Director Noud Baijens in conversation with Sander Schimmelpenninck

A message from Noud Baijens on LinkedIn: 'Hi Sander, I'm in Ibiza reading your magazine. Can you tell me how I get into Quote without tiresome PR agencies?' Now that's what we like to see. With Pro Contact, Baijens kicks down doors professionally, so a cold LinkedIn message like that is peanuts.

Criss-crossing Romania in propeller planes

'I started working at Vapro, a training provider for process operators, my uncle's company. He stationed me in Romania, around the time it had just joined the EU. We could happily soak up European subsidies there. A fantastic time, with an emerging international scene in Bucharest. I was sales manager and flew all over the country in little propeller planes.'

Noud Baijens's entrepreneurial drive

After another year and a half working in the Netherlands as a consultant for Vapro, Baijens wanted to start his own business. And he had an idea. 'As a student I worked at Van Lanschot for six months, where I learned to make calls. I had to convince wealthy clients to make an appointment. We actually worked just like you do: simply scrolling through the Chamber of Commerce register looking for people with assets of at least 750,000 euros. And then just calling. From that moment on, I set about mastering the front end of sales: kicking down doors.'

Noud Baijens started Pro Contact, specialising in cold calling. 'In the first few years I ran sales campaigns, initially just from my living room. With good instructions and training, we often turned out to be better at it than the clients. We put our telemarketers right at the client's own premises, so you get direct knowledge sharing and the client knows exactly what they're getting. Our telemarketers can grow with sales training, so it doesn't turn into a revolving door.'

The development of Pro Contact

The company has grown to thirty people and the focus has shifted from sales to recruitment campaigns. 'When I started, everyone wanted customers; now everyone wants staff. It's a boom. Well, fine, enjoy it, but do push on. And that's what we've done, because 80 percent of our revenue now comes from our recruitment campaigns. And we don't have the smallest clients either: Randstad, Jumbo and Philips, to name a few. For our sales campaigns we often worked for the lesser gods.'

The real growth in recruitment has to come through play. 'We're now specialising in gamified recruitment; think of an electrician who has to rebuild a fuse box online. You recreate the working environment and let the candidate convert in a fun way. It works like crazy and we're good at it. You have to be innovative in this market, and big clients in particular respond to that. It's efficient too, because you can build an assessment straight into the landing page.' And revenue? 'We turn over between 1.5 and 2 million euros and onboard three to five new clients every week. We get paid for the hours we put in.'

So not the usual no cure no pay? 'No, and yet we're much cheaper than any recruitment agency. The ad budget also goes straight to social media; that's never money down the drain. Randstad and Tempo Team like working with us, because we pick out the best candidates. I've never had a request for a discount, so we must be doing something right.'

WHAT DOES THE EXPERT THINK?

Marlot Anna Cruiming (29), CEO of Jobbird Worldwide: 'With unemployment as low as it is, everyone in the Netherlands has a job, so you need to come up with something exciting to attract domestic and foreign candidates. This kind of gamification is a great idea for appealing to the right target group. What I do wonder is how you keep conversion high and costs low. The big challenge: can you deliver enough candidates?'

(Source: Quote 500, no. 229) September 2018, by: Sander Schimmelpenninck

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