• [00:00:00] Intro — PHCom at the transforma bxl studio
• [00:01:07] What is OkDo: multi-technical B2B maintenance
• [00:01:30] A typical day: requests, planning, interventions
• [00:02:03] Standing out: doing it in-house, not promising “everything”
• [00:02:46] Getting started: finding clients, quality, reporting
• [00:03:35] Building loyalty: specialists vs “handyman”
• [00:05:02] Trades & types of work OkDo delivers
• [00:06:06] Obligations & compliance: fire safety, electrical, plans
• [00:06:43] Field observations: standards, emergency lighting, prevention
• [00:08:11] Without a sales team: how OkDo grows its clients
• [00:09:36] Key challenge: time, and prospecting slowing things down
• [00:10:09] Why PHCom: context, scepticism, turning point
• [00:11:04] Results: more meetings, time saved, clients
• [00:11:20] Anecdote: prospecting… and a “network” surprise
• [00:12:31] Positive surprises: hidden networks, reaching the right contact
• [00:13:24] Sales skills: listening, questioning, staying honest
• [00:15:01] Goals: team responsibility + references & brands
• [00:16:24] PHCom in 3 words: speed, efficiency, professionalism
• [00:16:34] Outro

Intro — PHCom at the transforma bxl studio

[00:00:13] Stéphane Depaepe: Hello and welcome to this new episode of the podcast "Performance, Harmony & Sales" produced by PHCom in the "transforma bxl" studio in Brussels, with technical assistance from "The Podcast Factory Org".??

[00:00:23] Nadia Ben Jelloun: The "Performance, Harmony & Sales" Podcast is intended for marketing and sales managers as well as company executives taking on sales roles.

[00:00:32] Stéphane Depaepe: Every month, we share with you successful experiences regarding finding new clients for companies active in business-to-business.

[00:00:38] Nadia Ben Jelloun: You can find every episode on the site PHCom dot be, P.H.C.O.M, and also on all major podcast platforms.

[00:00:48] Stéphane Depaepe: You can support this podcast and boost its visibility by sharing it with as many people as possible via a like, a comment, or a share.

[00:00:55] Nadia Ben Jelloun: The voicemail is always active so you can leave us a message; we will answer it with great pleasure.

[00:01:00] Stéphane Depaepe: You can also book an appointment directly with Nadia or Stéphane by going to phcom dot be.

[00:01:06] Nadia Ben Jelloun: See you soon.

What is OkDo: multi-technical B2B maintenance

[00:01:07] Camille de Meeûs: Hello Philippe.

[00:01:07] Philippe Vanschoubroek: Hello Camille.

[00:01:09] Camille de Meeûs: We are super happy to have you today in this new episode of PHCom. Let's start with your business. What, specifically, is "OKDO"?

[00:01:17] Philippe Vanschoubroek: So, "OKDO" is a company specialized in multi-technical maintenance, exclusively for B2B clients. So we work mainly for clients who own stores, nursing homes, or for property managers who manage buildings.

A typical day: requests, planning, interventions

[00:01:30] Camille de Meeûs: But specifically, what does a workday look like within "OKDO"?

[00:01:32] Philippe Vanschoubroek: Well, a workday at "OKDO" is mostly about handling all client requests. That is to say, today we have ten people in the office and 30 technicians on the road; we do more or less 20,000 interventions per year. What does that mean? It means that requests come in. For example, a store that has a problem with lights because they are too bright, or not working; it means the client sends an email or calls the office and asks for a technician to stop by as quickly as possible.

[00:01:57] Camille de Meeûs: Is there a lot of competition in your sector? If so, what differentiates you from the competition?

Standing out: doing it in-house, not promising “everything”

[00:02:03] Philippe Vanschoubroek: It all depends on what you call competition. There are very big firms that do many, many things, but ultimately—and this isn't a criticism—ultimately they don't do much themselves; they do a lot via subcontracting. So they promise to handle every possible technical aspect, but behind the scenes, there is obviously an organization creating schedules for a bunch of subcontractors. We work differently; we decided to offer only the work that we carry out ourselves. So that means: we have people on our payroll who are today truly specialized mainly in electricity, plumbing, interior finishing, roofing, and exterior works. And Handymen, as we call them, so, jacks-of-all-trades.

[00:02:42] Camille de Meeûs: What advice would you give to people today who would like to get started in the same business sector as you?

Getting started: finding clients, quality, reporting

[00:02:46] Philippe Vanschoubroek: I think there is actually a lot of advice to give. At the same time, we managed to get there in less than ten years simply because we saw there was a market, actually; there was real demand. And we did it little by little, meaning without clients and without initial technicians. The advice: well, firstly, you have to find the clients, obviously; you have to get the client interested. It has to be solid too, meaning that when a technician comes on site, he must do his job, and do it cleanly. The client also expects reporting, which means you don't just need a technician; you also need a system in the background that allows the client to verify if everything went well, because they aren't always on site. We work for certain networks that have more than 200 or 300, sometimes 500 stores, so the manager or the person requesting the work isn't on site, so they need to be able to verify afterwards if everything went well.

Building loyalty: specialists vs “handyman”

[00:03:35] Camille de Meeûs: Speaking of that, you mentioned the whole client aspect. How do things work at "OKDO" to ensure you retain your clients? How do you keep these clients in your database?

[00:03:45] Philippe Vanschoubroek: We are fortunate to have, I would say, very good technicians. Of course, there is inevitably a little turnover sometimes, but we focused very quickly on quality. Not the cheapest price—that doesn't mean we are the most expensive, but we are in the mid-range. But if clients are paying a certain price, it means they are also entitled to quality. We really focused very early on finding specialized people. I was speaking earlier about handymen—it's a bit of a pejorative term—and we have some, guys who can do a bit of everything. But we understood very quickly that when clients have an electrical problem, they want an electrician to come by, not a handyman doing a small odd job. So you have to see the intervention through to the end, and for that, you need specialized people.

[00:04:24] Camille de Meeûs: A handyman is someone versatile, it's about versatility (Philippe Vanschoubroek: Yes), someone who can do several things (Philippe Vanschoubroek: Yes); they aren't a specialist.

[00:04:31] Philippe Vanschoubroek: He isn't a specialist in a specific field, so indeed he is a generalist. A handyman is a technician who, for example, comes into a store and does a bunch of little things that others don't want to do. That means: replacing a tile, changing a trap, changing a light bulb, and oiling a squeaky door—that's a handyman. But indeed, he isn't a specialist in everything; if there is really a more serious problem, or more substantial work to be done, it's better to have a specialist.

[00:04:58] Camille de Meeûs: But what are the other specialties your technicians offer?

Trades & types of work OkDo delivers

[00:05:02] Philippe Vanschoubroek: You have to understand that the handyman aspect is a small part of what we offer. Naturally, it is absolutely necessary and useful, but as I've already explained, the most important thing is working with specialized people. So we propose our services, and these services are performed by our technicians who are on our payroll; it's important indeed that we can see the service through to completion. That means: today we have electricians, we have plumbers, we have finishers—so that means walls, floors, ceilings. We have roofers, and a small portion can indeed do a bit of everything as a handyman. 85% of the interventions we do are done by specialists, but we don't just do small interventions. So I have technicians who do three or four interventions a day. Alongside that, we also do—I won't call them construction sites—but more significant works. More significant works could be: renovating rooms or bathrooms in a nursing home, it could be repainting an entire hall of a building, it's redoing major plumbing over a week with two or three men. So we also do that type of work.

[00:06:02] Camille de Meeûs: We have the whole aesthetic side of the work, but what about the work that is mandatory?

Obligations & compliance: fire safety, electrical, plans

[00:06:06] Philippe Vanschoubroek: Well, it's true that regulations are evolving more and more as well, and in that context, we go even further and can bring electricity up to code, including single-line diagrams, etc. single-line schematics. For example also: fire protection. Within "OKDO Building Maintenance" we have an entity called "Secu-Fire" which specializes in fire protection. That means we install and inspect extinguishers, hose reels, fire doors, etc. And so that legislation is also changing more and more lately.

[00:06:40] Camille de Meeûs: What are the recurring observations you make in your line of work?

Field observations: standards, emergency lighting, prevention

[00:06:43] Philippe Vanschoubroek: Well, generally speaking, we notice that, starting with fire safety, I won't say we're rarely up to code, but it depends on the buildings. Many residential buildings today, meaning apartment buildings, are rarely 100% compliant, whether in terms of electricity, but especially regarding fire safety. What does fire safety mean? It's not enough to just have fire extinguishers; you also have to check if there are fire doors that work, emergency lighting blocks—very important because, in the end, it's not really the fire that kills people, it's simply that they can't see anything anymore because there is too much smoke. And if the emergency lights aren't working, well, people just don't know how to get out of the building; that's the first thing. Next, more so for buildings like, I'd say, industrial sites or offices, it's preventive maintenance. That is to say, prevention is better than cure; it means maintaining your roofs, maintaining the grounds, etc. It's better than waiting for water to leak from the roof because everything is clogged and because the roof was poorly maintained. That means we end up with more damage later, we're in an emergency situation, etc. Preventive maintenance is the best way, simply to keep things running. It doesn't cost more, but it prevents a huge amount of damage and is necessarily easier to manage in terms of costs and scheduling.

