S5E11 – Secrets to Going Global: How Startups Can Succeed Internationally With Gilles Bertaux

What are the Secrets to Going Global? In this insightful episode, Joran engages with Gilles Bertaux on the Grow Your B2B SaaS Podcast, the co-founder of Livestorm, a platform designed for organizing and hosting engaging webinars. Founded in 2016, Livestorm has successfully gone global, boasting over 5,000 clients worldwide. Gilles shares valuable lessons from Livestorm’s journey, offering a wealth of knowledge for startups looking to expand internationally. The conversation covers essential strategies and insights for businesses considering a global reach and the challenges that come with it.

Understanding ‘Going Global’

Gilles defines going global as reaching an international audience by localizing your product and ensuring it’s not restricted by local boundaries. He emphasizes the importance of having content accessible to a global audience, with English serving as a common language to bridge different markets. Localization is not only about translating your product but also adapting it to resonate with various cultural contexts.

When to Consider Going Global

The decision to go global should be strategic, starting with a neutral, English-speaking approach. Gilles advises startups to assess their product’s potential to transcend local regulations and cultural differences. This means ensuring that your product offers value across different regions while navigating the legal and operational complexities of international markets.

Common Pitfalls in Global Expansion

A significant mistake companies make is assuming that going global means standardizing everything. Gilles highlights the importance of recognizing cultural and regional specificities, such as language and currency preferences. By understanding these nuances, businesses can ensure that their expansion efforts are successful and well-received by international customers.

Strategies for European Startups

For European companies, English should be the default language to access broader markets like the US and UK. Gilles discusses the importance of hiring within a certain radius to foster strategic decision-making and cultural alignment. Hiring people who understand the nuances of local markets helps create a more cohesive and adaptable team that can respond to regional demands effectively.

Expanding into New Markets

Gilles shares a framework for identifying potential markets by analyzing data on usage, lifetime value, and customer acquisition costs. He underscores the importance of focusing efforts on regions with the highest growth potential, rather than spreading resources too thinly. This targeted approach ensures that businesses maximize their resources while establishing a strong foothold in key markets.

Internal Operations for Global Growth

Going global impacts internal operations, especially in hiring and salary structures. Gilles recommends setting a salary benchmark to avoid inequalities and using tools like Deal to manage international contracts. Establishing a fair and transparent system is crucial to maintaining a positive company culture and ensuring equity across diverse teams.

Challenges and Learnings

One of the toughest challenges in international expansion is choosing which battles to fight, implying the need to focus efforts on specific regions. Gilles reflects on the need to sometimes forego certain opportunities to concentrate on more promising markets. This ability to prioritize is vital for sustainable growth, ensuring that businesses aren’t overstretched.

Future Trends in Global Expansion

Gilles discusses how AI is making localization easier, although it also increases competition. He highlights that cultural understanding remains a crucial, irreplaceable element. While technology can streamline the process, a deep understanding of cultural contexts will continue to be an essential aspect of successful global expansion.

Advice for SaaS Founders

For startups reaching 10k MRR, Gilles advises selling the vision of the product to appear larger than life. For those aiming for 10 million ARR, he stresses the importance of hiring a VP of Sales to focus on revenue growth strategies. As companies scale, having the right leadership in place becomes increasingly important to manage growth and drive sales.

Actionable Takeaways:

• Start with English: Launch your product with English as the primary language to maximize reach and accessibility.
• Focus on Data-Driven Decisions: Use customer data to identify and prioritize markets with the best potential for growth.
• Localize Thoughtfully: Consider cultural nuances, language, and currency preferences when expanding into new regions.
• Build a Strategic Team: Hire strategically, focusing on roles that support your international growth objectives while maintaining cultural and operational cohesion.
• Pick Your Battles: Focus on specific markets where your product has the most potential rather than spreading resources too thinly.

Conclusion

Going global is a complex but rewarding journey that requires strategic planning and execution. Gilles Bertaux’s insights provide a roadmap for startups aiming to expand internationally, emphasizing the importance of cultural understanding, strategic focus, and data-driven decision-making. By taking a thoughtful and measured approach, businesses can navigate the challenges of global expansion and position themselves for long-term success.

