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Tom Glason: Hello, Stephanie!
Tom Glason: Can you hear me? Stephanie?
Hi, Tom! Yes, I can hear you. How are you?
Tom Glason: Good? How are you?
Stephanie Landais: Good! Thank you.
Tom Glason: Amazing good to hear. Good to hear. Can you make me a Co host? So I can share my screen?
Tom Glason: Thank you.
Tom Glason: Okay, okay, awesome.
Tom Glason: Let me just do that.
Tom Glason: Can you see that?
Stephanie Landais: Yes, I can see your screen
Tom Glason: right? Good. We are set perfect. We have a hundred 70 registered. How many? What percent do we normally see that turn up?
Stephanie Landais: We see around
Stephanie Landais: half 50, 60, I would say, yes.
Stephanie Landais: And how does 1 70 compare to your typical webinar? How many sign ups do you normally get? It’s good. We have between 50 to 300 depending. If we have many companies or one like today with you.
Tom Glason: So yeah, it’s good that’s great to hear. And love.
Anthony Rose: we’d love your questions. We’re going to kick off in just a moment. But if you’d like to introduce yourself, ask anything, tell us what you’d love to know about expanding in the Us. We’re going to cover all of that and more. But please let us know.
Anthony Rose: and we’ll give just a few moments more.
Tom Glason: Is that what you normally do? Or, yeah, give a moment or a rush?
Anthony Rose: All right. Hello, everyone, and welcome now for UK. Companies.
Anthony Rose: Uk’s a nice market. Europe’s a nice market, but the big banana is the Us. And we all think about including seed legal’s about incorporating, possibly in the Us. But certainly starting to sell to customers in the Us. Now, one of the key things that, it is said, is that, of course, when you want to start selling in the Us. You start building up a team in the Us. And the first
Anthony Rose: you make in the Us. Is a marketing person, and then later on, you realize the only thing that person could market is themselves. And why? Because
Anthony Rose: here in the Uk. You know people a bit more modest. They, you know, don’t. They’re not as effusive. And so when you meet people in the Us. And they’re selling themselves. It’s awesome. We’re going to be huge. It’s going to be amazing. And you bind the hype. And then you discover, actually, they’re not delivering. So today we’re gonna hear the tips, the secrets, all the things to do and not to do so that you can scale and sell in the us
Anthony Rose: from the experts. So, Tom, over to you.
Tom Glason: Thank you so much, Anthony, yeah. And your story about Marcus is being able to just sell themselves resonated with me. II have definitely had that experience. So good afternoon. Everyone. Thanks for joining us for this session on market expansion, with the with the focus being on expansion to the Us. I’m Tom Glson. I’ve spent 20 years, I think. Now, in B2B tech a decade of that time as a senior go-to-market leader within VC-backed SaaS companies.
Tom Glason: both in the UK and of course in in the US. And I think it’s fair to say that a lot of my my battle scars, and and probably my hair loss has come from trying to conquer the US Market. So I’m really glad SeedLegals and Anthony have given me the opportunity to share some of my my lessons learned with with you today. I’m also the founder of a UK arm of a community called Pavilion previously known as Revenue Collective. Some of you might have come across that. Now. The largest community in the world to go to market leaders. And then, finally, about 4 years ago I moved from being a full time revenue leader
to a CEO when I co-founded ScaleWise with my good friend Gavin, and also my wife. We exist to give B2B tech companies flexible access to community of world class go to market talent to help them accelerate growth. And we’ve onboarded about 350 experienced operators, and our clients essentially tap into that expertise on a flexible basis to help them quickly solve any go-to-market challenge that they might be facing. So if you’d like to learn more about what we do, or would like a free assessment of your go-to-market strategy and plans, you can email me at [email protected]. I will finish the sales pitch there. And without further ado, let’s let’s get started with the session.
Tom Glason: No, I think. Anthony did say this as we join, but I think there’s lots of people that have joined since we’d love to know who you are in the chat. So please let us know your company, your role in that company. And importantly, any markets that you’re currently present in today, and I’m sure some of you might be already present in the US. So do let us know in the chat. But I’m gonna crack on whilst you’re doing that because we’ve got a lot to get through. So here’s today’s agenda. I’m gonna start by taking you through my recommended us expansion roadmap and this is gonna lay out in detail the steps I believe you should take when thinking about expanding into the US. I’m also going to share a very personal story about how US expansion can go wrong. So yeah, I’ve definitely got some battle scars from that one and then I’m gonna introduce you to something called the horizon methodology. And how you can use this to think about go to market expansion. Then we’re gonna cover some common pitfalls I’ve seen when expanding into the US. Followed by answers to some of the most common questions that I receive about US Expansion. However, I’d also like to leave some time for questions that I may not have covered so my goal is to have some time at the end for Q&A if all goes well. But also I’m quite happy to take questions as we go through this, I’d much rather this becomes an interactive discussion rather than me, just sharing slides and talking at you. So at any moment, please just feel free to pop questions that you have into the chat. I’m sure Anthony might stop me, and you know, if we’ve got a kind of moment where we can cover those off. Then we will do so. If not, we’ll try and cover them off at the end.
Tom Glason: So that’s what we’re gonna be covering. Let’s dive in to start thinking about how to map out that journey from where you are today in your home territory to expanding into the US. And I’m sure we’ve got people in the UK. Maybe people across Europe, certainly people in France, but regardless of where you are about. Let’s think about that journey, and I spend a lot of the principles that I’m gonna cover today
could apply to most expansions into new territories. But I’m I’m focusing on the US because it is a market that I think European startups are most attracted to, due to the share size but also the access to to top venture investors over there as well. I’m also focusing on it because I’ve seen way too many companies fail trying to conquer the US and they generally burn through way too much capital and time trying to do this. So I said, I’ve got a first hand experience of this. I thought I would start by sharing a very personal story. And I’m not gonna mention the company name, but I joined as a VP of sales shortly after they raise their series A from a UK-based VC.
Tom Glason: it was a while ago now, we were probably one of the, I think the first investments that they’ve made, or maybe the second investment that they’ve made there are New fund I think it’s fair to say that their advice wasn’t always that well informed
Tom Glason: but anyway, we had a decent product market fit and traction in the UK and were being encouraged by our VC to expand to the US and at this point I think we had maybe a handful of clients in the US. I can’t remember, but I think maybe 4, 5 that somehow found us and and bought our solution. Clearly, very early adopters. They hadn’t been clients for that long, but the pressure to grow faster from all VCs meant that the US Market, you know, being 10 times bigger than the UK, Seemed really appealing, and I remember really well the the big debates that was happening in the boardroom about how we should expand into the Us. And there was lots of different views around the table. I had actually no experience at us expansion at the time, but I kind of instinctively felt that we should probably test the market out a little bit before investing too heavily. And one of our co-founders felt that he should move out there. He wasn’t. The CEO is another co-founder that he should move out there for a few months and hire maybe a couple of sales team members in the Us.
