Building SaaS sales team in Finland

Assently is an E-sign & E-identification service for businesses, originated in Sweden where they have achieved a strong market position. Assently has been on the market in Finland for several years, but now they decided to start a subsidiary and expand in Finland because of the great potential in the market. 

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After expanding in the Finnish market, they soon realized they needed to scale the sales team. “Our product is great and the market is ready for it. But our bottleneck was to find the right people to sell it”, Linda Skogberg-Lehtinen, CEO of Assently, explains. 

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Looking for a recruitment partner with a similar mindset and SaaS understanding - why were we the right partner?

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“I came across TalentBee, an agency specialized in SaaS businesses, and they seemed different”, Linda says. She decided to give us a chance and we started a cooperation. 

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Before working with us, they had worked with other recruitment agencies while scaling the sales team. However, she wasn’t unsatisfied with the previous partners. 

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“It was after we started to work with TalentBee I understood how we could do recruitment and cooperate with an agency even better than before. It was truly eye-opening to me”, Linda says. 

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One-off recruitment - here’s what we did 

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#1 Unique selling points & recruitment marketing 

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We helped Assently to find unique selling points as a workplace - with the help of employer branding action. This was done to create awareness about Assently as an employer and to get the right talents to apply. 

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Recruitment marketing included: 

• A job ad 
• A blog article that told more about the position and the working culture at Assently
• Social media posts for Assently’s LinkedIn page and to the employee’s personal LinkedIn profile
• + We also used paid advertising in LinkedIn to create traffic to the job ad. The budget was 500€ for two weeks.

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#2 Profile definition

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We helped Linda to define the needed profile. 

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How? We used SaaS-salespeople example profiles for her to comment on so that both her and we got a mutual understanding of  the necessary skills according to the role. After that we collected Linda’s thoughts both in written format and having in-depth discussion with her. Based on these comments and conversations we created an ideal candidate profile with priority list. This ensured what the most necessary skills and knowledge are when looking for the candidates. 

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#3 Talent Search 

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Finding suitable candidates from LinkedIn and contacting them with personalized video messages. During this time the paid advertising was running and we published scheduled content to Assently’s social media.

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#4 First interviews with the candidates

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We held the first rounds of interviews and provided support to Linda, the CEO of Assently who is responsible for scaling the sales team, during the rest of the recruitment process.

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#5 Job offer 

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We helped to create an appealing job offer, both visually and contentually.

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…and here are the results:

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We used paid advertising in LinkedIn to create traffic to the job ad. Using well-thought targeting we reached 4000 people with 3-12 years experience from the Sales and Business Development fields. 

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Did we get applications throughout the job ad? No. The hired candidate was found through headhunting.

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But we still created awareness about Assently as an employer in the market. Using paid advertising to this boosted the process and created a base for the audience to start growing organically as well. 

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It is important to note that a recruitment campaign is not only useful to attract the candidate but also to reach potential clients. Amongst the reached audience there were people in the regulation business who are considered to be Assently’s ideal customer profile.

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However, to create more awareness and to build the employer brand, strategic and consistent communication is the key.

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As said, the hired talent was found through headhunting. Our long list was created based on their skills priority criteria - which meant the candidate quality was already top-notch. 

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 Here’s a wrap-up from the headhunting process:

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The final result - happy talent, happy customer

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Most importantly, we succeeded in bringing in great candidates with matching backgrounds for Assently’s sales team. 

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“They are not just another recruitment agency – they truly care about scaling our business by helping us to attract and hire the right talent for our growth”, Linda concludes. 

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3 reasons why Assently chose TalentBee? 

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#1 SaaS business understanding 

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“TalentBee understands our field and knows what kind of people thrive in SaaS-companies. By focusing on this niche, they also knew how to ask the right questions. We didn’t have to spend so much time focusing on the basics of our business”, Linda concludes. 

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#2 True feeling of a partnership 

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It takes time to get to know your business partner and create trust. Even though we had a rather short track-record, Linda said she was quite sure about us. 

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“At the same time we are very different but also share the same spirit. But again, it was the SaaS knowledge that was unifying and it was a good base to start building the trust”, she explains. 

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“At the same time we are very different but also share the same spirit. But again, it was the SaaS knowledge that was unifying and it was a good base to start building the trust”, says Linda.

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Linda needed a business partner who understands this and could also help them in the long run. “Next time we need to recruit someone, we know how to act and how the processes go. This will save us a lot of time”, Linda says. 

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#3 Combining our expertise and sharing the knowledge 

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When you are entering a new market and scaling the sales team, it means there are a lot of new things to discover and discuss. To Linda this meant challenging her thoughts on what kind of a sales professional would be a good fit for them. 

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“We had some great discussions on what the sales people in today's working environment need to succeed and Talentbee has brought new ideas to our own sales process as well as sales onboarding and for that I am very grateful”, Linda explains. 

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“When we are opening new recruitments I will continue working with TalentBee. After this experience I won’t consider anyone else”, Linda concludes.

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