Shift & Thrive: CEO Insights on Driving Change

S&T - Paul Terry (Investor/ GTM Series)
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[00:00:00] In today's business world, change is the only constant, and mastering transformation is the ultimate key to success. Welcome to Shift and Thrive. I'm your host, Natalie Nathanson.

Each week we'll bring you conversations with CEOs who delve into how they successfully drove critical change in their organization. This show is sponsored by Magnitude Consulting, bringing you the thinking power of a growth consult. And the getting it done, power of a full service B2B marketing agency.

I am very excited to introduce today's guest. He is a global Go-to-market leader and advisor with over 25 years of experience, including building and scaling, high performing Go-to-market teams across Europe, north America, Latin America, and Asia Pacific. He's led organizations responsible for over $70 million in annual recurring revenue and managing sales [00:01:00] teams of over a hundred.

And all while delivering consistent year over year growth. Earlier in his career, he spent over 15 years at Forrester Research where I had the pleasure of working with him. And in that time there, he led multiple major business transformations before moving into sales, uh, senior leadership roles at LinkedIn and more recently served as Chief Sales Officer at Inclusive.

Today he advises early and mid stage technology companies on Go-to-market strategy and international growth. He's also an advisor and investor with tech operators, a network that helps ambitious startups scale internationally. Paul Terry, welcome to the show. Delighted to be here, Natalie, thank you for that wonderful introduction.

Yeah, I'm very, uh, excited to have you in the conversation today. And like I mentioned in your intro, you have spent your career building and scaling international sales teams, and I know you've really had a front row seat to a lot of big, uh, shifts in how Go-to-market [00:02:00] actually works. So I'd love to dive into one of those key transformations that you led during the time we were at Forrester.

And I'm now gonna take us back to the early 2010s when you helped champion and lead the rollout of social selling, uh, with LinkedIn. And I'll remind our listeners that this was at a time when social selling was barely even a thing. So can you take us back to that moment and talk about like, what was the transformation you were trying to drive?

And kind of, we'll talk about how you, how you navigated that shift. Sure thing. Well, uh, so the context was that it was 2012. I had been leading Forrester's Emer emerging markets business for a number of years up until that point. And, uh, uh, at a certain moment, I received a tap on the shoulder from, uh, my boss and yours, Charles Rothstein.

He was the Chief Operating Officer at the time, and he said, look, we're gonna be, we're gonna be shifting our entire organization from one CRM. Platform to another. It's a, it's a significant lift. And being a an analyst firm as Forrester [00:03:00] was the first thing an analyst would tell a customer who is considering such a significant technology pivot.

The first thing they would say is, You know, this, it implementation is far too important to leave it up to it. Uh, because, You know, if it's led from the technology team. You'll end up with a wonderful piece of tech, a wonderful piece of kit, but You know, nobody will use it. So it needs to be designed by the business, for the business and led by the business.

And, And so he asked me to, to be that business leader, to take on that transformation for the company. So we spent about a year, very thoughtfully, very diligently mapping out. Every single process we had in the business today across every department, not just customer facing, we then broke those down and rebuilt them with, You know, with, with the ideal of, You know, this is a moment in time where we could really start fresh if you like.

Um, and then we built the new CRM [00:04:00] in, in, uh, iteration to support those changes. Um, and along the way, LinkedIn came calling, came knocking on my door and said, Hey, look, there's this thing. We've got, it's called social selling. We think it's gonna be huge. What do you think? And as a sales leader for, You know, an extended period of time, I had been kind of banging my head off a wall because every year my targets were going up, but my resources were staying flat or, or in, in some cases even reducing.

Um, and, and I was smart enough to know I had a problem, but I wasn't smart enough to know what the solution to that problem. Could be except, You know, make more phone calls, send more emails, have more meetings, send more proposals, et cetera, et cetera. And when LinkedIn shared with me their vision for what this, as it was called then social selling could be, it was for me a slap head moment.

Uh, and by slap head moment, I meant, I, I mean, I literally took the heel of my hand and I slapped my head and I thought, my God, this is, this is so clearly. [00:05:00] The future of Go-to-market. This is so clearly the way buyers want to be engaged, that salespeople have to get on this bus. So without hesitation. Um, I leaned into it.

We, we took, uh, I think it was 450 licenses of, of a very nation tool. Uh, it wasn't even called sales navigator at that time. The tool itself was less important to me. It was more the philosophy of how we needed to change the way we, we go about engaging our customers. And we rolled it out across, across the entire organization.

