Centraal Beheer builds more partnerships with Sales Navigator

•   The pioneering insurance business has opened up a new source of leads through LinkedIn while strengthening relationships and bringing its commitment to direct client relationships to life.

•   Centraal Beheer is a pioneering insurance business with a legacy as one of the first in its sector to market to clients directly. When its supply of sales-sourced leads started to contract, the business turned to LinkedIn Sales Navigator to help bring its story to new clients. Rolling out the platform with a focus on advocacy, training and executive sponsorship helped to sharpen Centraal Beheer’s acquisition strategy, strengthen its existing relationships and drive closer alignment between sales and marketing to help bring its story to life. Its value has increased further still with the pivot to virtual selling following the Covid-19 pandemic.

Selling a new vision of sales

•   Centraal Beheer’s Digital Marketing and Sales Specialist, Jorrit Drieënhuizen acts as a social selling expert within the organisation. “It’s my role to encourage our sales colleagues to adopt social selling – and to use that to enable sales and marketing to understand and support one another more effectively,” he says. “It comes down to making sure we are visible and connected to the target group we need to engage.”

•   It became increasingly clear to Jorrit, that such visibility would require a transformation in the sales organisation. “I could see that sales teams were finding itmore difficult to get in touch with our target group,” he says.

•   Centraal Beheer turned to Sales Navigator to rejuvenate the sales pipeline and help to drive a wider change in how the business approaches selling. “A successful implementation starts with having a vision of where you want to go and being able to paint a picture that your employees can identify with,” says Jorrit. “It’s best to start with a small group that really understands this and has intrinsic motivation, rather than trying to move the whole organisation in one go. We organised meetings with the sales leaders to get them on board and add weight to the programme – and we put an emphasis on training so that people had the skills to employ Sales Navigator properly.”

Strengthening acquisition – and existing relationships

•   Centraal Beheer focused its roll-out of Sales Navigator on account managers working on larger accounts, for which it had two crucial roles to play. “On the one hand, it’s a tool to generate new leads and help with acquisition,” says Jorrit. “But more and more, we’re also seeing account managers using Sales Navigator strategically from a relationship management perspective. It helps them map out their most important clients and follow what’s going on.”

Relationships based on value – and insight

•   For Jorrit, it’s the level of insight that Sales Navigator makes available to sales teams that has had the most profound impact on the business. “We’ve been able to bring in  customers by using the tool – but for me, an  important thing is the many smaller contacts that it makes possible, and the moments of connection, which come together to make things happen. When you have the goal to build relationships and add value, beautiful things come out of that.”

•   Jorrit points to the insights that Sales Navigator provides on contacts’ activity as the kind of feature that enables this form of relationship building. “Seeing the content that somebody has shared on LinkedIn in the last 30 days tells you so much about them and what they’re doing – and it’s this that provides a hook for you to reach out directly in a way that’s relevant,” he says.

Leading the pivot to virtual selling

•   Taking the time to integrate Sales Navigator with a relationship-building methodology has enabled Centraal Beheer to realise value from its investment – and that value has only increased in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

•   Jorrit.says “The dynamic has changed and it’s clear that relationships have to be built online now. For us, that means sticking to the same strategy but using Sales Navigator even more intensively.”