Ever wondered how a Silicon Valley insider transitions to mastering the European market's diverse tapestry? Seth Olsen, country manager for UKI and the Nordics at MicroStrategy, joins me for a riveting discussion that promises to unlock the secrets of navigating the complex world of international sales.
Ever wondered how a Silicon Valley insider transitions to mastering the European market's diverse tapestry? Seth Olsen, country manager for UKI and the Nordics at MicroStrategy, joins me for a riveting discussion that promises to unlock the secrets of navigating the complex world of international sales.
Welcome to the sales management podcast, your source for actionable sales management strategies and tactics. I'm your host, Coach CRM co-founder, Corey Gray. No long intros, no long ads. Let's go my guest today at five o'clock in the afternoon from London, England, Seth Olson. How are you, Seth?
Speaker 2:Great Corey, great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. So Seth and I have known each other for more than 10 years 10 years or so and he left us to go to Europe and now he's the country manager of UKI and the Nordics over at MicroStrategy. So I guess now we're we're separated across the pond.
Speaker 2:Indeed indeed.
Speaker 1:All right. So I think that the topic of this show today. I want to talk about how you went from inside sales in San Francisco to a country manager in Europe, which is something that folks might be aspiring to do. Let's start with this what inspired you to want to work internationally?
Speaker 2:A bit of chance and luck and timing. But then so the kind of the back story behind it, of course, is I was in inside sales at SDR at the time at BERS in San Francisco, got a short term placement to come over to London, get the SDR program started here in London, and so initially it was just kind of that, oh, this is something cool and foreign and different. And then, once I got over here, what really inspired me to stay beyond kind of the professional development side of it was just the really the complexities in terms of cultures and the differences between selling from one country to the other and as much as I liked selling and to multiple states in the US. You know there's something about selling to multiple different countries across Europe. That's very appealing. Is it really that different?
Speaker 1:Texas, minnesota, new York, california aren't those countries, or we're not as different as we think we are Geographic wing. There's not much difference.
Speaker 2:You know, if we're looking at the spaces in between culturally, language wise there's some key, noticeable differences when you're looking at states versus states and countries versus countries. Ok, so it sounds like the way that you're looking at it is.
Speaker 1:It was just a big challenge and you said I want to try this and see if I'm up for it. Exactly OK, so out of the gate. What was the hardest part? Oof out of the gate and kind of in the context of at the time.
Speaker 2:I was building an SDR team and that was really my first task at first, at the time when I first came over here building the SDR team across Europe and across Amia but also APAC. At that point We'll get into APAC way down the line because that's a whole nother story. But just if we look at Europe and Amia, I think it's a really interesting story. But just if we look at Europe and Amia, it was all about language skills.
Speaker 2:You know, and we're working in San Francisco it's not even something you really talk about in the interviews. You know either you can speak the languages or not. But when you know you're working across multiple countries, having that language skills but also having you know you're still looking for A players for those positions that fit all of your other hiring criteria, then you had the language skills on top of that and your talent pool goes down and down and down. So you know, the recruiting for those different language skills became a huge factor and so there's really specific ones as well. You know, if you look in Germany, you know they're looking for someone not only who speaks German but speaks a particular type of German business German, if you will.
Speaker 1:How many people speak business German? Is that a common thing or is that a?
Speaker 2:Full transparency. I don't think they call it business German.
Speaker 1:Sure, but we, you know, as Americans, we can make up our own labels for people, right, of course?
Speaker 2:of course, but no, and you know there's added complexity because we were building out at our SDR hub in the UK looking for German speakers, so the pool was rather small. But you know, once you apply those filters and start to look at candidates that meet those filters, eventually you do have success and find the right people.
Speaker 1:OK, so you're evaluated in the language skills for somebody who speaks a language that you don't speak. Let's start with that how do you? Because you can't just say do you speak business German?
Speaker 2:This is and this is, you know, whether you're looking at this at the time. Of course we're talking about when I was building out an SDR hub, but also now, you know, in when I'm in field sales leadership and covering not only the UK, but obviously predominantly English speaking, but also Nordics. It's all about a lot of hiring internationally has to do with leveraging your full team. So obviously I couldn't, you know, validate a person's language expertise in German or Swedish or Norwegian. But if you're lucky enough to have that water network, maybe you have an SDR in place or an HE in place already in that country and they can help and be part of the interview process. Or you have someone else a consultant, a solution engineer already in country or speaks that language. That becomes vital to incorporate the full team into the hiring process.
