Episode Transcript
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You were listening to be the B
Revenue Acceleration, a podcast dedicated helping software
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executive stay on the cutting edge of
sales and marketing in their industry. Let's
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get into the show. Hi,
welcome to be to be revenue acceleration.
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My name is aim with you and
I'm here today with Alfie Marsh Ed,
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of US cells at spend desk.
How are you doing today, Alfie?
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I'm doing very well. Thank you. How are you doing? Yes,
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we want different time zines at the
moment as well. What't we absolutely you
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know, I'm doing great, great, great, grade. It's a beautiful
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day here in the UK. Beginning
of the winters is getting a bit cold,
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but the sun is out, so
nothing to complain about. While you
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base today, I'm in San Francisco, so this is the first September to
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November period I've actually had whilst I've
been here, and this is the best
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time of the year appoute. So
we've got blue skies, nice son the
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weather's good and it does make me
laugh every time I look back at my
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friends and family in France and the
UK getting a wrap top for the cold.
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Yeah, well, you know,
we actually have an office in Sonos
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and when we got down the bay
area, we actually I like to drive
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a few miles downways even moss and
now you can. You can get called
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sometimes in San Francisco, but there
you go. I'll discussion today is focusing
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on international expansion and I'll dance sells. But before we go into the conversation,
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would you mind just telling us a
little bit more about yourself, Alfie,
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as well as the company you represents, pend desk. Yeah, absolutely
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so. Yeah, my name's happen
more so I've been with spend desk for
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about three years now. SPINNESK is
a Paris Bonn company, now intern national.
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We have offices in London, Paris, Berlin and San Francisco, although
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many of us are working remote,
as I'm sure many people are. When
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I join the company we were around
twenty employees. Since then we're now about
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two hundred and twenty plus. We've
been growing around about three hundred percent year
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on year. It's been a pretty
exciting journey. That sounds good, sounds
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wonderful. And in them of your
solution, what is it that you bring
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to the market? Yeah, so
we help companies spend to make payments in
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the workplace. So we empower employees
to securely spend the company's money through smart
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payment methods like virtual and physical cards
that are connected to an online platform,
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which helps managers and finance teams automate
the month end close and reconciliation. Good,
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saving a lot of time. That's
wonderful. So thanks for that and
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fee. I know you are big
advocate for our bound cells as an instruments
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and a way for paper generation,
especially when it comes to expending into new
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market. So you would be good
to end up some more about your experience
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of international expansion and our you CDs
Dr Rule the Dr Rules to the people
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who are, I guess, responsible
for the top of the funnel in this
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process. Yeah, I mean one
hundred percent critical part of the process as
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part of any go to market,
and I think that outbound cells in particular
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is probably the most critical for a
couple of reasons. If you look at
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the difference between inbounds Lee generation and
outbound it's kind of the difference between fishing
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and spear hunting. So fishing is
you cast a net out which your marketing
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you catch a bunch of fish.
which are the needs and the SCI will
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have to go through and figure out
which ones are appropriate for you and then
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pass them on qualify the soone,
whereas an outbound SDR is more like a
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spear hunter. You have a predefined
target that you're going after, ideal customer
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profile and in particular segment, and
then you're going to go and hunt down
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that game until you can get an
opportunity. Now that's quite an important distinction
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between the two for go to market, because for any go to market there
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is a phase of customer discovery.
You start with hypotheses and assumptions and you
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then need to validate those. So
you need to be able to say,
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for example, our product is not
going to work the same way in the
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US as it is in Europe because
this market has a particular nuance to it.
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So you take your hypothesis and you
need to validate that. Now that's
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very hard to do if you're using
nets and in Bal leads, because you
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have much less control over the companies
you're actually going after. So, in
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short, the SDR function is the
lifeblood of any go to market because it
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allows you to be agile, flexible
and be very specific in your targeting.
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Yeah, I agree with you.