Tom Glason: Support that effort to win us customers. So anyway, off he went for our first Us. Expansion Mission.
Tom Glason: and 3 months passed and and we weren’t seeing the pipeline. All the customer growth that we were expecting. I think our our Us. Based co-founder started to kinda grumble about the performance of the sales reps, and and I think the sales reps are grumbling around the product, missing key features that us customers wanted.
Tom Glason: And the challenge, though, was that the product and engineering team based in the UK.
Tom Glason: Have, you know, a pretty full roadmap of feature requests from Uk customers who at the time contributed most of our revenue, and I think this created just a bit of friction, probably between our co-founder, the 2 sales reps he had, and ultimately the product and engineering team. But anyway. 3 months past further, 6 months down the journey.
Tom Glason: and the Us. Is way behind, where the Board expected the business to be, and it was clear that our small Us. Team also felt pretty disconnected
Tom Glason: from the Uk headquarters, and that they, I think, probably lacked some support and and resources from the wider business. So another 3 months passing now 9 months in, and it was deemed that we hadn’t invested enough into the Us. Market or taking that market seriously enough.
Tom Glason: We need to now take a different approach.
Tom Glason: So at this point. oh, Vcs
Tom Glason: made a very firm statement
Tom Glason: and encouraged us to hire a senior leadership team in the Us. People who knew the market had the right accents. Has significant scaling experience. So we hired a Vp of sales.
Tom Glason: and the chief marketing officer in the Us. But not just anywhere in the US. In Silicon Valley. Of all places.
Tom Glason: probably the most expensive part in the Us. But for talent and office space.
Tom Glason: Now I’m gonna cover that kind of pros and cons of different Us. Locations for hiring, and later on. So so for now I’m just gonna continue this story. So we hide these leaders in San Francisco. They quickly built a a sales and marketing team over there. 3 months later it was clear that the Us. Contribution to revenue was still not looking that good, especially now given the high cost base
Tom Glason: that we had, and then another quarter later, and the board was starting to actually get quite worried about this. Us sales performance and the team that we’d we built out there.
Tom Glason: One more quarter and 2 million dollars spent later. and the decision was taken to let the Vp. Sales and the Cmo. Go from the business as well as the team that they’ve hired. So we were back to Square one
Tom Glason: 18 months after that original Us. Expansion effort, where our co-founder went out. There now, what went wrong? You probably think. Well, I think lots of things quite frankly, but one big one was the gaps in the product for the us market. It became clear that us customers
Tom Glason: had very specific products and feature requirements that we had massively underestimated. Ultimately, II just feel like we didn’t have product market fit, and there was more work to be done to localize that product in order to get there. We just hide the team way too early, and probably hide the wrong people a as well. So
Tom Glason: so 2 failed attempts, 2 million dollars wasted, and the board turned to me at that point
Tom Glason: and set Tom. We’d like you to take on global sales and marketing. and
Tom Glason: I kicked off the third attempt at winning us customers hopefully without breaking the bank
Tom Glason: any further.
Tom Glason: So what I’m about to talk you through now I appreciate. That’s a long ramble in a story. But I think it was important context, because what I’m about to talk you through now is the approach that I took.
Tom Glason: But this approach is also one that I’ve seen. Be successful with several of scale wise clients, too, and in my view, II think it’s the best and most cost effective way to win clients in the Us. And ultimately conquer that market, and then essentially 5 stages to this roadmap that I’m about to lay out for you. Highlighting the key contributors for each stage, and the considerations as you move through each stage as well.
Tom Glason: So I’ve built it up. Now, I’m gonna share the 5 stage roadmap. So
Tom Glason: first up wherever you’re based. And in this slide we’re going to assume you’re based in the Uk.
Tom Glason: You should start by initiating the journey to the Us. From your current base your current headquarters. So in this example, I recommend that you take your best sales. Development rep.
Tom Glason: I’m one of your best salespeople, and this could be an account. Exec more likely, maybe your head of sales, or even your CEO, if you’re still early stage, and you start trying to build a pipeline of deals and customers from your base.
Tom Glason: Before I move on, though, I want to just make sure that we all know what sales development, rep and account Executive are
Tom Glason: so. Who could tell me in the chat? What’s a sales development? Rep
Tom Glason: quick knowledge test on, go to market roles.
Tom Glason: sales development, rep. Anyone, know what they do lead. Gen. Nice one, Gavin. Absolutely. They are purely responsible for creating qualified pipeline for account execs. Who can tell me when account exec is? What do they do?
Tom Glason: Not Gavin again, please someone else? Gavin, too quick!
Tom Glason: They are the closest. Yes, they are taking the qualified pipeline from the sales development rep, and they are closing those deals now. It may seem counterintuitive to take your best Sdr. From your home territory, and someone seen you on the sales side and direct them to your new territory.
Tom Glason: But if you don’t, and it doesn’t work as well as you want, you’ll be left wondering if it was the market. That wasn’t right for you, or whether it was the people who were the problem. It’s another reason why the earlier stage companies it’s very common for the CEO to lead this effort, because it was they who created the home market from scratch. They, you know, probably have the most experience across the entire company of building a new market for your product
Tom Glason: from the ground up.
Tom Glason: But anyway, whoever you use, these folks are, gonna work together to start building some hypothesis on how best to approach the market and then start testing this out from your home market.
Tom Glason: Now it’s crucial at this stage that no matter how big or successful you are in your home market that you approach the Us. Or whatever new market you’re going after like a scrappy startup.
Tom Glason: You don’t want big, elegant, all encompassing plans that take months to to put together. You want to run this like your CEO, or whoever it was who did the first few deals in your home market, you know. However, they built the company in the first place.
Tom Glason: and that’s by coming up with hypothesis on who to sell to and how to sell to them, and then testing these out in the field as quickly as you can, measuring all the results you’re able to, and using that data to rapidly iterate on your plans.
Tom Glason: The first thing is to try and build pipelines. So map out target accounts. Probably a couple of 100 is to start with.
Tom Glason: map out the ideal persona profile within those accounts and then start trying to get meetings. You know, if you’ve had inbound from the Us. In the past.
Tom Glason: That you’ve maybe put in the back burner, assuming. There. Icp, that’s also a great place to start, or if you’ve got customers in the Uk. Or in your cool market. You have a presence in the Us. Or who even maybe based in the Us. Then time to start asking for some introductions. Just don’t, I think, don’t overestimate how far those intros are. Gonna get you? If you’re lucky they’re gonna get you in the room, which is great, but that may well be it. You’re gonna have to still do a lot of selling.
