Jo Van Loock is currently the founder of Konnektrix which is a Sales Marketing coaching and consulting agency, where they focus on building lasting and profitable relationships between businesses and their (potential) customers. They do this by providing marketing and sales tactics that have a main focus on providing value, generating revenue and positive ROI’s.
Next to his sales marketing passion, he is happily married and has two little munchkins running around, creating chaos all over the house, and is also passionate about Siberian dogs (mainly Samoyeds).
Tell us about your life before the venture/ leading up to your venture?
My first endeavor was when I was 14, where I helped out in catering because I wanted to do something other than “stay indoors and game all day“. I wanted to help people by actually providing some value for them.
Fast forward to 2010 I got my Masters degree in IT and started my first job and I noticed that I needed more than just rotating in a corporate structure to feel fulfilled. I wanted to start my own business, but fear got the better of me so I started my 2nd job and 1,5 years later I took the decision to start my own IT company.
At that moment it became clear that I was exceptionally good at delivering services but I didn’t know how to sell or market my services. Not getting any customers, hitting rock bottom it became clear I needed to change.
I studied and self educated myself in the fields of relationship building, marketing and sales and started seeing some patterns that were responsible for lots of problems with companies (also my own). I tried different systems and started seeing major returns only 5 tot 8 weeks later.
That was the moment I was infected by the sales and marketing bug and I never stopped since.
Tell us something about your organization. What is it about and how is it helpful for people?
Konnektrix is a Sales Marketing coaching and consulting agency, where we focus on building lasting and profitable relationships between businesses and their (potential) customers. We do this by providing them with marketing strategies and tactics that work, generate sales and create recurring ambassadors (so the main focus is on providing value, generating revenue and positive ROI’s).
What has been the response of the consumers towards your venture?
Until last year it was never my intention to build a Sales Marketing empire or to become a main thought leader in my field. I just wanted to do the things I enjoyed the most in life.
But seeing how consistently more and more businesses are getting into serious trouble due to marketing and sales strategies that aren’t centered around ROI, profit, money making but instead focus on visibility, communication and branding we took a decision last year to start helping as many businesses as we can.
Naturally we weren’t able to do it with the meager systems I had in place, so I’ve been investing everything I have to create products and services that enable businesses to learn how they can do it, or have somebody to ask for help when they need it.
How has your life changed because of your venture?
It gives me more joy in my life because I can do what I like.
The thing that I learned the last couple of years is that you have to be ruthless in selecting the tasks that you actually want to do and love and do whatever it takes to maximize them (also when things that I don’t like or even hate are necessary to get there).
Give a motivational message for the audience/women who are reading this.
Be ruthless in managing your time (because it’s the most scarce resource we have) and calculate what will provide the most value, so you can focus your efforts on those… And maybe the most important… never stop dreaming of what would be possible and always chase those dreams.
All the motivational speakers (including me) tell people to never give up, to keep giving it your all… but on the other side it is crucially important that you learn to give up on tasks that aren’t worthwhile or that aren’t valued. This way you get more time and energy for the things that will empower you and provide massive value towards others.
