In this episode, Vladan sits down with Diederik Smit — Head of Sales at Temper, with ten years of sales experience across software and platform sales. They got acquainted in 2022, when Diederik was Head of Sales at Datatrics and worked with Nobel on several sales roles. Topics: the difference between platform sales and software sales, winning the SPICED Award for Growth Acceleration, running full-cycle AEs without SDRs, implementing a sales methodology, coaching, hiring on attitude over experience, and why outbound is definitely not dead.
Vladan: Hey Diederik — platform sales is easier than software sales?
Diederik: Good question. I think the biggest difference between platform sales and software sales is that when you’re selling a platform, you are selling more of a vision. Especially in the market we’re active in at Temper — the labor market, which is constantly changing; the rules and regulations are changing a lot — you really need to take people along in the story of where it’s going to be in several months or years. While software sales is more about connecting the pain points to very specific features. So we need a broader approach in terms of our sales communication to potential clients, and also our current clients.
Vladan: That’s super interesting, because I think there’s a tendency to see software sales as more complex than platform sales. Platform sales is perceived as more transactional — easier, so to speak. What are your thoughts on that?
Diederik: Well, I understand that people think platform sales is easier than selling software, and I think a lot of reps joining Temper think in the beginning that it’s super simple to sell a platform. But as I mentioned, you need to sell a vision. And you also need to check in constantly with your client — because in our case, after a shift, they can stop working with our platform. We’re super aware of our CAC/LTV, which we measure within the company, and I’m always chasing the people in my team, also in customer success, to really check in: okay, what did we discuss before, and how can we apply our platform from the perspective of labor within our clients? That’s the challenging part — the fact that people can stop using your solution directly.
Vladan: That’s a super refreshing point of view. And you’re an expert with something to say about this, because you have ten years of sales experience, both in software and now in platform sales. You’ve managed teams, you’ve sold yourself — and you recently won a SPICED Award for Growth Acceleration. Can you quickly elaborate — what is it exactly, and why did you win it?
Diederik: The SPICED Award for Growth Acceleration was part of the Impact Summit of Winning by Design, in Ghent last October. I was nominated because of the change I realized within Temper. As I mentioned, we’re in the labor market, which depends on a lot of rules and regulations. As a team, we took care of being more in control of what is happening at our clients — really being in charge of the situation our clients are in, and how we can make sure they’re constantly using our platform. The adoption of platform usage is super important for us, especially in the beginning of the collaboration. We implemented SPICED in our business development team, but also in customer success, and we’re now taking it broader within the company — marketing, and eventually product and account management as well — so we can grow continuously using this methodology.
Full-cycle AEs and smarter handovers
Vladan: Super interesting. So your go-to-market model is a typical B2B SaaS model, with SDRs, account executives and customer success managers?
Diederik: No SDRs.
Vladan: No SDRs — okay, so full-cycle AEs, and then a handover to customer success after the deal is won.
Diederik: Yes — or account management, depending on the potential, the size and the deal.
Vladan: And how exactly did you change that — what did you impact in order to win this award?
Diederik: I think it started with performance management. When I joined Temper, we handed over accounts after a certain number of shifts on our platform, and then we said: okay, this client is onboarded, it’s now going to customer success or account management. It was a bit based on the logo name, and we also looked at some data points within the platform — about the hourly retention we could generate from the client.
So in the beginning, what we did was set up different tiers, based on potential. And based on that potential, we decided how much effort we were going to put into these prospects. You can find a lot on the internet — for example, when we’re selling to logistics, we look at the square meters of a warehouse, because that’s an indicator of how many people are working there.
Vladan: Smart.
Diederik: Yeah, I think it’s quite smart. I had one colleague who also used Google Maps — if he couldn’t find the square meters, he used Street View to see how big it is. I thought that was super creative. That was one of the things we changed. And based on the potential we saw in clients, we now keep them for a couple of months — our goal is to increase the amount of revenue within this adoption or attribution period before we hand it over to client success or account management. The biggest benefit is that you have a serious ramp-up of your client, there’s quite a lock-in already, and we have much more information than when we just handed over after three shifts to one of the customer care teams.