Tom Glason: Once you’ve mapped out your ideal customers and your other personas. Look at what other intros you can get again. Often it’s why the CEO is the best person to do this, because they often have the best network in the company, and I’ve usually found the intro is of the way into the first few deals in any market.
Tom Glason: So your Linkedin, your investors, your customers, your partners, whoever you can use.
Tom Glason: You need to use them to get those first few doors open for you in the US.
Tom Glason: Beyond that you’re starting from scratch call calling cold emailing Linkedin in. However, you run your outbound today
Tom Glason: and bear in mind that you may need to change the content of your emails to reflect the Us. Market more closely. You probably gonna need to iterate on that. Hopefully, you’ve got some idea how you know what some of those key changes might be, if not, try and get some advice from people who’ve sold into similar personas in the Us. And just don’t forget your spelling lots more zeds and fewer use. When you’re marketing and emailing into into the Us.
Tom Glason: So just a few more tactical considerations at this stage, this is still stage one.
Tom Glason: You’ll probably also need to adapt your working hours to give you that biggest time zone coverage. So when I did this stage one myself. I had my Sdr. On my Ae. Working at 2 Pm. Till the 10 Pm. Shift.
Tom Glason: Now, if you’ve got good potential market on the East coast. It can be a good option to start there, as you’re gonna have that wider overlap. And whoever you bring into this project, you’re probably gonna need to work out different targets and commission plans for them to reflect. Just the immaturity of your get a market in in the Us. You may wanna offer them a higher rate to commission, to perhaps or focus this commission on on winning new Logos
Tom Glason: and ultimately internalizing. You know those market learnings into the wider business, you know. High commission rate, I think, can also just help to sweeten the working hours a little. It can be quite hard working that 2 to 10 shift when there’s others that aren’t in the office, and I think don’t ask someone to do that every evening of the week, because it will get boring really quickly, maybe 2 or 3 days a week, and and then build from there. But whoever’s working on this project
Tom Glason: should also change their Linkedin profile to make it look like they’re in the Us. This is gonna help. If people decide to check you out. Also put some sort of us address on your website. So it looks like you have operations there, even if it is the Us. Address of your law firm. Maybe you can use a virtual office service or mail forwarding services. They’re pretty cheap to set up so you can establish your presence in the Us.
Tom Glason: Without the need for full incorporation. And to be clear, though at this stage I didn’t believe it’s essential to incorporate in the Us. If fake it till you make it. At this point you’re still learning. You’re still iterating, and you’re doing it in a scrappy way.
Tom Glason: Now I’ll talk about how to think about resource allocation in a moment. But for now the goal is to get meetings, run discovery calls, learn as much as you can about what’s working and what isn’t as quickly as possible. Measure all your metrics from email open response rate meetings built, qualified, close, right? And just continue to optimize what you’re doing and internalizing that feedback as you start to to close deals.
Tom Glason: I’m gonna take a quick pause before I move to Stage 2 just to see if we’ve got any questions in the chat. So someone has said, Here.
Tom Glason: where are we? I still say, couldn’t these 2 roles be done by the same person? So
Tom Glason: Elliot elan. I’m sorry if II haven’t got your name correctly. There, I think they can, if you’ve got an A that is particularly good at generating Pipeline.
Tom Glason: and you’re open to the typical feast and famine that can sometimes happen when you have an A that’s doing the full so full cycle of that of that sales process, because what often tends to happen is they spend, you know, good period of time to start with building pipeline in the Us. Then they’ve got enough pipeline. Now they’re closing that pipeline. They stop building pipeline, and then they’ve got to go back to building it again. So you have this kind of very lumpy
Tom Glason: revenue. I think you can get learnings more quickly, assuming you’ve got the resource to do it if you get even if it’s just a proportion of your Sdrs time under proportion of your see, you’ve just split those roles, and you’ve got them both focused on the things that hopefully, that that best that hopefully, that answers your question. Ben, is there not a research phrase before this stage? One where you consult with us consultants, target customers, potential partners.
Tom Glason: Yeah, I think, yeah, I think, Ben, that that that maybe is II think it depends on how
Tom Glason: much resources you’ve got and how serious you are about going into the Us. I certainly think advises can be great. And I’ll talk about one that I think is particularly good later in the in the webinar they can also be expensive. I think that actually getting a support from someone that really understands the Us. Market. That from a go to market standpoint is is really useful. We’ve done that actually, with quite a few of our scale wise clients.
Tom Glason: we have experts in the U. In the Us. And across Europe, and and they just paid for coaching hours and mentoring hours with that person to help them get the land of the land. So I think there is different ways of doing it, depending on your budget, and how serious you are. But I also think you could do a lot of learning and iteration just by doing this stage one as well. And build on your hypothesis. Jane, more questions coming in I’m gonna come back to them. If that’s okay, Noel and and Gene, I’m gonna get to Stage 2, and I will keep stopping as we go. So
Tom Glason: once you do start to close deals.
Tom Glason: you’ve gotta get case studies out quickly, as you can make sure guaranteed case studies are in your contracts as a default clause. If you don’t have that already, then as soon as you close, they’ll start referring to these deals in your sales motions. Put case studies in your sales decks.
Tom Glason: I’m referring to them in your meetings to give your prospects the comfort of us based social brief. It’s so so important to have that social proof go into the Us. And say, Hey, look at our wonderful client base in the Uk. It’s not gonna work with us customers. You need that social proof. I appreciate. It might take you a while to have kind of clear roi metrics for those customers in the Us.
Tom Glason: But you can create initial case studies that simply refer to the challenges you’re solving. With those new customers. Obviously, as soon as you get those really compelling Roi metrics which IAAA really important show that tangible value you’ve delivered to us customers. Get those case studies updated with that data. And on that point you’ll wanna over service. Your initial, Us. Customers, because the value they create the Roy they receive
Tom Glason: is gonna be the foundation for your next phase of growth in the Us. You may also need these, as your early kind of reference call customers for further prospects in the Us. So when a prospect says, Hey, I’d like to speak to a couple of us customers.
Tom Glason: You need to do whatever you can to make sure. Those first few customers you on board have an amazing experience. They see tangible value, and they’re willing to do those reference calls with you. So over invest, I think, in in that it doesn’t matter right now if if none of this is in any way scalable, the sales motion or the customer success motion, you’re still at the point of working out what works, not making it repeatable and predictable.
Tom Glason: You will like with the sales motion. Want to put your best Cs person on these new customers. II think that the same thing applies. You need to de-risk the person element of the new venture, so put the best person on it involve them in creating the strategy. Same goes for the sales side, and also, if you, if you need them to work, evenings will be on calls late in the day.