I think it's also interesting you're the but'scally
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when it comes to extension. has
kind of getting into Maso gone question now,
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but we find a cultural defferences from
one region to another. The adoption
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of solution, the maturity to a
specific solution to be deferent from one country
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to another. And I believe that
you know, a particularly for the outbound
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as dl, so the people who
are are building up the message, trying
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to identify the right person in which
vertical and kind of identifying the cells plays.
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That will be successful. So then
you can scale with with cells,
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automation and all that. I think
the AUTBONASD is really key, dy,
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and I do agree with you.
I in fact, I use exactly some
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analogy of fishing and hunting. And
I think you know, when you are
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doing in bound response management we also
use a different type of training for the
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resources. So technically in bound will
be a bit more technical conversation. Why?
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Because you're already you're already looking at
something, you're already on the market
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for. I don't know if you
want to buy your watch or fridge or
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car to start get accounts will be
engaging with you. When we are doing
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the inbound response management, were really
seeing prospect really coming in with questions straight
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away. They want us to get
technical, they want us to go into
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a details while we are doing the
outbound prospecting is much more of a challenge
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our cells approach. So validating the
business needs understanding what those people are doing,
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how they're doing it currently and basically
creating the demon in Sea of responding
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to the demands. A hundred percent
agree with you and kind of fling to
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that point. We know that.
You know obviously the D SDR is a
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key role in building pipeline, but
they can also be a great way to
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keep your finger on the pearls in
relation to product market fit and how the
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market is receiving your message or solution. But what are your thoughts on that
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and now do you adapt on that
with your team? Yeah, absolutely.
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I mean they an str video that
can it be the eyes and is or
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your company in the market. They're
going to have that vistle response from prospects
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and clients on the phone and this
is one thing where I think the go
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to markets, actually cold calling as
a channel is great because you can get
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these responses in real time and really
understand what that fit is. So,
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for example, there's a few different
things that you can do when it pivoting
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in the go to market. You
can pivot your product and iterate that to
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PMF. You can pivot your segment
so who are you going after? And
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then you can also pivot your positioning. And so that's how do you position
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and sell your product or services?
On the cell side, the segmentation and
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the position in is very much a
function of the cells team and that position
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in is a variable which people,
I think, overlook. You can have
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the same product and make a slight
tweak in the terms of the way that
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you explain your value proposition or the
way that you're pitching it, and that
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can actually help get you into a
product market fit because, especially in a
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new market where your product or services
never existed before, people aren't very knowledgeable
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about your solution. They don't know
you, who you are, you you
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don't exist. So you have to
sell the vision and the problem and get
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them to understand that, and an
SDR is the perfect way for you to
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get that real time feedback and see
what works and what does it. Yeah,
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again, you know, he's been
very, very, very very varied
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all those points for of other course, of covied NAT. End of Bendinique,
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particularly at the outset, as we
are trained to figure out that you
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know what to do in the luck
down with people still pick up the food?
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And will people still respond to a
man and in fact, in the
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territory you are in in the US. What we realize, and we did
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a bit of a study that we
then share with our clients and come of
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best practice, but we look at
response rate per states and the states of
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California and particularly places like San Francisco
Bay area, but also New York,
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Metro Boston. At some points where
absolutely horrendous. Literally you could not get
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all of anyone. People will not
respond to email. I think the state
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of scare alerts confusion was really driving
people to not really respond or to not
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really move, and people wor kind
of happy to just raise everything for a
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little while and wait for government or
for institution to can of tell them what
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to do or at least get a
little bit of light at the end of
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the tunnel. But at this time
we would see some other places like no
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Dallas, sounds of the US still
being very, very, very reactive and
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in fact, you know, probably
a bit more responsive than they were before,
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and that's been evolving over time and
we also saw the medium changing.
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So when the lockdown started, linkedin
was fantastic see that everybody was on Linkedin.
