months but we've got this. 

January 2024: we're getting traction but this whole "starting a company" might be harder than we thought.

April 2024: ok ok... we're getting momentum, I can feel things are turning and we're going up! 

We're going into May now and momentum is finally on our side but it wasn't for quite a while. And it probably won't be if you're starting something from zero. It takes work. 

Here's what we've learned: 

Overnight success isn't a thing.

Value is the name of the game. 

It's not about profit but learning. 

Customer-centric is the approach.

PS. Wouldn't want it any other way though. 

PPS. Don't worry, we're finally able to pay ourselves although far from rich (yet 😉).

It's 2024, if you're not using tools to automate your outreach you're missing out.

Here are the main tools we use in our outreach:

TL;DR:
Sales Nav list → Clay Research → Lusha for numbers/ emails → Apollo.io for sequencing → HubSpot for deal management

It's a minimal stack but does the job well. 

What would you add (if any)? 

Sales tools we're using

Creating a 101 list for books in tech sales.

This is what we've got so far:

1. SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham - this book is fundamental to many sales theories used today

2. Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount - as the title suggests, as an SDR prospecting will be one of the major tasks on the job, this book will give you the tools

3. GAP Selling by Keenan - Discovery concept of creating a GAP between the current state and future state and its importance in selling, a commonly used approach in B2B SaaS

4. MEDDICC by Andy Whyte - The most popular discovery framework out there, if you're joining a SaaS comp, chances are they'll be using MEDDICC to qualify opportunities

Which ones would you add? 

Thinking about adding a book that's more business-focused but not sure which one, maybe the personal MBA? 

4 must read sales books

It took me 12 months to go from zero to €90k revenue in one of my first sales jobs (which was way below target). The following year I did €60k in a single month.

The main difference between those 2 years?

How I handled fear.

Somewhere around the end of year 1, my manager said something that changed my trajectory: "I see you're working hard but you promised me you would be all in. Right now, you're only all in when you're comfortable, you're not going outside your comfort zone. That's not being all in."

It made me realize she was right, I wasn't doing what I was afraid of.

So I started doing things I didn't want to, things that somewhat scared me. I started making more cold calls, wasn't afraid of rejection...

Here's what I discovered, courage isn't a lack of fear, it's doing something while being afraid. Everyone is afraid, it's what you do with it that makes you stand out.

Use fear. Don't let it use you.

PS. The Art of the Impossible has a great chapter on this (grit).

Will the SDR role die in 2024?

Been getting this question a lot lately. 

Here's my 2 cents:

1. It won't disappear. 

2. It will change drastically. 

The SDR used to be somewhat spray and pray. A cold calling machine trying to book meetings. But it's getting harder and harder to get this approach to work. 

The evolution we're seeing is an SDR as a researcher & marketeer. They understand their buyer's persona & know their business. It's becoming a quality game much more than a quantity game. 

Where do you see this role going? 

PS. Also think SDRs won't stay a junior role to get to AE but a different beast altogether. 

Expnd just finished a search and... 
 
We f*cking crushed it!
 
They had been working with an agency since January but still hadn't found the right candidate.
 
They needed a BDR, but since they're a fintech, the candidate had to be quite tech-savvy as well, which isn't always easy to find.
 
Here's how long it took us:
 
2 weeks 😎 
 
I believe business is a game of value - the player who delivers the most value over time wins, and this is just one of those cases. 

That's our 1 thing/ obsession as we're building Expnd: overdelivering on our promise.
 
PS. A more detailed case study is in the making.

PPS. All credit to Huub for leading this search. 

It took me 100 days of consistent posting to get 2.500 impressions in a day.   

It took me 214 days to have my first post with 10.000 impressions.   

Here are 5 things I've learned by posting consistently over the past 6 months and doubling my followers: 

1. Consistency is more important than writing the perfect post. 

2. You need to save ideas when they come to you. I just text myself whenever I get an idea and this makes writing content so much easier because I'm not starting from 0. (You can also use tools like Pocket and Feedly to save articles)

3. Engagement is very important on LinkedIn BUT very easy to lose track of time, I try to schedule a LinkedIn block in my calendar to comment/ like some posts. 

4. Don't automate your posts with chatGPT. I see both comments and posts that are clearly written by AI from time to time and I just don't like the quality usually. I've tried some tools too and never posted them because it just didn't sound like me/ wasn't good enough. 

5. Value is the name of the game, not going viral. I see many starting out and writing content based on "what will go viral", it's a losing game. Make content by asking yourself "What will be valuable for my readers?". You'll have an easier time writing posts and followers that follow you because of the value you deliver.

Anyone else got some tips after growing their LinkedIn? 

Now let's see how long it takes to get to the 10k followers... 👀

The biggest mistake I see in trying to hire A-players:

Treating the first interview as a way to asses instead of sell.

Interviews are a terrible predictor of performance.

Do this instead:

1. Hunt A-players, don't fish. Most A-players have options, they're not looking at job posts.

2. Use the interview to sell, not asses. Figure out what motivates them, what they like/ dislike... and pitch your company.

3. Use a project to asses skill. Ex, let a salesperson write out a sales email and do a mock call.

That's how you get A-players.

And yes, it's hard to scale and takes time.

PS. Bonus if you work on your employer brand, it's a major asset when looking for hire.

How to become an expert by reading 5 books. (5 Book framework)

Book 1: Get excited about a topic, pick the most popular bestseller book you can find.

Book 2: This is also a popular book, but usually a little more technical and a little more on point.

Book 3: This is the first semi-technical book on the topic—something that is still readable and interesting but maybe not quite a page-turner.

Book 4: the first actual hard book you want to read on the subject—something that isn’t nearly as fun as the first three, but gives you a taste of the kind of problems that real experts in the domain are thinking about.

Book 5: Read about the future of the topic, where it’s heading, and when it’s heading, a book that gives you a sense of the cutting edge.

Credits to The Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler.

What's the main difference between a top SDR and a loser? 


Deliberate practice. 

Time doing the thing, aka, cold calling. 

Just found out about this software: Hyperbound... it's a game-changer. 

It's basically an AI bot you can cold call and practice your cold calls on and it's so close to real life... literally blown away when I tried it. 

Imagine using an AI bot to ramp up your SDRs 10-20x faster, you can even set difficulty and increase it as the SDR gets more proficient. 

I think we're going to see a major difference between orgs using tools like this and the ones that don't. 

Makes me wonder though, will there come a bot to take over cold calling fully?
 
PS. If you're an SDR and your cold calls can use some improvement (which, let's be honest, they probably can) you would be crazy not to use Hyperbound. 

PPS. Not even getting paid by them to write this, just blown away (although... Hyperbound, if you're reading this, feel free to send me a dm 😉) 

Recently funded #fintech looking for a #BDR. 

Got ambition and ready to grow a fintech to the next level? 

Dm me or Huub

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