Key Timestamps

• (0:00) – Introduction and Hiring Strategies
• (1:06) – Episode Overview and Guest Introduction
• (1:39) – Definition of Going Global
• (2:33) – Considerations Before Going Global
• (4:03) – Language Barriers and Localization
• (5:28) – Initial Global Strategy for Livestorm
• (6:25) – Common Pitfalls in International Expansion
• (7:55) – Cultural Specificities in Going Global
• (8:16) – Expansion Strategies for European Companies
• (9:34) – Internal Operations and Hiring for Global Growth
• (10:56) – Balancing Global and Local Focus
• (12:01) – Challenges in Enterprise Sales and Global Focus
• (12:14) – Strategies for Entering New Markets
• (14:33) – Leveraging Data to Identify Market Opportunities
• (16:03) – Hiring Strategies for Global Markets
• (17:03) – Challenges in the US Market
• (17:41) – Best Practices for International Expansion
• (19:31) – Importance of Pricing Models and Currency
• (21:16) – Building a Team for Global Growth
• (23:06) – Challenges and Inequalities in Global Hiring
• (24:33) – Picking Your Battles in Global Expansion
• (25:13) – Focus and Marketing Message
• (26:25) – Steps for Entering a New Region
• (28:42) – Importance of Cultural Understanding
• (30:50) – Future Trends in International Expansion
• (33:13) – Advice for Startups Achieving 10k MRR
• (35:20) – Advice for Startups Growing to 10 Million ARR

Transcription

[00:00:00.800] – Gilles Bertaux

The most rational thing you can do, which is probably the most unfair, is to say, oh, I can actually hire people from different countries, so I will pick out whatever salary that’s more comfortable and within the market on that specific country. If you’re building a product that is tied to a certain region or a certain country because of regulations again or whatnot, then you’re going to prevent yourself to going globally. Or maybe it’s going to be much harder. The first big mistake that people make, they think going global as something, oh, let’s make everything standard, let’s make everything self service. People will adapt. My learning is when you start the company, it’s easier to have as many people as possible as close to you. I wouldn’t say necessarily in an office, but as close to you as possible. So you can gather pretty often, try to make strategic decisions and bound and build up the culture and whatnot.

[00:01:06.350] – Joran

In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how to go Global with your B2B SaaS. My guest is Gilles Bertaux, the co founder of Livestorm. Livestorm is a platform that helps you to organize and host engaging Webinars. Founded in 2016, has received 35 million in funding over three rounds, their latest being a Series B in 2020. They have their office in Paris, but are fully remote. Gilles Bertaux is actually in Amsterdam right now and they have over 5,000 clients worldwide. A great example on how a startup can go global and succeed internationally. That’s exactly what we’re going to talk about. So welcome to the show, Gilles.

[00:01:39.600] – Gilles Bertaux

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[00:01:41.640] – Joran

We’re going to just dive right in. So we’re going to talk about how to go global. How would you actually describe going global?

[00:01:48.820] – Gilles Bertaux

I think going global means two things. The first one is you can reach out to any audience, wherever that is, because you can localize a product because you have content that is accessible to 80% of people in the world, essentially. The second piece is the product is something that is not limited to local boundaries. And what I mean by that there are subtle products that are limited by local regulations, for example, or maybe apply only to certain types of countries or regions and others don’t. A lot of software, you can sell them in Japan or you can sell them in the US or in France and it works the same. But some other software don’t apply to that role. So I guess it’s the role like.

[00:02:33.720] – Joran

Audience plus product and the audience and localization can be something you probably can do later. Product, local boundaries, probably not. So at what stage Should a startup seriously consider going global to take the two items?

[00:02:48.820] – Gilles Bertaux

The first item is what we did, for example, starts with the most mutual agnostic way of speaking. For us, it was let’s just talk to marketers in general and we’re going to talk to marketers in any country. And the most efficient way to do it is to speak English from the get go. It doesn’t seem like obvious today, but the truth is a lot of companies still to this day, they speak their own language. They might speak Dutch, might speak French, they might speak German and don’t speak French at all, don’t speak English at all. Which means they cannot actually reach out to any or they cannot appear reachable to audiences outside of their native tongue. So that’s the first thing to the second item. I think it all comes down to thinking about the product you want to build, right? If you’re building a product that is tied to a certain region or a certain country because of regulations again or whatnot, then you’re going to prevent yourself to going globally or maybe it’s going to be much harder. Maybe there is a tweaking a product you can do, maybe there is a whole different product you should do in order to go global because the product is agnostic in itself.

[00:04:03.580] – Joran

Yeah, you already mentioned I’m being Dutch, you being French. Like we have our own native language. And I think even with, correct me if I’m wrong, with the French market, it’s even a bigger problem that people speak French a lot more because the country is bigger. So we have to go global often, many times you don’t have necessarily. So when you guys started with Livestorm, how did you look at things going global when starting out and growing?