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Everybody was on fire absolutely. You
know, Linkedin was great, and
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then came June, Linkedin wasn't as
good and people are Cann of fed up
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with Linkedin. And then everybody was
back at home, their fun line from
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the office would be then directed to
the mobile and, you know, things
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kind of resume to some certain level
of normality and I think now we are
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in a position where people know what
to lock down looks like. So if
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we were to go to a second
lockdown, certain lockdown or whatever, it
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could be a, let's hope,
nuts but if that was to happen,
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I think they would not be a
fear of what's going on. So that
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phrase would not happen again. But
it was an interesting things to witness.
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And with all the people that we've
got in the trenches as the air speaking
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to prospect now, when you've got
two hundred of them on the daily basis
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speaking to prospect you can very much
kind of get a feel for the market,
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get to feel for what's working,
what's not working, what's a nice
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to all what is a must have, and those guys have been absolutely instrumental
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in us under something what was going
on, basically and US adapting to what
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was going on, influencing the our
clients who are thinking to change the way
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we're working and basically still managed to
produce a certain level of results in in
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a very testing market. So Yeah, a SD ICE KEI and and I
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do agree with you in the on
the focus and the trenches and they actually
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see the real stuff. Getting an
understanding of what they're seeing on a daily
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basis is critical. And so I
think you mentioned in your intro that spenders,
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who was pretty much twenty people when
you join, and now, on
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circule little bit more than two hundred
people. So I would have expected that
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the face of your SDR team up
fundamentally changed. And in fact we do
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believe that you've got an SDA function
that should be set up for startup and
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as Dr Function that should be set
up for what I would call a scale
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up, and I would put you
in that category. So yeah, what
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is your perception of that change from
an SDR role perspective? As the company
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is growing, as the company is
evolving and obviously becoming more potentially process driven
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then started driven? Yeah, yeah, that's that's a great question. So
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fundamentally the role is exactly the same. The outcome is the same. The
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STR is there to help connect to
your company and create meaningful conversations with potential
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buyers. So that fundamentally will stay
the same regardless of the stage. But
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you know, I think in the
company, however, the context in which
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that is operating is very, very
different. So, for example, where
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we are in the US at Spendersk, we right at the beginning of our
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journey in our core markets in France, the UK and Germany, with further
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advances, so in more up in
that scale up stage. And then to
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a blue chip, you know,
company that has a huge SDR team of
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an established marketing stage points to be
very different. So initial stage, like
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I said before, you have to
validate a lot of unknown assumptions and so
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it's kind of your building the plane
whilst you're flying it, and the kind
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of mentality that these types of SDRs
have to have is very, very different.
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They are not going to come into
a process that they know works,
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and so you can't turn up to
work, do your activity and expect to
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have results. I don't think anyone
could do that ever really, but even
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more so at this particular stage,
because you have to be able to constantly
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iterate an adapt you have to build
the message and you have to understand which
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problems are really speaking to people,
what element of your vision or solution is
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getting people emotionally invested in the product. Now that's very different to a maybe
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a scale up stage in the company
where, for example, in France,
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in our core market, we know
exactly what the value proposition is and what
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works, we know exactly which segments
and we know exactly their pains and why
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they're going to buy versus us in
the competition. So it really is a
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case of the process itself is more
validated, so there is less need to
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build the plane, you know whilst
you're flying it, and it's more a
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case of execution. And so that
changes and this is one reason why,
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I think, you know, we've
had success in being able to hire great
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scurs early on in the company for
go to markets, because there's this element
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of you have a lot of ownership
over construction, a process and being a
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part of that vision, whereas other
strs and other candidates may just not really
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want to be part of that.
They want to just turn up, work
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hard and know that they're going to
get paid from producing opportunities at the end
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of the month. So they're better
suited to being in an organization with a
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validated, repeatable process. Yeah,
that next perfect sense. And then if
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you want to move on to international
expansion. Now, global international expansion.
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We witness it for many year and
we know our difficulty it can be,
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particularly for our start up coming from
Europe. So, like you, geze
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France, or even his stray start
up, we've got a fair through is
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freely customers to go and tack hold
the US market. Okay, such a
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white market is such a you know, where do you start, basically,
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and of course what people tend to
do is to get one some of that
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top gays, to go and fly
to relocate their like. Probably spend ex
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done with yourself. But I'd like
to understand about your lesson learned. You
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know, and I don't know if
you can address you know, some of
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the challenges that you can across,
some of the opportunity that you've seen.