Vladan: I think that’s super smart. And you already have the relationship, so there’s way less friction to actually expand in the first part of the relationship as well.
Diederik: Yes. And you see that business development managers — or account executives, however you want to name them — are also more critical about the clients they bring on board. If it’s not directly contributing to their target, or the impact on their target is not so big, they stop chasing them quite quickly. And other teams within the company benefit from that too. I heard Richard saying: if we hand over bad clients — outside our ICP — to customer success or account management, then in the end it’s a big churn factor as well.
“The growth-at-all-costs principle doesn’t exist anymore.”
Why full-cycle forces focus on the right ICP
Vladan: And I think you’re already tackling that in the first part of the funnel, right? Because you’re working with full-cycle AEs, it’s not beneficial for them to convert just any lead — they also need to look at potential: is it in the ICP, is it relevant to us as a business? How is it working for you? Because I see a lot of clients, and a lot of other companies, moving away from the classical SDR/AE setup into a more full-cycle or 360 AE setup. How do you see that in terms of results, and would you advise other companies to move in that direction?
Diederik: I think it forces a business development manager to be super critical: is this prospect in the company’s ICP? The times where we were pushing on volume, getting as much business in as possible without looking at what it really brings in value to the company — those times are behind us. Winning by Design talks a lot about it, and in Pavilion there are a lot of discussions about it as well. The growth-at-all-costs principle doesn’t exist anymore.
I believe that when an AE or business development manager is responsible for their own portfolio of prospects, they need to be really critical about where they want to spend their time — and that automatically forces them to focus on the right ICP, the right buyer, the right users. And maybe one of the things we’re doing better right now is that we really know who the buyer is within a company and who the user is. The buyer is concerned with rules, regulations, price obviously — while the user of our platform has daily issues: not enough people on the floor in their logistics center, or in their restaurant, for example. I think it really contributes to that part as well.
Implementing a sales methodology: start at the basics
Vladan: Obviously you won the SPICED Award, so I can guess which methodology you prefer — and I also noticed you have the Winning by Design Revenue Architecture stamp of approval. You introduced this model at Temper. What I see a lot with our clients is that the actual implementation part is often the hardest and most challenging. What is the number one tip you can give to companies who want to implement a new sales methodology, or to new managers?
Diederik: I think you should really start at the basics. At Temper we already worked with Winning by Design — that was super helpful, it was already there when I joined one and a half years ago, so it’s easier to apply a sales model on top of what we already have. And what I always do when we train a new rep, or a new team when I enter a company: I start by explaining the fundamentals — traditionally there are the classic phases: opening, analysis, closing. Depending on the level of the AE, I decide where we start with explaining the new way of selling — and also explaining what the benefit is for them. And then I automatically come back to focusing on the right ICP, the right buyers, the right users, and constantly checking in on the situation — because that’s one of the main things we need to do in order to grow accounts.
Vladan: Makes sense. And obviously that first training is the initial part. What do you do in terms of continuous development with the team, to make sure they keep developing and stay on top of their game?
Diederik: I believe that coaching or training should be based on individual needs. I’ve tried group trainings, and for very general things — pipeline management, for example — it works: okay, this is the new way we’re going to do pipeline management, fine, we can put everyone in a group. But if I look at my business development team right now, I have people with seven years of experience and people who just graduated. I cannot start with the basics with someone who’s already seven years in this business. So I’m really focused on: what do you want to learn? Where do you want to grow? What kind of skills do you need in order to be successful?
That’s also something I take into consideration when hiring. One of my questions in hiring is always: what is the first thing we should work on together? It shows self-reflection, it shows how coachable someone is — and it’s also a main driver for me, because I know directly where to start. Besides all the calls we can listen to, of course.
Vladan: Love that. And extra bonus points for the hiring tip.
“With a junior, you get someone at the table who doesn’t have habits.”
Hiring: attitude, coachability, self-reflection
Vladan: We got acquainted in 2022 — you were Head of Sales at Datatrics at the time, and we worked together on some sales roles. What do you think are the most important things when hiring an AE or a sales rep? What do you look for, and how do you qualify that person?