And I kind of thought, You know, that's. That's my job done. You know, I, I, I delivered on the tool. I sat back, I, I, I waited for the plaudits to arrive. Uh, and I thought, You know, there, they'll be building statues to me in, in, in headquarters, or they'll be naming new, You know, department. They'll be naming wings of the building after me, because I've, You know, I've led this change, but in fact, all I heard was silence.

Absolute crickets. [00:06:00] And I realized that what was completely obvious to me. Understandably enough wasn't obvious to 449 other people for whom I had bought these licenses and I fell at the first hurdle of transformation. The first hurdle of change management is it's an incredibly laborious, detailed, repetitive process that requires you to, in your mind, over communicate.

To the, to the audience, You know, just about communicate enough and to communicate through multiple channels. There, there's, in fact, there's a very clear playbook for driving change of this nature. And it involves getting executive sponsorship, giving the executives a voice. It involves, um, money balling, uh, You know, so that you're looking for wins and you're socializing those wins.

It involves communicating through. Meetings, emails, [00:07:00] video, You know, carrier pigeon. It involves repeating yourself to your, to your mind ad nauseum in the hope that, You know, ultimately people will, will hear the message because we all learn in different ways. And so what I thought was going to make me a hero, uh, in terms of transformation, very, very nearly, I would've thought maybe even clo came close to getting me fired because I had spent a significant amount of money on this process of change.

Uh, but it appears I wasn't delivering anything for it. Now, to LinkedIn's great credit, they, they leaned in and, You know, they, uh, uh, applied additional. Support in helping us roll it out, uh, training, engagement with the audience And so on. And the number one thing I learned about this change was, well, actually it was the things I've just described there, but, but one particular thing was I failed to treat and address the most important people in that organization independently from everybody else.

And that's the frontline [00:08:00] management cohort. So with their combination of. Proximity to the frontline and their span of control. Frontline managers are the most important people in a sales organization because they are the culture carriers and they, they influence the day-to-day experience of the largest body of, of employees in the business.

And I hadn't pulled them apart. I hadn't pre-wired them. I hadn't helped them understand what was coming down the pipe. So literally on that very first Monday morning when You know, the licenses rolled out. I can imagine that conversations went along the lines of the sales reps and the CS people and all of the customer facing folks get an email going, Hey, you've got this tool.

Now they turn to their manager and say, Hey, what is this thing I've just got? And the manager goes, I don't know. I I, I just got it too. Right? So a huge learning for me there was not only treat it like a, a truly change management or exercise, but also. Carve out [00:09:00] that cohort of frontline managers and get them on board before anything else.

So, You know, since then I've gotten, I'd like to think, I'd like to hope a lot better at managing those transformations and those changes because that was a, that was a key learning. And you definitely learned more from your, your failures or in this case, near failures. The happy outcome was. We did indeed manage to, You know, deploy appropriately.

And I'm very, very proud that I was closely involved in pivoting the way an entire commercial organization in a highly respected, respected international brand went to market and continue to do so today. And as you highly, as you correctly pointed out, this was 2012, so long before, You know, social selling and all of these, these concepts were becoming, uh, mainstream.

Yeah, I think it's such a tremendous example and, You know, it's, it's bringing me back a bit nostalgically to what, uh, sales and marketing looked like, uh, back in that time. But I think, [00:10:00] You know, the example that you gave with the frontline managers reminds me of like the distinction between like what feels to a sales org as like a corporate initiative of like, oh, we have to check the box and do this.

To, like, what makes it all about them and the value and like bringing them through that journey as you, uh, as you learned and, uh, and did. And I, I think that piece about over communication is so important because to the person leading the change, like I hear this in almost every conversation I'm having with leaders is, uh, like, it feels like we're over communicating or repeating ourselves.

Um, but that is the area that continually needs more, uh, kinda more feeding. You know, you, you learn from your mistakes. It's even better to learn from somebody else's mistakes 'cause it's far less painful. And three years subsequent to that transformation, I ended up joining LinkedIn as a, as a member of the team, selling in this at this point, sales Navigator.

And I was able to sit with prospects and clients around the world and [00:11:00] essentially tell them this, this tale of wall and say, look, You know, the, these are the things you gotta watch for. This isn't as obvious. This isn't an obvious win for your organization as it is for you, and you've gotta follow these steps if you're going to make this stick.

You know? And that I, I like to think that helped our customers quite a lot. Oh yeah. I'm sure that it did. Uh, I'm curious to ask you, like, do you remember any tipping point in kind of that change management journey? Like when did it take hold and kind of what did you experience there? Yeah, do You know what it, it actually came from marketing ashamed as I am no marketing as a sales leader, so.

