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Best Practices for International Growth · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:15
  All right.
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  Welcome everybody to another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
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  Thank you so much for joining us.
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  Really excited to have you all here.
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  really excited to have you here.
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  and future at salespipelineradio.com.
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  So very excited to have you all here today.
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  Really excited to dig into our conversation.
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  Andy Champion, SVP of International for 6sense.
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  Andy, thanks for joining us.
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  Matt, absolute pleasure to be here.
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  We were joking before we got started that your title is SVP of International,
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  which basically means there's an entire company that does American go
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  to market apparently, and you alone have, I don't know what, we're up
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  to like 290 countries on your own.
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  So just real quick for those that don't know you, give me a little background of
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  who you are, your background, your role.
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  Yeah, so Matt, as you say, my role is everything outside of North
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  America, which sounds very grand.
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  Fortunately, I've got a phenomenal team around me that does a lot of the heavy
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  lifting, but really my remit is to help us grow our international revenues at 6sense.
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  My background-- I've been in around sales technology, marketing technology
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  for, as you can probably guess from my lack of hair well over 20 years.
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  So I don't have all the answers, but I have a lot of scars.
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  And much of that time has been helping US based technology vendors
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  figure out how the hell do we go into EMEA, Europe, Middle East, Africa?
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  How the hell do we go beyond that into maybe some of the other regions
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  of the world, like Australia, Asia Pacific, and the likes.
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  " So we were joking earlier that a lot of companies, when they think
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  about their go to market strategy, they say, well, I've got a U.
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  S.
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  strategy and then a quote unquote "rest of world", which ironically sounds
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  very colonial in nature in terms of how you think about a hierarchy and just
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  sounds like just way too generalized.
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  As someone who is based in London, thinking about EMEA, but also
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  thinking about other markets, how should we be thinking about it?
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  What's a better way to potentially think about markets outside of the U.
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  S.
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  from an operational and a pragmatic standpoint?
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  The first thing is to acknowledge that even if we just talk about EMEA,
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  EMEA, Europe, Middle East, Africa.
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  Three distinct subsections of EMEA.
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  Many organizations might break down what I would call Western
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  Europe into Northern Europe.
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  Kind of think UK, maybe a bit of Benelux, maybe a little bit of the
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  Nordic, Sweden, Norway, and the likes.
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  Southern Europe, probably out of France, encompassing Spain, Portugal, and Italy.
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  And then Central Europe you know, commonly you'll hear about DAC,
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  which is Germany and Austria and Switzerland looking sort of East.
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  But the reality is, and I think this is really important for organizations
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  as they think about their EMEA strategy is to understand that within
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  EMEA there are distinct sub regions and there are distinct cultural
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  differences that show up in the buying cycle within discrete countries.
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  For example, in Germany, generally the burden of proof, the level of due
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  diligence, as I say, in general is higher than perhaps it might be in the US.
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  In Sweden and the Nordics, typically it's more of a consensus
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  driven purchasing decision.
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  And that shows up in all of the data that we see.
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  And I know you spent time with Kerry Cunningham in the past.
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  We've just released a European B2B Buyer Experience, and there's a
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  lot of data points in there that really evidence what I've just said.
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  Each country is different, and it is behoven upon us to understand
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  how those differences impact how we need to engage with our buyers.
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  Yeah, I think it's really, really important what you just said that, you
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  broke it up as Europe, Middle East, Africa, but even that's not fair, right?
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  You've got different countries, different cultures, different ways of buying.
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  And I would say if you're not ready and willing to invest in operationalizing
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  those differences, then you're probably not ready to sell into those markets.
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  Cause you cannot bring the fully Western US approach and think that's just going to
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  work everywhere that you wish it can work.
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  And it gets more complicated than that too because now you've got different
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  markets-- let's just take Europe, for example, you've got EU that has some
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  generalized policies, but privacy policies, data management policies are
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  different in different countries as well.
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  We can't get into everything, but talk a little bit about what you know and see in
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  terms of those broader differences and how sellers and especially companies that are
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  using data to market into those companies, how they need to think about it.
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  When somebody is looking to partner with a technology vendor
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  that is going to support them.
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  Look, any technology vendor worth their salt is going to understand and
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  comply with all of the local laws.
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  6sense, as you know, is driven by data.
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  It's the fuel of everything we do with our customers.
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  And so part of our duty is to make sure that we are compliant in all of
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  the countries in which we operate and we support the needs of our customers.
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  So I would say, when you're looking at vendors make sure you
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  do your due diligence then but also understand that in markets such
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  as Germany, there is a higher bar.