[00:04:27.740] – Gilles Bertaux

We knew that we wanted to have the capacity to sell to anyone. We wanted to sell in the us, we wanted to sell in Europe. It was a very innocent thing and kind of a candid thought of saying we don’t want to be a French product. It’s not a bad thing to be a French product, but we don’t want to be just a French product. Maybe the customer base will evolve and we’ll be known in France and have a lot of French customers. But by sense, by DNA, we want to be a international product and for to do that we wanted to speak English. So far as everything in a product was written in English, everything in a communications even. We were just a forum, four French people. Everything we will actually communicate on slide, communicating, documentation, everything was in English. The image that we wanted to project is to say we don’t want people to go to the website and think this is a French company. And that was rule of thumb. Turns out actually it works. Worked pretty well because a lot of customers in the beginning until 2020 and we started back in 2016, they no one thought we were actually French pool fund.

[00:05:28.280] – Gilles Bertaux

I thought you were in the US or in the UK or whatever. So I guess it played out well at the end of the day. And then when we started getting some traction and some PR when Covid hit, then this is when people realized we’re actually a French company.

[00:05:41.230] – Joran

Yeah, because at the website you do have built in Europe, you don’t specifically say frauds.

[00:05:45.880] – Gilles Bertaux

This build in Europe is actually pretty recent. It’s something we didn’t even even mention before. This is the result of a certain positioning that we injected in the company like two or three years ago now.

[00:05:56.840] – Joran

Yeah, I can fully relate, I guess what you’re saying, targeting globally as in for example with us, they don’t know where Dutch often because everything’s in English. My developers are Romanian, we speak in English, everything is documented in English. Sometimes if we have conversations in Dutch, I will make my notes in English just to make sure that if somebody else comes on board they can fully take over without me explaining. So I guess we can want to turn this around. So this is like the best practice, right? What are some common pitfalls, mistakes other startups make while trying to expand internationally?

[00:06:25.570] – Gilles Bertaux

I think going internationally is like a funnel. Refine it for us. The first step of the funnel was to go English mode, just like I described. I think that’s the first thing you want to do. And then if you want to refine, maybe you want to have something that goes a little bit more specific as your go to market, get more specific because you have certain regions in specificities. If you ever worked with Germans or if you ever worked with Southern Europe, English is not the best option. And this is where localization actually plays a big part. Because if you want to sell big enterprise deals to Germans or if you want to have long term relationship, commercial relationship with Italian or Spanish people, you might need to have an actual localization of the product, localization of your team on some level and even at the currency levels, if this is something you require. So I think being global does not mean necessarily to obfuscate cultural specificities. That’s the first big mistake that people make. They think going global as something, oh, let’s make everything standard, let’s make everything self service people will adapt. But the truth is even more if you have a premium enterprise product, going global also means being mindful of local specificities, languages, currencies, culture, whatnot.

[00:07:55.520] – Joran

Definitely ask more questions about this in a bit for European companies, right? If we just look at how can we go global? So we can either go in Europe, Germany, Southern Europe or Northern. Would you recommend doing that or keep it easy at the beginning you mentioned basic says English mode. Go for example to uk, us.

[00:08:16.990] – Gilles Bertaux

If I had to build a company like Livestorm, it’s a pretty standard product, you can sell it pretty much anywhere because there is no local specificities about hosting webinars and standard tied to certain regulations. Also it has some sort of self service element in the revenue making. So if I were in that configuration, I would probably go with the most efficient path. And the most efficient path is to speak English. As long as I can scale the revenue, scale the companies, keep things as dry as possible, to use like a programming term. And as soon as I want to get more specific, more revenue and more focused in the way I want to do revenue, meaning if I want to go up market, this is when I get more specific also in my localization, going global, et cetera. So that’s probably how I would do it. I think we talked about externally how to sell and how to market and things about localization. But the truth also happens internally when you want to hire people, right? We are fully remote company, so by definition we don’t have any boundaries and no frontiers. And my learning is when you start the company, it’s easier to have as many people as possible as close to you.

[00:09:34.420] – Gilles Bertaux

I wouldn’t say necessarily in an office, but as close to you as possible. So you can gather pretty often, try to make strategic decisions and bound and build out the culture and whatnot. And to do that you need to have a certain radius of people within a certain radius. At least that’s my learning. To do that you need to be able to hire ideally on the same country or you can do that on multiple countries. This is where going global also plays a part. Because if you want to hire in different countries, you’re starting a company, you don’t have offices in all those countries, you don’t have the resources to do that. So you need to adapt the contract and you need to equip the company with the tools to do that. So typically you can use something like Deal, but there is other of the software, other services where you can actually have local contract on those countries so you can actually hire them. Going global also plays a part in how you Operate internally if you want to be remote, if you want to have people from the get go in different countries, then this is when you need to structure your operations to accommodate that.