Forester, CMO at that point called me up and said, Hey, look, You know, I, I hear you bought some of these licenses. You know, if are any chance you could throw a few over the fence, we'd love to play around with them. And, uh, so I passed a few over and he came back to me, uh, not, not, not long afterwards, and he said, look, this is amazing.

We've got an opportunity here to light up this network of [00:12:00] 450 employees by putting bite sized, easily managed, easily consumed content. A kind of a menu format for them and they can pick and choose which ones they share on LinkedIn. And so it, it, it enabled 450 voices within the Forrester organization to, to have a voice without having to, You know, write their own full on content.

We we're not all Richard Branson who write long, long form content for LinkedIn. It's enough to. Curate other people's content as long as it resonates with you, as long as you believe in it, as long as you support it. And so we were in a position now to dramatically enhance our presence on the LinkedIn platform by putting content easily within reach of the users.

Um, and with that, I think Res began to see the turning point. Crucially reps began to engage prospects and clients on the platform. Crucially, they began to win [00:13:00] business via that engagement. And then we were, You know, we were sailing. Yeah, I mean it's a great testament to like the different purviews of sales and marketing and like how and why that that partnership can be, uh, so impactful.

And I remember from the marketing side. You know, when I first joined Forrester, maybe 2005, 2006, uh, social media was something, right? If you had it up on your screen, like you didn't want anyone looking over your shoulder to like very quickly, like, if you're not learning how to use this and taking the reins, like shame on you.

Right? So it's just absolutely. We had clients at Forrester. We had clients who. Banned LinkedIn on, on, uh, company devices. Right. Because they felt it was a, You know, it was a version of Facebook. They felt it was a distraction, not a business tool. Yeah. Which reminds me of, You know, AI and kinda chat GPT and all that.

In the early days, a lot of companies like defaulted very quickly to. Uh, to banning this. And I remember there's a conference I go to [00:14:00] every year called the marketing ai, uh, conference, which I'll put a quick plug for them because they do cover a range of Go-to-market roles. So anyone who's interested, it's, it's really good.

Um, but the first year, uh, that I, that I went, uh, I'd spoken with a, a few marketers who said their companies don't allow it. They're trying to learn a bit on their own. Um, by the following year, I think anyone whose company wasn't allowing it was already there looking for a new role. Right. Realizing that skillset, uh, was so essential for them to learn and be part of it that, uh, You know, you don't wanna be somewhere that doesn't allow it and support it.

Mm-hmm. Um, I'm curious, Paul, to get a little more on the kind of softer side of the change. And maybe before you hit that, uh, kind of tipping point, uh, were there any points where you were kind of fearful in your decision or like maybe any, like, distrust in, in yourself, like before, uh, I had caught on, and if so, kind of how did you navigate that?

[00:15:00] Absolutely. The short answer, um, again, You know, I, I, I would've, I would describe it obvious as an emotional rollercoaster for me. It was this very obvious. You know, water in the desert type thing, You know, You know, you would think that water in the desert, you wouldn't need to have to push it or sell it, but turns out you do.

So I, I started this very high, very enthusiastic. This is gonna be amazing. I went through this, this dip where I realized, my gosh, this could be very expensive. And, You know, embarrassing misstep on my part to when, when it came back up again. And indeed, I. Again, as part of my passing on those learnings, uh, I used to sit with prospects when I was in LinkedIn, prospects of this service, and I would say to them exactly, I would say, You know, if, if you do this and it doesn't work, You know, the 50, a hundred k, whatever it's you spend with us, it won't, it won't kill your business.

Your, your business won't go outta business because you, You know, you've made the wrong decision here, but it will cost you. [00:16:00] Your political capital as an individual, it'll cost you your reputation as an individual and it might even cost you your job. So the, it's not a financial risk you're taking, it's a reputational risk, and you need to be really, really, you are willing to take on that risk.

The flip side is if you see it through and you make it work. Then you will be the person who has pivoted the way your entire business goes to market, and that that is a prize worth pursuing. Um, And so that, that was exactly the journey I was on. I was, You know, I thought, this is great. Oh my God, I'm in deep trouble.

Oh my God, it worked out. Um, and my political capital would've been shot to hell. I was, I was fortunate in that I had a lot of trust, uh, at the executive level of Forrester. But if it had not worked out, You know, fast forward a year, if I came with the next great idea, for sure, Charles and, and the crew would be scratching their heads and going, oh, well, the last time he had an idea, it didn't quite [00:17:00] work out, so we're just gonna pass on this one.

So that, that is the risk you're running. It's reputational risk. Uh, so you have to be aware, aware of that and, and be ready to take it on. Yeah, I think that's an important way of thinking about it. Um, and then I think, uh, You know, myself, like earlier in my career when I had had these kind of hunches or gut instinct and where something was headed, I might have said them a little too quietly and then you risk, right?