Tom Glason: I think. Just pay them a bit extra free in in whatever way you can. Don’t expect they’re gonna do it out. The goodness of their hearts. You might have really committed team members, but but trust me, it can get quite boring and and painful for people, so I do try and sweeten it for them, as I said earlier.
Tom Glason: and get your product team involved early with these customers as well. They should start attending meetings in the sales cycle. If there’s good stuff to be learned from these early meetings. This is, I think, a big mistake that we made in our first failed expansion effort. Make sure your product team gets involved in both the sales and the Cs motions early. Obviously, if their product changes, you already know, you need to make to get into the Us. They’ll already be working on those hopefully. But it can be a really powerful motivator, I think. For a product team if they’re
Tom Glason: there was a hearing, live firsthand, you know from customers how how they’re receiving the product.
Anthony Rose: So we’ve unpacked quite a bit there in those first 2 steps. So I’m gonna pause, Tom, can I help in? Can I hop in with a couple of observations and a question. So I loved your mentioned about. You know, making the website. You know us
Anthony Rose: labor without the you making sure there are no pound symbols. They’re all dollar symbols. I mean those things are key, and when we launch seed legals in France, a key thing for me was the French saw it as a French seed. Legal have come over here, and which then leads to an interesting other thing, which is
Anthony Rose: your yeah. UK. Site, which you might have started, might be filled with content that is designed for the UK. It might mention London people or London customers, whatever it might be.
Anthony Rose: So the question to you is, and then I’ll tell you what we did is, should you try to number one, replicate all content, which will be a massive amount of trouble to make a Us. Version number 2. Should you have the Us. Version? That kind of has some pages that are designed for us, and then just filled with all the others at our UK. Or should you have a different Us. Proposition? That is a small but perfectly formed subset of your site.
Anthony Rose: and the Us. Folks only see that even though you’ve got a lot more, maybe only some of your products off for the Us. Market. So tell me what you think, and then I’ll tell you what we what we did.
Tom Glason: My view is the last option there, Anthony, I think it’s a huge effort to overhaul your whole website, and to make it us centric, I think small and perfectly formed, is perfectly adequate when you are doing this level of kind of testing and a hypothesis, and trying to keep it relatively scrappy. I don’t want you to see legal, but that would be my advice
Anthony Rose: alright. Well, I’m delighted to say that’s exactly what we did, and the thinking was, it’s better that people see a subset of your offering that is perfectly formed that you can support, and that it doesn’t lead them to want all these other things that they just can’t have, because you haven’t put it in their market yet. So even if you’ve got, you know, 100 articles, and so on, and that this new audience won’t see it’s better than trying to explain which things are relevant to them and which are not
Anthony Rose: okay. So now the next question is.
Anthony Rose: if you do have a home page, that is, you know, in the Uk, you’ve got pound symbols, your insurance. We’re gonna save you pounds and so on. And now your Us. One obviously needs to be completely dollars and no mention of pounds. It needs to feel to your American audience that you are as us as anyone that you know lives in Texas. How do you not alienate
Tom Glason: your existing customers? You probably need 2 versions of the you of the All homepage and website. And then you need Geo targeting. And I’ll tell you what we didn’t. But before that. Maybe if we aren’t covering it further, what technologies might you use for your website to Geo target? And so on. Yeah, I can’t speak to Geo targeting on websites. And I’m sure the technology is is evolved a lot from
Tom Glason: 10 years ago, when I first had my failed expansion effort. I’m sure, Anthony, you can probably provide more recommendations on geotarting tech than I can.
Anthony Rose: Alright good. Well, then, I’ll tell you the answer, so you don’t need to spend time on it, which is, we use WordPress for our public website. There’s Maxmind, I think, which is a database, which is geo lookup. It’s available as a WordPress Plugin. So you can have people in each country. Seeing a version of your website, it takes a bit of effort to set up. We were unable to do that in Squarespace, Webform or other Cms. But WordPress Labrador haters
Anthony Rose: lets you do all of those things. So we have different versions of our website for each territory. Anyone coming from that territory will automatically get directed to the right version for them, and then to allow you to switch sites, and mostly, in fact, so that we can easily test without having to use a VPN. Which is important, their little country flags, so we can set Ireland or France, and so on.
Anthony Rose: and see that version of a site which also means that you know, if someone happens to find a Google, an article on Google that takes them to the other site because it’s a French article or something in our case, they can still find their way back again or jump back to it. So that’s the short piece on Geo targeting your website. And then you can create
Anthony Rose: those small and perfectly formed variants or alternative versions of your wordpress site. And if you have any questions on that, I can connect you with our team. That did that because a bit of work is needed to set it up alright, back to you. Thank you. I know there’s more questions coming in the chat. I’m going to get through this slide and then going to try and cover some of those off. So so stage 3, is all about taking that strap scrappy. Go to market effort
Tom Glason: and making it more repeatable and predictable. At this point your key contributions are still in the Uk or your call market, but you’re looking to achieve a level of consistency in that performance that can give you the confidence you need to start building out that initial team in the Us.
Tom Glason: And by this point you should be, I suppose, much clearer on your Icp. Or idle person, or in the Us. And combining this with hopefully an increasing number of good case studies, you should be getting hopefully some more traction and repeats ability could be measured in different ways.
Tom Glason: But I don’t think it’s worth kind of over over complicating this. You can see a couple of simple measures on the slide here.
Tom Glason: So essentially is your Sdr hitting their target relatively, consistently. And does your us focus. They have a win rate on qualified opportunities of at least 20% and perhaps look at this on a co-host basis over maybe the course of 2 or 3 months depending on your sales cycle. And then another key part of Step 3 is developing a strong Sdr. And a onboarding process. If you don’t already have one. And, in fact, even if you do have one.
Tom Glason: it’s probably gonna need to be improved, or maybe adapted to support the on boarding of reps in the Us. When you do eventually hire that so effective onboarding of reps is is a massive topic in itself. I do a whole workshop on on that topic in itself. But 3 things you should certainly include.
Tom Glason: Firstly, a good amount of time should be spent with existing customers, so reps can deeply understand their worlds, their day to day challenges, and how their solution solves those challenges. Kind of over index on on that I think versus product knowledge in the first few weeks.
Tom Glason: Secondly, I’d encourage lots of role, place and ideally, certifications for different phases of the of the sales process. So break down the component parts of the sales cycle. So call calling code email discovery. You know, demos, stakeholder management negotiation closing and just ensure you have an up to date playbook that details the best practices at each of those stage. Then, through a combination of cool recordings.
Tom Glason: role plays ride alongs, insure reps, are able to demonstrate competence before then assessing their skills via kind of what I call scorecards. So that that onboarding piece using role plays really important. And then, of course, number 3 is product knowledge, but based around specific personas and used cases rather than teaching about features and functions. They need to be able to effectively demo solutions to specific persona problems.