[00:10:38.930] – Gilles Bertaux

It’s not a small choice. I think this whole question of going global also implies that you have to pick some sort of path between opening offices, being remote, using local contracts instead of having actual entities. It’s not a simple question.

[00:10:56.380] – Joran

Yeah, and the answer is going to be different for everybody. How do you want to run your company? How do you want to get your employees?

[00:11:03.540] – Gilles Bertaux

How do you want to sell? If you want to say bu contracts like six figures contracts, enterprise, et cetera, you should not even be at the beginning going global. Maybe you should go German, Dutch, French, whatever and try to get those first contracts like this. I think going global from the get go on the enterprise revenue type of model is probably a mistake because you don’t have the resources to have 10 account executives in each of those language in each countries to begin with. You know, I think the more premium the product, the more premium the price, the more focused you need to be. And that also implies focusing on certain geographies, focusing on certain countries of residencies for your employees, that sort of thing. So everything is tied together. It’s a system. It’s not like one choice.

[00:12:01.130] – Joran

Yeah, yeah, you guys are now already 5,000 clients or at least according to the site, so many different countries. If you go back in time a little bit, where you were going into new regions, new countries, what would be your strategy or framework?

[00:12:14.850] – Gilles Bertaux

I think one thing we did pretty much on a late that we should have done earlier. And I’m not saying we as we lifestyle but I think in general we tend to pay too much attention to the playbook with a capital P, whatever that is. It’s like this common thing where people common path that people should follow. Right. You build on a startup, you operate in your country, maybe you have a multinational product fully in English, you can operate on another scale. But at some point you think hey, I’m going to go to the US because this is where the market is. Says who? Nobody says who. What’s a common thing with people think you can operate in the U.S. maybe it’s true, but maybe it’s actually not true. And there is a lot of kind of arguments of going into the U.S. maybe there is too much competition, maybe they’re already equipped. Maybe going there will necessitate a lot of resources and implications that you don’t have or maybe you don’t want to take part in it. Is a whole thing. Maybe the answer is much simpler than that. Maybe the answer is dig into the data.

[00:13:20.330] – Gilles Bertaux

Dig in your data, dig into your actual pipeline, your actual customer trying to have try to play with cohorts. Maybe you have 50 or 100, maybe a thousand customers, doesn’t matter. Just look at them and say okay, which country or at least which region tend to have the most usage, tend to have the best lifetime customer value, the best average revenue, the best margin, etc. The less CAC, the mast churn all the things and try to figure out okay, I have a good volume of those, I have good KPIs. Maybe this specific region for some reason I could like double, triple down 4x that region and scale exponentially my revenue in general. And maybe after I’m done with this one, I’ll try to push the needle a little bit more on that other specific region which is number two in my list. It’s not about there is going global which means that you have some sort of foundation that enables you to sell anywhere and then you have how the go to market focuses and that’s a whole different game. That’s when we realize it. We three years ago or two years ago, we made a decision to go a little bit at market to make the product a little more premium and target more larger accounts.

[00:14:33.660] – Gilles Bertaux

This is when we did this work and realized that actually we had a lot of better opportunities. In northern Europe, for example, Northern Europe was like incredible. Like Sweden, Finland, also Netherlands and also western Europe. Like all the countries that were including France, but including all the neighbors. This is where we had the most traction, the most volume. The last churn time to close were actually very low. We are a global company, we have people everywhere, we have customers everywhere. But all sales team needs to have focus so they have a controlled message, a controlled marketing approach, a controlled pitch and they don’t have time to lose. So let’s just put the right customers, the right prospect in front of them and that’s the regions we’re going to target. Going global doesn’t mean you don’t have focus. And that’s the counterintuitive things that we realize a bit late in my opinion.

[00:15:26.860] – Joran

And in your case, you kept focus by hiring people in that certain country or keep them on a certain market to make sure that they can target that.

[00:15:35.210] – Gilles Bertaux

So the goal is to have jack of all trades of localization essentially. So people that can speak English, that can sell to pretty much anyone, but they have this in their core. Maybe they are German, maybe they speak German very well, or maybe they’re Spanish. But they can adapt and they can actually have this cultural proximity with the targets that we have, with the focus that we currently have. And also time zones obviously is definitely something to consider.

[00:16:03.710] – Joran

Yeah, yeah. Most of our listeners are actually in the, in the us so when I ask a question for them, like a lot of US companies at one point want to go to Europe. Right. So in your case you’re saying you need to have people who speak the language, who know about the cultural differences. So they would need to hire people here in Europe if they want to come here.

