Time travels fast when you’re having fun. This year it is 15 years ago that NextSales started supporting B2B companies growing their business in Europe. These 15 years as experts in sales have been mainly successful, but we also faced challenging times due to external forces we couldn’t control. If there is one lesson to be learned it is to be agile & flexible to adjust and stay relevant.

Doing business in Europe, is all about relationship and trust, but over the years we have seen Europe changing slowly to a more American way of doing business. This approach made its way into Europe through the UK and Scandinavian countries followed by the Netherlands, currently moving to the South gradually.

Because building a relationship and creating trust takes time, finding business in Europe takes perseverance and as we say in the Netherlands: “een lange adem“ (long breath). However, when trust is established, it is often there to stay for a long time. The US on the other hand is more opportunity driven: “we haven’t done business before, but I need what you offer, the price is fair: let’s give it a try!” This means shorter sales cycles, but when a customer is not happy or can find a better offer elsewhere, you lose the business.

For the Netherlands this development started around 2005 when lead generation and sales outsourcing were introduced. At that time sales companies created appealing paper letters explaining their proposition, suggesting setting-up a meeting. With a fax form attached, potential clients could easily send their response back. People that didn’t respond would be called to persuade them to set-up a meeting. Even though this was hard work and took perseverance, it was a successful way of finding leads.

The associated business/price model was simple: supporting clients with finding leads, building a database of 300, 600, 900 or 1.200 accounts & relevant contact persons and providing support with lead generation activities for a period of 3, 6 or 12 months at a fixed price. When clients saw this was successful, and the number of meetings exceeded their ability to do the follow-up themselves, they needed support with attending meetings & follow-up. The need for sales outsourcing support (the whole sales process from converting meetings in to deals) was born. Also, here the so called “one size fits all approach “on sales activities was offered to attend meetings, follow-ups, events, demonstrations, contract negotiations, deal closing etc. also, at a fixed price.

However, clients over time got more demanding because their business couldn’t be compared one on one with their competitors, they developed special needs. That is why, when we started NextSales in February 2011, our service model was a bespoke approach for each client and NextSales as we now know it (15 years as experts in sales) was born. Different earning models like shared risk reward and connecting clients to potential investors were successfully introduced.

In the years that followed the custom approach was very successful, but several crises worldwide (e.g. Greece crisis, 2009-2018) impacted the results. Potential clients didn’t want to invest money and projects were postponed. We saw the need for more agility and flexibility to adjust to changing market circumstances rising.

One of the crucial changes in the way we do business took place on May 25^th, 2018 when the GDPR came into effect. The GDPR regulates the private contact details of European citizens. Every company that wants to do business with them, needs to comply with this regulation.

Many sales companies and self-employed salespeople decided to refocus their sales effort to marketing. lead generation (cold calling) was basically dead. Luckily, people became creative and other ways were found to find new leads. Advertising through LinkedIn and Google was booming with a constant focus on creating content (text, pictures, video etc.) to generate an appealing website to find leads and generate business.

NextSales also leveraged these new tools, but the Ambassador Network we introduced in 2015, proved to be our unique selling point why clients wanted to start working with us instead of the competition. NextSales Ambassadors are people who enjoy sharing their knowledge, experience and network relationships with others. Our clients become part of this trusted network and inner circles, enabling them to showcase how their products/services can offer a solution for potential clients.

Our Ambassors come from the European business and Public Sector community and have carefully developed a network of trusted connections (C-level) over the years. They also have an extensive amount of industry and country knowledge that comes in handy during the market research and go to market plan phase. They can give advice on how to address a new target market and what the do’s and don’ts are based on culture and ways of doing business. When we build and nurture funnels for our clients, our Ambassadors will open up their network, but only when they believe it is a unique solution that can benefit their network.

One of the reasons why people want to join the Ambassador Network is to stay up to date on new developments in the IT, High-Tech and Public Safety & Security field. In addition to that they like meeting new people to expand their network and business.

Then came 2020….The global pandemic changed the way of doing business for good. People were forced to stay and work from home. At the beginning companies didn’t do anything, they were just waiting to see how this would play out. There were advantages because of less costs for travel and not doing face-to-face events saved money, but if you don’t do anything, nothing happens. After a couple of months companies were convinced, COVID was here to stay, and they realized they had to deal with it and come into action again.

Companies started organizing webinars and digital events to stay in touch with their (potential) clients. Even though many of them liked it at the start, sitting behind a computer all day left people missing the real connection with peers. So, when the pandemic was slowly resolving, it was time to catch-up on physical events with mainly small-scale events reconnecting with their target audience.

However, when your target audience can attend an event every day of the week, they have to choose where to go and you are competing with other players in the market more and more. Another development was that many liked working from home. Over the years people have found new ways to balance work and private life that works best for them. Some work from home entirely, some work only from the office and others have found a hybrid way of working from home several days per week and working at the office the other days.

Not only the way of working and how people interacted changed, also, the way how they look for and find information on the internet has changed. During the time when we had only Google, SEO was key and you needed to find the right keywords to showcase your company and what you have to offer in order to end up on the top of the search results. The digital developments in this field kept on growing and the time was right to shake things up.

On November 30^th, 2022, a new holy grail was born: ChatGPT (powered by OpenAI). OpenAI has trained a model called ChatGPT which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests. In response, Google introduced Gemini and other players like Claude, Perplexity, Copilot, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Pi joined the playing field.

A new era has arrived where companies need to adjust their approach once again, because where potential clients first would type in keywords (e.g. market research, lead generation or sales outsourcing support/supplier) to find a solution for their need, they now type in sentences to find a solution (e.g. Which supplier can help me grow my business? Who can help me with market research?).

In 2026, it is all about authority. Pure promotion is less successful compared to sharing knowledge. All communication (through website, social media etc.) needs to be able to handle this new approach for your company to be successful. Furthermore, it is important to create your own content and not rely on tools to do it for you. Otherwise, you become just like your competitors that use the same tools, and everyone uses similar content!

To throw even more challenges into the game, the world is changing faster than ever before. Due to wars spreading around the world faster than we can change content on our website, investors have become more careful where to invest their money. Also, potential clients don’t want to take risks on big, expensive and long-lasting projects. The need for agility and flexibility comes back into play here. Therefore, it is best to start small and grow bigger step by step. Not only in how you try to find business for your own company, but also the projects you do for your clients. No one is interested in Waterfall projects that take years to finish and when they do, the solution doesn’t fit the demand.

What is a positive development, in our opinion, is the need for Europe to become less dependent on countries like the US. That is a great opportunity for local players offering solutions. As NextSales celebrates 15 years as experts in sales, we are enthusiastic about the next 15 years. With promissing opportunities to “Make Europe Great Again” (MEGA), we are ready to support companies like yours!

Enthousiastic to get started, and interested to know how to do it? Well, the steps are very simple actually:

1. Market research
2. Plan how to approach the market
3. Get started
4. Give it time, persevere, trial & error
5. Adjust, repeat

If you want to benefit from our 15 years as experts in sales capabilities to get started today growing your business one step at the time, drop us a note. We look forward helping you getting started!