Sales Transformation

All right. Welcome to another episode of Sales Transformation brought

to you by Ledium. I'm your host, Colin Mitchell. And today I've got Chris Parker on.

Yeah. And, and you mentioned something earlier that I'm curious, cause, um,

you know, all companies, uh, you know, lots of

changes, uh, have to be willing to be adaptable. Um,

and you kind of mentioned that the team is, um, kind of used to

that. So curious, you know, with a fully distributed team, you

know, working through, you know, different things and, and being adaptable, you

know, what are some things that, um, you have done to kind of build a

Yeah. You know, again, I think what

it really comes down to is just having

the right type of people on the team. Honestly, I think, you

know, it's important that you're able to kind

of, you know, cultivate that

type of team by not only hiring externally,

you know, the right people, but also promoting and developing the

people that are working really well in terms of

not only their performance but also from a cultural perspective. And

that really lean into those types of activities that do

help, you know, the team connect. So that's

certainly been something that I'm very proud of is the fact

that we've made several promotions over the last three years. And

it continues to be something that's really important for us to

make sure that again, you know, we can keep that knowledge within

the walls of our team, but also just lean on the people that

have brought us to where we are from not only a performance perspective,

Yeah. And where is the team kind of spread out?

Like what does the team kind of look like today? You know,

Yeah. So, yep.

Yeah, so we actually do have a

global client base. So when

we first started to scale the team, we

did orient ourselves a little bit more towards the East

Coast and central

time zones, just to make sure that we did have coverage for

the prospects and customers that are in Europe. Um,

so I would say, you know, we definitely skew to towards

the East coast. Um, but we do have, uh, sales reps

and, um, solutions architects across the country in

the U S and then, um, we recently brought in. Uh, leadership,

um, to help us scale out, uh, Mia, uh, specifically in

the UK. And they're also going to help us grow

into the APAC regions as well. So

that's kind of the next phase of growth. And that was really the most exciting

kind of development over the last few

Yeah. And is there anything, um, that you could

share, you know, I know selling into different countries and

stuff, right. There's different cultures, uh, different ways of doing business.

Um, any learning curves that you've kind of hit

along the way of, you know, having a global customer base.

Um, and then also now, you know, hiring leadership, you

Yeah, so again, I think the

fact that we have very strong product market fit really helps

us in many ways, and it sort of feels like a cheat code

in sales, but we definitely do.

you know, that has served us really well. So, you know,

as it relates to how we're able to scale

when we do have strong product market fit is that

we're able to meet the customers where they already are. So

being that we have had a global client base has

really helped us just make decisions that are a little less risky

as it relates to actually putting boots on the ground and staffing

up the team in the physical locations of

that audience. But again, it really just goes back to

even when we were scaling US, making sure that we had time

zone coverage so that we could optimize towards

the buying experience and make sure that we were

doing our best to kind of serve the demand that

we had. And that's what we continue to do. So,

again, being methodical about that has definitely helped

us out. And again, you know, you're able to minimize

risk by already having that customer base. But not

only that, we actually not only had customers, but

we did have a global customer success

team to serve those customers. So ideally,

that is kind of the order that

I would recommend. Again, it really starts

with product market fit. But if you can first actually

have customers outside of the region that you're starting

with, and then focus on supporting those customers so

that they do refer other prospects and customers to

your business, then you're in a pretty good spot to

start adding some reps. So what we did is we actually added

two ICs, two account executives, in

the London area. for about six months just

to kind of explore, you know, what the communication would be

with a team that was a little bit more spread out. And after,

you know, ramping them up, we brought in the leadership,

the second and first line leadership there to help us

really, you know, double down and build out that strategy

Yeah. Yeah. Well, Chris, it's been, it's been awesome

having you on. I'm just kind of curious if you have any final

thoughts as we wrap up, you know, for sales leaders that are trying

to scale globally or trying to, you know, get into new markets or

expand their team into other markets. And then where's the

best place for people to connect with you or find out more about customer customer

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I think, you

know, again, my final thoughts would be. definitely center

your strategy around your customers. It

sounds a bit cliche, but it truthfully is

the way to go. If you're doing anything other than

being customer-centric, then it's really self-serving. And

it's really a very big bet that not

a lot of companies are able to get perfectly right.

And of course, you know, nothing's going to be perfect, but

you always want to kind of minimize the risks. So

by centering your decisions around your customers and

your audience, you're in pretty good shape to minimize

risks. So that would be my kind of parting

words, if you will. And then you could definitely find me on LinkedIn. And

customer.io is our URL. So please check

Awesome. We'll drop the link there in the show notes to make it easy for everybody. Thanks

again, Chris, for coming on the show. Appreciate it. If you enjoyed today's episode,

please share the show with your friends, write us a review, help us

so we can reach more sellers and sales leaders to transform the way that