Speaker 1:Got it. So you're looking internally inside your company and you're saying who has? I'm just going to keep saying business German, because this is fun who in the company speaks business German? Is it on the sales team, the product team, the executive team, whatever it is and being able to incorporate them as one asset in the hiring process? That's what you're saying.
Speaker 2:Of course of course. And there are gaps. You know there are ways you can fill that gap if you don't have that person of language expertise in your company. You know working with local recruiters and agencies who can please qualify that. But you know, if you're fortunate enough to have that resource in your company, be sure to utilize it.
Speaker 1:Love it. And then, in terms of top performer, how do you evaluate someone from different countries? Are there nuances there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes and no. There certainly are in terms. So you know, when we're looking at top performers, we're looking at a players, we're looking for all the classic things PhD, ice and you still really can approach those in the same fashion that you would in English speaking role, for example.
Speaker 1:Wait, what are? I don't understand what you're saying. What are?
Speaker 2:PhD and ice, we'll get into it. Yeah, it's a PhD.
Speaker 1:I was like, wait a second. You all, you almost have really smart sales people in Europe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course. Of course, PhD is only no. But you know some of the criteria we use to hire. A micro strategy currently is, you know, and none of this is secret sauce or anything like that. A lot of other playbook companies replicate it. But if you look at PhD persistence, heart, desire you know what does this person have the persistence, heart and desire to succeed, not only in this role, in their career, etc. Ice intelligence, coachability, character and experience. So this is a little bit broader than kind of the qualitative stuff that PhD looks at, but it also looks at, okay, intelligence and experience. You might be able to gather that from a CV, but then you look at coachability and character and has this person overcome, you know, big setbacks in their professional career? Are they actively seeking feedback throughout an interview process, providing examples of when they seek feedback in their current role? There's there's lots of different ways that we will quiz the candidates on this.
Speaker 1:I love it Because, at the end of the day, we're all humans. Chris boss, the guy that read never split the difference. He has the same. He says look, we all have a limbic system. Because people push back on him and they say, oh, it's different in my country. Well, they're all human beings, they all have a limbic system, they're all emotional creatures and, while some cultural norms might be different, the things that you're talking about are going to be standard and things that you can evaluate for across cultures. It sounds like.
Speaker 2:Of course, of course, and the questioning might change or how you get to the ultimate evaluation of that might change. You know, for example, some cultures are. You know they're not going to share as much, they might be more concealed, but through questioning and opening up you can certainly get to to see how they stack up in the criteria.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So that's got to be a challenge when you're evaluating culture fit, because there's got to be. I know there are because I've done a lot of business in Europe and Asia not nearly as much as you have, but there's countries and you notice, wow, this group of people talks way more than this group of people, for example, maybe the folks from the UK versus the folks from Germany. The forwardness and directness might be a little bit different. How do you evaluate for culture fit, knowing that there are certain characteristics and maybe it's not of everybody but of many folks within a culture, so you're not getting some kind of false signal and saying, oh, that person's not very outgoing when they come from a country where it's not culturally appropriate to be outgoing in a initial interview.
Speaker 2:One of the tactics, because culture fit, you know. There I mean that that person's culture fit into that market. Obviously one part of it. Then there's culture fit into your company. Oh, so now you've got to.
Speaker 2:You've got to guys to do things to evaluate kind of the culture, fit into their own market. You know that comes with a lot of assumptions but in terms of matching to culture, fit within the organization and the company. I'm a huge fan of storytelling and so you know, if you're going through and you're in an interview or hiring process where you're asking, you know, walk me through your latest net, new win or walk me through you know you mentioned this deal just now, walk me through that deal. Who was the EB of that deal? Did you have a champion? Did you build them? Just kind of quizzing them on deals and getting them to story tell. I find that is the biggest way that the people who might be hesitant to open up at the beginning generally open up. Everyone loves talking about themselves and what they did, so it's through that storytelling that you can start to get some information into that.
Speaker 1:Love that. I want to rewind a little bit and look at what your experience was when you first went overseas as it relates to the headquarters. So we recently had Carl Carell on here to talk about building a company in Europe. He did it from the European perspective because he was in Sweden and built the Get Accept team in San Francisco and then Europe. You were sent away from headquarters to go do it on your own and you also weren't the co-founder of the company. So your experience was substantially different and since Burst isn't around anymore, we can probably talk openly about this. You were in San Francisco, you got sent to Europe. What was your relationship like with headquarters and how did that impact your ability to do the job? Well, and if somebody is getting sent away from headquarters to a faraway land, what advice would you give them to make sure they're set up for success?