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You know things that you've seen.
You've seen being easier to fer. So
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I kind of a general feeling ready. So if you can empty your bag
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about that there would be great,
because we know our difficult it is right
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and we know it because we are
being a few clients to do it.
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It's about getting the first your reference. You're not the US company, US
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PROSPECTING TO L Bane from US organization, when you are start up from France.
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You know do this. You in
the best in the same way.
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I don't know. So it'd be
good to get just your souls of that.
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In term of challenges and opportunity that
you've come across since you're relocated in
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San Francisco and you've been pushing spenders
in the US. There are so many
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topics that we could go in deep
dives and podcasts of their own, I
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think, on this one, but
maybe one context. I think in terms
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of challenging and with hindsight, I
think many of the problems that you face
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become much easier when you're aware that
you're in the problem. It's like being
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in the eye of the storm of
a hurricane. It's very hard to see
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that you're there when you're in the
midst of it. And so what do
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I mean by that? So let's
say, for example, your tactic is
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to launch your product from Europe in
the US and you're going to send the
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sales team and acquisition team and hope
that you've got product market fit. And
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then, obviously, if you do
and you have repeatable lead generation and close
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in, and then you kind of
skip all the initial discovery stages and validation
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stages and you go directly into execution
phase where you invest in growth. You
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can invest in your more SDRs,
you can invest in more cant exectors and
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you just focused on growing now up. If you don't have a product market
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fear and you don't understand the variables
that you have within your control, it
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can be very frustrating, it can
be very challenging because you have a sense
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of constantly failing. And I think
that my biggest learning is you have to
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reshape what you understand to be a
failure and, for example, to not
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close deals or not have a product
market fit is not, to say,
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a failure, as long as you
realize that your goal, your objective,
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is to validate a hypothesis and if
you haven't got a product market fit,
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then it's to execute a different plan
to get there. And when you shift
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that mentality, it makes the whole
experience a lot more enjoyable and you can
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also iterate quicker because it means that
you won't continue trying to go down one
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route that doesn't work. Are you
selling to the same segment or selling the
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same value proposition? You can identify. Okay, I'm my positioning is off
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here, so I need to pivot
that. And then you change and you
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iterate quickly and you advanced into a
product market fit at a much quicker rate.
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So does the kind of challenge?
What have you seen them off a
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box you to do? US Get, you know, once you get the
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frost your reference easy become easier.
Well, I think one thing that's really
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interesting is just the way different people
and companies by software. You know,
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in spend us we have at the
German market, France, UK and then
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the United States, and aren't on
two aspects. Germany United States couldn't be
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further apart in almost every way to
culture, way they buy and so on
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and so forth, and then the
France and UK kind of in the middle.
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With the US, for example,
there is a lot more emphasis on
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storytelling. How do you pitch your
vision? And I feel that it's easier
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to get in people emotionally brought in
to your idea through storytelling and vision,
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without necessarily having the details of every
piece of the product in a hundred percent
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up to scratch, versus, if
you look on flip end of Germany,
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storytelling just doesn't really work in the
German market. They want to know facts
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and they want to have the bullet
points, Bang, Bang, Bang,
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yes or no tick boxes, and
that's kind of how it's done. So
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I think that there's always opportunity as
long as you see the context that you're
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in and you can pivot an adapt
and really focus your approach on leverage in
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that. Yeah, thanks, perfect
sense, and let's question for you and
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feel we spoke about this. Yeah, and it's YEA, in the context
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of in donational expansion. If I
wasn't this Dr and you know I stuff,
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may carry out, what would be
just readvised she would give me.
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Don't expect to be good from day
one. Have a growth mindset. So
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expect that you can be good one
day, but you have to do the
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work to get there. Is the
first one. I would be an avid
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learner. Read, listen to podcasts
like this one. Speak to your peers,
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don't just look inside the company for
the best practices, speak to peers
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outside, really make sure that you
have created an environment of learning that is
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going to really accelerate you. And
I think the third one is you have
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to be self critical and self analytical. That means every phone call that you
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do, listen to analyze it.
