Making the call to be a leading market player

Co Carlow start-up company Maven TM is recruiting and expanding with a view to establishing itself as a leading player in the telemarketing sales space in Europe.

Set up two years ago to offer telemarketing and telesales services to SME technology companies in Ireland, the company now has 20 customers including large companies operating on a global level. Recent recruitment has brought the staff number to 18 and the company plans to increase this to 30 early next year.

“In the region of 70% of our business is in Ireland and we have customers in seven other countries including the US, the UK, France and Germany,” says Maven TM founder and managing director Mark Cradock.

He explains that the company offers sales in seven languages and is a specialist provider of B2B telemarketing and lead generation services to companies selling into Ireland, UK, Europe and the US

Mr Cradock had 15 years’ experience in the telemarketing industry before setting up at Enterprise House in Carlow in Mar 2011, using the word maven which means expert as part of the company name.

The recession had made it difficult for companies to grow their businesses and he saw an opportunity to offer a specialist services to those wishing to outsource inside sales.

He identified a niche for a company specialising in the technology area, observing that many smaller or medium-sized companies in this area didn’t have the budgets for telemarketing.

“The aim was to assist Irish companies sell into national and international markets, including the US, Western Europe and the UK,” he explains.

Using his own funding and some grant aid from Carlow Enterprise Board, Mr Cradock set up the company, operating on his own for the first few months.

“I started by doing some cold calling and on the first day I got a sale and within the first six weeks I had three clients,” he says explaining that these included a company providing satellite technology and a small software company.

After three months he took on two staff. “The companies I contacted were very receptive to the idea. One of the reasons for this was because they preferred to contract out the function rather than employ someone. Outsourcing this headache was seen as a good solution,” says Mr Cradock.

He offered this service at a lower price than many competitors and by the end of the first year Maven had 11 clients and was continuing to grow.

“In December 2011 we made the decision to offer multilingual services. We were bidding for a contract for a software company providing services to a printing operation selling into 12 countries across Europe and needed to offer multilingual services.”

Winning this contract was a milestone for Maven, which now does work for the UK headquarters of the company as well as the Irish division. After the company hired linguists, it began pursuing work in both France and Germany.

“We won our first German client in Mar 2012 and our first French client in May 2012. Customers now include some global brand leaders in the technology space,” says Mr Cradock.

Experiencing difficulties because the company didn’t have people on the ground in Europe, it took on a resource person in Paris in Aug last year. In the long-term the company plans to set up offices in Europe.

Maven TM is now working on projects for 20 clients ranging from start-up companies to multinationals. Customers in Ireland include Logicalis, Prostrategy Colman, and Lincor as well as Vodafone Ireland which is one of its largest accounts.

Earlier this year, Maven TM was one of five winners for the Best Emerging New Businesses category at the 2013 SFA National Small Business Awards.

The company has ambitious plans for 2014 and is aiming to double revenue to €6.1m.

“We see a lot of scope for growth in Ireland and we also plan to expand internationally and are specifically targeting markets in France, Germany and Scandinavia,’’ says Mr Cradock

Part of the plan is also to diversify into other areas and he is in discussions with companies outside the IT sector.