Speaker 2:It's a really good point and it's also a key determining factor for success, whether it's on an individual perspective or for that organization's success in Europe or other international emerging markets. The Burst experience I was fortunate enough where I did work a year or two at Burst in that headquarters. So I made all those connections internally that then when it came time to move to the UK and help build out the business for Europe, I had all the connections where I could go back to this person in product or this person in marketing and say, hey, we're dealing with this problem locally. Have you come across this or do we have any customers in this vertical working on this use case? But then that was my time at Burst. I was fortunate to have had that connection. I think I had that connection before but also kind of resubmitted the importance of that connection with HQ.
Speaker 2:Because if we fast forward to my time at MicroStrategy and or just apply a more general lens to it, when you're building out of the business in Europe, a lot of what you start with is okay, what's our ideal customer profile? And because each and every country in Europe has its own verticals and industries that they're strong in. So we want to figure out where do we sell, where do we hire, and being able to connect that back. Because the reality is that majority of the software companies we work for have an HQ in the US. But being able to connect back to the not only just the leaders but even individual contributors back at HQ helps and builds a foundation for any European strategy. So that connection is extremely vital. So if you find yourself in a situation where you work for a European arm of an American company, that connection's not there, but big red flag.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got to have the support from the home base, so is this one of the reasons why you'd mentioned earlier not on the show, but before the show there's an assumption that people go from the US to the UK first. It seems logical because, well, I guess a lot of us came from there.
Speaker 2:Hey, they speak.
Speaker 1:English and it's England, so that's kind of where our language came from. Is that the right first move? Or are there examples that you've seen just from your peer group and other folks around where you say, wow, this type of business should really not go to the logical English speaking place. They should probably go to a different country to start, for some specific reason?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think first up across the pond in the UK is the tried and tested approach for any business expanding from the US into European and international markets. Big portion of that, of course, language skills, but also if you're basing your operations in and around London, going back to when we were just talking about hiring German speakers from London that could speak a particular type of German. One of the great things about London is it's a very international city. So if you are trying to build your operations, first stop in UK, in London even. You could look at Dublin now as emerging as one of those cities as well, but it's a predominantly English speaking country or city, as in London, but you have a broad base of Spanish speakers, french speakers, german speakers. It's a very international city. So it's the logical first step.
Speaker 2:But I do think it is important when companies are expanding internationally to say, okay, that's the logical one, that's what everyone's done before, a lot of people do before. But is that the best? And I'll tell you why. I think that's worth looking into. A lot of it comes back to your ideal client or customer profile and, after you've succeeded and had some success in the US, who are you selling to? Because if you're coming over and you're a software that helps financial services companies come to London and sell there, but if you're looking, if you're a software company that supports manufacturing use cases, maybe you want to start in Germany and so forth, and you can, because each and every of the markets has a unique segment that they're stronger in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting, and I think that also ties into the idea that we call it AMIA, which stands for Europe, middle East and Africa. But now you're talking about the difference between the UK and Germany. So is AMIA even, or is that just an oversimplification that somebody came up with so they could have a spot on the map? That's not the US.
Speaker 2:Yeah, amia it's a broad stroke and companies the startup or the scale up phase typically will address AMIA as one market. But of course, as the organization grows we talked about all the differences between Germany, switzerland, uk, all of those they go even further when you look into Africa or Middle East. So you kind of start off covering the broad strokes of AMIA and then, as the organization grows, you split out the regions more and more for each of the reasons we just discussed.
Speaker 1:Did you guys grow into the Middle East or in Africa? Are you there today?
Speaker 2:From a micro strategy perspective, yeah, we've grown where we have a hub in Dubai, we've got hubs in Sydney and Melbourne and Singapore, and grown internationally to not only just the AMIA and APAC but also have separate regional hubs within that.
Speaker 1:Got it. So in Europe, what's forecasting like? Is it similar to what it's like in the US, or is it harder to forecast? Easier to forecast from predicting what revenue is going to be for a specific period of time perspective?
Speaker 2:Great Part of why I'm selling it. Answer this question actually is I've been gone for 10 years, Corey. I forget what the US is doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you're on the calls with the US colleagues. Is your CRP saying you and me? Are people never forecast right? Us is always spot on. Are you saying, hey, jokers, I'm always on my number? You all have variants.
