Sales Navigator helps Royal HaskoningDHV make lasting connections

Royal HaskoningDHV is an independent engineering consultancy firm helping organizations transition to smart and sustainable operations.

The pandemic led to an increasing number of their prospects working remotely, so Royal HaskoningDHV had to find new ways to connect with new clients in a virtual environment.

At the same time, Royal HaskoningDHV wanted to explore ways to get a higher return on their marketing budget, by reducing costs and improving efficiency in the marketing and sales funnel.

Instead of following traditional sales tactics and a broad channel approach, Royal HaskoningDHV wanted to introduce a new way of selling based on a deeper understanding of their clients’ needs. To do so, they needed to segment and target key decision-makers and influencers, determine their positioning in their respective markets and approach them with value propositions.

“LinkedIn Sales Navigator allows us to have a ‘silver bullet approach’ for selling in a virtual environment. The amount of data it provides and the possibilities it gives us are unmatched,” says Alex de Ruiter, CG Director of Marketing at Royal HaskoningDHV.

For Alex de Ruiter, Sales Navigator needed to be rolled out right: “In our organization, top-down decisions tend not to work, so we initially only included people willing to try a new way of working. There were no rules on how to use the new tools because we wanted to give our team the freedom to feel and understand the added value. Once the first successes came in – and we had some significant ones – we shared the results with senior leadership and started to scale the operation.”

At Royal HaskoningDHV, team members using Sales Navigator act as ambassadors, inspiring the rest of the organization – including the senior leadership. Serge Dufrasnes, Product Owner of Buyer First Sales, underlines the importance of letting people discover the benefits of Sales Navigator at their own pace: “There’s always resistance when introducing new ways of doing things. You have to give people time to understand the benefit.”

By adopting an insights-driven sales system with Sales Navigator, the client-facing staff of Royal HaskoningDHV was able to bridge the buyer-seller divide. It allowed them to engage with prospects and forge lasting connections before making a sale. De Ruiter says: “The actual sale is never at the center of what we do. Our goal is to make connections and build relationships. We treat closing the deal as almost an afterthought.”

Sales Navigator helped make the marketing and sales funnel more efficient, resulting in a decrease in cost per lead by 96%. At the same time, conversion rates have significantly increased. They now range from 30% to 44%. In 2021, the team made over 4,100 connections and saved more than 1,200 leads. De Ruiter adds: “At times, the program was almost too successful. It was challenging to follow up on the overwhelming number of generated leads.”

Through Sales Navigator, Royal HaskoningDHV was able to win new clients from regions where the company was previously not active. These new clients contributed significantly to the revenue of 4 Mio. € that was generated in 2021.

Royal HaskoningDHV is currently implementing LinkedIn Sales Insights into its dynamic environment. The tool will provide them with even more relationship intelligence and real-time, actionable insights.

Main features used:

Advanced Search

Buyer Intent

Saved Leads / Accounts

“Considering the amount of data at your hands, you get a really high return on every Euro spent on Sales Navigator and Sales Insights.”

Alex de Ruiter

Director Sales & Marketing Enablement
Royal HaskoningDHV
“The majority of our marketing team used our website as the main channel, but you cannot interact there. With Sales Navigator, you have more insights into your audience, allowing you to interact with people on another level.”

Sebastiaan van Alphen

Director Commercial Strategy
Royal HaskoningDHV