Setting out to reach customers is a hard task. It involves a lot of trial and error. Am I calling back too soon (and seems pushy)? Am I too late (and the customer has already forgotten about me)? Is my current workflow highly effective, or can I do better? Thanks to French startup Tilkee, you can stop wondering.
Vacation in the Caribbean
It all starts during a vacation on the beach. Sylvain Tillon works for a corporate training company and is on holidays.
Before leaving, he sent a proposal hosted on a sub-domain of the company’s website. Not really cutting off from the digital world, he sees there’s a visitor on the sub-domain. It can only be his prospect. Sylvain calls him right away.
The prospect then tells him he didn’t quite understand the proposal. With perfect timing, Sylvain gives all the explanations and the deal is done.
Back on the beach towel, Sylvain decides to use this method for future deals. He will achieve a 50% rise in transforming prospects into clients.
Thus came the idea for Tilkee.
Salesmanship 101
Every sales action starts with a proposal. This proposal must be followed up by some sort of contact (or you’re very lucky and your prospect signs right away). But depending of the domain you’re in, the time to evaluate the proposal differs. For instance, a person seeking to have electricity at a new home will take little time to decide. It’s rather urgent to make a decision. On the other hand, a home loan proposal will be studied for several days. Ten days later, the prospect is still reading the proposal, maybe with the spouse. Call the electricity seeker 8 days later and it’s too late. Call the future homeowner 8 days later and it’s too early.
How can you tell when it is the right time to make the move?
This is what Tilkee is all about: tracking the recipient’s use of your proposal. When was it opened? How long did it take to read it? Did the prospect stop at the 2nd page of a 24-page proposal? Did she return and read it again 2 days later?
Then, the sales team can take guessing out of the picture.
Tilkee is perfectly integrated with all the existing tools used by marketers, it becomes hardly visible and is part of the workflow.
Four sides to a story
Tilkee is divided into 4 parts depending on the needs. Tilkee Sales, the most used component, helps to make that vital call at the perfect time. Tilkee Marketing is like “Google Analytics for documents”. The cheeky team actually used it to analyze the programs of the candidates for the Presidential election last year.
Some of these programs were mere online versions of paper programs, totally unsuitable for online reading. Thanks to Tilkee Marketing, the candidates could have detected these shortcomings. [note: Tilkee does get people elected though]
Tilkee Events. Once again, it was designed following the team’s dissatisfaction with the workflow on professional exhibitions. With Tilkee Events, the prospect’s business card is scanned and, according to the expressed needs, the proposal is automatically sent. When the exhibition is done, so is the work of sending out proposals.
The last Tilkee component is free, it’s Tilkee Jobs. Job seekers can track their resume and only reach out to those who took the time to read it.
Coming up is a new feature for tracking invoices which will work as evidence in case of legal action.
The International Tilkee team
Despite some competition in document tracking, Tilkee has a huge advantage over the others. It is GDPR compliant. They have users in France, England, and Germany. Since professionals in all these countries display different attitudes when closing a sale, the need for an international team was blatant. The French way is not the German way, nor the English way and Tilkee needs to adapt.
The team of 31 is mainly in Lyon and more recruitments will take place shortly.
Because Tilkee displays ethics and a friendly environment to work in, they don’t advertise for job positions. You’ll need to follow them on LinkedIn to know of the latest openings.
“There isn’t just one way” (to do it right)
Tilkee is only for businesses that are afraid to adapt. Using Tilkee means you are ready to test, measure, see what works and maybe change your previous workflows. Indeed, your certainties might take a hit. Beyond sales, it can impact human resources and management methods. As Sylvain says, “there isn’t just one way of doing things”. It takes open-minded management skills to admit you’re doing it the wrong way and tools like Tilkee to show you the way.