[00:16:22.050] – Gilles Bertaux

Yeah. And the same applies to the US, right? 15% of what we do is in North America, including Canada, in a big bucket. And we do have people in the us but is it the most interesting market to us? Clearly not, because again, much more competition, better equipped, a lot of tension on the budgets. There is a lot of pipelines, a lot of volume, but it’s not the same. It requires a lot more resources to really be thriving on those markets. And at the moment the focus of the company is actually to increase profitability, not burn out resources.

[00:17:01.470] – Joran

This is where built in Europe comes from.

[00:17:03.590] – Gilles Bertaux

Yeah, exactly. You get it.

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[00:17:23.780] – Joran

so I guess we already discovered how to identify the new markets. So dig in the data usage, LTV margin, low CAC, etc. Any other best practices or things you would recommend for startups to do when they start expanding into other markets?

[00:17:41.020] – Gilles Bertaux

Look at currencies. I think currencies is something we actually overlooked a lot. Part of the reason is the building infrastructure was not as it is today. Today we have tons and tons of tools to experiment around pricing. And I think not just currencies actually, but pricing models is something that is very culturally biased. In France for example, people have this old fashioned way of buying. Even if they’re going to pay for something that costs like 4k or 5k a year, they would actually record to have some sort of quote. Right. In the US people can buy a contract for 10, 20, 30,000 without having to refer to the N plus 1 or the IT or whatever. In Europe in it is a more restrictive market, UK excluding it is a more old fashioned type of selling, experimenting with pricing and models depending on what global means to you? Is it more Europe than the US Then maybe you want to experiment in that front or maybe it’s the other way around. Also, currencies, as I said, people are willing specifically outside of Europe, if they can pay in their own currency they usually prefer. So that’s definitely something that will increase conversion rate in general.

[00:18:49.520] – Gilles Bertaux

And today you need to pick out and building infrastructure that enables you to do that. There are tons of tools today. We either have chargebee or Lego or others that actually can sit on top of your Stripe account and enables you to do all those types. Hyperlink is another tool. It can enable you to do all those pricing experiments and really be super relevant in the way people pay. Because if you want to sell in China, if you want to say in Japan and Korea is going to be a whole different game than selling in the US and Europe because people pay differently. So again, going global means you need to take into account local specificities, billing included.

[00:19:31.290] – Joran

Yeah, it’s interesting because I already hear a mistake we’re making right now. So we are based in the Netherlands, we sell globally. Maybe a bit too soon, but we have clients everywhere. But if you go to our pricing page and if you would buy our plan, you actually always be charged in doll.

[00:19:48.190] – Gilles Bertaux

Interesting. I think that’s definitely something to look for. And I think the Netherlands is a good example. I don’t think we have that in French. I wish we had an example like that. But in Netherlands you have this payment option called Ideal, right? Yeah, I haven’t seen it anywhere else. It’s super convenient when you have an ING like account or even when you’re adventuring B2B transaction, you can actually pay with Ideal as long as you have a credit card. Super convenient, super easy to pay. But for an expat, when you first land and you want to pay with Ideal, you cannot actually need to revolute bank account. An ING bank account and maybe you don’t have those bank accounts having a local way of payment methods. If you know that you’re going to have people from the outside that can actually pay for your service or product or whatever that is, is going to put a constraint. It’s going to decrease conversion rates. I’m 100% sure of it. There are tons of services here. For example, when we first arrived that I couldn’t afford, I couldn’t pay actually for it. So I had to open like an ING account, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:20:47.720] – Gilles Bertaux

So you see like the length I need to go just to pay for the service. That necessarily decreases conversion rates and it’s a very extreme example. But I’m probably sure there is the same thing on the B2B space.

[00:20:59.830] – Joran

I do agree we’re going to make changes after this when we look about growing internationally. We talked about a little bit already team, you said you have to have them in a certain radius to get together quickly. What kind of other advice would you have? Or building a team that can support global growth.

[00:21:16.560] – Gilles Bertaux

You already pick a benchmark. That’s my first thing, I think pick a benchmark. I think the most rational thing you can do, which is probably the most unfair, is to say, oh, I can actually hire people from different countries. So I will pick out whatever salary is most comfortable and within the market on that specific countries and set HR grid in or plural. That will actually depend on your localization. So you pick, let’s say two engineers, same level, same skill set, same whatever. If they decide to work in two different countries or two different cities, they’re going to have two different salaries for geographical reasons. Right. And although it makes sense, I think it creates inequalities and can create questions and misalignment and unnecessary debates internally. Pick out a benchmark and stick to it. For us, it’s the benchmark salary grid that we use for anyone except for the US because it is a very extreme way of compensating Paris’s Paris salaries will determine how much we pay someone that works from Uganda or someone from Mauritius or for the Netherlands. And sometimes it’s not in our favor and typically when we talk to candidates in Netherlands, it’s not in our favor because Netherlands usually have higher salaries or same in the uk but if you look for people in Spain or in France or Germany, it’s pretty much the same, maybe a little bit even higher.

