Sharing experiences to learn together

Through this interview, Pierre Bert, Senior Sales Manager at Salesforce and Geoffroy Guigou, Co-founder of Younited Crédit and Vice-President of France FinTech review the partnership that has linked Salesforce and France FinTech for 3 years now. A win-win collaboration based on family spirit and the sharing of experience. 

Birds of a feather flock together: by entering into a partnership with the France FinTech association, Salesforce brings its support and expertise to a rapidly expanding ecosystem and, for its part, is nourished by all the innovation dynamics of start-ups champions of disruption. A win-win collaboration with very strong impact.

Association bringing together nearly 200 French start-ups with high potential, France FinTech's missions are to defend the interests of fintech, insurance and regtech with the public authorities during the consultation on legal texts, to make promote French know-how internationally and serve as a melting pot of innovation by promoting contacts between fintech and with partners.
For three years, Salesforce has been one of these major partners who, through the sharing of experiences and advice, have supported the extraordinary development of this sector. " French fintech has entered a very rapid scaling phase with record growth. This is the case, for example, of Younited Credit which records an average annual growth rate of 60 to 100%. We are therefore within an ecosystem of 200 companies which are growing very quickly and which must, consequently, structure their commercial efforts and their processes, equip themselves with tools and professionalize their marketing in both BtoB and BtoC. They need advice and role models », Explains Geoffroy Guigou, Co-founder of Younited Credit, and Vice President of France FinTech.

This need is all the more pressing given that the Covid-19 crisis has considerably accelerated the activity of fintech: amplification of payments on the internet, new uses and new opportunities.

Family spirit

More “big brother” than mentor, Salesforce approached this partnership with a certain family spirit (the famous culture ofOhana) which brings together its fundamental values. Values ​​which are also widely shared by France FinTech and which explain the strength of the links between the association and Salesforce: trust, customer success, innovation and equality. " France FinTech is a family that helps both young shoots and successful start-ups. At Salesforce, we have the same approach: we support very small companies and the largest global groups with the same attention ”, recalls Pierre Bert, Senior Sales manager at Salesforce.

Sharing experience to inspire start-ups

Inspirational meetings, discussions with the top management of Salesforce, workshops and thematic webinars (theBtoC customer acquisition for example), Salesforce is multiplying initiatives with members of France FinTech by insisting on experience sharing. Geoffroy notably uses the How Salesforce Uses Salesforce approach: “During a workshop bringing together fintech founders from the BXNUMXB sector, Salesforce employees explained how they manage internal sales teams. It was not a question of talking about technology, but of sharing best practices on marketing segmentation, the structuring of sales teams between inbound et outbound, the incentive of the different types of sales teams… ”. He himself took advantage of the information drawn from this session to set up a BtoB organization within Younited Credit: “Younited Business Solutions”. 

In addition, the international reach of Salesforce reinforces the interest of these contributions: “We can pass on fintech feedback from other countries. And especially in Great Britain where the sector exploded long before France. This makes it possible to bring a large number of best practices to challenge here ”, adds Pierre.

A win-win partnership

By getting closer to fintechs, by talking to them regularly, Salesforce better understands the expectations and the evolutions of an extremely changing ecosystem. “I lead a team of ten sales representatives dedicated to the financial sector, with a very high level of expertise. To maintain this level and provide relevant and personalized solutions to our customers, this intimate relationship with fintech is extremely valuable ”, explains Pierre, who relies on this source of real-time feedback to improve his service offering, with a concern for permanent development and customer satisfaction… whether the latter is a fintech or not!