[00:07:55] Camille de Meeûs: It clearly limits the damage.

[00:07:56] Philippe Vanschoubroek: It clearly limits the damage, or even avoids it. That means fewer arguments with insurance companies, with residents, or with the people occupying the offices. Yes, preventive plans exist, I would say they are quite simple, you know; again, it's a question of cost, it's simply a question of organization.

Without a sales team: how OkDo grows its clients

[00:08:11] Camille de Meeûs: Someone who starts with you as a sales rep, a salesperson... do you have sales reps, salespeople within "OKDO" to sell your services?

[00:08:17] Philippe Vanschoubroek: No.

[00:08:17] Camille de Meeûs: No, there are no Sales reps. But then how do you manage to find these clients? The follow-up, the quality of your technicians, etc. (Philippe Vanschoubroek: Yeah). But before those people go out into the field, you have to find them clients, so how does that work at that level?

[00:08:27] Philippe Vanschoubroek: At that level, I was lucky to have actually started "OKDO Building Maintenance" with partners. We divided the commercial side in two, meaning there are two of the four partners who mostly did the canvassing for clientele. We naturally split it up: Jerry does more of the property management side and I do more of the retail side and also the Dutch-speaking clients since we have quite a lot of them. And then we started like that, quite simply. Yes, there was some canvassing at the start, and then afterwards, quite a few clients brought in other clients. There is also sometimes a certain turnover among facility managers, so that means one leaves a network for another and then proposes us again in this new network. And then we also, as I was saying earlier, really paid very, very close attention to quality, to client follow-up. We have very loyal clients going back several years and major clients.

[00:09:18] Camille de Meeûs: So you actually have a certain reputation now?

[00:09:20] Philippe Vanschoubroek: Yes, I think so; in any case, I realized it when I had meetings with prospects, people I had never met before. Indeed, I think we have a pretty good reputation in the facility management market.

[00:09:32] Camille de Meeûs: What are the main difficulties one might encounter on the commercial side in your sector?

Key challenge: time, and prospecting slowing things down

[00:09:36] Philippe Vanschoubroek: Difficulties, well I'd say the primary difficulty in our trade is not having enough time. Meaning that as a partner, we don't exactly have only that to do. We grew quickly in a short time, which obviously also demands a lot of work regarding technician follow-up, regarding the follow-up of internal staff. To sometimes rethink, or restructure the company because it's growing. I would say honestly the commercial part has, I won't say become secondary, but we were following up with our clients, yet for a certain time, we didn't prospect enough.

Why PHCom: context, scepticism, turning point

[00:10:09] Camille de Meeûs: Very good connection. So, now we're going to talk about the collaboration with PHCom. Tell me a little bit about the history with PHCom, since when and why this collaboration?

[00:10:18] Philippe Vanschoubroek: We got in touch with PHCom via a client who told us about PHCom around April-May, and we were actually in the middle of reorganizing a little bit and telling ourselves that we really needed to start prospecting again. So, we got in touch very quickly, and the contact went well. It's true that at the beginning you're always a bit skeptical, because you tell yourself, "Well, we know how to do it better, so why them and not us?" But there you go, we realized that, well, firstly, it is a profession in itself. Even for me, having been in sales for 30 years, you have to be honest, it's not the most fun part. It's making calls, trying to get appointments, and calling, calling again until you actually get the appointment. That honestly helped us a lot.

[00:10:59] Camille de Meeûs: Can we say that the collaboration with PHCom allowed you to be more productive, to save more time?

Results: more meetings, time saved, clients

[00:11:04] Philippe Vanschoubroek: It certainly saved us time, since we could never have had so many appointments in such a short time. We had more or less thirty appointments in three months; if someone had told me that at the start, well, I wouldn't have believed it. Yes, it saved us time in any case, and it has already won us some clients.

Anecdote: prospecting… and a “network” surprise

[00:11:20] Camille de Meeûs: Philippe, do you have an anecdote to share with us regarding the collaboration with PHCom?

[00:11:24] Philippe Vanschoubroek: It's more of a coincidence. Following the prospecting, an appointment was set for me with a prospect. Well, it's true that we receive a lot of emails, appointments, etc. so I didn't pay attention to it right away but... The day before the appointment, I said to myself, "Hey, who do I have an appointment with tomorrow? Where have I been booked for an appointment?", and essentially, it was at a friend of mine's place. But it was a company involved in property development; I didn't have the appointment with that friend, I would say fortunately, in a way. I met two people during that appointment, but I thought to myself, "Well, they aren't aware that we know each other," so I did my presentation, etc. And it was only after an hour and a half that one of the two people said to me, "Yes, but you do know our CEO, right?" And so there I said, "Yes, it's true," but they asked me the question, "Why are you only making contact now? And why didn't you go through that person?" I said, "Quite simply because I didn't think of it, for one. And then secondly, I think it's actually better not to go through someone, quote-unquote, perhaps more privileged. It might have placed more of a sense of obligation on people. So I actually prefer to meet the people in the field. And afterwards let it be confirmed that, well, we are someone trustworthy."

Positive surprises: hidden networks, reaching the right contact

[00:12:31] Camille de Meeûs: In the various appointments that PHCom's prospectors booked for you, for "OKDO", did you have any good surprises?

[00:12:38] Philippe Vanschoubroek: Yes, I had several. Among the surprises, that is to say, actually you don't realize the number of networks that exist. By network, I mean, some clients are companies that manage a lot of buildings; I'm thinking for example of a client I met, who manages over 700 buildings in Belgium, which is really huge. So what I mean by that is, it's not a retail chain, it's not a brand; it means it's a company managing 700 buildings. These buildings belong to them, but actually, it's not something one could find on one's own. I mean by that, at that point you have to go through a company, for example like PHCom, that knows this hidden world, this sub-world, I would say unknown, since it is not a known brand. You really have to know the companies managing these buildings and the people working in that company to finally get to the right appointment.

Sales skills: listening, questioning, staying honest

[00:13:24] Camille de Meeûs: In your opinion, what are the sales skills that are essential today?

[00:13:27] Philippe Vanschoubroek: I'm not going to teach you anything new. I've been in sales for 30 years myself. At the beginning, I thought you had to talk a lot, but in the end, that's not true. I learned over time that it's better to ask a few questions and listen, rather than trying to sell your product or service at all costs. So there you go, it's about letting the other person speak first before presenting your product or service. Because ultimately, it's the client who gives us the key, or gives us the answer as to whether it could be of interest to them or not. And then afterwards, you also have to be honest; you can only sell when there is a real need. So sometimes a meeting might simply end with us saying, "Let's stop here; I can't do anything for you," or "You don't have any needs that I can meet."

[00:14:08] Camille de Meeûs: Listening is paramount.

[00:14:09] Philippe Vanschoubroek: Listening is paramount, and asking the right questions is too.

[00:14:13] Camille de Meeûs: And to ask the right questions, you also have to take an interest in the person in front of you (Philippe Vanschoubroek: Yeah) and the person on the other end of the line.

[00:14:18] Philippe Vanschoubroek: Of course, of course. It's also experience that dictates it's not necessarily about asking questions just for the sake of it, but simply because we are genuinely interested in the client's problem. We know the issues generally, but then again, a network of buildings, or buildings themselves, aren't always the same thing so...

[00:14:32] Camille de Meeûs: Every case is different.

[00:14:33] Philippe Vanschoubroek: The client is looking for technical solutions, yes, but then, there are different ways to get there and to interest the client as well. That is to say, not just the technical intervention, but also the administrative part. Meaning, as I said at the beginning, the client wants good reporting; they want to know where they stand and they also want to reach good conclusions, so we have to go further than just the technical work. We also have to help them manage these buildings and be able to create added value on that level.

Goals: team responsibility + references & brands

[00:15:01] Camille de Meeûs: What is your next ambition, or personal commercial goal?

[00:15:04] Philippe Vanschoubroek: The goals are always, I would say, twofold. On one hand, we have the goals for the company. Naturally, when you start a company from scratch and today you have 30 employees and workers, you have a certain responsibility. So, that means we have to feed them, so to speak, and we have to be certain that we can keep them so we can continue working with them, and for them, so that's my first objective. The second, I would say, is perhaps more personal on a commercial level: it's to land some big brands at some point—more big brands, perhaps better-known brands—since that always serves as a reference for future clients or future meetings. We already have some; it's easy, you know, to say, "We work for so-and-so or so-and-so." Somehow, the prospect feels more at ease. Personally, I have a few targets that would make me happy.

