When you want to expand your successful domestic business and go large internationally, you soon realize the difference between an established business’ account management-type of sales and selling to new relationships. It is usually very tempting to recruit and hire someone highly experienced because you want to go with the best and hope to accelerate through leveraging existing connections.
Unfortunately, this will result in a big zero. You get frustrated and either never hire a salesperson again or almost convince yourself that selling is not a profession (i.e., anybody could do it, even you have been doing it for years!). We believe the underlying cause is often in another area: where the culture differs, and the processes are not yet well defined, your team will not be able to support the new salesperson. This is not about the skills of the new salesperson or the skills of your people; it’s about how differently they see the world, and what they expect from each other. It’s a cultural change as you might know if you read us regularly. And we will repeat this over and over again:
Changing culture takes time. Lots of time.
Before hiring a senior sales, you should experiment on the respective market and understand the processes appropriately enough. These direct hands-on experiences will enable you to manage your sales director or salespeople. You also have to understand the differences between the different sales positions: account manager, sales, inbound manager, business developer. These are distinct roles, with distinct benefits for your organization - whether abroad or in your home country. Knowing what you need will help you hire the right person at the right time.
Localization (including translation) of the proposition is vital when going international. If your translation screams UNPROFESSIONAL, you sadly start from an inferior position in your new relationships. Potential clients know immediately you are not local and suspect you don’t have the resources to act and serve like one. Your customers or future partners might see this as a risk. That perception is even more shocking when the translators are really professional and well paid. Either in tech and most business domains, current and up to date knowledge of the languages does not reside with professional translators - and this is not an attack against language experts. If your local guide is not involved in the particular industry, nuances of the language may not be trivial. Finding someone with domain experience and native language ability will boost the quality of all your marketing materials.
Finding the right partner takes time. Large companies are looking for effort from their future partners. Commitment: time and money. Even with such high entry barriers, not all partners will become successful ones. Imagine what will happen if your future partner decides to work together with you in weeks and without building expertise or committing substantial funds to the cooperation. So no matter how tempting, never jump on the first opportunity to sign up partners that have no idea what they will be part of. We have rarely seen any sales out of this, and never a sustainable business. Never. Ever.
Sales and partner networks have their dynamics and rules. It’s not a charity where everybody is looking to become your partner and deliver you dozens of deals a day. You want to partner with companies that have a strong brand, excellent supporting cast, and documents. Not having sales experience in-house will determine your success in building a partner network. Don't begin with partners yet until business opportunities present themselves, where 1+1 can equal 3. Or until you see what kind of partners can help you and how you can serve them in reaching their goals and keep them motivated.
With your experience, expectations are that everything will work with precisely the same speed as in your already developed markets. The bad news is that it might not work at all. And even if it works, it will take a few tries to crack the market. Going to new markets is a marathon. It’s a long exhausting challenge, and only the persistent will survive.
Be prepared for failures, inconvenient surprises. Have faith and patience until you figure out what works and what doesn’t, then, you can assemble the right practices for your new market.
Well, this is for today, and we will get back to this topic, whenever we see further dead ends you might want to avoid. Good luck with your efforts, and ping us if you need help with any of these.