[00:22:49.590] – Gilles Bertaux

So yeah, I think when we go global again, take into account that’s what have an impact internally on how you compensate people and be mindful of the potential inequalities of having a global team.

[00:23:06.350] – Joran

And what you mentioned, if you use a company like Deal, you can hire people anywhere. Right. So you will find people who speak Dutch or French who are actually living in Southern Europe so they can support themselves with the salary you’re offering from Paris benchmarks because they’re not actually living in Amsterdam or they’re not actually living in Paris.

[00:23:22.550] – Gilles Bertaux

Absolutely.

[00:23:23.970] – Joran

So when you look at your journey has been the toughest challenge for you trying to grow internationally. How did you learn from that?

[00:23:33.570] – Gilles Bertaux

I think the toughest challenge the big battles. When you run a company, you Want to do everything. You have tons of things you need to do. There’s tons of things when you want to lead the company. The truth is there is a reason why Companies exist for 10, 20, 30 years. Because you don’t have time to do it all. When you go global, you need to pick your battles. It’s okay to have foundations of being an international company, but going global is not being an international company. So two different things. Being international company means, yeah, you have a neutral approach of localization. You speak English internally, you speak English externally. You can have different currencies, you have people all over the globe. But going global means picking models. You have a natural stream of revenue that will come from certain countries. And then as I said earlier, you need to pick your battles on where your sales team is going to focus. And that’s the toughest thing because choosing is just letting go of things. And when you say, oh, we’re going to be focusing on northern Europe, it means that you need to give up that opportunity.

[00:24:39.910] – Gilles Bertaux

In Singapore, I see there is a very greenfield market in Singapore. There is not that many competitors. We have a few happy customers there. What should we do? At the end of the day, it all comes down to how much money do you have. If you have the money to do two things at the same time, then do it for sure. But the truth is you rarely have all that money. So you need to focus specifically these days when you cannot raise as easy as it used to be, picking your battles differently, not have a choice at least. Yeah, I’d guess for an entrepreneur.

[00:25:13.120] – Joran

Yeah, yeah. It comes down to what you mentioned before. Make sure your sales team keeps focus. If you’re gonna not pick your battles or regions, they’re just gonna be scattered and defocused.

[00:25:23.520] – Gilles Bertaux

Absolutely. It’s crazy how much because people say I can do it. I can have four or five different countries in my focus and I will actively be proactively reaching. And the truth is people don’t realize how much of the defocus that can be, how much the dilution of the marketing message will become, how much work you will put on your team just to work on those localization strategies. I need to translate all those ebooks in German, Polish, Spanish and Italian. All of a sudden a 1,500 translation of an ebook starts to become 10k. It’s a small thing, but everything starts to look like that and it’s a huge pain in the ass. So yeah, focus on.

[00:26:08.160] – Joran

You mentioned before, the go to market is completely different. Right. So let’s say the Numbers do line up, you dig in your data, you look at everything and it is good to go to a certain market. How would you do this? What would be your steps to dive into a new region slash country?

[00:26:25.040] – Gilles Bertaux

That’s a good question at first. I will try to understand a little bit better the use case of these people. Maybe there are something that will defer. So just like a analytical thing, just look at the how to use a product. For us, it’s a webinar product. So we’re going to look at, okay, what type of webinars, how much in length, how many participants, what is their recurrence, is it very different from the other countries? Is there an actual pattern that is very unique to that region? Maybe there is, maybe there’s not. And then once we remove that from the table, let’s move on to the next question, which is how those people buy, you know, prefer in terms of buying process, in terms of selecting a provider. So in this case what you want to do is listening to sales calls, reading sales notes, maybe do some discovery calls, not just on a product, but also on the way they buy. Maybe you realize that they need to require quotes in 99% of the cases that they’re certain they are. And that’s. That was the case for France, for example. So that’s probably two things I would do.