Tom Glason: They also need to understand how your product is used by real customers. So again, time with live customers is is really key. So again, onboarding, really thinking about how you’re gonna want those new reps that you hire effectively and efficiently.
Tom Glason: So now onto Stage 4, when we’re finally hiring in the Us. And one of the reasons why we’re waiting until this point is that the cost and hassle of setting up a US. Entity
Tom Glason: adhering to us employment laws, their regulations, their crazy tax system means that you really wanna make sure that you have product market fit over there. And I think a repeatable way of acquiring new customers before you invest in all that stuff. If not, you can waste a lot of time, a lot of money, as we did in our in our second failed mission. Only to then have to kind of retrench.
Tom Glason: But it’s the slide suggests. Now’s the time to hire an Sdr. In the Us. Perhaps even 2 of each. If you have the budget and and the kind of traction over there. Personally, I’m always a big fan of hiring 2 at time for for a couple of reasons. So, firstly, if you only hire one person.
Tom Glason: you won’t be sure whether any underperformances down to them. Or if there’s some other problem with the market or territory hiring 2 at the same time, especially if they have slightly different profiles, can just help to mitigate this a little bit. Also provide some healthy competition between the 2 of them. The second reason for hiring to a time
Tom Glason: relates to the first consideration you can see on the slide here. So we suggest that you bring any new, highest to the Uk or your cool market for 3 or 4 weeks of onboarding, and it can be much more time and cost efficient to bring over multiple people
Tom Glason: as you’re on. Boarding efforts can then be one to many, but you can also save costs and and kind of build relationships in that new team. By putting them all up in an Airbnb house together, which is what we ended up doing when we bought the the kind of initial Us team over, and that helped to build those relationship, those bonds. So just a more cost, effective way of doing it.
Tom Glason: Another con key consideration is the type of experience you’re looking for in these new highs. Our recommendation is always to find reps who have experience at your stage of business.
Tom Glason: but also your average deal signs or complexity of sale. This is, I think, less important.
Tom Glason: then or should I say, more important than industry experience in, in in my view, also, it can be a real bonus if you can find reps who have worked for companies where the headquarters is outside of the Us. They’re gonna be much more familiar with the challenges that that this is gonna bring, and they’re gonna be more likely to to stick around when they face those challenges of being separated from from the Hq. And then finally, in step 4.
Tom Glason: The real goal is about getting these new highs in the Us. To reach repeatability with their performance. You know common mistake as well as to assume that this is gonna happen as quickly as you found repeatability when you were selling from your core market.
Tom Glason: However, the reality, I think, can be can be quite different. Because you you don’t, I said. Just don’t forget that you. You had your best reps
Tom Glason: focusing on the Us. They probably had deep experience. Of your company, your Icp. And your and your product. They also had their manager on that time zone, perhaps even sat next to that manager. You know, in in Stage 4. Your Us. Reps manager could still be in the Uk. In fact, I’d I’d probably encourage that you you don’t hire an expensive leader in the Us. Yet until Stage 5, which is what we’re we’re gonna discuss now. So that’s Stage 4. Then, finally, stage 5.
Tom Glason: You now have productive reps in the Us. Creating repeatable revenue growth. Now is the time to hire leadership in the Us. The first high should probably be ahead of or Vp of sales, so that your reps have that that local support, but also send. This person can can start to build out the team cause if you really have reached product market fit, now is the time to to scale up tight team, however.
Tom Glason: and this is a big consideration.
Tom Glason: You should only hire Aes
Tom Glason: in concert with growing demand. And I’m gonna repeat that because it is so important you should only hire A’s in concert with growing demand. And what do I mean by this? Well, the opposite of this
Tom Glason: is building a head count driven revenue model that assumes that you can hit a certain revenue target
Tom Glason: simply by multiplying the number of newly hired reps that you plan to hire. You multiply that by that quota
Tom Glason: I have never seen this work out, especially in a new market. What you need to do is ensure that you’re able to build sufficient demand in that market first.
Tom Glason: before hiring all those reps.
Tom Glason: Now, if Sdrs are, are key to your demand Gen. Strategy, then make sure you’re hiring Sdrs in in tandem perhaps even before your your ais, or maybe, if you’re if you know the inbound marketing or events, maybe is a key part of your demand. Gen. Make sure you build this capacity either in the Uk. Or us, before building at your sales team in the Us. And a final word of caution here.
Tom Glason: even if you think the Us. Might end up being your core market. and that you might move your Hq. There.
Tom Glason: now is not the time to hire very senior revenue leaders out there find someone who can be scrappy, someone who can manage a small team
Tom Glason: get in the trenches with that team, do deals, and who has the experience of doing this at your stage of business ideally, as I said, for a company outside of the Us. But that’s not essential. We are looking for that more play and manager type rather than that senior leader.
Tom Glason: Okay, we’ve covered a lot on this slide across the 5 stages. I’m gonna turn my attention to the the chat and see if there’s some questions here. That that I can answer. So
Tom Glason: Noel, says other. Any people we can speak to that can link us to early adopters. Yeah, I think this is. It’s an interesting question, Noel, you know, as in kind of sales agents, II. I’m a little bit dubious about sales agents, so work on a referral only basis that will plan to introduce you to early adopters in your market. I rarely see that work. Well, what I see work better
Tom Glason: is value, added reseller or channel partners that that sell already a product or solution into your target persona, and they see your product as a really valuable extra tool in that kit bag that can help to create stickiness with that customer base help drive more value as well for them. Those kind of partnerships can work quite well. I’ve seen them work in the past. If you find the right ones.
Tom Glason: Jean is one thing doing sales devout the Uk. But if you’re scrappy Sas startup Polyton, new software product, you’re gonna be facing all kinds of teething issues. We need to jump on it immediately and restore credibility. Any thoughts on how to support the launch of an app software product. Well, I wouldn’t be launching my apple software product in the Us. If I hadn’t figured how how to do that in my cool market, as I’ve explained here like, build that capability internally.
Tom Glason: Know how to do it over here. And then yes, of course, you’re gonna have to lean into that new market. You’re gonna have to jump on the cool way you need to. You’re gonna have to provide probably quick solutions to problems as they as they crop up. And you’re gonna probably have to over service, as I said earlier. Those first few customers, both from a maybe a technical sales standpoint, but also from a customer success standpoint. So hopefully that answers your question. As well that Jean?
Tom Glason: Simply cannot. The new customers reject the new information published in the case study. Okay? So I think what you’re saying here absolutely is, what about those customers that say that they don’t want the case study?
