How a Dutch Company Generates 40% of Pipeline With Cognism

A Netherlands-based business-to-business service, uses Cognism’s data to:

• Find verified emails and mobile numbers globally.
• Improve speed to lead from two days to two minutes.
• Generate 40% of pipeline.

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The company

The organisation, headquartered in the Netherlands, partners with startups and scale-ups to facilitate their growth and success in the European market. Its core focus areas encompass a wide range of industries, from HR tech to fintech, hardware solutions, physical products, and more. 

The company operates in multiple regions, with a particular emphasis on Europe, including Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Nordics, and select Asian and North American markets.

The challenge

We interviewed the Inside Sales Support & Lead Generation Expert, about his experience with Cognism. 

How did they discover Cognism? 

“Everything started with the need for a lead generation tool that would deliver exactly what we needed. And at that point in time, that was verified email addresses.” 

He explained the evaluation process:

“The geographical coverage of the contact database was a huge criterion.”

“We needed a tool that would deliver verified emails from all across the globe, and the quality of data needed to be of a high standard across APAC, Europe, Nordics and US.”

What problems were they trying to solve?

“The biggest challenge we faced was the amount of time spent finding leads.” 

“We knew who we wanted to reach, but our sales team spent too much time hunting for leads. This became their biggest hurdle because part of their job is finding leads. If this process isn’t streamlined, it takes up too much time.”

Did they look at any other tools?

“We tested other solutions like Ocean.io, Lusha and Hunter along with Cognism.”

Why did they choose Cognism?

“Long story short, I would say that Cognism is the most complete package, having the features we need for filtering and, most importantly, verified emails and phone numbers.”

“We needed the verified email feature so we could sort out the good data from that which is not validated at all. There aren’t many tools that have that option.”

The solution

How do they use Cognism day-to-day? 

“So the teams that use it are Sales and Partner Acquisition.”

“Generally, we’ll start by uploading a domain list because that, in our opinion, is the most precise kind of searching when it’s about companies.” 

“Then we can check on Cognism whether the domain matches, to ensure that those are exactly the companies we’re looking for. We’ll then apply job titles and other filters like location if needed.”

“A very useful feature is the contact data quality feature. Mostly, we extract verified emails.”

What was the onboarding experience like? 

“The platform is very user-friendly compared to other tools I’ve used for lead generation. It only took about a week to grasp how it works, and a few months to feel like an expert in Cognism.”

What has your customer support experience with Cognism been like? 

“I contacted them many times during onboarding and I’m very happy with them. They answer very quickly and solve my problems as soon as they can. They’re very communicative - I really appreciate their help.”

The results

How has Cognism helped them?

“I’d say that Cognism’s contribution to our overall sales generated pipeline would be about 20-40% of our total leads, which is a lot.”

“Also, the speed to lead. Finding leads from certain companies used to take up to two days, but now it’s about 2 minutes. It’s amazing!”

Given the speed at which the SDRs can retrieve contact information in the platform, he told us about the positive effects this has had on sales performance.  

“It’s allowed us to get more leads, which has meant we’re able to be more active and successful in hitting our targets."

He added:

“By having access to and using verified mobile and office direct dials and email addresses, we’ve created more opportunities. One phone call can be more valuable than a thousand opt-outs.”

The top reasons why they recommend Cognism

1. Exceptional data quality and coverage

“We’re active all over the globe because we cover Europe, Nordics, US and APAC. So we needed a balanced database with good B2B data quality everywhere.”

“I’d consider Cognism the most complete tool on the market right now. It has a strong database from all around the world, and while there’s no one tool that can do everything, Cognism is closest to that ideal tool.” 

2. Accelerated prospecting

“The biggest challenge prior to Cognism was the amount of time our sales team had to put into finding leads. It was a pretty long lead generation cycle, and without this process in place, it took days.” 

“Now it takes two minutes, and they can focus on the sales process.”

3. Easy product adoption

“I like Cognism because it’s user-friendly and delivers what you need quickly. You don’t need formal training; just spend about an hour to understand its features, especially for the Prospector side, which I use the most, including workarounds for tricky tasks.”