Vesper Increases Win Rate and ACV by 20% - and Breaks Its All-Time Sales Record

Vesper offers commodity market data, analytics, and analyst insights globally. Used by companies like Mars, PepsiCo, Albert Heijn, Carrefour, and hundreds of smaller firms, it serves around 700 customers with 100 FTE in Amsterdam and Chicago. The revenue team has about 40 staff, including 20 in sales, led by Head of Sales Karel Bos.

Vesper's challenge:

Vesper's sales problem wasn't a lack of growth. It was that growth had outpaced the sales strategy, and the two AE teams had drifted apart.

Karel had co-founded the mid-market team years earlier and built its playbook. Later he launched the enterprise team and rebuilt the strategy from scratch, moving from BANT to MEDDPICC and layering in other methodologies. The mid-market playbook, however, was never updated.

"Both departments and both sales teams were working in a different way."

When Karel took over the full sales organization on the 1st of March, aligning those teams became priority number one - together with bringing real structure to the mid-market team.

"I thought we need to, first of all, align everything and make sure that everybody speaks the same language. And I knew from the beginning that I couldn't do it all by myself. I had some ideas, but I also knew that I needed some help."

Underneath the structural problem sat a behavioural one: deals were being hoped closed rather than worked closed. In the enterprise team, multiple stakeholders were involved early. In mid-market, that barely happened. which made both closing and forecasting unreliable.

Solutions by SALESDOCk: Value-Based Selling & Coaching, 7-Month Program

Vesper had worked with sales agencies before, and Karel knew exactly what he didn't want.

Key changes introduced through the program:

• From feature-led to value-led demos – instead of showing the 25 nicest features, reps now qualify with proper discovery first and only demo what actually creates value for that specific buyer.
• From a seller-centric to a buyer-centric sales process – the process was rebuilt around how customers decide, not around what the team assumed it had to do to close.
• Stakeholder mapping from day one – identifying who actually signs the contract at the start of the process, a discipline the enterprise team had partly but mid-market didn't.
• A shared language across the whole revenue org – value-based selling was rolled out not only to the mid-market and enterprise AE teams, but to the SDRs, BDRs and the Customer Success team as well.
• Hands-on implementation – SALESDOCk on site at the Amsterdam office throughout the rollout, not a one-off workshop.

"It's a big difference from hoping that deals close to actually going through the process and understanding what we need to close that deal."

The Outcome:

Vesper tracked three metrics for the program: the overall Q2 target, win rate (discovery/demo to deal) and ACV. All three were hit.

• A company record quarter. "All targets were hit in Q2, leading to our Vesper sales record ever — most revenue done in one quarter."
• ACV up 20% in the mid-market team — from just over 15K to 19.6K per deal.
• Win rate up 20%.
• Forecasting that holds. "When we have these conversations on Monday morning — what do you expect to close this week — very often they are right. If someone tells me I'm expecting the signature on Friday for this, this and this reason, I also feel confident that we will actually get in that deal."
• Reps on top of every deal. "If I ask someone who's the economic buyer, or what's the business problem, or what's the negative impact of that — people have the answers. And if they don't have the answers, that's also fine sometimes, but then we at least know what they need to ask for in the next meeting."
• A more confident team. "People feel more empowered, feel more confident, and are also more confident to hit their targets."

The decision also had full backing from the top. Implementing value-based selling was Karel's first call as the new Head of Sales, and his CRO's verdict was clear:

"Our CRO, Brendan, said it was the right decision to put value-based selling in place. And the whole business stands behind it."

Asked what he'd tell himself with hindsight, Karel's answer was about timing, not approach:

"I would tell myself that we should have done something like value-based selling earlier. We've grown very fast over the last six years, but it could potentially have been even better — especially ACV, win rate, those numbers could have been higher."

Would Karel recommend SALESDOCk?

"I would. Apart from the targets that we set together and hit together, my main reason is that SALESDOCk does not give a presentation, we write the check and we say goodbye to each other. SALESDOCk comes to the office and stays on board throughout the implementation. And I think that's extremely valuable, especially in sales organizations. Therefore I would definitely recommend SALESDOCk to any other sales organization in the European SaaS industry."