[00:15:52] Camille de Meeûs: Is it important to have references like that, from companies you've collaborated with for years?

[00:15:56] Philippe Vanschoubroek: Yes, yes, certainly. It obviously counts for prospects because it reassures them that we are already in this market, that we are already active, that we know how it works, right? Again, it's not just a technical question; it's also a question of client follow-up, IT systems, or a platform that allows us to do exactly that. I think everyone likes to buy from a store where they aren't the only one buying, and where hundreds of people have already passed through before and are satisfied. It naturally reassures them in the purchase.

PHCom in 3 words: speed, efficiency, professionalism

[00:16:24] Camille de Meeûs: If you had to define your collaboration with PHCom in three words, what would you say?

[00:16:28] Philippe Vanschoubroek: I would say, in any case: speed, efficiency, and professionalism.

Outro

[00:16:34] Camille de Meeûs: Thank you Philippe, and all the best for the future.

[00:16:36] Philippe Vanschoubroek: Thank you very much.

• [00:01:08] Introduction to Quentin Hanquet and Travie
• [00:01:35] What differentiates Travie: a very broad activity portfolio
• [00:02:32] Core values: inclusion, adapted environment, dedicated support
• [00:03:13] Commercial complexities within the sector
• [00:03:57] Seasonality: a very busy second half of the year
• [00:04:27] How new clients are generated
• [00:05:45] Pipeline management, follow-ups and internal practices
• [00:06:34] Building trust: collaboration at every level
• [00:07:06] Essential commercial skills: active listening
• [00:07:27] 2026 ambitions: offsetting the decline in inbound demand
• [00:08:16] Economic context and uncertainty
• [00:08:36] 2024 collaboration with PHCom
• [00:09:43] Time saved thanks to PHCom
• [00:10:21] Using PHCom’s DM programme
• [00:11:41] Is Travie more expensive? Pricing clarification
• [00:13:18] How workers join Travie
• [00:14:09] Why choose PHCom: a human and effective approach
• [00:15:14] Collaboration in three words: “excellent”
• [00:15:22] Podcast closing remarks

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:00:13] Hello and welcome to another episode of the podcast "Performance, Harmony & Commercial", produced by PHCom in the "transforma -bxl" studio using the techniques of "The Podcast Factory Org".

Nadia Ben Jelloun: [00:00:23] The "Performance, Harmony & Sales" podcast is aimed at marketing and sales managers, as well as company executives with sales responsibilities.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:00:32] Every month, we share with you our best practices in finding new customers for business-to-business companies.

Nadia Ben Jelloun: [00:00:38] You can find each episode on the PHCom point be website, P.H.C.O.M, and on all the good podcast platforms.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:00:48] You can support this podcast and promote its visibility by sharing it with as many people as possible via a like, comment or share.

Nadia Ben Jelloun: [00:00:55] The answering machine is always open so that you can leave us a message, which we'll be delighted to answer.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:01:00] You can also book an appointment directly with Nadia or Stéphane on phcom dot be.

Nadia Ben Jelloun: [00:01:06] See you soon.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:01:07] Hello Quentin

Quentin Hanquet: [00:01:08] Hello Camille

Camille de Meeûs: [00:01:08] We're delighted to welcome you today in this beautiful PHCom podcast. So, tell us a little bit about what you do. What are your activities?

Quentin Hanquet: [00:01:15] I'm a sales manager at Travie. Travie is an adapted work company founded in 1980 and located along the canal in Anderlecht. There are roughly 400 people working at Travie, 335 of whom are disabled. And so our mission is to offer paid, suitable work to all our workers.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:01:35] There are a lot of ETAs, so E.T.A., so that our listeners understand what Entreprise de Travail Adapté really means.

Quentin Hanquet: [00:01:43] So I'd say that what sets us apart from the competition is the fact that we have an extremely broad range of activities. So we're a pretty big operation. And so we're going to offer a whole range of activities, including fresh food, dry food, assembly, packaging, mailing, as well as sending workers to our customers' sites. And so I'd say that the first thing that sets us apart is precisely this very wide range of activities, so as we say back home, "We produce fresh lettuce on electric bikes". That's how wide our range of activities is. What also sets us apart is the fact that we're a large structure, with a high production capacity, and that we can offer our customers flexibility in terms of production to attenuate their seasonal peaks. That's what sets us apart.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:02:32] What are the company's values?

Quentin Hanquet: [00:02:34] Company values? Our ben mission is inclusion, offering paid work in a setting adapted to the specific needs of the people who work with us. That's really what we want to offer, we want to offer a working environment in which people can blossom, which is nevertheless a job, so it's paid work, it's not occupational, people really come to us to work. But what really sets us apart from an average company is the fact that we have a supervisor who makes sure that each person is in the right place at each production workstation, and that the workstation is adapted to the person's disability.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:03:13] Now let's talk about the commercial stakes. What's working well and what's not in your sector?

Quentin Hanquet: [00:03:20] So it's a bit difficult to say what's working well and what's not in our sector, since we do so many things. I'd rather rephrase that as "What are the complexities of our industry?". What's complex in our sector is that we offer a service, so we're subject to the requests we receive from our customers, and to the seasonal variation in these requests. So, typically, as we're here to absorb our customers' seasonal peaks, there will be times of the year when we'll have a lot more work than other times of the year. Typically, the second half of the year is a very busy period, because there are a lot of requests from companies.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:03:57] We're right in the middle of it now.

Quentin Hanquet: [00:03:57] That's it, we're right in the middle of it. For the end of the year, for Easter and, in short, for all the commercial news ahead. This keeps us very busy in the second half of the year, but the first half is traditionally a quieter period. The challenge for us is really to be able to complete our business during this slightly quieter period, and to find additional activities to ensure that our business is as smooth and stable as possible throughout the year, so that we can fulfill our social mission.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:04:27] How do you generate new customers, new leads if I can call them that?

Quentin Hanquet: [00:04:31] There are different ways of generating a new type of activity. First of all, the contact we have with our customers. At the moment, we're trying to work in good coordination with our customers to anticipate certain productions, to try and smooth them out a little more. We also have a series of activities for which we have a little more control over the schedule in terms of production. These are activities that we've been looking for, for which we can manage production, so that's a good complement. And of course, and I think this is why I'm here today, there's a real need for us to be proactive on the sales front to continue developing our business. We have to be constantly on our toes to keep developing our business, we can't afford to rest on our laurels. Even if we have a portfolio of regular customers who are loyal and well-established, that's not enough to guarantee us stable business throughout the year, so we need to be proactive in our approach to finding new customers, and also in different areas of activity, where there's less seasonality. That's why we called on PHCom to initiate this process in a structured way.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:05:45] So it's understandable that PHCom has really come, or at least arrived, to help you with your business development. But apart from that, do you have any specific tools or practices for managing your pipeline, your follow-ups, your appointments, beyond PHCom? Is there another structure made in-house?

Quentin Hanquet: [00:05:59] Before working with PHCom, I used to say that we did things a little with our own resources and common sense. It was a matter of relaunching customers and former customers, etc. But I would say that the axis that has always been favored, and which I think is also, and remains despite everything, an essential axis, is first and foremost to continue to listen to our customers at the present time. The major challenge right now is to keep our customers, support our customers, listen to their needs, and eventually add other types of activities that we don't do with these customers to enrich our activities.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:06:34] How do you create a long-term relationship of trust with your customers?

Quentin Hanquet: [00:06:38] The relationship of trust comes from working together at every level of the company. So it's not just at commercial level that the relationship with the customer is established, it's also at production and team level. And it's when all levels of the company work really well together that people talk to each other, share their problems, and from that moment on, well, the trust is there, it's really something that's built, clearly!

Camille de Meeûs: [00:07:06] What business skills do you consider essential today? We can't do without it.

Quentin Hanquet: [00:07:10] The business skills that are essential are listening. Clearly, it's all about listening, getting an idea of our customers' needs, and seeing how we can support them, how we can adapt our structure to meet those needs. I think that's the core competency.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:07:27] Is there an ambition or business goal that Travie would like to achieve? Here we are at the end of 2025, in 2026, how do you see things?

Quentin Hanquet: [00:07:36] It's a complicated year at the moment because, given the current economic climate, we're facing an erosion, not in terms of the number of our customers, because our customers are there and are still there, but we're facing an erosion in terms of the contribution made by our customers in terms of work in our companies. The big challenge for us next year is going to be to find additional activities to complement this erosion that's taking place, and when we see the current economic context, we tell ourselves that we can't just sit back and wait for things to happen, so we really have to be proactive about this and take the lead.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:08:16] It's scary, even in your sector?

Quentin Hanquet: [00:08:19] Well, let's just say that the current context, and I'm not even talking about the political context, eh? In which, at the level of the Brussels Region, there is still a great deal of uncertainty for all associations. I'm not even talking about that aspect, but clearly at the economic level, there's a lot of uncertainty, and we feel it in our business, we feel it in our day-to-day activity.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:08:36] Now let's talk about working with PHCom. We worked together in 2024, I think (Quentin Hanquet: Absolutely), we did a first mission. How do you think it went, and why are you calling on us now? It's late 2025, what happened in between?