Be Your own worst critique. When you
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can break down your self and your
actions that you do, it's going to
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help you de Block yourself a lot
quicker and wait for other people to do
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it. Were driving exactly at in
Donalys's wonderful three foundestic points. But yes,
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self teaching. It is keep you
know, and that's one thing.
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And people are missing sometimes. I
don't know if it's generational. I don't
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like to speak about million yells,
but you know, also people speak about
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me and yours and it's funny how
sometimes people can get a lot of information.
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I'm Swe Evan to what they do
is walk, you know, in
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term of social media and stuff like
that, but then when they don't have
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word they need at work, they
will point the finger at the manager of
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point the finger at the clients and
you know, just sell. Well,
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the information is actually a realiable everywhere. If you wanted to teach yourself.
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You could, but I'm a big
believer in self learning and I think your
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last point about kind of holding yourself
accountable. Look at yourself in the mirror,
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keep on going. Don't expect to
be good from day one. As
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well, the first point do make
sense. If there is a learning curve,
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and it's almost when you need to
find that moment where you click with
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the message, when you click with
the personnel, where you actually get on
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Tho the skin of the prospect and
the product become segondary and your knowledge of
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the product is not. That's important, but you really haven't on the stunning
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of what's happening in the life of
the people you are targeting. You have
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an understanding of what's happening in the
organization and that takes a little bit of
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time. Part surely if you are, you know, not a season business
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person, as the first time you
you target and don't know pharmastical company.
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The first time I get to the
pharmastical company myself, I had no idea
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what was going on in the organization. I just heard they were doing drugs,
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but I didn't understand the research and
development cycle. I didn't understand the
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way they operate, etc. Etc. And as you start speaking to them
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and you start having conversation within the
seconds, you really start to build up
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a picture under stone and appreciate the
complexity of these accounts. And then the
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really ampute to network. And then, you know, if I was to
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add one thing, is also use
the wall story from every single conversation you've
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got. You know, learn from
each conversation, removing a concussion with Alfie.
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Today I'm and learning something from you, and tomorrow I will speak to
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Bob, I will say to bug, look, but that's funny what you
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say to me, because I spoke
to Alphia to compare cold spender skies today
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and he was saying that to me. And, you know, getting the
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pier to per, I think it's
also coming twice the are. My point
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here is don't just get education from
your managers, in our case the clients
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and the managers, because we would
have our clients also supporting us and getting
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up to speed. But learn from
conversation with the prospect go and speak to
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the end user. These are the
people that will give you the best training
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because they will tell you what's upping
in their life. And if you know
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that, that's the key for the
next conversation. So true. I mean
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as an str I would love to
know how many people do this, if
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anyone does this. But if you
want to see are joining a company,
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reach out to your bio persona.
So let's say you sell to VPS of
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cells. Reach out to a couple
of VP the cells and on Linkedin and
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say, Hey, I just started
this job as a star selling to be
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piece of cells. I'm not going
to try and sell anything, but I
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would love to just understand how you
work and what you do for a living
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and how that's going to relate to
my product so that I com bet this
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sell to other people. Could we
speak for like fifteen minutes? I guarantee
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you that a lot of people would
be happy to have like an information interview
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with you and give you so much
information and just advance that. You know,
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you don't have to read books on
you know, being a BP yourself,
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so to speak. But yeah,
there's stays so much information out there,
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you just have to ask for it. On the thought of degree,
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I mean when actually started, it
was many moons ago, but I had
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zero training. In fact, Linkedin
was not even there. I cannot really
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little bit my hedge there, but
it was thrilling the having people started to
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use a linking in the US,
but not so much in Europe. So
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so it was. It was quite
interesting. Is We had to go through
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the switch ball and all that,
but people are quite helpful and that may
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have changed a little bit. So
I don't know what you would look like
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now, but I remember when I
first started having people saying no to me
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and saying no, I'm not interested
on and you know, most of them
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would expect me to go after that. But the question I would ask have
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was able. That's very good feedback. Can you tell me why you're not
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interesting? Is it what I told
you? Is it what I said?
