Sales Heroes: AIESEC

What is AIESEC all about?

“AIESEC is one of the world’s largest youth-run organisations. Our mission is to achieve peace and fulfilment of humankind’s potential. We strive to do this by placing confidence in the world’s youth, as we believe this is the key to unlocking a better future.”

Bei AIESEC geben wir jungen Menschen die Möglichkeit, ihr Führungspotenzial durch praktische Erfahrungen in einem herausfordernden Umfeld voll zu entfalten. Wir tun dies, indem wir sie mit globalen Praktika und qualitativen Freiwilligeneinsätzen in Verbindung bringen.

Wir bieten drei verschiedene Austauschprogramme an.

Global Talent is a program that gives recent graduates the chance to do an internship abroad. It’s a win-win, as companies here in Belgium in turn get the opportunity to work with international young high potentials.”

At AIESEC we strongly believe youth is the key to unlocking a better future for the world.

“The Global Volunteer Program sees young people doing volunteer work such as teaching children, crafting business plans for NGOs etc. Every single one of our Global Volunteer opportunities is linked to one of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.

Nicht zuletzt bieten wir jungen Menschen die Möglichkeit, im Rahmen unseres Global Entrepreneur Programs durch Arbeitserfahrungen in Start-ups in das Unternehmerleben hineinzuschnuppern.

Check out our website if you’d like to know more!”

How does AIESEC do sales?

“Every year we start off with new members who have no idea how to do sales. This is one of the challenges we face every year.

Wir leiten sie an, indem wir ihnen die Programme erklären, die sie verkaufen werden, und sie mit professionellen Verkaufstrainings ausstatten. Diese Verkaufstrainings werden von Unternehmen durchgeführt, die in ihrem täglichen Leben im Verkauf tätig sind.

Everything starts with a cold call. Our goal of these cold calls is to get through to decision makers and get hold of a meeting. At this meeting, we will lay out what AIESEC is all about and ask questions to see if there’s a match.

Afterwards, we’ll dive deeper into our Global Talent Program and explain how it provides companies with the interesting opportunity to work with international young high potentials.

When it comes to sales and building new relationships with companies, we’re also quite big on networking events such as job fairs and conferences.”

Where do your leads come from?

“As a worldwide international organisation, AIESEC has several Belgian offices in Antwerp, Ghent, Leuven, Brussels and more.

Within AIESEC Belgium, we share a list of Belgian companies assigned to the different companies so to make sure we don’t contact the same companies.”

We strongly believe face-to-face contact leads to better relations than cold calling

“We often get leads thanks to warm contacts of our AIESEC members. Another great lead source comes from our partnerships with companies. They often speak highly of us to other companies and give us contact information and introductions.

We also get in touch with a lot of companies during networking events, job fairs and conferences. We strongly believe face-to-face contact is more effective than cold calling.”

Wie verwenden Sie Salesflare?

“We use Salesflare to stay on top of our leads at all times. The app tells us if lead companies have read our email, how many times they did, if they visited our website etc. It’s a great way to determine where to focus our efforts on.

Besides that, it’s an amazing way to save data. Because most of our members are still students, our teams consist of different people every year. For example, right now, I am responsible for the sales within AIESEC here at the University of Antwerp, but in one month my successor will take over.”

Every year Salesflare allows us to effortlessly pass on our CRM data to a new generation of AIESEC members

“Thanks to Salesflare we can make sure this year’s data regarding partners and other people I’ve been in contact with can be effortlessly passed on to my successor who can then pick up where I left off. Zero difficulties.

Salesflare is also of great help when it comes to following up on leads. It gives us a nice overview that tells us whether we should take action on a lead or rather wait for a reply.”

Any sales tips/hacks you would like to share?

“When contacting companies, we first do our homework. We research their values, check if they have any job openings and — in case of a cold call — we try to find details on the HR director or another decision-maker.

As AIESEC’ers we live by six defining values:

• Streben nach Exzellenz
• Aktivierende Führung, gelebte Vielfalt
• Nachhaltig handeln
• Integrität demonstrieren
• Freude an der Teilnahme

It’s important to us that the companies we work with share these values and so we use these values to qualify leads. We believe that, this way, there is a way better chance for match than if we would contact companies more randomly.”

“Because we have an influx of new members every year, it’s sometimes difficult to stay on top of follow-ups as responsibilities and roles within our organisation change every year.

However, we believe that doing good follow-up is one of the most important things in the sales process. That’s where Salesflare comes in. We can easily transfer accounts and opportunities from one person to another while still being promptly reminded to follow up.”