Speaker 2:I think we all deal with the same problems. There's certainly European factors that also we need to take into consideration with forecasting. For example, we're in Q3 right now, it is summer, and any deal that is being forecasted from my team in the Nordics ie Norway and Sweden when the countries go on holiday or vacation for minimum two months, I am highly questioning those deals. What is the compelling event? Is our champion even working this month, this quarter? So there's certain little market elements like that that you have to take into consideration. But broadly speaking, I don't think there's a high degree of variance when forecasting international versus US, at least not from my experience, that's a great example.
Speaker 1:I've got two deals that are paused right now because they're in the Nordics and it's summer vacation time. Indeed, but you know what? They deserve it? Because it is so beautiful up there in the summertime. November is not so nice. No, no, oh man. So what's the personal life been like? How has it changed from San Francisco to living in London?
Speaker 2:I mean, one of the reasons I think I've ultimately stayed in London and stayed abroad despite pushing the professional stuff aside for a second is just so. I mean, london's amazing UK is good, but just having the ability to take weekend trips oh, I'll go to Spain for the weekend. I've got a Portugal for the weekend. Now I'll go visit. I've got family in Norway, I'll go up there for the weekend. But just having that kind of international experience is what keeps me here.
Speaker 1:Is what Spain's an hour away.
Speaker 2:An hour and a half, two hours An hour and a half two hours. An hour to Paris and 45 minutes to Amsterdam.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's nuts, especially for somebody from Texas, because I feel like you could just overlay. I think that Texas is bigger than Spain.
Speaker 2:Oh, I went to figure the price.
Speaker 1:France too. Yeah, it's fascinating because all of those places are so close, because I always look at the Northeast and I say, wow, everything's so close together. And then you've got the same thing, only instead of cities and states and countries.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's gotta be it.
Speaker 2:So you're passing so having that adventure side of things is really what keeps me here at the moment.
Speaker 1:And you've got the passport send-gen zone, so you don't have to stamp it. You can just go or no, because you guys brexit it. So now you have to immigrate to all those different countries.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course I sell my American passport, that's right and since I've moved here you didn't fully leave us. No, no, no, of course not, but I have had to add pages to my passport. Let's put it that way Love it To accompany all the stamps.
Speaker 1:That's great. That's great, and you teased out something earlier. You mentioned APAC. Have you done work in APAC or are you just having to teach?
Speaker 2:Marjorie. So during my time at Burris when I was building out the SCR team for the whole of the international market at that time and I did it for a period of two years we had the hub in London, which we had between four to six SCRs, but then we also had a couple of remote SCRs, between two to three SCRs in APAC as well. So I wouldn't say I'm an expert in the market, but I've dabbled.
Speaker 1:You dabbled, you dabbled, okay. Another thing I'm curious about what percentage of your team's time today so you're managing the closers, the salespeople, what percentage of their time is out in the field shaking hands, meeting with people in conference rooms, versus doing inside sales from the office or their house?
Speaker 2:It's a good question and of course there was this such thing as COVID in the pandemic and we switched to fully virtual remote and then we shifted our way back. I would just, I guess 30% Now is that adequate? You can always say you know there should be more face to face, but we've probably around 30% of it is and actually as a leader I'm actually fairly comfortable with that, as long as with that other 70% they're spending on prospecting and PG.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, as they're doing prospecting and PG. How do you manage field marketing in such a diverse territory? Do you have folks that can go out and run events alongside, because that's a great way to help field sales generate some pipeline?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'd say it's in. I'll answer that question by addressing marketing, but also one other thing that's vital in that, which is so for field marketing. We've gone through periods where we have someone manage the full region of Northern Europe, now micro strategy from London, and we've also had times where we had vocal field marketing people as well. I think both strategies work so long as the person is willing to travel and go around. But field marketing is important, but also partners.
Speaker 2:Partners are extremely important, as you look, in the Europe and international markets, and a lot of that has to do with everything we talked about at the beginning. When it comes to, you know, understanding that culture, understanding the language, and you know these countries. For example, I'll pick on the Nordics because it's part of my remit at the moment, but you know there's a lot of companies in Norway and Sweden who have seen a plethora of American companies come over here, try to sell to them. Either, you know, they boom or they bust, and then things change, and so what they're looking for is the ability to take advantage of those emerging technologies and softwares, but also have a reliable rock. That's it in the city next to them. That's a five minute drive down the road, that they can trust and that they know that the partner is not going to go anywhere, even if the software company does.
