Expanding your business into the US market can be a transformative step, but only if you ensure your go-to-market strategy has the right foundations. A critical part of this strategy is building out an in-market US sales capability, not only hiring the right people but also giving them the right tools to sell your solutions. We ask Brett Pentz, ECI’s Growth Specialist for North America, where he has seen management teams do this well and what are the key considerations.
1. Why should you win in the US market?
Because the US is such an attractive market, it can be easier to focus on the benefits to the business of you being there, rather than to your potential customers. Many businesses make the faulty assumption that their solution will immediately translate to the US. Leadership teams need to have a clear view as to product-market-fit, why you have a right to win customers in what can be a different market, and what subtle components of product localisation might be needed. This first step is crucial and will have a benefit when you go out to hire roles and can explain the potential. At CPOMS, we spent time and effort to conduct substantial interview and survey research with prospective buyers and users to understand their needs when it came to school safety software. This allowed the business to prioritise some small but critical changes to their marketing collateral and product to be successful with US school districts.
2. Where should you sell?
One of the ways I help management teams with US expansion is deciding where they should first launch or which new regions to enter, in particular where to open offices. There are several factors that feed into that decision from the presence of ideal customer profiles to logistics to total costs, but the availability of potential talent, including sales, is a key consideration. Moneypenny is a great example, where operating from Metro Atlanta has proven to be target-rich in the legal, healthcare, home services, and other businesses that they serve and talent-rich in recruiting the sales team and other roles.
It’s also important to understand what a competitive compensation package looks like by metropolitan area, while remembering that not only will the US often have much higher salary expectations than Europe, but it can also vary dramatically from one location to the next. You will also need to consider the full compensation package, including commission targets, retirement accounts, employee stock options, health insurance, remote work flexibility – and much more, all in line with expectations of that local market. You may need to be prepared to pay up; trying to undercut a market you’re trying to break into is unlikely to deliver a long-term return on expansion.
3. Are you being sold to?
Assessing sales talent in any country is inevitably difficult – they’re just so good at selling themselves! But this may be more true in the US than anywhere else based on my travels. It is important to get a good feel for multiple candidates so you can do a proper side-by-side comparison, rather than comparing to your UK sales team. It’s also important to align your hiring process to your company culture, assessing for behaviours and values, rather than just looking at historic numbers. Hiring into a US office that is establishing itself in the market is more akin to hiring into a startup, so the skills to hire for should be different with those first US hires. The more that individuals from your business, or a partner like me, can spend in the market to try and reference and get to know salespeople before a hiring process, the greater the chances of successfully being able to find and attract the right talent. Better yet, go to a relevant conference or event for target customers in the US, and observe firsthand who is effectively selling in your industry.
4. Who should be your first hire?
It is easy to imagine that one superstar hire who knows everyone in the industry can forge an entire sales function, but that assumption can be an expensive mistake. Not only do you add high cost into a function that is just getting started, but often a different level of hustle and hunger is needed when trying to build something from the ground up versus operating within a larger enterprise. What an individual can do at one company may well not translate to your business that is nascent in a new market. These individuals can be introduced once networks and brand reputation already have a foothold, and operations are established to set them up for success. Moreover, we have found businesses should be open and prepared to be flexible when the right person is identified, even if the timing isn’t exactly right. At Peoplesafe, the right answer was not to try to find a salesperson that worked for a large US competitor, but rather to find someone that was effectively selling a completely different type of technology solution to the same types of buyers that fit into Peoplesafe’s go-to-market strategy.
5. Where are the leads coming from?
A sales team needs high quality lead generation to be able to sell your product, and this is especially true in the competitive US market. Word of mouth takes a long time, so you will need to allocate significant marketing budget, and create a seamless process for lead qualification that means teams are focussing their efforts on those most likely to convert. It is critical to map that process to build an effective sales and marketing engine from awareness to qualification to conversion. Don’t be in a rush to hire a US sales lead, but rather take the time to rebuild this engine to reflect each high-priority US customer segment. Then, once you have established a sustainable pipeline of qualified leads, you can bring in a US salesperson that is now set up for success.
