Meet Naava
Founded in 2011 in Jyväskylä, Finland, Naava has evolved from a specialized indoor air purification company into a comprehensive provider of nature-based workplace solutions. Their innovation, originally based on NASA research, uses living green walls with microbial purification to clean indoor air.
By 2025, Naava’s mission has expanded beyond air purification. They now bring holistic greenery and wellbeing solutions to corporate offices and public spaces across Finland and Sweden, making nature and fresh air accessible indoors.
“We bring nature inside and provide fresh natural air to workspaces,” explains Siru Heiskanen, Head of Marketing at Naava.
Here’s how their products look like:
The Business Model: Nature as a Service
Naava operates with two distinct models:
Direct Sales (Finland & Sweden): Using their “Nature as a Service” model, Naava provides products, maintenance, delivery, and installation through simple monthly subscriptions. They maintain their own sales teams, marketing operations, and service networks in these markets.
Dealer Network (Global): Naava works with resellers across Europe and has a sister company in South Korea. These partners handle their own sales and maintenance operations, while Naava supplies the green wall products.
Who Buys Green Walls?
Naava’s buying process is uniquely complex and deals take a long-time to get over the finish line. Decision-makers vary dramatically depending on the organization:
- Small companies: CEO makes the call
- Larger organizations: HR managers, office managers, property managers
- Public spaces: Schools and municipal facilities with diverse stakeholders
Then there are the influencers who don’t buy directly but heavily impact decisions:
Architects and designers specify Naava products in their plans. Companies then decide whether to purchase the recommended solutions or put them out for tender.
“The decision-maker varies tremendously. It could be the CEO in a small company, or it might be an HR manager, office manager, or property manager. The titles are all over the place,” says Siru.
The Challenge: Finding Customers at the Right Moment
“We typically have very long sales cycles. We need to find the right timing, which is usually when a customer has a specific space project or move happening,” Siru explains.
Naava also does a lot of traditional outbound sales such as calls, emails, and relationship building but the biggest challenge was to capture customers who were actively searching for solutions at that moment. HeadQ solves this problem for Naava.
“It’s important that our website visibility is such that someone who is looking for a specific solution at that exact moment can easily find our pricing and products. They can get the solution from our website when it’s the right time for them. We don’t have to dig for the right timing or chase that person. They come to us when it’s the right moment.”
The “Before HeadQ” Attempts
Naava had tried various approaches to enable self-service buying:
Traditional “Contact Us” CTA: Required customers to already have a deep understanding and be far along in their consideration process. Too high a barrier for early exploration.
E-commerce and Form-Based Solutions: They tested letting customers select products from images and submit quote requests. The problem? It was clunky. Getting pricing visible and creating a functional shopping cart experience didn’t work natively through their HubSpot website.
Even worse: they couldn’t track data effectively or generate quality leads.
“We felt it was quite awkward because it would have required certain add-ons to our website to get prices easily visible or a shopping cart type solution. It didn’t work natively through HubSpot in a functional way. And we couldn’t track the data well or get sensible leads from it.”
The Final Problem: Constant Product Changes
Naava continuously launches new products with variations in models, colors, sizes, and accessories. They needed a solution where they could make updates quickly without developer support.
“New products come continuously. We have changes to products and pricing changes. Being able to make these changes across the entire site quickly is essential and that’s one of the reasons why we chose HeadQ.”
The HeadQ Solution: Self-Service at the Right Moment
Implementation was straightforward, with one predictable challenge: Naava has an enormous range of product models, colors, sizes, and accessories. Getting all the variations configured took some work, especially since they had product images for most items.
“It was very easy to implement. The only thing was that we have so many different product models, colors, and sizes. Fortunately, we had images for most of them. But when you add all the accessories and everything else, there are suddenly quite many different variations that could be produced. Getting them all set up required a small process, but the implementation was very easy, and getting it on the site was very straightforward.”
Real Business Results: Fast Sales in a Slow-Cycle Industry
Naava has only had HeadQ live for a few months. The results came faster than they expected.
Sales closed already: Multiple deals have closed directly from the configurator. For context, Naava’s average sales cycle runs from six months upward. Closing deals within a few months of launch signals something significant.
“We’ve already closed actual sales from there. Very quickly, actual sales have come through. Our average sales cycle length may be six months or longer. The fact that we’ve already gotten dozens of deals in just a few months is a very promising sign for us.”
Fast-track sales channel: The configurator functions as a rapid sales channel where sales reps don’t need to invest heavy effort upfront. The website does most of the selling for them.
High-quality leads: Beyond closed deals, Naava is generating clearly potential leads for continued nurturing.
“We’ve gotten really good leads from there: ones that haven’t materialized yet but are clearly potential, which we can continue warming up so when their timing becomes more relevant, we can get sales later too.”
The Price Visibility Question (And Why It’s Not a Problem)
Sales teams initially worried that showing prices would scare away customers. Siru’s, Head of Marketing at Naava, response cuts through this concern:
“My counter-argument is that it’s not a bad thing at all. If someone feels it’s too expensive, they wouldn’t be able to pay us for that product anyway. In a way, we can simultaneously filter out who is a real, actual potential customer versus who is not.”
Think about the alternative: a salesperson invests time and energy, then reveals pricing, only to lose the prospect anyway.
“If there had been a salesperson spending their time on it, then when the prices came up, they would have lost that person anyway. Time and energy would have been spent on it, which is naturally frustrating for salespeople. In my opinion, it’s only a good thing that they’re visible there.”
The leads that progress past pricing aren’t tire-kickers. They’re qualified prospects who understand the investment and are genuinely interested.
Now, after a few months, the sales team members are also giving great feedback: “people who’ve self-qualified by exploring pricing and configurations mean more productive sales conversations with less education of our product required.”
The One Speed Bump: Fake Email Filtering with Poop Pants Ltd
Initially, Naava received many calculator sessions from people entering fake email addresses or nonsense. While occasionally entertaining (“there were all kinds of companies like ‘Poop Pants Ltd’ and other stuff – it was quite day-brightening”), it created noise in their lead flow.
HeadQ’s team implemented email filtering functionality to solve this immediately. With HeadQ email filtering customers can filter out submissions with fake emails or submissions from domains they do not wish. This dramatically improves the data quality as only qualified data gets in.
The Bottom Line
For Naava, HeadQ solved a critical timing problem: how to capture customers when they’re actively searching for solutions like Naava, without requiring heavy sales involvement upfront.
The configurator doesn’t replace Naava’s relationship-driven sales approach. It complements it by:
- Qualifying leads through self-service pricing exploration
- Reducing wasted sales effort on unqualified prospects
- Accelerating sales cycles from +6 months to weeks/months for ready buyers
- Capturing demand at the precise moment customers are ready
In an industry where sales cycles typically span six months to years, closing deals within months of launching the configurator proves that self-service configuration works, even for complex, consultative B2B sales.
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