Lead generation startup Salezeo has raised €1.5 Million from Newfund capital in order to expand into foreign markets, the company announced this week. Started in 2011 by Olivier Piscart (previously of Emailvision), Stéphane Chaillou, Olivier Candau and Karin Olsson, Salezeo provides prospecting software, leveraging a private database of over 1 million contacts, crowdsourced by its 15,000+ members in France. The company enables its clients nott only to identify potential leads, but provides their contact information in exchange for getting contact information on other clients, creating a quid pro quo lead generation software.
The company plans to launch in the UK, Germany & Spain this year, and in order to do so, they’ll be recruiting new profiles at our upcoming Paris Startup Job Fair on April 5th alongside 50 other startups.
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For companies looking to generate leads for potential clients, Salezeo provides a real solution by offering them verified, up to date contact information for prospects that fall into their business line. There is an obvious issue around whether clients may be inadvertently giving their competitors access to their client list, if both are using Salezeo, but the democratizing of the address book certainly eliminates the need to go fishing for emails through services like mailtester or by reverse engineering them on Rapportive (I know.I’m not the only one doing that).
Having never worked as a salesperson from a given list of leads, I have trouble seeing where the value-added is. For me, the hardest part isn’t finding leads, but
building a relationship with those leads through introductions and cultivated interactions. Nonetheless, I’ve seen Glengarry Glen Ross, so I can imagine how important those precious leads can be.