Quentin Hanquet: [00:08:50] We initiated a first collaboration in 2024. Because in 2024, we were faced with exactly the same problems as we are now. We also wanted to round out our customer portfolio a little. The collaboration went really well, we worked really well together, so I'm not going to say in terms of the sales strategy because that was defined by us, but in terms of the implementation of this sales strategy in the scripts, in the canvassing, in the way you were going to canvass the various prospects. We're really in the B2B business, not the end-customer business. It had gone well, we had worked together for a few months and it had resulted in additional activity on our part, which is far from nil and far from negligible, hence the desire this year to re-initiate a new collaboration to really give a boost to this approach because it's necessary, that's all.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:09:43] Has working with PHCom saved you time or made you more productive?

Quentin Hanquet: [00:09:47] Working with PHCom enables us to focus on the part of prospecting on which we have, I'd say, more added value because we work in the company. The fact that we can delegate qualified telephone calls to PHCom to qualify prospects enables us to concentrate on these prospects once they've been qualified and try to see how we can respond to their problems. It allows us to concentrate on what's important at the end of the day.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:10:19] Which is the most important thing.

Quentin Hanquet: [00:10:20] That's right.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:10:21] It seems to me that you're still working with our DM, our program, you started using it in 2024, we stopped the prospecting mission and you've continued to use it until now? How are things going for you? It's easy, it's intuitive?

Quentin Hanquet: [00:10:34] The program is actually relatively intuitive to use, and really helps us to keep track of the various communications we've had with prospects or customers. So in this respect, it's a database that we're building up as we go along, and one that will be much needed, and is already needed now, but will be even more necessary in the future. Because customer communication management is something that can't be neglected, and needs to be done in a structured way, and that's where the PHCom database really comes into its own, so that we can do it in a way that's different from the usual piecemeal approach. We continued to work on our own, with a small sales team, doing proactive canvassing in much the same way as PHCom. So, we've reaped some rewards, but in the end, we realize that it's something that consumes an enormous amount of time and energy, and that trying to do it on top of the work we're doing at the moment, our work in sales, is complicated. At the end of the day, it doesn't allow us to do it intensively enough to be able to get quick results in fact.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:11:41] When we talk about ETAs (Entreprise de Travail Adapté), is it expensive to work with you, if we can put it that way? When it comes to prices, because it can be a false belief when a company calls on you, how do things work?

Quentin Hanquet: [00:11:52] In general, a company calls on us because we have production capacity. People don't call on us because some do, but people don't call on us because we're an ETA. People call on us first of all because there's a need in terms of production, and we're there to meet that need. So do we have a competitive price advantage or not? I'd say that's for customers to judge. Now, the subsidy we receive from the regional authorities is there to compensate for the fact that a person with a disability is less productive than the average person. And so this subsidy is there to compensate for this lower productivity, in quotation marks, so this subsidy is not there to give us a competitive advantage. There are companies in Belgium that do packaging work similar to ours, with whom we'll be competing directly, and there's no guarantee that we'll have a competitive price advantage over them. But it's clear that we need to be well-positioned in terms of price, because if we're poorly positioned in terms of price, people won't come to work for us if there's a price differential compared to the competition, they won't come to work for us because we're an ETA, in the majority of cases I mean.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:13:18] The question may seem a bit silly, but how do the workers manage to work for you? How does it work? Do they come with a CV or are there intermediary agencies that place people with disabilities? How does this work?

Quentin Hanquet: [00:13:30] In this respect, we operate like any other company, with an HR department, with workers coming in and applying to work in our company, with positions opening up from time to time, and positions closing up from time to time, so there's not much difference. The only thing is, of course, that our workers' disabilities have to be recognized before they can come and work for us, and that's part of our social mission, so we can't, for economic reasons, hire workers who won't be subsidized. So we'd be going beyond our scope and our mission, so there you have it, so as long as the disability is recognized, people can come and apply to us without any problem.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:14:09] Let's get back to the PHCom collaboration. Why did you choose PHCom instead of another partner?

Quentin Hanquet: [00:14:16] So, first and foremost, I called on PHCom because I'd met Nadia, who works for you, at an event organized by Travie. And so, at that point, we discussed things a little together, and the prospecting approach proposed by PHCom seemed to me to be an original and human approach above all. And that's what immediately appealed to me and made me want to go a little further. Telephone canvassing may seem a little old-fashioned, but these days, I think, when you see what's coming into mailboxes, you quickly realize that, in fact, mail is useless - people don't look at it. And so you really need to be able to find a channel to reach the right person, with the right message, and generate interest. And that's what I think PHCom does so well. So that's why we work together, and why we work again together.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:15:14] So, if you had to define your collaboration with PHCom in three words, what would you say?

Quentin Hanquet: [00:15:18] It's excellent, that's three words.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:15:22] Many thanks Quentin, and all the best for the future.

Quentin Hanquet: [00:15:24] Thank you, Camille.

• [00:01:07] Introduction: Barriers at the first point of contact
• [00:01:30] Why these barriers often feel “invisible”
• [00:01:40] Sales is first and foremost a mindset
• [00:01:48] Dakis’ testimonial: adapting to the prospect’s tone of voice
• [00:02:19] Sandrine’s testimonial: the importance of accurate contact details
• [00:02:51] The role of reception
• [00:03:11] When you reach voicemail
• [00:03:45] Voicemail, email, multichannel: what should you do?
• [00:03:59] Dakis’ testimonial: the importance of leaving a message (or not)
• [00:04:21] Sandrine’s testimonial
• [00:05:41] Back to reception as the first gatekeeper
• [00:06:03] Differences between SMEs and large organisations
• [00:06:18] The receptionist as an ally
• [00:06:39] The professional filter: a legitimate role
• [00:06:56] The three profiles of receptionists
• [00:07:25] Adapting your tone and strategy
• [00:07:40] Preparing your objective before calling
• [00:07:52] The question: “What is this about?”
• [00:08:02] Benefit-oriented phrasing
• [00:08:32] What to avoid at all costs
• [00:08:37] Timing tip (early or late calls)
• [00:08:51] Example of a confident tone
• [00:09:02] Gaining information from every call
• [00:09:31] When the receptionist blocks access
• [00:09:40] Turning a barrier into a gateway
• [00:10:24] Practical cases: documentation requests, refusal to transfer
• [00:11:37] The TRAMAIS method
• [00:12:48] The barrier as an entry point
• [00:12:54] The receptionist as a long-term ally
• [00:13:05] Conclusion and call to share the episode

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:00:13] Hello and welcome to another episode of the "Performance, Harmony & Commercial" podcast produced by PHCom, in the "transforma bxl" studio, with technical support from "The Podcast Factory Org".

Nadia Ben Jelloun: [00:00:23] The "Performance, Harmony & Commercial" Podcast is aimed at marketing and sales managers, as well as company executives with commercial responsibilities.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:00:32] Every month, we share with you our best practices in finding new customers for business-to-business companies.

Nadia Ben Jelloun: [00:00:38] You can find each episode on the PHCom point be website, P.H.C.O.M, and on all the good podcast platforms.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:00:48] You can support this podcast and promote its visibility by sharing it with as many people as possible via a like, comment or share.

Nadia Ben Jelloun: [00:00:55] The answering machine is always open so that you can leave us a message, which we'll be delighted to answer.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:01:00] You can also book an appointment directly with Nadia or Stéphane on PHCom dot be.

Nadia Ben Jelloun: [00:01:06] See you soon!

Camille de Meeûs: [00:01:07] Hello everyone, and welcome to a new episode of the PHCom series, the podcast where we explore together the secrets of effective prospecting, without stress and always with a smile.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:01:17] And today, we're tackling the salesperson's nightmare when it comes to canvassing companies, blockages at the entrance!

Camille de Meeûs: [00:01:22] Those famous invisible barriers that waste your time. You feel like you're going round in circles, that you're not getting anywhere, and that you can't always talk to the right person.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:01:30] Why invisible?

Camille de Meeûs: [00:01:31] Because I get the impression that you start out thinking that you don't know who to approach, or that you're not going to get the right person on the other end of the phone. And that's what's blocking us from the start.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:01:40] We can't stress it enough: sales is all about the mind. Listen to what Dakis says, when asked how he approaches a company?

Dakis: [00:01:48] I'm not afraid of anything, I'm prepared for any eventuality. What I'm afraid of is that he or she won't get up on the right foot, so there's apprehension, so I'm always waiting to see which intonation will pick up on my call. And I try to adapt precisely to the prospect's vibrations, so I can get down to his level. If the person seems a little more concise, a little more in a hurry, or a little more pragmatic, I'll adapt. If the person looks relaxed, I adapt too.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:02:14] Well yes, I think he's right, we know it's going to work, optimism through and through.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:02:19] And if we go a step further, when we ask the question about the brakes, listen to what Sandrine has to say.