[00:27:29.190] – Gilles Bertaux

Try to understand better how they buy, how they use a product. If there is a specific pattern, then I will probably start some basic localization strategies and see how it behaves. I wouldn’t go for 100% localization of everything, but just pick your top 10 pages of the website, look at the pricing, does it make sense for people in that country? Product needs to have continuity with the website, so the product should be translated in the language and probably see if someone internally is able to speak that language. That will be the bonus on top. But I will approach some sort of mvp, localize a couple of things, trying to understand better who the customer is, who the prospect is, how they buy. And if you see some sort of tiny uplift because you made a slight effort towards that specific country, then I will go a little bit more all in. Hire someone that speaks the language or have someone speaking the language internally to actually sell and do the customer support and check again if conversion rate has increased or maybe all the metrics, if sales metrics internal have increased for that specific region and just iterate.

[00:28:42.870] – Joran

Yeah, he mentioned find somebody internally who speaks the language. Language is one thing, right? How much does culture comes into play? So somebody who Actually lived, for example, in Germany or Spain.

[00:28:55.450] – Gilles Bertaux

Yeah, that’s very true. And I feel that there are specific countries where you will require more specific cultural approach. Germany is definitely a good example. East Asia with Japan or Korea is another good example. People need to have someone that understands how they behave, how they buy, how they speak, what are the cultural specificities, someone they can relate to. Because selling is a relationship at the end of the day. So it’s a sort of relationship. If you cannot create a bonding with a person in front of you, then probably there is a fair chance you’re not going to close the deal. Those markets where you need someone on the ground that requires more cultural presence is the markets we already know somehow. So usually the furthest, the more logical it is to have someone. So I said East Asia, but actually all Asia, including Russia, might need someone on the ground or someone that is a native to actually understand and sell better to those people. For specific countries that are actually close to you but still require local specifics, like Germany, we already know those countries. It is common knowledge that those markets are tough to penetrate.

[00:30:15.360] – Gilles Bertaux

If you have any doubts, what I would recommend is just sit down with VP Sales or head of sales that has been on the ground on those countries, that has been selling to those countries and just ask them out. Do I need someone in the country or do I need someone just to speak the language? Those are two very different hires and they will tell you what you need to do.

[00:30:41.240] – Joran

Yeah, nice. And when we then look at the future, do you see any trends happening right now going into the future, expanding internationally?

[00:30:50.880] – Gilles Bertaux

I think that localization is going to be much easier as we go by, obviously because of AI, because translation has reached a point where it is actually very easy. Specificity with vocabularies and images when you speak. That might require more training still for AI, but in general, AI has definitely lower the barrier of accessibility and translation. So that’s probably one thing. Obviously we come from video conferencing. So I can tell safely that now it is less and less of a constraint to use video conferencing anywhere. Even in China, where it used to be a huge pain to have a webinar meeting with China because of firewalls and whatnot. It is actually getting much easier and much easier because technology are able to bypass those contracts or play with it at least. So it is easier to reach out to people. It is easier to translate the content. Also it is easier to pay any currencies right now. So I guess like the two obstacles that remain is A infrastructure does. The country has the right infrastructure so I can sell the product, whether it’s bandwidth, network firewalls, whatever. That’s one constraint. But it’s usually tied to geopolitical stuff.

[00:32:05.950] – Gilles Bertaux

And I think one thing that I don’t see how technology can overcome this is just like something very human, which is cultural bias. Unless you are native, I don’t know how you can really understand that. Maybe I can help on some level, but I don’t really see how because it is a very empirical knowledge. It’s something that you leave and you experience. It’s not something that you actually learn. And there is tons and tons of things that are unspoken that you still understand somehow. So I think that’s it is getting easier, but it’s always going to be a challenge for sure. And also, yeah, one thing I didn’t mention is competition because if it is getting easier, it is getting easier for the competitors as well. Expect a more globalized market, but a more competitive and globalized market.

[00:32:56.890] – Joran

Good point. We are going to start wrapping things up. As people know. I love to ask these two questions at the end when we go more into the broad sense of growing a B2B SaaS, what kind of advice would you give another SaaS founder who’s just starting out and growing to 10k monthly.

[00:33:13.570] – Gilles Bertaux

Recurring revenue to go beyond 10km? I will probably obsess with not selling the product as it is today. That’s a bit of a counterintuitive. But one thing that we did early on was almost every prospect or customer that I had on a call. I never really started by showing the product, by showing a prototype or where we want to take the product. It’s actually a kind of an envisioned product. Like back in the days we didn’t even have figma. So we will show them. Okay, this is what we’re building. This is the final iteration of the vision that we have for the product. What do you think of it? Yeah, cool. You love it. Perfect. We’re going in the right direction, by the way. This is where we at. And you could feel that we checked maybe 20 or 25% of the checkboxes of the problem I’ve just shown. But you can tell that we’re going in the right direction. So what do you think? And I think that helped a lot because people were understanding the direction they were buying the direction also, not just the products. And it felt almost as if you were actually selling feature that didn’t exist and people will buy all these features.

