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Welcome to the Sales Transformation Podcast, the definitive stop for leaders driving change in the sales world. Hosted by Kevin Warner, we dive deep into the minds of Founders, CEOs, VPs of Sales, and Sales Development Leaders from trailblazing startups to industry-leading public companies.
Our mission is simple: to illuminate the path to extraordinary sales leadership. We explore a broad spectrum of sales territories, from the intricacies of Founder Led Sales and Outbound Sales to the transformative potential of Technology in Sales and Social Selling. Whether it's mastering your CRM, optimizing conversions, scaling sales teams, or engineering a complete Sales Transformation, our conversations are set to challenge the status quo and redefine sales success.
With a new content every day of the week, we bring you unfiltered interviews with the luminaries of sales, people who have not just succeeded but transformed the way we think about sales. Kevin Warner also shares sharp, tactical sales tips every week, packing decades of sales wisdom into bite-sized insights.
So, if you're ready to rewrite the sales rulebook and learn from the best in the business, the Sales Transformation Podcast is your ticket. Write us a review, share the show, and join us on this journey of sales evolution. Let's transform the way we sell, together!
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