Sales Pipeline Radio, Episode 371 Q & A with Andrew Champion

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Summary

In this insightful episode of Sales Pipeline Radio, Matt Heinz and Andrew Champion talk about Best Practices for International Growth

By Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing

If you’re not already subscribed to Sales Pipeline Radio or listening live Thursdays at 11:30 am PT on LinkedIn (also on demand) you can find the transcription and recording here on the blog every Monday morning.  The show is less than 30 minutes, fast-paced and full of actionable advice, best practices and more for B2B sales and marketing professionals.

We cover a wide range of topics, with a focus on sales development and inside sales priorities.

This week’s show is entitled, “Best Practices for International Growth and my guest is Andrew Champion, SVP International at 6sense.

Tune in to Learn:

  • The distinct cultural and regulatory differences in various international markets.
  • How companies need to tailor their approaches to succeed.
  • The impact of data privacy laws on marketing strategies and the growing role of AI in improving sales effectiveness.
  • The importance of understanding and respecting local market nuances for successful international sales expansion.

Listen Now | Watch the video HERE | Read the Transcript BELOW:

[00:00:15] Matt: All right. Welcome everybody to another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio. Thank you so much for joining us. Really excited to have you all here. If this is your very first time on Sales Pipeline Radio, just really, really excited to have you here.

Thank you very much for making us part of your work day and work week.

Thank you so much for downloading, for subscribing, for listening and watching the show. You can always catch every episode of Sales Pipeline Radio, past, present, and future at salespipelineradio.com. So very excited to have you all here today. Really excited to dig into our conversation.

[00:00:47] Andrew: Andy Champion, SVP of International for 6sense. Andy, thanks for joining us. Matt, absolute pleasure to be here.

[00:00:52] Matt: We were joking before we got started that your title is SVP of International, which basically means there’s an entire company that does American go to market apparently, and you alone have, I don’t know what, we’re up to like 290 countries on your own.

[00:01:07] Andrew: So just real quick for those that don’t know you, give me a little background of who you are, your background, your role. Yeah, so Matt, as you say, my role is everything outside of North America, which sounds very grand. Fortunately, I’ve got a phenomenal team around me that does a lot of the heavy lifting, but really my remit is to help us grow our international revenues at 6sense.

My background– I’ve been in around sales technology, marketing technology for, as you can probably guess from my lack of hair well over 20 years. So I don’t have all the answers, but I have a lot of scars. And much of that time has been helping US based technology vendors figure out how the hell do we go into EMEA, Europe, Middle East, Africa?

How the hell do we go beyond that into maybe some of the other regions of the world, like Australia, Asia Pacific, and the likes. ”

[00:01:58] Matt: So we were joking earlier that a lot of companies, when they think about their go to market strategy, they say, well, I’ve got a U. S. strategy and then a quote unquote “rest of world”, which ironically sounds very colonial in nature in terms of how you think about a hierarchy and just sounds like just way too generalized.

As someone who is based in London, thinking about EMEA, but also thinking about other markets, how should we be thinking about it? What’s a better way to potentially think about markets outside of the U. S. from an operational and a pragmatic standpoint?

[00:02:28] Andrew: The first thing is to acknowledge that even if we just talk about EMEA, EMEA, Europe, Middle East, Africa. Three distinct subsections of EMEA. Many organizations might break down what I would call Western Europe into Northern Europe. Kind of think UK, maybe a bit of Benelux, maybe a little bit of the Nordic, Sweden, Norway, and the likes.

Southern Europe, probably out of France, encompassing Spain, Portugal, and Italy. And then Central Europe you know, commonly you’ll hear about DAC, which is Germany and Austria and Switzerland looking sort of East. But the reality is, and I think this is really important for organizations as they think about their EMEA strategy is to understand that within EMEA there are distinct sub regions and there are distinct cultural differences that show up in the buying cycle within discrete countries.

For example, in Germany, generally the burden of proof, the level of due diligence, as I say, in general is higher than perhaps it might be in the US. In Sweden and the Nordics, typically it’s more of a consensus driven purchasing decision. And that shows up in all of the data that we see. And I know you spent time with Kerry Cunningham in the past.

[00:04:01] Matt: We’ve just released a European B2B Buyer Experience, and there’s a lot of data points in there that really evidence what I’ve just said. Each country is different, and it is behoven upon us to understand how those differences impact how we need to engage with our buyers. Yeah, I think it’s really, really important what you just said that, you broke it up as Europe, Middle East, Africa, but even that’s not fair, right?

