Everyone wants to tell you that sales is complicated, so they can sell you a solution that then makes sales even more complicated.
The software businesses that are highly successful without a big marketing budget or bloated teams all apply simplicity to their sales strategy (with Bookboon we scaled from €300,000 to €16 million ARR).
Simplifying your sales strategy starts with your pitch, your sales calls and meetings, and your sales process.
If you want a higher win rate, you need to simplify your sales strategy. There are three levers you can pull.
How fast a prospect understands what you do.
How effective you are in every conversation.
How easy you make it to buy from you.
I was part of Bookboon, a small Danish software startup that we scaled from €300,000 to €16 million ARR in less than five years and then sold for €75 million to The Access Group. The key to our success was simplicity in every step of the sales process.
Then, we started to believe we needed to be fancy. We added a log-in. We extended the sales process to more meetings, we cut the free pilot, and we applied our 32 pages of terms and conditions. Month by month our new sales slowed down and then declined. The best people left because they lost their vision.
Same product, same market, same people, and the only thing that changed was how complicated we had made it.
I had started at Bookboon as an account executive and, along the journey, became a Global Key Account Manager, Sales Team Lead, and eventually the Bookboon Sales Lead at The Access Group.
In 2025 I quit my job, waving goodbye to a €200,000 per year salary and a quarter of a million in equity, and my goal became to bring simplicity in sales to other B2B software companies so I can help them to write their own Bookboon story.
