Willenbrock Baltic Growth Story with Fontakt

The challenge

The Estonian industrial equipment market had experienced a downturn compared to peak years such as 2021, while competition intensified significantly—particularly with the increasing presence of lower-cost manufacturers and imported equipment.

At the same time, Willenbrock faced a core strategic challenge: lack of structured visibility into the broader market. There was limited understanding of how many potential customers actually operate forklifts or warehouse systems across different regions of Estonia, what equipment they use and when they might be ready to invest or replace existing machinery.

Additionally, despite having strong product-market fit with its Baoli range, had only achieved limited sales traction (approximately six units in the preceding period), largely due to a lack of brand awareness and a missing outbound customer acquisition system. Internally, sales resources were highly valuable and technical, but too often spent on early-stage filtering and prospecting instead of focusing on closing deals and consulting with qualified customers.

The key need was clear: build a systematic way to map the market, identify real buying potential, and feed high-quality opportunities into the sales pipeline in a consistent and scalable way.

2. Step: The Approach

Fontakt worked closely with Willenbrock’s leadership and sales teams to define a clear Ideal Customer Profile based on companies actively dependent on internal logistics and material handling operations. This included manufacturing plants, logistics providers, warehouse operators, retail distribution centers, and industrial production facilities.

From there, the outbound strategy focused on direct, high-volume but highly targeted phone outreach across Estonia.

The objective was not just to “collect leads,” but to understand real buying intent from the decision-makers, operational pain points and timing.

Each conversation was assessed in real time and categorized simply based on commercial readiness—ranging from no immediate fit, to future potential, to active interest where sales engagement was required.

This allowed the internal sales team at Willenbrock to focus almost exclusively on meaningful opportunities rather than spending time on initial qualification or low-intent contacts.

What we also learned?

Beyond lead generation and outbound execution, the collaboration also provided valuable real-world market insights into how industrial equipment is actually bought and sold in Estonia. This gave Willenbrock Baltic OÜ a clearer picture of customer behavior, decision-making logic and market structure.

Key insights included:

• Which types of companies are actively investing in forklifts and warehouse equipment today
• How purchasing decisions are structured in logistics, warehousing, and industrial sectors
• The most common objections and barriers to entry (e.g. pricing, existing supplier relationships, downtime concerns)
• How maintenance, service contracts, and uptime expectations influence supplier choice
• Which industries show the fastest buying cycles and highest intent
• Differences in decision-making between smaller operational teams vs. larger corporate structures
• Sensitivity to total cost of ownership vs. upfront pricing
• How strongly existing supplier relationships influence switching behavior
• Seasonal and operational timing patterns for equipment investments
• What triggers a “replacement vs. repair” decision in real operations

This insight allowed Willenbrock not only to engage the right companies more effectively, but also to refine their messaging, prioritization and outbound targeting strategy.

As a result, the sales approach became more precise — focusing less on volume and more on high-intent operational needs where timing and fit are already aligned.en.