Sandrine: [00:02:23] If you have direct contact details, that makes life easier, seriously. After that, when we go through the switchboard, it's a matter of convincing the person that our call is useful to the company and that it's not the 1,000ᵉ call of the day that they're going to have to deal with. So you have to be able to stand out from the crowd, in terms of the message you convey, you have to be inventive, because every company is different.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:02:51] Finding the right person's name. And we know that in France, it's a real drag - she's a bit French, isn't she? And then there's the front desk, which may or may not want to give us the right contacts.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:03:01] You say the right word, she can't, that's the rule, and it's often the case at the reception. And if he doesn't want to, it's because he doesn't see the point, and that's often the case with a secretary or assistant.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:03:11] Now, let's say you've already got your contact's contact details, he's unavailable and you come across his voicemail.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:03:18] Well, let's see how to deal with this situation? Do you have the person's name and contact details? Well, it already depends on the database. So let's not talk about it too long, because it's already been covered in other episodes. In short, in PHCom Data Management's database, chances are you already have the name of the contact, otherwise you have LinkedIn, you have all the other tools that exist like Zoom-info, Loucha, le Trens, Konig, Casper, Rocket Search etc etc etc.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:03:45] Let's say you got the name directly, did you approach it live then?

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:03:49] In this case, there are three possible scenarios. Voice mail, either it never answers, or you're passed on to another service. Listen to what Dakis has to say.

Dakis: [00:03:59] We're on trial for this, aren't we? We have an email process, but otherwise I leave a voicemail with an email, I always do both. This allows me to have an introduction in the e-mail, "Further to the voice message I sent you, in which I told you about this", and here I go on in the e-mail. Look, I don't have a ready-made answer either, I'm just trying to multiply the channels.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:04:19] I'm like Dakis, I also leave a message.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:04:21] Yes, Sandrine too, listen to her.

Sandrine: [00:04:23] Ah but I'm leaving a message, there's nothing worse than having, I think like everyone else, when you get a call and it's hung up you tell yourself it's not important. So people don't call back, so what I do is leave a message with my contact details, saying why I called. So, if they're not interested, they don't call back and in these cases I put in my little note to call them back a little later. And if I don't, I call back, leave a message asking them to call me back with my contact details, and customers sometimes call me back. It happened yesterday, and afterwards there was an appointment, so it's still working.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:04:55] Well, I'm going to surprise you: the technique of not leaving a message also applies. Because the person actually identifies a phone number and doesn't know who it is, so he calls back. And anyway, you can't leave 36 messages either, if he really doesn't reply, you really shouldn't harass, so you be the judge. Intensity, reminder frequency, leave a message, don't leave a message - it's up to you to decide what works best. Of course, if you've now been forwarded to another service, that means you've already got the person's name, you've probably already left messages, so you've got plenty of reasons to have a chat with the person you're talking to. Take the opportunity to prepare for a future call, gather information from colleagues, so you can really use all this information when you actually make contact with the right person.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:05:41] Back to the classic barrage: reception or secretary?

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:05:44] Okay, let's make the distinction right away: small businesses, SMEs, large companies. Their role is to dispatch calls, but they're not the ones who really put up a barrier, except when it comes to disclosing or not disclosing people's names, and that depends on the rules established by the company.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:06:03] For small businesses, there isn't really a reception desk, but a Mr or Mrs X or Y who can answer in place of the person I want to reach. Again, this person can give me information and tell me when it's best to approach my contact.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:06:18] Ok, so let's effectively consider this person as an assistant, or a secretary, or conversely, a secretary or an assistant. They're not enemies, they're allies. The mind, the mind, the mind.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:06:31] Exactly. So let's see how we can get around it, or better still, how we can get them to play on our side.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:06:39] First of all, let's put things into perspective: when we talk about a dam, we're talking about a professional filter. The secretary's role is really to protect her boss's time, not to annoy you.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:06:48] Yes, it's a bit like the front door of the castle: if you arrive without an invitation, without a clear reason or by slamming the door, she's bound not to let you through.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:06:56] And there are many different types of secretary. First, the very methodical, very precise "executive profile" secretary, who handles every call like a military operation. Impossible to pass without a real good justification.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:07:08] Then there's the "administrative secretary", who is more procedural and follows the rules. You call, she transfers or not according to protocol, no room for improvisation.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:07:17] And then there's the "cautious" one, the one who's already had negative feedback and in fact no longer takes any risks. So if she doesn't know your name, it's a no-go.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:07:25] That's why you need to adapt your tone, and your strategy, to each profile. When a secretary is stressed, suspicious or under pressure, you can immediately hear it in her voice.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:07:34] Yes, and that's where the smart salesman comes into his own. Because it's benevolent, because it's calm, because it's reassuring.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:07:40] Before you call, be clear about your objective: who you want to reach, why and in what capacity? Remember, you're always the first impression you make on the company. So be professional, courteous and confident.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:07:52] And prepare your answer to the famous question "What's it about?"

Camille de Meeûs: [00:07:57] Ah yes, that moment when it all comes down to it. Here, you need to be precise without being too talkative.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:08:02] Exactly, "I call it a solution that helps companies reduce their international communication costs". It's clear, it's clean.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:08:08] Or "I'm following up on a previous exchange about optimizing internal processes".

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:08:13] The key is to use a sentence that's focused on benefiting the company, not yourself. Avoid vague formulations such as "I would like to speak with ....". About a project where...", or even worse, "I'm calling Monsieur So-and-so, it's personal" (Camille de Meeûs: Ah yes), never do that.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:08:32] Oh yes, that's a direct red card. We never lie, let's not forget, we're B2B.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:08:37] Here's a little tip: play with timing. Call early in the morning, before 9 a.m., or late in the day, after 5 p.m. - it's often quieter.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:08:44] Yes, at such times, the manager is sometimes at his desk, the secretary not yet, or already gone. Timing is everything.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:08:51] And if you run into her, well okay, you'll be able to sound confident, not dominant. Example: "Hello, Stéphane Performance for Camille Harmonie please, I'm calling to schedule an appointment".

Camille de Meeûs: [00:09:02] We don't ask "Could I maybe talk to him?". No, you calmly say "I'd like to speak to Mr. Thing" or again, if you don't have the name, "I'd like to speak to the person responsible for". And here, the key lies in gathering information. Find out his name, what time he comes to work, whether or not the company has worked with this type of service before. And don't forget, every call is a source of enriching information, and this will enable you to best prepare your contact with the person you're targeting.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:09:31] What if it blocks you? Well, never mind, we'll keep smiling and bounce back "I understand he's very busy. Maybe you can help me get a message across?"

Camille de Meeûs: [00:09:40] And then you enhance it, turning the dam into a footbridge.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:09:43] That's right, it's the status game. In fact, you must always be at the same status as the person you're targeting. But at the same time, you can't be more than a secretary. So put yourself on her level, listen to her, find a way to collaborate with her, either real or... Use ice breakers, talk about something else, make this person an ally, even a friend, call them by their first name after all. Ask him his first name, and ask him some useful questions: "By the way, what's the best time to contact him or her? Is he in meetings all day, or more available in the early afternoon?"

Camille de Meeûs: [00:10:20] And once again, make a note of everything - this information is worth its weight in gold for your next call.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:10:24] Okay, let's talk about a few practical cases, like "Send me some documentation first, I'll pass it on". Classic mistake: we obey. So especially if he says "Yes, send it to me info at..." Mmm, the generic email address.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:10:39] Yeah, and in that case, the mail often ends up in the junk folder or is even forgotten. But sometimes it can happen too, depending on the structure, whether it's small or large.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:10:49] I offer you a response profile, "Send me some documentation". "Yes, of course, I understand, it's precisely to make this documentation useful that I need to get a better idea of your needs. That's why a brief exchange with Mr. Machintruc Bazar would be much more pertinent".

Camille de Meeûs: [00:11:04] And if she insists, we listen and move on to other things. A face-to-face exchange is much nicer than an e-mail exchange in today's world, so let's take our time and see what synergies are possible.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:11:16] Yeah. Another case, the most classic, she really doesn't want to give the name of the caller. You can also bounce back like "Oh yes, I understand, it's your procedure, but can you maybe just confirm that this is the purchasing manager?" For example. Talk to her, get her to talk, she can give you lots of information.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:11:37] Or "I was in contact with Mr. So-and-so. What exactly is its role? And sometimes, by calmly asking the right questions, you get a lot more than you bargained for. Now we're going to give you a little mnemonic tool, the "Tramais" method, to remind you of everything we've just explained in this podcast.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:11:53] Yes, you never know what might be lurking around the corner, do you? So cram "T" like timing, call at the right time, choose the hours between 8am, 10am, after 5pm, at noon . "R" for relationship, stay respectful, nice, relaxed. "A" for a good attitude, stay confident, neither arrogant nor submissive. "M" For words, choose your vocabulary clear, clean, professional. "A" for help, involve the secretary in the success of your call, she can really be a tool. By the way, what's his job? It's helping, she likes helping, so ask her "Can you help me?". "I" For information, take advantage of the exchange to glean lots of useful information, and "S" for what comes next, always prepare what comes next: a reminder, an appointment, a follow-up - the "Tramais" method works!

