We started with a $200 budget and evolved into a company group. Why Western clients choose us even in times of war: Belkins case

Belkins search­es for busi­ness prospects and engages them through email mar­ket­ing. It oper­ates in the US and on Euro­pean mar­kets and holds first place in its niche in the Clutch.co rank­ing.

Despite the war, Belkins hasn’t lost a sin­gle cus­tomer, and its sales haven’t dropped. In this affil­i­ate project, the company’s founders, Vla­dyslav Podoliako and Michael Max­i­moff, told MC.today how they man­age to triple busi­ness growth every year and win the cus­tomers’ trust, and also shared some tips on how oth­er Ukrain­ian com­pa­nies can repli­cate their suc­cess.

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We haven’t lost a single client during the war

Ukrain­ian ser­vice com­pa­nies that oper­ate in West­ern mar­kets are los­ing cus­tomers because of the war. We at Belkins haven’t lost a sin­gle one. The inva­sion began on Thurs­day, the evac­u­a­tion last­ed for two days, and on Mon­day, every­one was at work. The war did not affect our clients. We dri­ve results and have built ser­vices so that our cus­tomers can trust us and nev­er doubt us, even in cri­sis.

On aver­age, we find 80 to 400 leads per day for one project. With­in 1000 leads, we can sched­ule up to 30 meet­ings. This is 5 times more than our com­peti­tors do. We are one of the top-per­form­ing B2B lead gen­er­a­tion com­pa­nies in the US mar­ket with a 4.9 score and the #1 com­pa­ny with pos­i­tive reviews in the sales & email mar­ket­ing cat­e­go­ry on clutch.co.

Screen­shot from clutch.co web­site

Each client is assigned to one of our account man­agers. We joke that becom­ing an account man­ag­er is as dif­fi­cult as becom­ing a CEO. The task of these peo­ple is to make cus­tomers hap­py, so they do not have to wait and feel their prob­lems are being solved.

How we work with clients

When the war start­ed, the Belkins team did­n’t have to wor­ry about any­thing. We took care of the people’s secu­ri­ty, trans­port, and mon­ey; evac­u­at­ed their fam­i­lies and pets. The account man­agers had one duty back then, which was to take care of the cus­tomers. The guys evac­u­at­ed with lap­tops and phones and, right on the way, were explain­ing to clients that there were no risks for their busi­ness­es and finances.

On the very first day of the war, we pro­vid­ed AMs with ten options in case the cus­tomers were wor­ried. The guys could offer clients to reduce the min­i­mum con­tract peri­od from six to three months. Or to put off pay­ment for our ser­vices for 30 days. Also, a cus­tomer could be switched to a man­ag­er locat­ed in Europe. We pro­vid­ed every­thing, and not a sin­gle account had to use the pro­posed options.

In peace­time, we also tried to do more for clients; for exam­ple, we sug­gest­ed or taught some­thing new. Once we noticed that one of our cus­tomer’s deals start­ed break­ing. It turned out that they had dif­fi­cul­ties work­ing with CRM. The account man­ag­er offered to hold a call with Michael, the company’s co-founder, who is well-versed in CRM. He helped the client fig­ure it out, and the num­ber of trans­ac­tions start­ed grow­ing. We do not charge for such work, we just want to help.

What helps us triple our annual growth

When we start­ed four years ago, our plan was sim­ple — let’s do it. We attacked all fronts: sent cold let­ters to poten­tial clients, set up organ­ic search, and shaped cus­tomer sto­ries into cas­es. It was like a rock­et launch — the team’s size and num­ber of projects tripled each year.

Now we have 210 peo­ple and 200 active projects. We receive 1500 appli­ca­tions per month from the U.S. and Europe, and we seal the deals with 400–500 leads. How have we achieved this? Our fea­ture is rig­or­ous effi­cien­cy. We track absolute­ly every­thing: the num­ber of open emails, respons­es, con­ver­sions — more than 15 indi­ca­tors in total.

Belkins founders Vla­dyslav Podoliako and Michael Max­i­moff

With the help of the met­rics, we build growth fore­casts. Our bud­get is divid­ed accord­ing to the expec­ta­tions for the month, quar­ter, and year, so we see how far we are from our goal. This year, we expect to triple our growth again. Due to the war, there was an idea to adjust our plans, but we quick­ly aban­doned it.

We can meet the KPIs thanks to well-estab­lished process­es that we are con­stant­ly improv­ing. If we talk about projects, this is how the work is done. Our sales man­agers find cus­tomers and trans­fer them to account man­agers. They fig­ure out a client’s issue and explain what type of leads the researchers should be look­ing for. Our researchers cre­ate a con­tacts data­base con­tain­ing peo­ple and busi­ness­es for this client.

Then the process is picked up by our SDR man­agerssales devel­op­ment reps, or sales devel­op­ment spe­cial­ists — note ed.. They cre­ate email newslet­ters and book calls for clients with prospects who have shown inter­est.