Tom Glason: It’s gonna happen. My default is to always put in my contract. That, we have the ability to write a case, study they can always. When they’re negotiating terms. Take that out. Very rarely do people do that. I found. If they do, could take it out, you know that’s absolutely fine. It might be for con confidential reasons. But just try and get as many as you cancely, I would say, in those early days so he do. Us customers expect different, ie. Much higher levels of service compared to Uk.
Tom Glason: I don’t think they do. Ii think they expect a different type of of sales approach, and I’ll talk about this in a little while in terms of how you sell to them, how they want to be sold to, but I don’t see that they are particularly more needy, as it relates to service. But I do think you should be over servicing your first few customers out there anyway. What are your thoughts on using us? Based sales agencies? I think I answered that one.
Tom Glason: Yeah, on the ground. Adminish. Let me know if you’ve got any more questions on that our Fintech. Start up, says Ryan, is is better better into the Us. Market as soon as possible, or wait until series. I,
Tom Glason: Ryan, if you’re at seed stage.
Tom Glason: That suggest to me that you probably haven’t got product market fit yet in your core market.
Tom Glason: I would really caution you against expanding into the Us. Or any new market, for that matter, until you found some level of product market fit in your new market. If you are a more progress, mature, established seed stage business that just happens to not needed funding up to that point. And you have product market fit in your core market. And you can start to devote some of this. Go to market resource to a new market. Absolutely do it. Don’t need to wait for the series.
But, as I say, what I typically see is seed stages too early to do this
Anthony Rose: hop in. Sorry, Tom. I’ll hop in right there. So they’re really fascinating set of questions on the timing. And there is a, you know, excellent advice from octopus benches on, we basically say, go early or go late. But don’t go in the middle, which is, you know, if it’s 2 founders, get on a plane, find a garage in Palo Alto. Do you know, as others have done before, or.
Anthony Rose: you know, get to product market fit and significant revenue in the UK. So you’ve got to mature products. And your team can now focus on replicating that elsewhere without having to do 2 things in parallel. So that usually is series A and beyond. And also where you’ve got the capital reserves that you can spend or lose
Anthony Rose: a few 1 million on a US. Proposition without it killing the company. But what you want to avoid is that you are still building features that are necessary to get product market fit, and your customers are demanding in one territory
Anthony Rose: while trying to get resources to do, too, or trying to build for both each new feature in 2 ways at the same time. Now this is going to vary a lot depending on how different your product is between markets, you know, if it turns out to be a social network, it’s going to be, you know, pretty much identical.
Anthony Rose: But it may turn out that you know it’s an insurance product, or in our case, a legal tech product, and the laws and the product offering and the part the integrations with your banks, or whatever else you connecting with, are vastly different. So II likely go early or go late proposition.
Tom Glason: And I think, add to that, Anthony, if you’re gonna go early, I think needs to be a really compelling reason why you’re going early a, and not focus on your cool market. And that might be because actually, you know, you’ve raised a huge amount of money. And actually, it makes sense to go and target the Us. Market. It might be as investors over there that, you know, are are going to be really warm to your type of proposition, and you see that, as being a core part of your strategy, raising from us invested what might just be that the Us. Market
Tom Glason: has the highest concentration of your of your target buyer, your target persona. And actually it just makes sense for you to start there. But I would. I would still work setting up in a garage going out to Silicon Valley or whatever it’s still yeah, it’s still hard. It’s gonna be hard. Okay. So so the other thing is which we’ve seen. And again, it’ll vary depending on the market. You’re in that sometimes the Us. Isn’t one
Anthony Rose: country. It’s 50 States, and they’re all different. You’ve got different employment laws. There has to be resource which I haven’t really found. That explains all the things. So you know, from what I’ve seen you’ll incorporate. You’ll always incorporate in Delaware. But then no one actually lives in Delaware. So you’re going to have a sales team based, perhaps on where your market is, or it could be in a city that’s
Tom Glason: attractive and or inexpensive to hire. You don’t want to be hiring developers in San Francisco, cause you’ll get bankrupt very quickly. Let me jump back in and see if we can make sure we get to to that point. So we’re gonna look at how to think about the resource allocation as a management tool for thinking about how to make this
Tom Glason: this journey. So I’m gonna talk you through something called the 3 Horizon methodology originated from Mckinsey. It’s a great tool to think about how to manage resources. You, as you expand into new markets. In fact, you can use this same methodology to expand into any market, whether a new product or a new sector as well. But the first thing is a is horizon one. This is the machine that’s creating your revenue today all the way from
Tom Glason: Legion to renewal and customer expansion, including your product team as well. Horizon one is all about running a revenue machine with predictability and repeatability. It’s essentially your your core market. I put a percentage of how much your company resources should be dedicated to this horizon. These numbers aren’t fixed. They’re really for you to think about how much you wanna kinda spend in each horizon, but generally horizon. One is the
Tom Glason: vast majority of your organization resources and the key to horizon one it is. It’s the current revenue machine as predictable and repeatable as you can make it. And it’s sacred. It’s like
Tom Glason: the businesses crown jewels hidden behind glass and untouchable. So you don’t ever wanna mess too much with with horizon one.
Tom Glason: and then next up. It’s horizon, too. That’s the new thing. It’s where you’re trying to grow into today to start delivering revenue tomorrow. This is all about experimentation and iteration. This could be the Us. For you, where you’re trying out new things and seeing what works, and you can see how much smaller the resource allocation is again somewhat of an arbitrary number, but something for you to think about. And this is where you’re back to working like a freshly
Tom Glason: minted start up, investigate in the market building, pipeline, trying to get deals done, improving and iterating as you go. And the key to this methodology is that you’ve got very clearly defined success criteria for anything you’re working on in horizon 2 in order for it to move into horizon one where it becomes part of your core revenue generation machine where repeatability and predictability, a key. And we’re gonna get onto what that criteria might look like in a moment.
Tom Glason: and then you have horizon 3. This is where the business is looking at much longer term growth, you know. Bigger bets in the future, perhaps new products, totally different markets, much longer term thinking these are higher risk bets that you’re willing to to make with even a smaller amount of company resources. And again, you’re gonna have a clear criteria for moving something from horizon 3 to horizon. 2. But let’s take a look at what this horizon methodology might look like
Tom Glason: specifically in terms of moving from the Uk to the Us.
Tom Glason: So in horizon one, your revenue machine is working today. Let’s say you’re selling your main product in the Uk to 4 main sectors to kind of vertical industries. And in addition to that, you’ve got both Mid-market and Enterprise companies that you’re selling to. Now, you could, for example, say that for Horizon 2, you’re gonna sell the same product. But to the us East Coast companies
Tom Glason: just into 2 of your 4 sectors, because you’ve got a hypothesis that these will be the strongest sectors for you in that new market. And also you’re only gonna focus on Mid-market rather than enterprise. Because again, you have a hypothesis that this is, gonna get you more traction more quickly.
