What was Buutti's challenge before Sellai's services?
Buutti is a IT house based in Oulu. Buutti offers software development, recruitment and training services. The company has grown successfully in recent years, and Kauppalehti considers Buutti as the most succesful grower in Northern Finland. Once the northern market has been examined, Buutti's gaze will naturally turn south. Buutti wanted to strengthen its status in the Helsinki metropolitan area, so Sellai stepped in.
What did Buutti want Sellai to solve?
Buutti's developer recruitment service goes by the name of CodeMatch and focuses on identifying and employing talented junior and mid-level developers. CodeMatch was well received in Oulu region, and Sellai's task was to pilot the sale of the concept also in the Helsinki metropolitan area.
What kind of relationship does Sellai have with Buutti?
Sellai's consultant Tomi Suomela is working as a member of Buuttis sales team. "Outsourcing sales is a slightly misleading term in this context. I am a full-blooded member of the sales team: I work in Buutti's systems, I attend the morning meetings of the sales team and it is not visible to customers that the pay comes from a different house," Tomi says.
Openness and transparency of cooperation are therefore key to the success of sales cooperation. At first, there was a little bit of distance between the companies. However, Buutti's CEO Mikko Koistinen soon discovered that the outsourced sales consultant cannot operate completely independently. "It's not enough that one gives a phone and an email to the sales consultant, and then waits for the deals to come swarming in."
Quick profits are rarely available in B2B sales, and Sellai's sales also took time before deals were made. The characteristic feature of software developers sales is that demand and supply vary very quickly. Good developers are very wanted and quickly booked, and on the other hand, companies are constantly looking for developers themselves.
However, Koistinen had strong credit for CodeMatch's excellence, and Sellai's sales seemed to be going in the right direction. "We decided to double the number of hours Tomi worked so that the probability of meeting a potential customer and a suitable developer would be higher," says Mikko Koistinen. The investment paid off, and Tomi has now brought significant customers in the house.
What does the future look like?
Based on the results of Sellai's cooperation, Buutti decided to invest more in sales in the Helsinki metropolitan area and hired their own salesperson. Sellai's consultant moved on to the sale of yet another service concept. Buutti has recently won the framework contract for recruitment training services at the Uusimaa ELY Centre, and Buutti will get Sellai's sales power for the acquisition of partner companies.
