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Ilkka Vertanen
Sales & Marketing Director for Finland and the Baltics at LINK Mobility
about
Ilkka Vertanen
Ilkka Vertanen is the Sales & Marketing Director for Finland and the Baltics at LINK Mobility, a role he has held since May 2022. He leads new customer acquisition, account management, customer retention, and partner sales for the region, while also overseeing marketing initiatives aligned with revenue and growth targets. Vertanen is also the Founder and Author of GTM Club, which he launched in October 2023 to unite Go-To-Market leaders and share strategic insights on B2B technology sales.
How do you envision the ideal collaboration between sales and marketing in today's B2B landscape?
In my view, the ideal collaboration between sales and marketing is one where both teams work closely together, with marketing taking a more proactive role in understanding and addressing customer needs. We currently have a good setup, but I believe we can bring these teams even closer together.
One key area for improvement is reducing the time it takes for marketing to react when sales identifies important trends or insights. While it's honestly challenging to quantify the exact impact of delayed responses, we potentially miss valuable opportunities to lead industry conversations and demonstrate thought leadership.
At LINK, we specialise in providing advanced communication solutions that help businesses connect with their customers across multiple platforms. In our rapidly changing industry, we're introducing richer communication channels that include images, videos, and other media—such as RCS (Rich Communication Services) and WhatsApp—to enhance customer engagement. When we spot recurring themes or questions in customer meetings about these new technologies, we have the opportunity to be the first to address these concerns in the market. However, if we delay our response by even a few weeks, we might miss that window to lead the conversation.
To achieve this closer collaboration, I believe marketing should shadow various stages of the sales process. Ideally, we'd be present at all stages, but realistically, we need to prioritise based on where the company currently needs the most emphasis. I'd recommend focusing on the first and second meetings with prospects, as these initial interactions often reveal the most interesting discussions that can be scaled up.
This shadowing approach offers several benefits. Firstly, it allows marketing to hear customers explaining their problems in their own terms, without the filter that often exists when information is relayed second-hand. This direct exposure helps capture the authentic voice of the customer, enabling us to craft messaging that truly resonates. Secondly, it helps bridge the gap between sales and marketing by giving marketing professionals first-hand exposure to customer conversations and the challenges faced in the field.
How has the increasing complexity of B2B buying groups affected your sales process, and what do you need from marketing to better engage these groups?
The complexity of B2B buying groups has indeed increased, and we're seeing new stakeholders become involved in the decision-making process. For instance, we're noticing more involvement from CFOs, particularly due to the current economic climate. This shift requires us to adapt our approach and messaging to address the specific concerns and priorities of each stakeholder.
Let me give you a concrete example from our industry. A CFO might suggest switching from SMS notifications to email for parcel pickup alerts, reasoning that email is either free or close to free, compared to the cost of SMS. This is precisely the kind of dialogue we need to be prepared for. We need to help them see beyond immediate cost savings and consider the broader implications, such as the potential for increased congestion at delivery hubs if people don't receive or notice email notifications.
To effectively engage these diverse buying groups, we need marketing to develop content and collateral that goes beyond just touting the features of our communication solutions. We need data and case studies that demonstrate the holistic impact of our services on the entire value chain. This might include metrics on customer satisfaction, reduced support tickets, faster turnover times at delivery hubs, and even the environmental impact of fewer failed deliveries.
Moreover, we need to create educational content that helps various stakeholders understand the nuances of modern business communication. This could include case studies, whitepapers, or interactive tools that demonstrate the journey of a message and its impact on different business metrics.
How do you currently personalise your outreach at scale, and what account-specific insights from marketing would make this process more effective?
Our approach to outreach is quite targeted. Rather than conducting mass outreach at scale, we focus on specific segments, which could range from a very small set of a few companies to as many as 200 companies that use a particular partner's product portfolio.
We aim to do small, highly targeted outreach campaigns. The aspects we consider include the prospect's technology stack, industry, potential use cases, and trends and benefits we've observed in similar companies at an industry level. This approach is a collaboration between marketing and sales, led by sales in our organisation.
To make this process more effective, we in sales definitely need support from marketing. We need conversation starters - topics and materials that can spark meaningful discussions. We're looking for customer cases, examples of transformation journeys, and ways to inspire success. We need fresh perspectives and new aspects for our prospects to consider.
The goal is to move beyond those typical, often ineffective "just checking in" type of outreach. Instead, we want to provide value with every interaction, positioning our sales team as trusted advisors rather than just vendors pushing a product.
Given the changing B2B landscape, what types of content or resources do you anticipate needing from marketing to engage buyers more effectively?
As our industry evolves, with new channels emerging and customer needs changing, we need content that helps us navigate and lead these changes. We need to utilise insights from our entire customer base, our dialogues with customers, and industry-wide trends to create content that educates and inspires.
For example, we've noticed significant differences in messaging preferences between Nordic countries. In Finland, WhatsApp is more popular for personal communication, while in Sweden, Facebook Messenger is preferred. We need to be able to pull these insights and utilise them in our dialogues, especially when introducing new solutions and inspiring our customers.
Video content is also becoming increasingly important. We've been focusing on this for almost a year now and are seeing good traction. I'd like to see our sales team able to use video differently in their individual customer dialogues, to inspire and speed up the changes we see coming.
Ultimately, what we need from marketing is a combination of trend analysis, customer insights, and innovative communication formats. This will enable us to stay ahead of market shifts, address evolving customer needs, and position ourselves as thought leaders in our industry.
about
LINK Mobility
LINK Mobility is a leading European provider of Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) solutions. The company specialises in delivering mobile communication products and services to enterprises, helping them communicate effectively with their audiences across multiple channels. LINK Mobility serves over 55,000 customers globally, offering a range of communication tools including SMS, WhatsApp, and RCS for various use cases such as notifications, multi-factor authentication, marketing, and customer care.
About 6sense
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