Tom Glason: and then horizon 3. That could be any number of different dimensions, perhaps selling to the rest of the Us. Or you could perhaps be exploring different sectors. But here we’ve shown it as essentially the same geography as East Coast, and sectors as horizon to
Tom Glason: but enterprise prospects, because now they’ll have much longer sales, cycles, but could also be game changing if you if you win them. So let’s look at what that criteria of moving from different horizons might be. And again. These are just examples you need to work out for yourself what the exact criteria might might be for you.
Tom Glason: But, for example, the criteria for moving between horizon 2. One might be that for either of the sectors to be moved into horizon. One, you need to have generated a qualified pipeline of more than 200 K. And
Tom Glason: I’ve closed 5 new deals greater than 30 K. A/C. Once you’ve reached that benchmark we can start allocating more resources from horizon. One or more likely hire reps, or or give more resources from horizon one to focus on your horizon. To. Now you might stop building a pipeline of reps that you might hire by, maybe in the Uk. Or the Us. But you can’t pull the trigger on hiring these reps and move them into the team until you hit that criteria.
Tom Glason: Now, the other alternative which I’ve seen quite work quite well is that you direct one of your existing reps to the new Market, and then you back. Fill them in the in the Uk as well, which is kind of my point with the the roadmap.
Tom Glason: and then you have criteria for moving from H. 3 to H. 2. And that might be a certain number of enterprise. Pocs. So proof of concepts again, with a with a minimum value. Then, in terms of resource allocation, you might decide that you’re gonna allocate your best Sdr. To the Us.
Tom Glason: Maybe 2 days per week of your Vp sales time, or perhaps your best account, exec, and maybe even a day, a week of your Cs lead this time, and this would effectively be that that initial team working on the new Territory. If you already have some traction in the Us. Or maybe more inbound, you might decide to increase these numbers. But bear in mind this is an expedition force. This is the marines, is not the. It’s not the army. E. In thinking about that analogy.
Tom Glason: This is still very much stages 2 and 3 from that roadmap on my previous slide. We’re trying to build repeatability and predictability from your your base.
Tom Glason: And then for horizon 3. This is maybe just the CEO working a day a week to try and spin up some proof of concepts with enterprise customers using all their knowledge and connections. To make this happen. Like I said, these numbers are all just placeholders to give you something to think about. You’ll have to work with your, you know your management team to see exactly how you wanna structure this. But I like this type of methodology for for a few reasons. So. Firstly, it forces you to go step by step.
Tom Glason: You know I’ve seen attempts to expand into the Us. Where the company wants to try and sell something. All of this II tried to sell all of the same sorts of companies that they sell to in the Uk, all at the same time which I think may feel like a strategy that’s going to give you more success. But the reality is the narrow. You can be the more focused on a target set of accounts. The faster you can iterate what’s working and what isn’t, and the more successful you’re likely to be.
Tom Glason: If you haven’t. By the way, where Jeffrey Moore’s book crossing the chasm, I highly recommend you put that to the top of your reading list because the crossing the chasm strategy is as good for expanding into new markets. As it is for kind of creating your original Icp and and customer base in your first market as well. So definitely crossing the chasm by Jeffrey Moore. The other reason why I like this methodology is it doesn’t
Tom Glason: mess with your core revenue machine. You know, you need to keep that sacred. So it’s a strategy that allows you to expand into the market for that much risk on your current revenue, and of course cost base and number 3 is that it forces you to build up some traction and pipeline before you even consider hiring anyone, which is very important in my, in my view.
Tom Glason: so lost that we’ve covered there. I’ll pause for a quick moment just to see our friend. I love it when people answer questions
Tom Glason: in the chat that I didn’t have to answer. So thank you very much. Poc is proof of concept. Ben, 5% might seem very small, very small, for a very good reason you are experimenting. This is a scrappy startup. You have to keep your call market as your sacred, you know. Resource, your revenue machine. At this stage you are just experimenting. You need to keep costs low. Of course it might be 8%. It could be 8,
8, and 2 need to figure out what you’re willing to risk.
Tom Glason: You know how big this bet is worth for you, because it is a gamble in these early stages. So keep the focus of your resources on your cool market. In my view, right? I might for the time I’m gonna I’m gonna actually skip through common pitfalls when expanding and I’m gonna go straight to
Tom Glason: Well, you can see the common fitfuls. I’m not gonna talk through them. But they’re all pitfalls that I faced, I think in the in the past I’m gonna go straight to common questions because these are some of the common questions that I receive about expanding into the Us. And I wanna make sure we cover them off. And then may even be additional questions that I wanna give time for at the end as well. So so let’s let’s kick off. So when should I expand into the Us.
Tom Glason: We’ve kind of covered this off. I don’t think there’s a straight answer to this, because it will depend on a few factors such as how much investment you’ve taken on. You know whether you have a real pull from the Us. Market and the investor community over there. But my strong view, as you’ve probably gathered by now is you should have strong product market fit.
Tom Glason: A in your cool market in a revenue machine in that cool market that’s repeatable and predictable. Too many companies expand to soon thinking that they need to do that in order to accelerate their revenue growth. My view is that’s normally much more there’s normally much more market share
Tom Glason: in your cool market than you think. You know. Unless you’ve saturated your call market, you’ve got 2030%. I would say, double down. Keep working on your cool market. Until you really need to expand. Other thing. I’d say, startups often think that expanding into the Us. Is gonna create a more compelling story for potential investors.
Tom Glason: And that might be the case if you’re committed to raising from us Vcs. But I would say that you need to be really careful about assuming that European investors are gonna buy into your Us. Expansion narrative as a positive thing.
Tom Glason: they actually may well see it as a risky and expensive gamble if you’re trying to do it too soon. So just be cautious about selling that Us. Expansion narrative too early, and thinking that investors are gonna like it maybe sound that different investors see that. How they view the Us. Market. And just be. You play your cards wisely on on that investor story.
Tom Glason: Should I incorporate in the Us. And in which state should I incorporate in? Well, Anthony’s probably answered this question to a degree on this, because he talked about Delaware. My view on incorporating in the Us. Is that companies generally do it too soon, because they hire employees in the Us. Too soon, and once you’ve hired employees in the Us.