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  In markets such as Germany, there are actually seven
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  distinct regions within Germany.
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  Each of which has their own subtle interpretation of
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  the laws and they do differ.
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  But understanding what those requirements are in advance, building that into
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  your go to market strategy are just as important as the cultural differences
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  that I've talked about, and good partners and good vendors are going to be able
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  to help you navigate that journey.
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  Does that constrain, a marketer's ability to leverage some of the data and
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  intent signals that exist in the market?
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  Here in the US we're used to, and definitely I think in many cases take
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  advantage of more lax laws around privacy and what is and what isn't accepted.
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  I would argue that a lot of European markets are far more advanced in
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  terms of consumer and data protection.
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  How does that impact go to market strategies for companies that you work
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  with that have pretty robust EMEA and especially European go to market strategy?
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  It definitely has an influence.
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  And that shows up differently in the different markets, but more
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  broadly, there is a higher bar.
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  So, simplistically in many cases, we are a permission driven organization, market.
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  So once you seek to gather that permission there are places where
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  a legitimate business interest does allow you to communicate.
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  But more broadly, I think it's common courtesy, right?
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  Build up trust with your audience, with your market.
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  Help them in the buying decisions that they are seeking to make.
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  And then broadly, when you ask for that trust to be reciprocated through some
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  sort of permissioning of communication, so long as within that communication
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  you stay relevant, then you're unlikely to fall foul of people that opt out.
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  But certainly when people opt out, of course, you need to respect that.
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  So as I say, it's very important to understand the different
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  rules and regulations by country.
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  Plan for that within your marketing strategy and use partners that are
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  able to help you navigate through the various differences that we
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  see across the European landscape.
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  Talking today on Sales Pipeline Radio with Andy Champion.
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  He's the SVP of International for 6sense..
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  You referenced some data, some research from the fall that Kerry Cunningham
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  did that we've quoted quite a bit here around buyer behavior-- when buyers
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  want to be engaged, but also the high percent of sellers that get selected
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  when they're the first to engage.
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  And it seems like it's kind of a contradictory statement to say,
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  well, they don't want to hear from you until like almost three quarters
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  of the way through the process.
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  But they'll most likely buy from the first person they talk to.
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  And so to a US marketer, I'd say stop trying to sell them, stop trying to put
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  them into a demo, but get some value added content in front of them, do some
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  education, do some brand building, do some credibility building early on.
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  It's more difficult to do that in a market when you can't do unsolicited marketing.
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  And yet the data is actually even more compelling in EMEA markets based
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  on Kerry's research that like those buyers really do have preference
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  for the first person they talk to.
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  What kind of advice do you give for folks marketing into these tighter, more data
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  privacy restricted markets to build that credibility and attention upfront to have
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  that advantage come active buying time?
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  One of the great advantages we have is that we can still use intent data
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  to understand and segment people, understand where people may be or broadly
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  companies may be in their buying cycle.
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  As you quite rightly said, Matt, in the earlier stages, the goal I
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  think of our engagement nowadays really must be educational.
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  We're about earning trust.
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  We're about building awareness.
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  We're not about forcing people into that demo, right?
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  That's not the way that people are going to buy.
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  Ninety percent of the time, when an organization buys, people
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  within that buying cycle have had prior experience of that business.
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  Now, we see typically somewhere between 3 maybe up to 5 percent of your total
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  addressable market is likely to be in a buying cycle at any one given point.
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  It's a small number of companies.
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  It's a small proportion.
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  But that proportion, you really need to make sure that you're in front of,
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  because 76 percent of the time in Europe, 76 percent of the time, the vendor that
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  speaks to the buying group first, wins.
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  And this is where, as organizations look to come into international
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  markets, right, into Europe, Middle East, Africa, into APAC.
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  It's really important to get ahead of the strategy, to look at how you
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  can leverage technology to understand where you put your resources, right?
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  We're no longer in a world of grow at any cost.
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  We are in a world of responsible growth.
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  We are in a world where we really must, we owe it to our shareholders
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  and stakeholders, and we owe it, frankly, to our colleagues, right?
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  to set them up for success.
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  And in my world, that's about having my BDR team spend as much of their time
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  as possible in front of organizations that want to speak with us and that
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  have a really good idea about what we do so we can have a robust and
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  educative conversation about how we can impact and align to their goals.
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  And the data and the technology, it's all there to help you navigate that in Europe
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  and get in front of people that want to have a conversation and stop spending
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  your time looking through this haystack of thousands of emails and phone numbers and
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  building cadences with people that, quite frankly, really don't want to hear from
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  you because you haven't got a solution to the problems that they have right now.
