THEO Technologies offers video playback solutions and live streaming technologies, and was the first company to offer streaming in a browser - initially for volleyball. 12 years in, the company based in Leuven was acquired by Dolby. Here are some of the sales moves behind this massive win told by Pieter-Jan Speelmans, co-founder and CTO, and Syndicate One member.
Invest your brand - early
Marketing is difficult when I look at it from an engineering perspective, but it starts with doing all of the obvious things. That means our name is known very well and we have high chances our name comes up every time someone is looking for a video player.
We had big, noticeable booths at events. Our brand used a yellow color. That really stands out when you compare to all of the blue, grey and black in our industry. The blue is supposed to send out trust. Apparently yellow sends out innovation, so that’s a nice extra.
Our first customer was very relevant: the UK Parliament. They found us through Google search. It was a bit of an atypical case though: we were the only company in the world able to do what we did at that stage. It served as a super good reference, we all know they cannot afford to go down on a streaming event.
Get tech people involved
All our content was done by the technical team : we showed what the product could do and our expertise through content. We always tried to reuse it: if we wrote a white-paper or a blog post, we made a LinkedIn post or a newsletter out of it.
Sales were initially founders-led. And the founders were all engineers, meaning we had to build the sales experience. This however proved extremely helpful to tune the product and understand the market further.
We make sure that that we do, works and that when we promise something, we deliver.
ABM worked for us
Cold-calling did not work for us, ABM (account based marketing) did, as a continuous investment. We focus on building meaningful relationships with prospects, ensure we are known in the industry and produce good content in order to be known by a potential buyer before they are even in buying mode.
We targeted 2000 customers around the world, all major accounts. Onboarding costs the same, no matter what each client brings.
We feed this funnel and we interact with these companies.
We need to be in contact with the right people at these companies.
Hire for mindset
We hired someone who did sales in a smaller company. This person proved to be an amazing sales person: last year alone, he closed 2 out of the top 5 customers and trained a team.
Lesson learned: you need to hire someone with the right instinct. Having a good network also helps: a sales person with the right instinct will get you where you need to be, a sales person with the right instinct and the right network and experience will get you there fast.
THEO Technologies is an inspiring example of a Belgian tech startup that developed a unique technology and took over the world's screens. We believe that sharing strategic and tactical moves behind such a win will inspire next-generation entrepreneurs and nurture a snowball of success across the Belgian ecosystem 🔥
