capital MAJOR REFERENCES

Essensium is one of the pan-European market leaders in safety & productivity within the warehousing & logistics sector. As an IMEC spin-off they are based in Leuven and sell to a large number of corporate accounts; see https://essensium.com
Benny has facilitated the repositioning of this organisation resulting in new customer messaging, new website, new collateral, etc.
Since spring 2021 he is their interim Marketing Director and now busy on different strategtc marketing projects incl. repositioning of their MIND business unit !

For more than 3 years, capitalM is a recognised training provider for each of the respective Chambers of Commerce (VOKA West-VL, O-VL, VL-Brabant, etc.). Most of the training workshops are in the context of the Mercurio ‘go international’ sessions of VOKA regionally. During these pragmatic workshops participants are getting concepts on international sales & marketing strategies combined with some reflection on their own export situation! More recently I also held an interactive Lab (5 sessions) on “commercial skillset for high-growth firms”…

Since more than 5 Years Benny is guest lecturer for following courses: product management & innovation, distribution marketing (channel marketing), international marketing & entrepreneurship. All courses are in English for BaNaBa students (bachelor after bachelor) or Bachelor students in Business Management/Erasmus direction. See also https://www.vives.be/nl/handelswetenschappen-en-bedrijfskunde/business-management-entrepreneurship

Penbox is one of the promising scale-up’s in Belgium. They are active in the insurance industry and have recently been nominated for “rising star & most disruptive innovator’ in Deloitte’s Fast 50 …  It’s a leading insurtech firm backed by VC’s Penbox confirms its ambition to be the leader in insurtech | Fortino Capital

They commercialise a SaaS platform that automates the admin of insurance brokers & firms resulting in more accurate customer data and customer engagements/interactions.
capitalM was asked to support them in revising their positioning and to enter the corporate insurance market vs. the broker segment. In workshops with seniro management and their commercial team we successfully concluded this assignment.

Benny Van Calster was involved in a consulting trajectory for this leading Telco in the context of their ‘fiber to the home’ initiative. The objective was to strengthening the channel approach, especially in the domain of their reat-estate channel partners. Ultimately this consulting assignment resulted in a “channel sales” training for the PAM’s (Partner Account Managers)

Benny, as partner of Minds&More, has been involved in different strategic marketing projects such as: funnel management plan for digital cinema division, facilitating a 2-day offsite meeting with the global Marketing team, sound boarding sessions with sr. management, etc.

The Sniffers, based in Balen, is a global service provider for field emission measurements and pipeline integrity surveys for the oil and gas industry (see: https://www.the-sniffers.com/ for more info).
A few years ago, Benny Van Calster was leading an assignment with the GM to refine their value proposition in order to reach the C-level community in EHS (Environmental, Health & Safety). Via different workshops we build a buyer persona, a new value prop, a messaging matrix, etc.
In 2021, as Partner of Minds&More, he was in charge of a new sales training programme in the context of their ‘sales excellence’ trajectory. Objective was to get to a more proactive account management approach via e.g. following training modules: DISC for sales, opportunity management, value proposition pitching, account management, etc.

capitalM participated in a 2-day strategy workshop with Konica Minolta Benelux in order to define their next strategic plan for the BeNeLux region. The outcome was the definition of key growth areas, roadmap with future commercial initiatives, strenghtening sales & marketing alignment, etc. (Assignment done for Business Markers – see https://businessmarkers.com )

Coming soon.

Benny Van Calster was asked in 2021 to participate in their new ‘postgraduaat salesanagement’ https://www.hogent.be/opleidingen/postgraduaten/salesmanagement/ . This new education program is focusses on Bachelor or Master students wanting to reinforce their commercial skill set and consists of modules like: negotiation, key account management, defining solid value propositions, etc. Benny is lecturing a 5-day module on sales & marketing strategy and alignment of both disciplines in context of commercial excellence !

Benny has been instrumental over the past 2 years in the channel training programs of this leading ICT-vendor. We have developed a full curriculum in commercial trainings for both the sales staff of VMware’s distribution network, as well as for the pre-sales community. Various topics such as social selling, winning new deals, get a buy-in at technical level, selling as trusted advisor, etc. were discussed and trained in each of the respective sales workshops!

Novalis Biotech is an early-stage venture capital (VC) investor in life sciences. They welcome innovative concepts in healthcare and aim to support their development already at the state of incorporation. Their investment focus is on “enabling technologies” in life sciences. One of the fund managers approached capitalM to organise a ‘strategic marketing & sales’ training for its 10+ portfolio companies. This was a great interactive session (see also news section on this website).