Tom Glason: You need to employ them by your Us. Subsidiary because if you’ve got employees in the Us. You create a tax presence there, and your Uk. Company can then get sued. If you have them working through your Uk. Company you could avoid this by hiring contractors in the Us. Through your Uk. Company. But there’s also risks and challenges to this, and my council would be honest to seek
Tom Glason: professional advice, and I can recommend someone in a in a moment. In terms of choosing the right state for incorporating your company. I think this does depend on various factors, including your business goals and your industry and operational preferences. Delaware is often considered the default choice for startups, because it’s got very business. Friendly laws. It’s got an established legal framework. Also many Vcs prefer Delaware corporations. So it may make it easier to attract investment, and Delaware
Tom Glason: also has, I think, more flexible and well established corporate laws to but there’s also states like Nevada, well known for its kind of favorable tax environment especially for businesses, with no physical presence that Texas has become, you know, pretty popular growing tech scene. But I think more broadly Delaware is the is the place to go, but seeks some. Seek some legal advice on that should I create an lc, or a C core.
Tom Glason: Again, I think this depends on various factors, including your your goals, your structure, your funding plans
Tom Glason: your long term strategy. Generally speaking, the C. Corp is the best route to go down C. Corp. So often more attractive to to Vcs and institutional investors. Because the structure kind of allows for for you know, multiple classes of stock and and more complex financing structures c-corps, also well suited for implementing stock option plans or esops is that called in the Us. Employee stock ownership
Tom Glason: plans and see corpse can provide certain tax deductions and benefits that may not be available to to Lcs. But I would say, as always, with these things, I’m not an expert legal advisor. Seek some legal advice. I’ve got a recommendation for that on the next slide as well. Where should you have people in the Us. I said. I’ve come to this so
Tom Glason: not in San Francisco. I would say, the cost of living, the competition with talent, time, zone differences make it really challenging. Austin, in Texas has become a very popular choice for a lot startups over the last
Tom Glason: a decade. A place that I’ve heard great things about also is is rally in North Carolina. It’s on the east coast. So you get more overlap with the European time zone. But it’s also becoming a real tech hub. So it’s it’s part of what’s called the the Research Triangle Region which is known for a really good concentration of tech companies, research institutions, a lot of startups. They’re now good universities. This means that it’s got.
Tom Glason: I suppose, a vibrant ecosystem. That can provide really good networking opportunities is good talent there compared to to some other tech hubs like Silicon Valley or New York. It also has a lower cost of living. I think it also consistently ranks in terms of quality of life.
Tom Glason: And finally, it’s got kind of business friendly policies. It’s it’s kind of recognized for being supportive for startups and entrepreneurs to check out rally in North Carolina and then what roles should you hire? Well, my view on this is that it probably makes sense to keep your product and engineering teams in your home market and focus on building your customer facing teams in the Us. I’d certainly invest in in customer success and support
Tom Glason: in the us as soon as you can, so that your us customers have someone on that time zone who they can kind of pick up the phone to when they need help. Salespeople, of course, as I said, they’re going to be needed. But as I lay that in my roadmap.
Tom Glason: you should only be hiring these in the Us. When you’ve shown some repeatability selling into the Us from your core market. Also, as I touched on in the road map when you reach Stage 5. It’s start time to start layering on further hires. Perhaps managers. I’d be thinking about hiring marketing people in the Us. To start with. I’d probably go with a marketing generalist
Tom Glason: who can kind of adapt your home marketing efforts to the Us. Market. Because it’s like you’re gonna need a supposed to market to us customers in a slightly different way, and so having someone in territory who knows how to do this often makes sense
Tom Glason: depending on your Icp. You know you. You may want field marketing support, or perhaps Ibm, but this will be dependent on your your own business. So the type of marketing person you’re you’re gonna hire will be determined by that. I would, as I said, avoid hiring expensive Vp and C-level marketing leaders in the Us until you’re really ready to invest in in scaling over there and then what a salary! Benchmarks! Well.
Tom Glason: a lot lower in rally than San Francisco so broadly. An Sdr, you’re talking about 35 k. To 50 k. In in somewhere like Raleigh, plus a bit of bonus
Tom Glason: an ae somewhere like in 60 k. To 80 k. In rally normally as a base salary with double that as an ote. I mean, you could double that if if they’re in San Francisco, csm, so customer success you’re probably looking at somewhere in the region of 50 k. To 90 k. In rally more like 80 to 120 K. In San Francisco, and then the headed Marketing and the head of say.
Tom Glason: you know, you’re probably looking at a hundred to 160 k. In somewhere like rally and a lot more in in someone like San Francisco. So quickly. My last slide. I’m a big fan of leaning on experts for things like us. Expansion.
Tom Glason: high stakes, high risk initiatives. Easily go wrong. I said. I recommend a great legal adviser. Dan Glaser. He needs the Uk practice of Wilson Solini. He’s brilliant. He knows his stuff but also scale wise. I hate to support you, too. We’ve got lots of brilliantly experienced. Go to market experts who have the battle scars and available to support you with us. Expansion efforts, either as a mentor. But
Tom Glason: we also have what we call fractional leaders in the Us. Who can work part time through us to support your kind of market efforts out there, and we’ve helped a few clients this way, and it’s a great way of just having experience boots on the ground without needing to employ or incorporate out there, and you can get someone who perhaps you wouldn’t normally be able to afford on a full time basis. But who can add a huge amount of value for a fraction of the cost of of hiring them
Tom Glason: full time. So yeah, contact me, Thomas. Scalewise com if you want to learn more about that. Wow! I had to speed up there. Just to make sure we covered those questions. Do we have any in the chat. I’m happy to stick around, if need be, but I know lots of you will probably have a hard stop.
Anthony Rose: Thank you, Tom. That was amazing. That was an amazing brain dump. I’m also delighted that, as I think about US. Expansion, our thinking after circuits path is remarkably similar to the things that you suggested here. I wish I’d seen this video months earlier. I do like the 1%, 5% starting off. Your talk was
Tom Glason: today as CEO. I spend time with a potential customer on a call, and I think I’ve got our first Us customer like that exact one piece. And you know the common problem that you keep hearing is
Anthony Rose: hiring senior people way too soon. I hope I’m not gonna fall into that trap. We’ll see. And the salaries in the Us. Are insane. So trying to avoid hiring there first is important.
Tom Glason: So I’ve put the salaries. So I think someone a a a earlier, put the salaries into the into the chat. So you can see them there. So hopefully, that makes sense is a lot of data there. But it’s basically saying, SS. Dr. Sf. Is San Francisco, 50 to 80 K. Base. Austin. You can see 40 to 60 rally 35 to 50, and then you can see the same for Aes Csm’s head of marketing head of sales so hopefully, that is helpful for you all.
Anthony Rose: Alright. So thank you, everyone. This recording will be available. So if you didn’t catch everything now, it will still be there any last question before we wrap up. Otherwise it’s a wrap.
Tom Glason: Alright, everyone. If you’re looking to expand to the Us. Please contact Tom, who’s clearly the expert, is gonna save you millions in making mistakes and get you there faster. Thank you so much, Tom, and good talking. Thanks everyone.