Diederik: It depends a bit on what type of person you’re looking for and what the role is. Right now I’m looking for a new inbound sales rep, for example, and for me it’s fine if someone is straight out of school. Then I’m hiring on attitude, on coachability and on self-reflection. In the role play for this role, for example, I ask someone: okay, we’re going to do this role play, you’re going to sell me something that feels comfortable to you — it could be a bottle of wine. We do it, I give feedback — or Jasper, my colleague who joins me in the call — we say: these are three improvement points, and we do it again. That’s how I hire a new salesperson who has never done it before. I can’t ask a graduate, “here’s one of the accounts — how are you going to prioritize it?” They have no idea. Of course they don’t. But if someone comes in with six years of experience, that could be a question.
Vladan: Exactly. That’s also what I find: sometimes it’s harder to recruit a junior with no experience than a senior — because with a senior you can go on track record and experience, they have super concrete examples of what they’ve done and why they’re good. With juniors it’s more about the personality, the motivation, the grit — and sometimes it’s difficult to really test that. But I love your example of doing the role play and asking for their own self-reflection, to see if they can actually take the feedback into account for the next try. Do you think it’s easier to hire someone with a lot of experience? Maybe not to find them — but to actually test them and go through an assessment, I find that easier than with a junior.
Diederik: I find it maybe even more difficult sometimes. Because they know how to sell — sometimes they’re also really good at selling themselves.
Vladan: That is true.
Diederik: And I think with a junior, you get someone at the table who doesn’t have habits. In terms of coachability — people with a lot of experience bring their own habits, and that’s really difficult to change, because it’s behavior they’ve had for a lot of years. I remember when I started in my first management role at Datatrics, I was super sensitive to people that came from Salesforce, for example. I thought: they know the dream. But selling Salesforce is something totally different from selling another software tool — they know how to sell Salesforce, because when you’re calling from Salesforce, everybody knows Salesforce.
Vladan: For me it’s more that I’ve interviewed so many salespeople that I can really dig deep — ask follow-up question after follow-up question to understand: this person can sell themselves, but have they really done it? How have they closed this deal? What is the track record? When you really dive deep, it shows. With juniors, what I’ve found sometimes — and maybe it’s also this generation, I’d love to hear your view — is that they can say one thing, and then in practice, because they don’t have that working experience, when they’re truly put to the test and need to show determination, excuses can come into play.
Diederik: I think that’s a personal aspect of the person you hire, but there’s also a very important role for you as a manager: being aware that you’re hiring a person with zero experience, and that you need to take care of him or her. If you look at my agenda, I spend between four and eight hours a week on proper sales training and coaching. And I think a lot of managers are — not wasting their time, but putting their heads into spreadsheets. It’s super important, when we hire junior people, that we spend our time, that we join them on appointments: okay, we’ve practiced this — how are you going to apply it? Why do you apply it in this way? What are the top three learnings from these appointments we did together? And those become the focus points for next quarter, for example.
Vladan: I love that. And it’s really necessary to have that proper culture of training and coaching when you have a sales model based on hiring people from university — graduates. That’s the only way you can make this work. And then you can also develop raw talent into real diamonds. That’s what we’ve seen a lot with some of our clients, and I think that’s a great example of how to do it.
“Help your buyer or user get that promotion, that next step within their company — and they will never stop using your platform.”
Outbound is not dead
Vladan: Cool — then the final question. Cold calling is dead, outbound is becoming more noisy, inbound is becoming more expensive. What is your number one tip to generate pipeline in this market?
Diederik: Outbound is definitely not dead — I see that kind of statement so often on X. I think you really should understand your ICP — especially your buyer and your user — and what is important to them, and how you can help them grow within their role. I think that’s something people forget: what is their promotion path within their organization, and how can we, as a platform or software solution, help them get that promotion, that next step within their company? If you can bring that kind of value to your buyer or your user, then they will never stop using it.
Vladan: Love that. Thanks a lot, Diederik.
Diederik: Thanks for having me, Vladan — super nice to be here at the office. See you soon.
Vladan: Same here, man — you’re super welcome. And if you’re interested in learning more about Diederik or following him on his growth journey, you can find him on LinkedIn. And if you’re interested in more content like this, make sure to give this podcast a follow and a like — and see you next time.