You’ve got different countries, different cultures, different ways of buying. And I would say if you’re not ready and willing to invest in operationalizing those differences, then you’re probably not ready to sell into those markets. Cause you cannot bring the fully Western US approach and think that’s just going to work everywhere that you wish it can work.

And it gets more complicated than that too because now you’ve got different markets–let’s just take Europe, for example, you’ve got EU that has some generalized policies, but privacy policies, data management policies are different in different countries as well.

We can’t get into everything, but talk a little bit about what you know and see in terms of those broader differences and how sellers and especially companies that are using data to market into those companies, how they need to think about it.

[00:05:18] Andrew: When somebody is looking to partner with a technology vendor that is going to support them. Look, any technology vendor worth their salt is going to understand and comply with all of the local laws. 6sense, as you know, is driven by data. It’s the fuel of everything we do with our customers.

And so part of our duty is to make sure that we are compliant in all of the countries in which we operate and we support the needs of our customers. So I would say, when you’re looking at vendors make sure you do your due diligence then but also understand that in markets such as Germany, there is a higher bar.

[00:05:56] Matt: In markets such as Germany, there are actually seven distinct [00:06:00] regions within Germany. Each of which has their own subtle interpretation of the laws and they do differ. But understanding what those requirements are in advance, building that into your go to market strategy are just as important as the cultural differences that I’ve talked about, and good partners and good vendors are going to be able to help you navigate that journey. Does that constrain, a marketer’s ability to leverage some of the data and intent signals that exist in the market? Here in the US we’re used to, and definitely I think in many cases take advantage of more lax laws around privacy and what is and what isn’t accepted. I would argue that a lot of European markets are far more advanced in terms of consumer and data protection.

How does that impact go to market strategies for companies that you work with that have pretty robust EMEA and especially European go to market strategy?

[00:06:58] Andrew: It definitely has an influence. And that shows up differently in the different markets, but more broadly, there is a higher bar.

So, simplistically in many cases, we are a permission driven organization, market. So once you seek to gather that permission there are places where a legitimate business interest does allow you to communicate. But more broadly, I think it’s common courtesy, right? Build up trust with your audience, with your market.

Help them in the buying decisions that they are seeking to make. And then broadly, when you ask for that trust to be reciprocated through some sort of permissioning of communication, so long as within that communication you stay relevant, then you’re unlikely to fall foul of people that opt out.

[00:07:52] Matt: But certainly when people opt out, of course, you need to respect that. So as I say, it’s very important to understand the different rules and regulations by country. Plan for that within your marketing strategy and use partners that are able to help you navigate through the various differences that we see across the European landscape. Talking today on Sales Pipeline Radio with Andy Champion. He’s the SVP of International for 6sense.. You referenced some data, some research from the fall that Kerry Cunningham did that we’ve quoted quite a bit here around buyer behavior– when buyers want to be engaged, but also the high percent of sellers that get selected when they’re the first to engage.

And it seems like it’s kind of a contradictory statement to say, well, they don’t want to hear from you until like almost three quarters of the way through the process. But they’ll most likely buy from the first person they talk to. And so to a US marketer, I’d say stop trying to sell them, stop trying to put them into a demo, but get some value added content in front of them, do some education, do some brand building, do some credibility building early on.

It’s more difficult to do that in a market when you can’t do unsolicited marketing. And yet the data is actually even more compelling in EMEA markets based on Kerry’s research that like those buyers really do have preference for the first person they talk to. What kind of advice do you give for folks marketing into these tighter, more data privacy restricted markets to build that credibility and attention upfront to have that advantage come active buying time?

[00:09:30] Andrew: One of the great advantages we have is that we can still use intent data to understand and segment people, understand where people may be or broadly companies may be in their buying cycle. As you quite rightly said, Matt, in the earlier stages, the goal I think of our engagement nowadays really must be educational.

We’re about earning trust. We’re about building awareness. We’re not about forcing people into that demo, right? That’s not the way that people are going to buy. Ninety percent of the time, when an organization buys, people within that buying cycle have had prior experience of that business. Now, we see typically somewhere between 3 maybe up to 5 percent of your total addressable market is likely to be in a buying cycle at any one given point. It’s a small number of companies. It’s a small proportion. But that proportion, you really need to make sure that you’re in front of, because 76 percent of the time in Europe, 76 percent of the time, the vendor that speaks to the buying group first, wins.

And this is where, as organizations look to come into international markets, right, into Europe, Middle East, Africa, into APAC. It’s really important to get ahead of the strategy, to look at how you can leverage technology to understand where you put your resources, right? We’re no longer in a world of grow at any cost.