Camille de Meeûs: [00:12:48] Well, if you've applied these seven points, the secretary's dam will become a real privileged gateway.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:12:54] And remember, a secretary is a good storyteller, often an ally for life.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:12:57] Thank you all for following us, and if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your colleagues who are still battling with the Standard every day.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:13:05] Or better still, send the podcast to your favorite secretary, she'll love it.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:13:09] See you soon for another episode.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:13:10] Above all, keep Performance and Harmony in mind.

• [00:01:07] Introduction of Antoine Denis
• [00:01:20] Audéo: background and activity
• [00:01:43] Differentiation: flexibility and reactivity
• [00:02:23] Updated equipment and technological evolution
• [00:02:48] Advice for getting started in the event industry
• [00:03:32] Family origins and passion
• [00:04:19] The seasonality of the sector
• [00:05:34] How to meet new clients
• [00:06:27] The key role of networking
• [00:07:25] Main commercial obstacles
• [00:08:10] Working in complementarity: challenges and limits
• [00:08:57] Building long-term trust
• [00:09:46] Internal tools: project managers and follow-up
• [00:10:48] Examples of assignments and client management
• [00:11:45] Essential commercial skills
• [00:12:35] Objectives for 2026: storage, growth, recruitment
• [00:13:23] Role of a new project manager
• [00:13:56] Why Audéo chose PHCom
• [00:14:58] Stéphane’s commercial coaching
• [00:16:05] Importance of meetings, projection, and fieldwork
• [00:17:20] Three words to describe PHCom
• [00:17:44] Podcast closing

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:00:13] Hello and welcome to another episode of the "Performance, Harmony & Commercial" podcast, produced by PHCom in the "transforma bxl" studio with technical support from "The Podcast Factory Org".

Nadia Ben Jelloun: [00:00:23] The "Performance, Harmony & Commercial" Podcast is aimed at marketing and sales managers, as well as company executives with commercial responsibilities.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:00:32] Every month, we share with you our best practices in finding new customers for business-to-business companies.

Nadia Ben Jelloun: [00:00:38] You can find each episode on the PHCom point be website, P.H.C.O.M, and on all the good podcast platforms.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:00:48] You can support this podcast and promote its visibility by sharing it with as many people as possible via a like, comment or share.

Nadia Ben Jelloun: [00:00:55] The answering machine is always open so that you can leave us a message, which we'll be delighted to answer.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:01:00] You can also book an appointment directly with Nadia or Stéphane on phcom dot be.

Nadia Ben Jelloun: [00:01:06] See you soon.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:01:07] Hello Antoine

Antoine Denis: [00:01:08] Hello Camille

Camille de Meeûs: [00:01:09] Nice to have you on our podcast for phcom and, of course, to talk about business development. How are you?

Antoine Denis: [00:01:15] Very good, very good. Busy week but all's well. Friday ends on a high note, indeed.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:01:20] So Antoine, you founded Audéo with your brother. What does it mean in concrete terms?

Antoine Denis: [00:01:24] So Audéo is a fifteen-year-old company, founded by a family, which deals with all technical and audiovisual aspects of events, mainly sound, lighting and all the technical equipment needed for all types of public events, festivals, concerts and others.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:01:43] There's a lot of competition in this field. What sets you apart from the competition?

Antoine Denis: [00:01:48] So it's true that there are a lot of us in Belgium, and a lot of us in Brussels too, because there are a lot of events going on, so it's quite normal. What sets us apart is that we really try to take advantage of our average company size, I'd like to say, and offer customers speed, flexibility and rigor in project preparation. It's also worth pointing out that all the "last minute" aspects are very important, as we get a lot of last-minute requests for modifications. And that's what sets us apart from other, perhaps larger structures, which find it harder to turn around in the event of last-minute changes.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:02:23] So you're clearly flexible and quick to adapt.

Antoine Denis: [00:02:27] Yes, in the schedules, in the equipment and in the field too, of course. We also try to keep all our equipment up to date, in the sense that technologies evolve very quickly, especially in lighting for example, and we know that we have to offer something that's always adapted and updated for ever more immersive and attractive experiences for customers and participants at all our events.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:02:48] What advice would you give to people who want to get into the same business as you?

Antoine Denis: [00:02:52] So there are several things: rigor, which we've already talked about, and stress management. We have quite a few trainees who come to us, who know how things are going to work, but after three or six months, we notice that despite the good work, they still leave tired. Events are great fun, it's a passion for us, we created it out of passion, and there's that aspect of keeping going. In the sense that there are a lot of events, the seasons are busy, you have to keep your head above water but it's something we enjoy, there's nothing similar about every event. I'd like to say that to get started, you need to be one: passionate. And two: to be, indeed, rigorous, keeping in mind all the technical aspects of the events.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:03:32] Where does this passion for the technical and audiovisual world come from?

Antoine Denis: [00:03:35] We're going back to family history, our dear father passed on this passion to us, so you could say that we fell into it, into the magic potion, from the time we were very small. When my brother and I were ten, we were already behind the mixing desk, setting up microphones. A passion, a teenage hobby that has now become our profession, with a company, several employees, etc. Today, we coordinate more projects, but we still like to go out into the field too, which is important. I must also emphasize the human aspect, which is important in the events business. We create events, if we take a step back, to get messages across, so there you have it, equipment is unloaded from the truck, we set it up, but we try to keep a certain human touch to the events. So getting out into the field is important for us too.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:04:19] Your sector, it has to be said, operates on a seasonal basis, if you can put it that way. It can't be easy every day, and it must also be very challenging.

Antoine Denis: [00:04:27] We're pretty much on a rollercoaster, so we have super-busy months when there are lots of outdoor events, like June and September. On the other hand, winter is much quieter: December, January, February. It's indeed a challenge in the sense that perhaps 75% of activities are concentrated over four or five months, both in the logistical aspects of managing the warehouse and equipment, and in the HR aspects for all the technicians. It's a real headache to fit all this into all the schedules. And we mustn't forget that in these busy periods, in addition to field management, we also inevitably have all the requests that arrive, the visits that have to be accommodated, the modifications. These are very, very, very, very, challenging and demanding months, but you have to rise to the challenge every time. We prepare over the winter months to get ready for the new season, knowing that it's going to be very busy every time. And I'd like to say that it's all a question of anticipation, both in terms of - I'm repeating myself here - the logistical aspects, of having equipment that's fully maintained and ready for the season, and in terms of staffing, so as to be prepared to accept, respond to and honor all requests, and to have new customers as well - we're here to talk about that too.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:05:34] And speaking of customers, how do you go about meeting new people in your rather niche sector and turning them into your customers?

Antoine Denis: [00:05:41] So with experience, I have to say that what works best is meetings in the field. Once we're going to meet someone, either at a meeting for site scouting, or even better, at an event. Once prospects and customers come to see our equipment, the teams and the way it's deployed, it's much more meaningful than a website, an Instagram page, or a call or email of course. So, the canvassing aspects are very important, but they have to lead to a human encounter, a real meeting to discuss the future project in concrete terms, and how we're going to set it up. And there's also the dimension of projecting into the future event, where the customer will be directly involved, much more than simply replying by e-mail and sending a specification. The human dimension is again very, very, important.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:06:27] We're talking about the human dimension, so we're talking about the network, it's the network, it's also word of mouth.

Antoine Denis: [00:06:32] It's word of mouth, the network, we could have added that in the first part for the characteristics you need to have to get into the events business. You have to build and maintain your network all the time. There are indeed meetings to take advantage of, contacts to reactivate, and don't hesitate to bring people in and get them to meet each other. In fact, every year we organize a little end-of-year drink with all our in-house and freelance technicians. It may seem trivial, but these get-togethers are a great opportunity to exchange ideas and raise Audéo's profile. So the address book, the network, is super important. Of course, you have to work at it all the time, and of course, when you've already got a network, it's like a little springboard and all the operations are easier, so to speak. Aspects of contacts, once you know someone and receive an e-mail from that person you've already seen, are always much quicker, so projects progress faster and offers are signed more quickly.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:07:25] What are the main difficulties and obstacles you encounter in sales?

