Clevenio: “New Company Needs Testimonials”

Clevenio is a sales engagement software that aims to maximize the effectiveness of the first steps in B2B sales. It works on the premise that a company’s ideal customer profile (ICP) is strictly defined, and all data related to contacting ICP companies is gathered and used to further optimize the outreach process in the future. As soon as Clevenio acquired its first customers, it started collecting testimonials. After asking for testimonials manually via email, it decided to start using Trustmary to both collect reviews and add them to its website.

All B2B sales teams want to get results as effectively as possible. A lot of CRM systems, such as Pipedrive and HubSpot, make it hard to collect and utilize the data about the effectiveness of an outreach strategy.

According to Clevenio’s founders, even the most modern CRM systems are not great tools for leading sales outreach.

– It’s tragicomic that a company can contact the same potential customer companies for decades, but their effectiveness does not change. Many feel that contacting a company for the second time is even trickier than the first time. By using Clevenio, a company can go through their ICP companies, learn more about their market while contacting, and can boost the effectiveness of its sales team based on the gathered data, says Clevenio’s Co-founder, Aleksi Halsas.

Before founding Clevenio, Halsas worked broadly in digital marketing and paid advertising for both B2C and B2B target groups. He has also worked in software development.

Halsas is now in charge of Clevenio’s marketing and takes part in the B2B sales. Thanks to his extensive experience, he can make the most out of using Trustmary.

“We started collecting testimonials immediately”

In December 2022 Clevenio was being developed full-time. In the autumn of 2023, it had its first software users.

Halsas decided to start collecting testimonials right away, so that he could use them in marketing and enabling sales.

– I wanted to save on everything, as we just started and money is tight. I asked the first testimonials via email. The next thing I know, I was irritated as I wanted to add the comments on our website. I decided to start using Trustmary for this to remove manual steps, Halsas describes.

Even though Halsas still sends the actual requests manually to each customer, using Trustmary has made the process very easy.

– By using Trustmary the whole testimonial collection process is now systematic and uniform. We have one testimonial form in use and a process for how we get people to leave us a testimonial, Halsas continues.

Everytime someone leaves a review or a testimonial for Clevenio, Halsas approaches the company and asks if he could write a case story.

– We want to grow fast, so we have a constant need for testimonials and reviews. We want better and better testimonials, he goes on.

Demand Generation with Reviews

Clevenio operates in a rather new industry. It is not a traditional CRM, but rather competes for the market share with CRMs.

Even though the founders know Clevenio can solve a huge problem, the problem is to convince potential customers to give Clevenio a shot.

– We renew the way to do sales. When we combine this with the fact that we just started our business last year, it created a credibility issues, Halsas says.

The company uses social proof to generate demand in their customers. Halsas says that their sales people very often get asked “Who are you and do you have any proof that what you’re doing even works?”.

– When we can show the doubters testimonials from happy customers, we can actually change the whole tone of the conversation. Most people get very interested in what we do, when they see a comment from someone from their industry saying what great benefits they’ve got by using Clevenio, Halsas explains.

Reviews Boost Customer Acquisition

– Reviews and testimonials play a huge role in customer acquisition. If someone doesn’t believe in our product, we show our testimonials. They’re a kind of “get out of jail free” card to keep the conversation going, Halsas laughs.

Reviews and testimonials play a huge role in customer acquisition.

If someone doesn’t believe in our product, we show our testimonials. They’re a kind of “get out of jail free” card to keep the conversation going.

Aleksi Halsas, Co-founder @Clevenio

He adds that one or two testimonials are not enough, but one needs to have much of them. In addition, Clevenio puts effort into getting testimonials from companies that seem trustworthy to other companies and it tries to get a high-quality comment from each user.

– When we use a branded testimonial form to collect references, it creates credibility and encourages customers to spend a few minutes to write a testimonial, Halsas adds.

The biggest advantage of using Trustmary is that Clevenio can be sure that it can use testimonials publicly.

– If you collect testimonials via email, you need to doublecheck whether you can use a comment or not. That’s an unnecessary step that Trustmary totally eliminates, Halsas describes.

When someone sees that users have been happy with Clevenio, it makes one wonder if they could update the way they currently do sales.

– The absolute easiest way to write copy for your company is to use the comments from existing customer, Halsas adds.

DYIng Everything Is Not a Good Idea

When everything needs to get done with limited resources, it’s crucial to select easy-to-use tools.

– It’s easy to add two testimonials to one’s website manually. Three testimonials can get troublesome, if the length of the testimonials vary, Halsas says.

Before using Trustmary Halsas decided to ask their own software developer to code an element he could use to add testimonials to website. In his mind, Halsas thought that he’s saving a little money when he does things in-house instead of using a service.

– At the end of the day, using our software developer was much more expensive than using Trustmary. And the element our guy coded didn’t even work that well, Halsas laughs.

Even though the software developer was able to code an functioning element, it lacked many useful features that Trustmary has by default.

Useful features include:

• Getting star rating to SERPs (Review schema)
• Unified way to add testimonials to a widget, no matter the length of the comment
• Adding new reviews and testimonials to website easily

Trustmary specializes in collecting and showcasing reviews and feedback on one’s website, so it makes no sense to try to reinvent the wheel by yourself.

The price is next to nothing for a small business and scales with your growth

Aleksi Halsas, Co-Founder @Clevenio

– Trustmary specializes in collecting and showcasing reviews and feedback on one’s website, so it makes no sense to try to reinvent the wheel by yourself. The pricing is next to nothing for a small business and scales with your growth, Halsas thinks.

Halsas is very happy that Clevenio uses Trustmary.

– Using Trustmary makes selling so much easier, he summarizes.

Using Trustmary Solves Many Issues:

• The widget looks nice even though the lengths of testimonials can vary
• After installing a widget one only needs to go to Trustmary to publish new testimonials
• Easy way to keep the contents of a website up-to-date
• Increased credibility in the eyes of new website visitors and potential customers

Features Used by Clevenio

• Review widget
• Collecting reviews and testimonials