Jeroen Corthout

Jeroen Corthout's public output, whether in interviews or in the steady drumbeat of LinkedIn posts promoting the Salesflare blog, circles back to one consistent diagnosis: CRM systems typically fail not because salespeople don't want to use them, but because they demand too much manual upkeep. He traces this directly to his own frustration with existing tools, explaining that he and his co-founder started Salesflare in 2014 "after struggling to organize leads and follow-ups using existing systems like Salesforce, which he found impractical for salespeople managing customer relationships" ¹⁷. The fix, in his view, is automatic data aggregation from email, calls, and calendars rather than manual input, which he identifies as "a major reason CRM systems fail in practice" ¹⁷. This is the through-line for nearly everything else he publishes: the guides on choosing a CRM, using a CRM, and automating sales tasks are all extensions of that founding insight, packaged as practical, checklist-driven content rather than abstract theory .

On growth strategy, Corthout is candid about why Salesflare leans so heavily on organic and earned channels instead of paid acquisition. He explains that competing in the crowded CRM market against well-funded competitors makes paid advertising ineffective for a startup like his, and that Salesflare instead relies on word of mouth, Google search rankings, review platforms like G2, and content marketing created by people with genuine product expertise rather than generic SEO copywriting ¹⁸. This is also why he's done more than 100 podcast appearances, treating them as a core marketing strategy rather than a side activity ¹⁸. The implication is a broader belief that in a saturated software category, credibility and specificity beat spend, and that founders themselves should be visible carriers of that credibility.

That philosophy shows up concretely in his LinkedIn cadence, where nearly every post is a short, informal nudge toward a long-form guide addressing one narrow, tactical sales problem: forecasting , lead generation vendors , email finders , email trackers , sales analysis , finding new customers , and CRM setup for specific segments like consultants . The tone is consistently plain and imperative, treating the reader as someone with an immediate operational need rather than someone to be sold a vision. Lines like "Reap all the benefits by using your CRM the right way" , "Build more great relationships by getting organized" , "Know when your emails are opened" , and "Embark on a treasure hunt for more sales revenue" all frame the CRM and its surrounding practices as tools for very specific, checkable outcomes rather than abstract productivity gains.

A clear evolution across the more recent posts is the push toward embedding Salesflare into the AI assistant ecosystem rather than treating AI as a bolt-on feature. He announces that "Salesflare is now officially live on Claude" and that the company is "now officially listed in the ChatGPT Apps" , alongside a broader product update framed as "More automation and AI just went live ✨ Fill Your Pipeline Faster, Import Smarter" . Taken together with the earlier automation-focused guide on doing sales automation "right" , this signals a shift in his stated priorities from CRM-as-database to CRM-as-connective-tissue between a salesperson's existing tools and now AI agents and assistants, continuing the same founding complaint about manual data entry but extending it into the current AI moment.

He is also willing to position Salesflare directly against competitors when useful, as in the comparison piece on smarter alternatives to Pipedrive , which fits his stated view that differentiation should be argued on functional grounds like automation and setup ease rather than through advertising spend, consistent with his broader growth philosophy ¹⁸.

The concrete takeaways from his output are practical rather than aspirational. For anyone evaluating a CRM, his guidance is to use a defined process, criteria, and checklist rather than intuition . For anyone already running one, the point is that a CRM only pays off if it is set up and used deliberately, with the how-to guide framed explicitly around closing more deals through correct setup . For sales leaders assessing pipeline health, he directs attention to forecasting speed and accuracy with a reusable template and to sales analysis as a structured hunt for hidden revenue rather than a vague audit . And for those wary of overengineering their stack, his repeated message is that automation should target the "robotic tasks" specifically, not replace the salesperson's judgment .