Antoine Denis: [00:07:30] Quite a few venues, or agencies, or customers, are already committed to service providers, and this is perfectly normal, as it's something that will facilitate relations between a customer, a venue and its technical service provider. But we often come across venues which already have their own equipment, which impose a service provider or which are reluctant to accept another service provider. The main obstacle is that the sector is rather closed, I'd say. Everyone has his or her own contacts, and it's only natural that we should go back to our address books and networks. You have to find a way through and find a small gap where you can offer your services, try to innovate, convince the customer that it might be time, or perhaps an opportunity, to try out a new company for once.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:08:10] Yes, but sometimes you can complement existing infrastructures, things that are already being done?

Antoine Denis: [00:08:15] These are things that are done, but they're not necessarily easy. It's sometimes a double whammy for the customer who rents the room, who has to rent an installation with perhaps a technician on duty, who may be twiddling his thumbs, and the Audéo teams who install equipment in parallel. There can be synergies, but it's not necessarily easy either. When we have to provide a service in a place we don't know at all, to be sure of ensuring a quality service, we sometimes prefer to come with all our equipment and be 100% autonomous, and unfortunately not use the equipment on site if we don't know it, so there you have it, these are contexts that aren't always easy. For the customer, it's also sometimes complicated from a budgetary point of view, so we think it's normal for them to turn to the venue's service provider, who already has their equipment installed on a permanent basis.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:08:57] How do you build a long-term relationship of trust with your existing customers?

Antoine Denis: [00:09:02] When a request is made, an event takes place, and several weeks or months later, a second request arrives, we consider that the relationship of trust has already been established. It's only after a successful first event that the customer can be totally reassured and call on us again, hopefully for a long time to come. I think we try to establish a fairly close and human relationship directly. When it comes to submitting bids, I always give priority to telephone calls rather than e-mails, to try to understand the needs and constraints of each customer, and to try to get as close as possible to each customer, step by step of course. But I think that trust is also established through a close relationship, and I think it's important to underline that too.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:09:46] It still requires a lot of follow-up. Do you have any specific in-house tools or practices to support your customers and show them that you're still there?

Antoine Denis: [00:09:54] There are several of us at Audéo, and each project manager has his or her own customers. Take Bozar, for example, which is a venue we work with a lot. All the requests from Bozar's various customers come to me, for example, for ease of use. When we receive a new request from a new customer, we decide internally who will take charge of the project and the customer in question, and we try to keep a single point of contact between this customer and our teams to facilitate exchanges and communication. I think you have to be quick and reactive. I've mentioned this before, but so last-minute requests and modifications are normal, and quite usual in the events business. The customer needs to feel that the technical service provider is behind the project, is being monitored, and that he can rely on the service provider for all logistical aspects.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:10:48] When you're a technical service provider at events, you've got a lot on your shoulders.

Antoine Denis: [00:10:51] It all depends on the type of event and, above all, the type of customer. Once you're working with customers, let's call them professionals, and it's a long-term collaboration, the missions are very clear and everyone has their own tasks and agenda, and we know how to move forward. For private customers, it can sometimes be more complicated, as it's less clear to them what Audéo can and can't do. We sometimes have to refuse certain services that the customer thought we could provide, but which in fact aren't part of our range at all. I'm thinking, for example, of decoration aspects for a wedding. Sometimes we have to reframe customers a little, but generally speaking, things go pretty well. And I think it's pretty clear on all our communication channels, the services we offer, the staff we offer, are really purely technical aspects, very few ancillary services, no photographers, no decoration, etc..

Camille de Meeûs: [00:11:45] To keep in touch with your customers, what skills do you think are essential for sales?

Antoine Denis: [00:11:53] I'd say don't just sit back behind your PC and wait for the requests to come in, keep up to date. I think there's a lot going on in Brussels in terms of culture and events. And keep up to date, informed, simply by following social networks, agendas and activating your networks. And in fact, go out and find prospects, look for events or offer services. Once you've acquired the network, you need to activate it to find out what events you'll be organizing over the next three months, and do you need a technical visit? Can I help you? This will really build customer loyalty, and they'll feel that we're there to support and assist them in all logistical aspects.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:12:35] At Audéo, what's your next goal, your next business ambition? We're at the end of 2025, how do you see 2026?

Antoine Denis: [00:12:43] How do we see 2026? We're starting to feel very cramped, both logistically and in terms of storage space, and this becomes quite restrictive in peak seasons, such as September. So we're really looking for a new storage location, so that's for the purely logistical aspects. And in terms of staff and events, we're currently at around 300 projects a year, and we'd like to pass the 400 mark next year. Growth is still good, the number of events is increasing, so that's great. We've reorganized everyone's tasks within the company a little, and we'll probably have to hire another project manager in 2026 just to ensure that we can meet all the new demands in a timely fashion.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:13:23] That's why this new Project Manager will be really for the commercial aspect, to always have a follow-up in real time and show that you're there, and that you don't abandon your customers.

Antoine Denis: [00:13:30] So, given the growing demand for events and, let's say, general management time, to manage all the logistical aspects, personnel, vehicles, equipment, meetings, modifications, all this takes up a lot of time and we'd like to have an additional project manager to support our customers even more reactively, even more efficiently. And to show customers that responses within a quarter of an hour are commonplace in our company, to ensure a really, really, fast follow-up.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:13:56] To ensure that your business development works, you called on phcom. Why did you choose this partner?

Antoine Denis: [00:14:01] So we were already in contact with phcom, I think, before Covid. Then Covid came along, and we stayed in the freezer for about two years. We were in contact with phcom to give a little boost, so to speak, to our business development. My brother, who's my partner, and I didn't have much time to find new prospects. Because between all the events and the administration, it's complicated to put the priority on that, as we realized after a few years. Phcom really helped us to free up time that was really allocated solely to canvassing, making calls, mailing, getting Audéo recognized, activating outreach, already showing all the references. It's a very time-consuming job, so you have to allocate very specific time to it. Once again, we're going to talk about networks, but when you call someone who may refer you to someone else, it's important to activate all these contacts and networks.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:14:58] You're currently accompanied by Stéphane, phcom's CEO. I think he accompanied you on an appointment to listen to you and help you with the sale. How does it work?

Antoine Denis: [00:15:08] So Stéphane took part in a call with me a few days ago, in a rather passive way, to listen, that's normal. We debriefed right after the appointment for a good 20 minutes, which was the first time he'd listened to my sales pitch and methods. Two or three comments have already been made, and some advice given directly. After the call, I had a call, I think 1 hour later, and advice that was applied directly afterwards. And the main piece of advice, if I can give it here, I guess yes, was simply to ask the customer more precisely what their needs were for a concrete event, whether that's in two weeks, in two months, but so that they can actually launch, project themselves, already imagine themselves in an event with Audéo. Apart from that, Stéphane felt that the presentation of the company and the way we interacted with each other were perfectly fine. But perhaps we needed to personalize things more for the customer, to understand their needs and imagine a concrete relationship.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:16:05] Is this sales support important to you?

Antoine Denis: [00:16:08] Yes, I think phone calls and e-mails are classic. But a videoconference or an on-site meeting is when you have to pull out all the stops, and you know that time is precious for everyone. When you've got someone at the end of the line, or in front of you, that's the moment to take advantage of, to try and make things happen, to build loyalty already, to...

Camille de Meeûs: [00:16:28] We have to seize the opportunity.

Antoine Denis: [00:16:29] Seize the opportunity, the moment, and hope that within the hour or the next day, you'll already have a request arriving in your inbox and you'll be thinking "Ok, we talked about this yesterday during our video, here's the project outline. Can we meet there?". It's a straightforward way of getting down to business. And Stéphane guided us in this way, saying "Ok, so we're talking about events, we're talking about the human dimension, we're talking about events, we need to get together", we need to go there, we need to project ourselves into the event.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:16:55] The importance of terrain.

Antoine Denis: [00:16:56] It's important to be hands-on and concrete, to be able to say, here's what you can imagine in your specifications, and here's what I can offer you, and here are the little extras we can propose. What is Audéo going to do to stand out, to stand out a little from the crowd? Given our experience, the events we've already done in venues, and our technicians who are used to this kind of event, we need to pull out all the stops to convince the customer directly and launch a relationship with them.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:17:20] Finally, Antoine, how would you describe your collaboration with phcom in three words?

Antoine Denis: [00:17:25] So, in three words, just off the top of my head, I'd say: efficiency, rigor and transparency. Transparency, especially via our online platform, which enables us to track appointments and calls by the day, or practically by the minute. And it's important to know how things are progressing and how we can work together.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:17:44] Merci Antoine.

Antoine Denis: [00:17:45] With great pleasure.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:17:46] See you soon.

Antoine Denis: [00:17:46] Goodbye.