Speaker 1:Well, that's interesting because they're sitting there in Helsinki working out of a building that was built in the 1400s, and San Francisco didn't even exist until 1849.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, that's fascinating. So partners are very key as far as expanding and having that local presence.
Speaker 1:How is it an American company get in with a partner in the European region?
Speaker 2:It's a lot of. I mean, there's a. You know why do the partners, or why do the customers trust the partners? The partners work?
Speaker 1:No, we do that because the customers trust the partners, because they're the local presence. They've been there forever. They know that they're going to at least be a good filter and have the customers long-term interest in mind, because the software companies will come and go. If I'm a software company and I want to get in with a partner so I can have that ambassador for the local customers, is that an easy market to get into to get the partners to work with me, or is that something where they're going to be very selective and it's going to take time and I've got to build a lot of trust with them?
Speaker 2:You have to build a lot of trust with them. That's a key part.
Speaker 1:And building that trust with the partners and people buy from people, people partner with people and I've probably way more way more true on the people partner with people, because people buy something they need, because it solves a problem, if it seems to be trustworthy. But the partnership is way deeper than a transaction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know a good point to illustrate this is a lot of the same partners we're working on it with first at the time I'm still working with today at MicroStrategy, and you know whether that be in the UK or in other regions. But just having that longevity of trust and working with them. The technologies change but the people remain the same. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1:I love it. What else do we need to know about Europe?
Speaker 2:Whatever we talked about we talked quite a bit around ICP, talked quite a bit around hiring, what to look for, what to do. I think what's really important is also, you know, if you're a US software company, expanding is just and this kind of touches back to our connection with HQ but just the agility that's required to expand into Europe at certain pieces and certain in certain aspects, Because I, you know, we always build out a model. This is what we're targeting, this is how many customers are we going to buy? But there's a lot of individual market differences in each of the countries and that's probably something that fundamentally changes the business model more rapidly than, say, you know, the economies in two different European countries are more volatile on their own than two different states within the US. So you have to really be agile as to how you adopt your growth model, your business model.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you also. I think the other piece on that on the agility front is you have to be able to anchor in, because if I want to fire somebody, how long does that take?
Speaker 2:It depends on the country, but yeah, and as important as the how is in terms of the US, in the US it's 1041.
Speaker 1:If I really wanted to fire somebody, I could have it done in most states by 1042. And I'm good.
Speaker 2:France 1042 or At least six months, and that's really why the who we hire is very important.
Speaker 1:You can get divorced in the US faster than you can fire somebody that works at your company in France.
Speaker 2:I would. If I was a betting man, I'd bet on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that just makes the hiring structure and strategy that much more important. If anybody listening doesn't have a formal hiring framework, I've got a course on it Hiring salespeople I'll give it to you for free Email. Free stuff at coachsierremcom Free stuff at coachsierremcom. I said no long ads. I didn't say no ads. Right, yeah, that's that's so. You really have to make a commitment that this is, this is a person that we're going to work with, and if it doesn't work out, then there's a lot of liability that we have. But we think the upside's worth it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's, it's, it's very you know, it's stuff like probation period extremely important to qualify your new hire in that probation period time, because if you exceed that it's extremely different, difficult to move on.
Speaker 1:How long do you probation period specifically last?
Speaker 2:And part of the intricacies of, you know, working across Europe is each and every country is extremely different in terms of labor laws. So some are six months, some are 12 months, and then you know some countries. It might take six months to let go of someone, some might take longer, but each and every one has its own different labor laws. Even if we look to you know, in my region today, norway's is different than stock or Sweden's and it takes a while to adapt and get to learn each of those. But the key thing is you actually pay attention to them.
Speaker 1:Well, we started this off by saying that you moved over there for the challenge man. It sounds like there's a lot of different challenges, a lot of nuances. You've learned a lot and you've obviously been really successful in it. So great job on that. Is there anything that you want to plug today?
Speaker 2:No, just thanks for having me on for it and always a pleasure speaking with you and yeah, if anyone else has questions, obviously get in touch with Corey, get in touch with myself.
Speaker 1:Love it. Seth Olson MicroStrategy. This is the sales management podcast. If you want to check out what we're doing at Coach Sierra and we got a free version head over to coachsierracom. Check it out. Subscribe to us on Spotify and Apple. We're coming at you at least twice a week with new episodes. See you soon.