We are in a world of responsible growth. We are in a world where we really must, we owe it to our shareholders and stakeholders, and we owe it, frankly, to our colleagues, right? to set them up for success. And in my world, that’s about having my BDR team spend as much of their time as possible in front of organizations that want to speak with us and that have a really good idea about what we do so we can have a robust and educative conversation about how we can impact and align to their goals.

And the data and the technology, it’s all there to help you navigate that in Europe and get in front of people that want to have a conversation and stop spending your time looking through this haystack of thousands of emails and phone numbers and building cadences with people that, quite frankly, really don’t want to hear from you because you haven’t got a solution to the problems that they have right now.

[00:12:12] Matt: So there’s permission, there’s anticipation, there’s data protection and privacy. Let’s talk about AI a little bit relative to that as well. In the US we’re still very much kind of a Wild West from an AI standpoint, lots of things happening, very little regulation at this point, seeing a lot of companies start to materially use AI to drive business results.

[00:12:31] Andrew: We had your colleague in the marketing team Simon Rashid join CMO Coffee Talk last month and talk through a very high percent of net new pipeline that is coming from AI agents. Is that same possibility exist in EMEA markets?

My understanding is that the EU is a little more further along in providing some regulations around AI. But talk a little bit of how people should be thinking about how to leverage AI tools and AI agents in some of those European markets as well. So what I would say is we are seeing a rapid adoption of AI across all the different aspects of marketing and sales.

We are most definitely seeing organizations starting to embrace it to drive demand. I am firmly of the view that it remains a better together story. It’s again, it’s about taking out the laborious tasks, right? I spoke to an organization the other day, 10 percent of the average salesperson’s time was spent researching accounts. Well, we’re of the view at 6sense that that’s no longer necessary.

We can automate a lot of that so that sellers spend a lot less time manually doing research and spend a lot more time thinking about what is the point of view that I need to lead with during this conversation? And so we’re seeing a lot of organizations leverage AI to help with that. As Simon talked about, we ourselves in Q2 saw 25 percent of our new business pipeline created through our agents inbound and outbound.

It’s very compelling. It’s very attractive. It’s very cost effective. Agents don’t get sick. They don’t take holiday. They’re willing to work with people that need more attention, without any level of fatigue. And they do that with all of the rich data around intent, technographic, buying stage, everything available.

[00:14:26] Matt: But still it’s a better together story. So I think my message for organizations in Europe and looking at Europe is– I would most definitely leverage AI. Broadly the same principles apply in terms of communication and opt in. And if you stay good with the general rules around that, you’re probably going to be pretty good with AI.

Love that. We’ve been referencing some data, some research, some insights. For anyone that wants to dig deeper into that, where can they go to get access to some of that?

[00:14:58] Andrew: Well, I would say from a 6sense perspective, one of the best sources we have is Kerry Cunningham.

As you know, he has a lot of credibility from Sirius and the likes. He most recently has just released The European B2B Buyer Experience. I think that’s a great one that breaks down the individual nuances of Europe. We did a global one as well, which was released in October. And later this calendar quarter, we’ll be releasing insights into the world of BDRs.

Last year we saw that 40 percent of BDRs was supported by AI tools. It’ll be interesting to see, per your last question, how that has increased year over year. I suspect pretty substantially.

[00:15:41] Matt: I think it will, and I think also what I’ve seen so far seems to validate the idea I’ve heard from some people that says AI is not going to replace people, it’s going to augment the impact people can have.

You know, I think a year and a half ago someone told me that BDRs would be extinct by now. They’re not. I’ve seen some companies pull back on BDRs and seen that that is an error and they aren’t necessarily like doubling and tripling the size of their BDR team, but they’re keeping them intact and making them more efficient.

How? By having AI agents do the upfront work to get the appointment to do the initial qualification. I mean, I’ve spent 16 years of my career here at Heinz Marketing trying to figure out how do you make sales reps more effective and more efficient? Well, part of the job of doing that is to take some of that manual work, take some

repeatable, scalable work out of their hands, have robots do it so you can increase active selling time from your reps with other humans. And that’s where we are already seeing evidence. And I expect that we’re going to see that grow moving forward. Andy, thank you so much for joining us today. Andy Champion, SVP of International for 6sense.

I know it’s a little late your time, but thanks for staying up for us.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Matt. Absolutely. Well, thanks everyone for watching and listening to another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio. We’ve got an amazing lineup of speakers and topics for you coming up the rest of this quarter.

Again, thanks for being here. Thanks for joining Sales Pipeline Radio. We will see you next week. Until then, take care and have a great rest of your day.

Matt interviews the best and brightest minds in sales and Marketing.  If you would like to be a guest on Sales Pipeline Radio send an email to Sheena@heinzmarketing.com.

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