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Pieter Heyvaert
International Sales Director at Materialise
about
Pieter Heyvaert
Pieter Heyvaert serves as International Sales Director at Materialise, where he leads sales operations across Europe and Asia Pacific regions. With extensive experience in medical 3D software and printed medical devices, Pieter has progressed through various sales leadership roles within Materialise. He brings particular expertise in navigating complex B2B sales environments and developing strategic approaches to regional market challenges. Passionate about healthcare innovation, Pieter focuses on driving positive patient outcomes through personalised medical solutions.
What challenges do you see in today's marketing-generated leads, and how does this vary across regions?
We've observed a consistent decline in marketing qualified leads over recent years, particularly through traditional channels like our website and email campaigns. What's fascinating is the significant regional variation in conversion rates. In Japan, for instance, we see impressive conversion rates of around 40% from marketing-qualified leads to opportunities. However, in regions like China and Latin America, these rates can be as low as 5%.
These variations often stem from cultural differences and database quality. In Japan, when potential customers reach out, they're typically already in a purchasing mindset and explicitly want to be contacted. This contrasts sharply with other markets where the intent might be less clear. In Latin America, we face challenges with our marketing database quality, and our content often reaches students rather than our target audience. Similar challenges exist in China, where database management is even more complex. This stands in stark contrast to Europe, where we have access to much higher-quality databases and can be more precise in our targeting.
One of our most significant challenges lies in how we manage our data infrastructure. While we have an extensive CRM database and various products, these platforms aren't effectively communicating with each other at present. This creates ongoing challenges for our marketing team when they're trying to reach specific profiles, leading to back-and-forth interactions between sales and marketing teams.
How can marketing evolve to better support sales in today's complex B2B landscape?
I believe marketing needs to be more deeply integrated with sales teams and have a profound understanding of our customers' needs. This requires our marketeers to have hands-on time with customers—whether through field visits, events, or direct interviews—to produce truly relevant marketing materials. We've found that our most successful conversion channels come from our own driven events, both webinars and physical gatherings, where we can attract relevant participants and generate multiple content pieces from a single event.
The beauty of these events is that they not only drive immediate conversions but also provide opportunities for content multiplication. From a single event, we can potentially create around 20 distinct marketing pieces, including customer interviews, testimonials, and presentation highlights. This approach allows us to maintain consistency in our communication while maximising our output across channels.
The key is having marketing as an integral part of the sales organisation in each region, especially given our significant regional differences. While we need a global framework, having dedicated marketing support in each region helps address local nuances and challenges. This integration should extend to strategic sales meetings, ensuring marketing is present and viewed as part of one cohesive team.
How has the increasing complexity of B2B buying groups affected your approach, and what support do you need from marketing?
The complexity of buying organisations has increased significantly, with more stakeholders involved in decision-making processes. This naturally leads to longer sales cycles. Account-based marketing can be part of the solution, ensuring we cover all buyer influencers and decision-makers within customer organisations. However, we still need to improve how we provide relevant content for different decision-maker profiles.
Our organisation deals with diverse customer types, from single-decision makers like surgeons who can make autonomous decisions to large hospital organisations where the sales process involves multiple stakeholders. Currently, we face a challenge in not having properly structured content tailored to each persona, making it difficult to deliver consistent messaging and value propositions systematically. We're exploring generative AI as a potential solution, though we understand it's not a magic bullet but rather a tool that needs careful integration into our content strategy.
Our marketing team recognises these gaps but faces resource constraints managing essential activities—organising events, creating basic content, maintaining the website, and other fundamental tasks. It's primarily a resource allocation challenge that we need to address strategically.
Looking ahead, what capabilities do you wish marketing could provide to better understand and engage buyers?
I see significant potential in better leveraging external buying signals, particularly from platforms like LinkedIn where peer-to-peer selling often occurs naturally. These conversations, where specific needs are openly discussed, happen more frequently than direct website visits. While we have access to tools like Sales Navigator, I've found that even regular LinkedIn functionality, when used strategically, can be powerful.
The key is maintaining relevant networks and presenting ourselves professionally on these platforms. This means dedicating time to meaningful engagement—connecting, interacting, and sharing content appropriately. The goal should be to eventually earn the right to propose a meeting rather than leading with sales pitches. We need marketing to help us better monitor and engage with these conversations, as there's enormous untapped potential in this area.
From my experience operating globally, whether we're talking about Taiwan, France, or any other market, the fundamental truth remains the same: people trust and listen to their peers. Sales still plays a crucial role in this dynamic, particularly in facilitating these connections. The real opportunity lies in positioning ourselves as the connective tissue in these relationships, becoming the trusted partner that people naturally turn to for solutions.
about
Materialise
Materialise is a pioneering Belgian company specialising in medical 3D software development and the production of 3D printed medical devices. Based in Leuven, the company collaborates closely with medical professionals to create innovative solutions in areas such as virtual surgical planning and craniomaxillofacial applications. Their comprehensive portfolio spans medical equipment, implants, and prosthetics, delivered through advanced additive manufacturing technologies. With a strong presence in both EMEA and APAC regions, Materialise is committed to driving positive healthcare outcomes through personalised medical solutions.
About 6sense
6sense is on a mission to revolutionise the way B2B organisations create revenue by predicting customers most likely to buy and recommending the best course of action to engage anonymous buying teams. 6sense Revenue AI is the only sales and marketing platform to unlock the ability to create, manage and convert high-quality pipeline to revenue. Customers report 2X increases in average contract value, 4X increases in win rate and 20-40% reduction in time to close deals. Know everything, do anything, with 6sense.