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Is it deferd? You've already got
to product in place, you know,
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and some of them was a while. I don't really have the time and
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I would just say, look,
I don't want to be too much,
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but just satisfy my intellect here by
just telling me what's going on, because
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you know, I just need to
understand what I've done on the need to
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under some how we close that conversation. You telling me that you're not interested
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is great, but if I don't
unders on why, I can't progress and
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when you say that to people,
they actually said, you know, I'm
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going to any tact five mines.
And what I realize in that specific occurrence
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I was I was representing a company
that was called Strie Com and I think
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they've been a quil since and all
that. So I can probably mention your
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name and it was a long time
ago. And STRIE COM when B to
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be, then they stop going B
to be and then they won't be to
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be again. And I walked as
an SDR for them when they went be
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to be again. But no one
told me that two years before that they
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actually left thousands of prospect thousands of
clients worldwide with Palettes of kids in the
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office, and then you send them
an email saying, look, you know
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what, we're going to stop doing
big be now. So forget about the
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service, forget about this, forget
about that. We do we can focusing
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on something else. See You later
and thanks for your custom. So I
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had to pick up all that and
I was not understanding why people were saying
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no to me. We could see
all my others, are colleague working on
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those other compaign with other our clients
being successful. I was like, what's
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from? And as soon as I
understood that, I incorporated it in my
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message and I managed to speak about
it. So I managed to tackle the
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objection, the nonspoken objection, and
I think as yeah, I've always been
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a big advocate of if you want
to learn how to sell to someone on
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the storms, what's happening in their
life. It's not about you, it's
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not about your product. In fact, nobody cares about all that. People
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care about themselves. So going on, there some what's happening for them.
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Go and tackle those nonspoken objection.
What is it that people don't like in
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the approach? What you should not
do and adapts. Look in the mirror,
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change, don't take anything that people
are telling you for granted and try
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to adapt for every single conversations.
Yeah, big, big vounerful that looking
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for. We're getting to the D
NFL conversation. We took a little bit
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00:23:06.069 --> 00:23:08.069
longer than expected to there, but
I think we both got a little bit
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excited about some of the big recover
ut. So what we do at this
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point of the conversation? We always
ask our guests for what is the best
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way to get in touch with them. So if any of our audience would
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like to engage. We spend desk
and put. Then she discussed your solution
385
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or p've got any French, German, Israeli start up sales guy that are
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potentially, you know, looking at
international move and conquering the US market?
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Basically, if anyone wants to get
in touch with you to further that conversational
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fee, what's the best way to
get all of you? Yeah, so
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if any companies that are looking at
Pendersk as a product or service, they
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00:23:42.480 --> 00:23:48.920
can go to spend deskcom, as
spandeskcom, and they can book in a
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point with anyone of our reps.
if anyone would like to speak to me
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00:23:51.680 --> 00:23:55.279
directly about things like sales go to
market, it's the best way to getting
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00:23:55.319 --> 00:23:57.829
contact is through Linkedin. Just send
me a request and the message and I'll
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00:23:57.869 --> 00:24:02.349
try my best to reply. Alternatively, you can contact me by my email
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00:24:02.470 --> 00:24:07.430
on Alfie at spendskcom and Olfa Alfie. That's wonderful. Well, once again,
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00:24:07.509 --> 00:24:11.579
mini things for your time to day. It was absolutely a pleasure to
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have you on the show. Thank
you very much. Likewise, you've been
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00:24:14.660 --> 00:24:19.140
listening to BEDB revenue acceleration to ensure
that you never miss an episode subscribe to
399
00:24:19.180 --> 00:24:22.660
the show in your favorite podcast player. Thank you so much for listening.
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00:24:22.700 --> 00:24:23.809
Until next time,
