From manual prospecting to a stronger sales pipeline: How IF Gnistan accelerates partnership sales with Navigora
IF Gnistan uses Navigora to identify relevant potential partners, reach the right decision-makers, and move qualified leads into its CRM faster — helping its sales team spend more time selling and less time searching for information.
The challenge: Scaling partnership sales without scaling manual work
IF Gnistan is a fast-growing football club based in Oulunkylä, Helsinki. Its men’s first team is playing its third season in Finland’s top-tier Veikkausliiga, while in 2026 the women’s first team is competing in the Briotech Kansallinen Liiga for the first time. This marks the first season in the club’s history with both its men’s and women’s teams competing at the highest level of Finnish football.
Gnistan has approximately 1,450 registered players, with activities centred around Markku.fi Areena and the neighbouring Pikkupekka Areena in Oulunkylä. Alongside its sporting growth, the club is rapidly developing its commercial operations with the goal of becoming an even stronger partner for businesses.
For Mimi Lounio, Commercial Director at IF Gnistan Oy, one of the key commercial priorities is expanding the club’s partner network quickly while building sustainable, long-term relationships.
Before Navigora, identifying potential partners required too much manual work. The sales team had to search for companies and contact details across multiple sources and then separately assess which businesses were genuinely relevant prospects.
The solution: Targeted prospecting built into the sales process
Gnistan was looking for a sales intelligence solution that was easy to use, provided comprehensive company data, and could deliver tangible value to the sales team quickly. Navigora stood out by combining the information needed to identify and compare companies with practical tools for day-to-day prospecting.
According to Lounio, Navigora was intuitive from the start and required no lengthy or complicated implementation project. It quickly became an important part of the sales team’s daily workflow.
With Navigora, Gnistan’s sales team can:
target companies by size, industry, location, and financial performance
identify businesses that match Gnistan’s partnership criteria
find relevant company decision-makers and contact information
build targeted lists of potential partners
export qualified leads directly into the CRM
spend less time on manual research and list building
With Navigora, we can make our sales efforts significantly more targeted and identify companies that are particularly relevant to us based on factors such as size, industry, location, and financial performance.
— Mimi Lounio, Commercial Director, IF Gnistan Oy
The results: From company data to actionable sales opportunities
Gnistan is ambitious about sporting success, operational quality, and commercial growth. That growth is already visible in the numbers: IF Gnistan Oy’s revenue increased to approximately €1.5 million in 2025, representing growth of more than 40% compared with the previous year.
As the club expands its partner network, however, volume alone is not enough. The sales team needs to identify the right prospects and turn them into actionable sales opportunities efficiently. Navigora has helped make that process faster and more systematic while reducing the guesswork involved in new customer acquisition.
Instead of treating prospecting as a separate research exercise, Gnistan can move interesting companies directly from Navigora into its CRM. This allows salespeople to focus more of their working day on actual sales conversations and building relationships with potential partners.
With Navigora, a salesperson can spend more time on actual sales work and conversations with potential partners instead of spending a large part of the day searching for information and building lists.
— Mimi Lounio, Commercial Director, IF Gnistan Oy
The impact
faster, more systematic prospecting
more precisely targeted partnership sales
less manual company and contact research
qualified leads moved directly into the CRM
more salesperson time for customer conversations
easier identification of relevant decision-makers
a scalable foundation for growing the partner network
Navigora helps IF Gnistan turn time-consuming prospect research into targeted sales opportunities — giving its growing commercial team more time to build the partnerships that can fuel the club’s next stage of growth.