• [00:01:07] Introduction to the topic: the lexicon of expression
• [00:01:31] 1. “Belly-on-the-floor” expressions
• [00:02:09] The four Toltec agreements
• [00:03:24] Examples of “belly-on-the-floor” expressions
• [00:03:48] The ideal rephrasing?
• [00:04:09] Energy shift through a proposal
• [00:04:30] 2. Hesitant expressions
• [00:05:34] 3. Dark words
• [00:05:44] 4. Barbed-wire words
• [00:06:11] Words and the weight of words
• [00:06:42] The little daily bombs
• [00:06:56] Words that elevate the conversation
• [00:07:21] Words that speak about the client, not the seller
• [00:07:34] Cicero’s three pillars
• [00:07:59] How to correct yourself concretely
• [00:08:25] How to train
• [00:08:49] In summary
• [00:09:23] A small challenge
• [00:09:36] Episode closing

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:00:13] Hello and welcome to another episode of the podcast "Performance, Harmony & Commercial" produced by PHCom in the "transforma bxl" studio using the techniques of "The Podcast Factory Org".

Nadia Ben Jelloun: [00:00:23] The "Performance, Harmony & Commercial" podcast is aimed at marketing and sales managers, as well as company executives with commercial responsibilities.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:00:32] Every month, we share with you our best practices in finding new customers for business-to-business companies.

Nadia Ben Jelloun: [00:00:38] You can find each episode on the PHCom point be website, P.H.C.O.M, and on all the good podcast platforms.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:00:48] You can support this podcast and promote its visibility by sharing it with as many people as possible via a like, comment or share.

Nadia Ben Jelloun: [00:00:55] The answering machine is always open so that you can leave us a message, which we'll be delighted to answer.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:01:00] You can also book an appointment directly with Nadia or Stéphane on phcom dot be.

Nadia Ben Jelloun: [00:01:06] See you soon!

Camille de Meeûs: [00:01:07] Hello everyone, welcome to "Performance, Harmonie & Commercial", the podcast where we talk about prospecting, sales, but above all human relations.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:01:15] And today, we're going to talk about something that may seem insignificant but changes everything: words. The words we use on the phone, in appointments, in customer follow-up. Because the right word opens doors. A clumsy word slams them in the face, sometimes!

Camille de Meeûs: [00:01:31] Exactly. You know I was listening to a prospecting recording recently the other day, and the salesman starts with: "Hello sir, may I disturb you for two minutes". And there, I assure you, I felt the door close even before the first sentence!

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:01:43] Classic. The guy wanted to be polite and turned into a nuisance. It's typical of flat-bellied expressions: we apologize for existing when we've come to offer value. So behind the attitude, there are words, and words are creators, words create situations. Let's take a look at what not to say, and more importantly, what to say. It's a state of mind we're taking you towards.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:02:09] Aren't we talking about the Four Toltec Agreements?

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:02:12] Let's take a look at this Central American people who, around the year 1000 AD, set out to establish a code of conduct for living a free and fulfilled life.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:02:22] The first agreement is that your word be impeccable, and that's really the topic of the day.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:02:27] And the second, and third, are also in line with the subject, and in perfect continuity with the treatment of objections we talked about in the previous episode. Secondly, whatever happens, don't take it personally. In short, don't judge yourself. And the third, don't make assumptions, means try to understand, Dig.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:02:49] And fourth, always do your best, i.e. commit yourself fully to your actions, but realistically and without perfectionism. So just learn, move on, correct, improve by listening to yourself, but above all don't put too much pressure on yourself. As a result, these principles aim to free individuals from limiting beliefs and collective conditioning, thus promoting inner peace and unconditional love.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:03:15] Okay, it's beautiful. There's also a fifth Toltec agreement: Be skeptical, but learn to listen. So welcome to this episode, stay tuned!

Camille de Meeûs: [00:03:24] So let's start with the one you were talking about: flat-bellied expressions that put us in a position of inferiority. For example, I'll give you a few sample sentences: "Sorry to bother you, but I won't waste too much of your time, don't worry. I'm sorry, it's really not my fault".

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:03:39] Phrases full of good intentions but which undermine your credibility. Because by saying "I'm bothering you", you program the other person to think "Yes, indeed, you're bothering me".

Camille de Meeûs: [00:03:48] What would be the ideal reformulation for you?

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:03:51] Not with what's in your head. You're not bothering him, because you've got a solution for him. So you might say, "I'm calling because I've got an idea that might save you some time on this subject".

Camille de Meeûs: [00:04:05] And "I won't waste too much of your time, don't worry". So what's in it for you?

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:04:09] "I may have a solution for your business. I have something that will please you. I have something to brighten your day". We're no longer begging, we're proposing.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:04:19] And that's the key: we sell help, not intrusion. Help means not putting yourself on the same level as the other person, neither below nor too far above them. Don't patronize him either.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:04:30] Second category: doubtful expressions. You know, all those little words of doubt that sabotage confidence without us even realizing it.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:04:40] Ah yes, I can see that. The maybe, possibly, if possible, I think, I think, when you say "I think our solution is interesting", the customer hears "He's not sure himself".

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:04:52] But "I'm convinced this is the right approach" changes everything. Look, "I think this is a good time to talk about it"...pfff Not good. "It's the right time to judge the effectiveness of this type of solution", now you're convincing. And in fact, to be convincing, you have to be convinced.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:05:10] Exactly. And it's really the same with the conditional. "I would have liked to know if you had desired", then there, it is really the festival of the doubt. Replace the whole thing with the present asserted, "I suggest you meet our representative next week".

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:05:25] Again, if I doubt, he'll doubt too.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:05:28] That's right, it's like a verbal contagion: your certainty gives you confidence and your hesitation scares you away.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:05:34] Third category: black words. Those who install a negative logic. They flay, they tense, they trigger defensiveness.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:05:44] We can also call them barbed wire words, for example: Problem, complaint, error, never, impossible, risk. So many words that make our stress levels rise.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:05:55] Exactly. If you say "You run no risk", the customer just hears the word risk. I don't know if you've noticed, but there are always "R's" in those "barbed wire" words.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:06:05] Whereas a simple "Our system works safely" puts everyone at ease, it's easier, it's more obvious.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:06:11] Same thing with words like: costs, expenses. These words can become: investment. Or problem, well, it can become a question, a specific request.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:06:22] And then my favorite is: "Don't worry", it's really the best way to worry someone. In this case, it's better to say "Our team ensures your complete satisfaction".

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:06:33] Last example, "I don't know". Well, no, I don't know, it becomes "I'll find out and call you back". It's simple, it's professional, it's reassuring.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:06:42] And let's not forget the little bombs of everyday life. "But no, you're making a mistake", It's perceived as an aggression. On the other hand, "You might think that, but it's precisely our solution that answers that question", and that's where we clearly keep the customer in the discussion.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:06:56] Well, after you've eliminated the toxic words, the ones that bring doubt, or put you at a disadvantage. Let's talk about words that elevate the conversation.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:07:06] Yes, these are the positive, clear and above all solution-oriented words. Words that inspire confidence include: improve, simplify, optimize, adapt, win, streamline and secure.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:07:21] And above all, words that speak to the customer, not the salesperson. Your team, your objectives, your efficiency. When we say "you", we create a bond. When we say "I", we're talking about ourselves.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:07:34] And in rhetoric, we find the three pillars of my dear friend Cicero. One, ethos, meaning credibility, professional and precise words. Two, pathos, emotion, a tone that is sincere and positive. Three, logos, logic, a discourse that is clear, concrete and structured.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:07:52] It's the trilogy of the salesman who speaks his mind. We already talked about this in the episode "How to make a good argument?"

Camille de Meeûs: [00:07:59] So we know what to avoid, we know what to say... But how do you actually correct yourself?

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:08:05] A simple method: Register.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:08:07] Ah yes, it's true that we all think we speak well, until we listen to ourselves. And that's when we discover our "heu's", our "I think so's", our "I've just got a quick question".

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:08:17] The idea is to identify these stray words, rephrase them, and practice speaking with strong, positive, precise words.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:08:25] But how do you go about training? What tips could you share to help you evolve in all circumstances to use the right words that will put the other person more at ease.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:08:33] It's a real mental workout. Choosing your words also means choosing your posture. With an assertive, respectful, clear posture, so it's first in your head, do you approach your day positively? How can you put yourself in a positive frame of mind first thing in the morning?

Camille de Meeûs: [00:08:49] Yes, it's true, when it comes to posture, I knew someone who put a mirror in front of his desk to remind him to smile. Maybe just remember the Four Toltec Agreements? So, in short, banish belly-flat expressions, replace doubt with conviction, avoid black words and choose clear ones instead, and practice speaking like someone who brings value.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:09:09] So, yes, be comfortable in your head, be well prepared, and write your good words. Because in the end, words are the music of trust. And customers can't be bought, they have to be given.

Camille de Meeûs: [00:09:23] Wonderful sentence. And as always, we leave you with a little challenge: this week, record one of your conversations, and count how many times you say "maybe", "sorry" or "no problem", you'll see, it's quite revealing.

Stéphane Depaepe: [00:09:36] That's more of a challenge than a small one. See you soon for another episode of "Performance, Harmony & Commercial". And until then, remember, good words make good sales. So I'll leave you with one last word: subscribe, enjoy and learn.