[00:34:27.980] – Gilles Bertaux

So I guess the truth Is this advice also plays in. I put this advice in a big bucket of of appear bigger than you actually are. I think that helped a lot. So selling the vision Also when you create content, you create content with as many companies as you can. Just be this co pilot fish that glues himself to the other fishes. So find other companies, create content with them. Trying to appear bigger because you hang out with the bigger players. So it’s this whole thing of selling a little bit more, being a little bit more than you actually have or actually are. And I think that helps a lot at the beginning. It creates reassurance.

[00:35:09.390] – Joran

Makes total sense. Let’s assume that we now pass the 10k mor and we’re going to make a huge step. I know we’re going to grow towards 10 million AOR. What kind of advice would you give Sasha on this year?

[00:35:20.180] – Gilles Bertaux

I would say something like try to hire VP sales. Honestly, I think that’s simply something that changed for us. Hire someone if you’re not sales yourself, if you’re you know, product person or if all you believe in is standard product self service, that sort of thing. Or maybe if you’re just like too busy in doing something else. Hire VP sales. It’s going to make. Obviously there are different VP sales for different stages of the company, but hiring someone that kind of obsess around what kind of revenue stream I can build, what kind of offer I can iterate on to create to double the acv. Someone who can obsess about what are the pitch that I can build, maybe how I can tweak that pitch to sell more. It’s so valuable to have someone that is 100% focused on that specific thing because you have tons and tons of things to do. As a founder you might have accounting to do some hiring, to do, some management to do, some VC, whatever to do. So you’re not 100% as much as you like. You’re not going to be 100% on it. You need to delegate that as soon as possible and have someone you can trust.

[00:36:28.830] – Gilles Bertaux

So I’m saying VP sales. It could be another role that is attached to revenue obviously, but something similar. It’s definitely going to shift the company around for sure.

[00:36:37.100] – Joran

Nice.

[00:36:37.580] – Gilles Bertaux

Love it.

[00:36:38.470] – Joran

I will try to summarize so when you where you’re listening and you want to go global, you need to have the capacity to sell to anyone. Don’t limit your product to local boundaries. Don’t speak in your own native language so have English first. Focus on your international audience. If you’re going to Talk to clients so we drill down into steps. Steps 1 Basics English Mode Step 2 Stay efficient. Try to start targeting the English countries first. Step 3 have people in a certain radius get together quickly. Pick a benchmark for the salaries to make things easy. 4. Going global to other native countries is not making everything standard. So make sure you localize and also on culture when you are going to expand into new markets, dig into your data which one you’re going to pick. So check usage, LTV margin, slow customer acquisition costs. It’s going to make your sales keeping focused when you go into new markets. Charge to clients in their currency, local payment methods, find out how they buy, check their usage data, localize your top 10 pages, pricing and product pages in particular. And culture will be important. People actually need to understand each other.

[00:37:47.580] – Joran

And then I guess the most important one Pick your battles because choosing is also to let go. So don’t go for any country in the future. Localization will become easier with AI, but it also means it’s going to be easier for your competition. When we look at the revenue stages, 10k Mr. Sell division of the product 10 million AR higher VP of sales which can obsess about the revenue potentials and numbers.

[00:38:12.100] – Gilles Bertaux

Wow. ChatGPT couldn’t have done did better.

[00:38:15.680] – Joran

Exactly.

[00:38:17.040] – Gilles Bertaux

No AI is being used for this vanilla human. I like it.

[00:38:23.440] – Joran

If people want to get in contact with Eugeo, how can they do?

[00:38:26.850] – Gilles Bertaux

Reach out to me on LinkedIn Berto first name, last name, that’s the easiest.

[00:38:31.300] – Joran

Make sure to add the link because French names can be tricky to add as well.

[00:38:35.960] – Gilles Bertaux

For sure.

[00:38:37.120] – Joran

Nice. Thanks. Thanks for coming on. For people listening as usual, please leave us a review if you haven’t. We’re going to add a poll to this podcast episode as well, so love to hear what you thought of it. And thanks again for coming on.

[00:38:48.440] – Gilles Bertaux

Thank you.

[00:38:49.300] – Joran

Thank you for watching this show of the Grow your B2B SaaS podcast. You made it till the end so I think we can assume you like this content. If you did, give us a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel if you like this content. Feel free to reach out if you want to sponsor the show. If you have a specific guest in mind, if you have a specific topic you want us to cover, reach out to me on LinkedIn. More than happy, take a look at it. If you want to know more about Veritas, feel free to reach out as well. But for now, have a great day and good luck growing your B2B SaaS.