The Belgian energy market, where Luminus is one of the biggest players, is haunted. On top of rising gas and oil prices and energy transition, our southern neighbors are also dealing with the so-called MIG6. A drastic change around data exchange in the energy market. Meanwhile, Luminus took over the Belgian branch of Essent. Stanny van Goethem, Sr. sales manager OBS at Luminus, had the task of connecting outbound sales of the two organizations. That proved to be quite a challenge. Through sales partners, Stanny came in touch with Salesdock. What followed was an intensive collaboration to realize a solution under great time pressure with which the outbound sales teams of Luminus, despite all the challenges, flourished as never before.

At the time we spoke with Stanny for this client case, he was just recovering from one of the most hectic periods of his years at Luminus. A decade ago, he started as a channel manager in direct sales, rose to sr. business development manager and in October '21 became responsible for outbound sales (OBS). "OBS was less familiar territory for Luminus," Stanny explains, "Essent, on the other hand, was very adept at it. The takeover made capacity and know-how available in the OBS field."

MIG6 provided a very tight timeframe to convert Essent sales to Luminus and gave us bitterly little time to develop adequate tools. The external call centers were still able to close contracts, but were steering blindly towards proposals and proposal follow-ups. This created uncertainty and turbulence among partners and agents. "Sales results dropped by 30 to 40 percent, half of the salespeople dropped out," Stanny outlines the severity of the situation. "Confidence had to be restored to get sales results back on track." Stanny sat down with partners who advised him Salesdock. Time was running out. Stanny arranged a demo of Salesdock. He was impressed. "Developing something yourself would take 1 to 3 years, there was no time for that." There was one problem, however: things had to be up and running within 6 weeks because of MIG6. On behalf of Salesdock, Nick and Gijs rushed to Belgium. "The two gentlemen and the entire OBS team spent two days studying the architecture and operation of our sales organization and drew a draft. Those were very intensive days," says Stanny. Together they concluded that realization in six weeks was ambitious but feasible. Stanny and his colleagues opted for "as little Luminus-specific development as possible" and wanted to use Salesdock precisely as it was intended. However, the differences between the Dutch and Belgian markets did have to be bridged. "Salesdock was quick to learn about the market, Nick and Gijs have good empathy for the business and our needs," Stanny explains his trust. Looking back at the intensive development timtes, Stanny speaks of "the best collaboration of my career." That enthusiasm comes not only from the quality of the software or the ingenuity of the developers. "The platform is good and the cooperation fantastic. Within 15 minutes they respond, usually faster. Often immediately with an answer and sometimes they indicated they would have to figure it out and get back to you within a certain time. Those promises were always kept." As mentioned, the collaboration was quite intensive. "During actual development, we were in contact about 20 times a day. By now once or twice a week, but still I always get an answer within 10 minutes. Great people, great service, that's how you can cross meters quickly," Stanny praises. For Gijs, by the way, it was one of his first assignments as a Salesdock consultant, which Stanny didn't realize for a moment and which he can now laugh about positively. "I thought Gijs was an expert in the profession, but he turned out to be a rookie. I fell into it, didn't notice a thing!" After a short period of testing and final 'proverbial' fine tuning, Stanny was pleased with the solution. The results didn't lie; in fact, November became a historic month. "Outbound sales are going great again. We are currently 2 times above what Essent was doing. It was our best month ever," said the proud sales manager. The agents and partners who had previously threatened to leave are now running at full speed again. The network is even being expanded with Dutch parties who are trying their luck in Belgium because of the Dutch telecom law. Because of Salesdock, Luminus now works effectively with partners. The successful start-up month is propelling Stanny's ambitions. "My goal is to make outbound Luminus' biggest sales channel." His hands are itching to get more out of the link between Steam and Salesdock and feed sales with information from the CRM. He is also looking forward to even more dynamic interaction to encourage salespeople and a customized dashboard. In short: there are plenty of ideas for the future. For now, Belgium is not yet getting rid of Salesdock.