The main key is the team

Belkins account man­agers might have one call with a client at 10:00 AM and anoth­er one at 10:00 PM. Dur­ing the day, they can hang out for a few hours: go to the gym, take a walk. This is how most guys work: they sched­ule their day on their own.

Belkins team

Recent­ly, we’ve sur­veyed what peo­ple val­ue the most in the com­pa­ny. The sec­ond most pop­u­lar answer is «flex­i­bil­i­ty». It refers not only to the sched­ule but also to tasks. With Belkins, you can cre­ate your own KPIs. This approach affects the company’s results. The teams devel­op their own respon­si­bil­i­ty, and by no means is it like «let’s give them 300 projects and make them choke».

Our entire team works with full devo­tion and search­es for solu­tions inde­pen­dent­ly. We are sim­ple guys who did not grad­u­ate from Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties; we have no part­ners in Amer­i­can foun­da­tions, and we have been liv­ing in Ukraine all our lives. But we learn quick­ly, make rapid deci­sions, and are not afraid of mak­ing mis­takes. We have big ambi­tions, so we were able to become com­pet­i­tive in the U.S. mar­ket. We can already give a head start to any Sil­i­con Val­ley project — both in devel­op­ment and sales.

We, the founders of Belkins, hire peo­ple our­selves. We pro­vide adap­ta­tion, train­ing, inter­nal Wikipedia, instruc­tions, cours­es, and books. If some­one wish­es, they quick­ly become great spe­cial­ists. Almost all the guys who joined us from the start have stayed here — there is no turnover in the teams. C‑level spe­cial­ists and depart­ment heads become the part­ners of Belkins and receive the com­pa­ny’s share.

Right now, we have 14 vacan­cies: HR man­agers, mar­keters, sales man­agers, and oth­ers. Read more about the job oppor­tu­ni­ties and apply here.

How we take care of the people

The sur­vey showed that the peo­ple at Belkins val­ue their team the most. Before we com­plete­ly switched to remote work due to the war, every­one loved to come to the Kyiv office. We don’t need it to be effi­cient, but it’s rather nice to escape from the dai­ly rou­tine and chat with col­leagues.

There was a friend­ly vibe inside, every­one was hang­ing around and chat­ting, lis­ten­ing to music, and not just scrib­bling like squir­rels. Our PR man­ag­er, Nastya, brought her son, and we played Playsta­tion togeth­er. Some peo­ple brought their dogs to the office. This did not inter­fere with the work­flow at all but cre­at­ed a friend­ly atmos­phere.

To main­tain the feel­ing of warmth online, we came up with a few tricks. For exam­ple, we launched a cof­fee bot that helps intro­duce teams to each oth­er by assign­ing calls to two ran­dom­ly select­ed peo­ple. And a thanks-bot, with the help of which we express grat­i­tude to each oth­er and earn points for it. You can pur­chase a sym­bol­ic gift for these points: an extra day off, a book, a gym sub­scrip­tion, and more. All 210 peo­ple are con­stant­ly in touch on our Telegram chan­nel where we exchange ideas, ask for sup­port, and cheer each oth­er up with fun­ny memes.

Recent­ly, we cel­e­brat­ed Belkin­s’s 4th birth­day online. We released a col­lectible NFT tick­et for it, devel­oped a land­ing page and a script, and hired hosts for this event. All the guys got their cryp­to wal­lets now. The event last­ed for four hours, includ­ing pre­sen­ta­tions, sto­ries, and con­tests.

View vacan­cies at Belkins here.

How Ukrainian companies can attract Western clients

We can give some tips to Ukrain­ian cre­ative teams on how to attract West­ern clients.

Find your niche and work there. If you are a top soft­ware devel­op­er for med­ical equip­ment, then it does­n’t mat­ter whether you are in Amer­i­ca, India, or Ukraine. A client does not look at the coun­try, but at the indus­try, and one should strive to be the first there. We see how Ukrain­ian out­sourc­ing IT com­pa­nies come to this. At first, the com­pa­ny is engaged in web appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment, a few years lat­er, they devel­op web appli­ca­tions in fin­tech, and, in the end, they design fin­tech web appli­ca­tions for neobanks.

Be atten­tive to your client. You need to under­stand well what your client is doing. For instance: do not offer McDon­ald’s to a per­son who cares about their health. The bet­ter the man­ag­er knows their client, the more like­ly they are to win their heart and evoke pos­i­tive emo­tions.

Invest in mar­ket­ing. We devel­oped our com­pa­ny with­out invest­ment, with $200 in our pock­et, so we imme­di­ate­ly launched sell­ing ser­vices. And the first employ­ee at Belkins was a mar­keter. Now we have a whole staff of SEO spe­cial­ists, link builders, and copy­writ­ers. And Belkins has grown into a group of projects in four years.

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job oppor­tu­ni­ties at belkins