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  So there's permission, there's anticipation, there's data
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  protection and privacy.
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  Let's talk about AI a little bit relative to that as well.
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  In the US we're still very much kind of a Wild West from an AI standpoint,
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  lots of things happening, very little regulation at this point, seeing a
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  lot of companies start to materially use AI to drive business results.
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  We had your colleague in the marketing team Simon Rashid join CMO Coffee
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  Talk last month and talk through a very high percent of net new pipeline
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  that is coming from AI agents.
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  Is that same possibility exist in EMEA markets?
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  My understanding is that the EU is a little more further along in
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  providing some regulations around AI.
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  But talk a little bit of how people should be thinking about how to
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  leverage AI tools and AI agents in some of those European markets as well.
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  So what I would say is we are seeing a rapid adoption of AI across all the
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  different aspects of marketing and sales.
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  We are most definitely seeing organizations starting to
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  embrace it to drive demand.
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  I am firmly of the view that it remains a better together story.
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  It's again, it's about taking out the laborious tasks, right?
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  I spoke to an organization the other day, 10 percent of the average salesperson's
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  time was spent researching accounts.
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  Well, we're of the view at 6sense that that's no longer necessary.
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  We can automate a lot of that so that sellers spend a lot less time
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  manually doing research and spend a lot more time thinking about what
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  is the point of view that I need to lead with during this conversation?
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  And so we're seeing a lot of organizations leverage AI to help with that.
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  As Simon talked about, we ourselves in Q2 saw 25 percent of our new
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  business pipeline created through our agents inbound and outbound.
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  It's very compelling.
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  It's very attractive.
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  It's very cost effective.
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  Agents don't get sick.
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  They don't take holiday.
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  They're willing to work with people that need more attention,
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  without any level of fatigue.
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  And they do that with all of the rich data around intent, technographic,
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  buying stage, everything available.
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  But still it's a better together story.
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  So I think my message for organizations in Europe and looking at Europe is--
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  I would most definitely leverage AI.
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  Broadly the same principles apply in terms of communication and opt in.
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  And if you stay good with the general rules around that, you're probably
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  going to be pretty good with AI.
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  Love that.
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  We've been referencing some data, some research, some insights.
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  For anyone that wants to dig deeper into that, where can they
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  go to get access to some of that?
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  Well, I would say from a 6sense perspective, one of the best
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  sources we have is Kerry Cunningham.
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  As you know, he has a lot of credibility from Sirius and the likes.
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  He most recently has just released The European B2B Buyer Experience.
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  I think that's a great one that breaks down the individual nuances of Europe.
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  We did a global one as well, which was released in October.
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  And later this calendar quarter, we'll be releasing insights into the world of BDRs.
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  Last year we saw that 40 percent of BDRs was supported by AI tools.
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  It'll be interesting to see, per your last question, how that
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  has increased year over year.
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  I suspect pretty substantially.
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  I think it will, and I think also what I've seen so far seems to
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  validate the idea I've heard from some people that says AI is not going
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  to replace people, it's going to augment the impact people can have.
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  You know, I think a year and a half ago someone told me that
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  BDRs would be extinct by now.
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  They're not.
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  I've seen some companies pull back on BDRs and seen that that is an error
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  and they aren't necessarily like doubling and tripling the size of their
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  BDR team, but they're keeping them intact and making them more efficient.
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  How?
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  By having AI agents do the upfront work to get the appointment to
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  do the initial qualification.
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  I mean, I've spent 16 years of my career here at Heinz Marketing trying
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  to figure out how do you make sales reps more effective and more efficient?
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  Well, part of the job of doing that is to take some of that manual work, take some
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  repeatable, scalable work out of their hands, have robots do it so
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  you can increase active selling time from your reps with other humans.
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  And that's where we are already seeing evidence.
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  And I expect that we're going to see that grow moving forward.
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  Andy, thank you so much for joining us today.
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  Andy Champion, SVP of International for 6sense.
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  I know it's a little late your time, but thanks for staying up for us.
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  My pleasure.
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  Thanks for having me, Matt.
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  Absolutely.
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  Well, thanks everyone for watching and listening to another
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  episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
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  We've got an amazing lineup of speakers and topics for you coming
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  up the rest of this quarter.
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  Again, thanks for being here.
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  Thanks for joining Sales Pipeline Radio.
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  We will see you next week.
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  Until then, take care and have a great rest of your day.