Not, not actually having the impact. Um, but I think over the years I've learned like. It just how, like also how you frame the, the argument, right? Like, here's my thinking, here's my evidence behind it, here's what others are saying, right? So building that consensus. So it's coming from kind of a broader wave, uh, than yourself.

And that, I know makes a, makes a difference as well. For sure. I mean, we live in a, in, in an era today, and this is pertinent to sales and, and, uh, and how, how salespeople approach their customers today. But we live in an era [00:18:00] where. FOMO was, You know, a fear that we all had for a long time. You know, fear of missing out and, And so salespeople would kind of play to that FOMO and say, oh, You know, you got a sign today, or You don't get the discount, or Your competitors are doing this, you need to do it, or you'll be left behind.

But actually, buyers and decision makers and people influencing the decisions of their companies today are actually suffering from a concept of full mo, which is fear of messing up. And so we're, we look to kind of syndicate out those decisions, share the responsibility for those decisions so that if it goes wrong.

We feel less exposed. And, and this is a concept that has been kind of crystallized by a guy called Matt Dixon, who, who wrote the Challenger Sale when he was at CEB or maybe after FCEB, um, and a couple of years ago, he is followed the challenger concept up with this concept called the Jolt Effect. And he talks about fear of messing up and absolutely, I see it every day how we are all, we're all looking.[00:19:00]

To have other people in the boat with us when you make a a, a significant decision. Um, and I, I understand it, but it can slow us down as businesses too. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is a great segue. Uh, 'cause I'd love to dive more into kind of changes in buyer behavior and I think we're experiencing a lot of those right now.

And I think for years we've all known that, right? Buyers are showing up like more, uh, more informed, further along in their journey before they kind of talked to sales. Um, but I think right now, like one area we're seeing is like how much, uh, of the, the buyer journey has gone off the grid or happening in like peer communities, private conversations, slack groups, et cetera.

Um, which I think to your point like brings in some of that like fear of messing up, like, oh, well other people are doing this too. So you're kind of getting that. Uh, that, that insight, um, and then just, You know, broader impact from kind of AI and all of that. So, uh, would love to just hear, uh, a bit more broadly, like what are these bigger [00:20:00] shifts that you're seeing in, uh, You know, buyer behavior and related selling motions.

And you just touched on it a bit, but would love for you to go deeper? Well, certainly, and, and, and in particular, this is particularly pertinent for. Start startups or scaling businesses that are maybe still founder led. They don't have the, the track record, the, the, the, the history of engagement with their prospects, competitors, or peers, right?

So if you are going, if you're at the buyer, you're going to, you're going engage with one of these smaller companies, you are taking that reputational risk. And, and You know, there was a time, certainly when I started out in sales. You, you, you found that one buyer and you hung onto her until she got the deal done.

She signed the contract and you were like, yes, I'm home free. And that is so far from the reality today. And again, I go back to, uh, research that came out of CEB has been coming out for many years now, owned by Gartner, where, You know, the number of people involved in making [00:21:00] a B2B buying decision is growing year over year.

Uh, we're, we're operating in more matrixed environments, departments, and indeed geographies are, are, are more closely collected than they were before. And so you're looking at 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 plus people. Getting involved in making a significant B2B purchasing decision. So for me, that's the biggest change, uh, from when I would've started out in sales that a salesperson today is almost a conductor of an orchestra.

And, and that that's a terminology that, that's an image that would've been used in the past, but it would've been conducting your own resources, your sales engineers, your customer success, your finance team, but now you're conducting. The, the influencers within that syndicated purchasing decision. And so if you're not as a salesperson, if you're not leaning into uncovering who else is involved in the hope that they won't get involved?

You're absolutely kidding yourself. Right. [00:22:00] So, You know, I, I actually, I'm actually teaching a class on this in the university college Dublin at the moment, um, on B2B sales. And I, I have an image on one of the slides of a firefighter running into a fire. And what I say is, great salespeople, they run towards the fire.

So if they're talking to their, their sponsor or their champion, they're asking proactively asking who else is involved in this decision? And if the champion's not forthcoming, they're, they're even, You know, they're even referencing previous engagements. They're saying, You know, I've been, You know, I've been selling this service for a while.

I've seen that the CFO is getting involved. Are you sure she doesn't need to be involved in this decision? Um, because. Whether you, you could try to, You know, stick your head in the sand and hope that the CFO's not getting involved. But knowledge is power and the sooner You know about it, the, the sooner you can address the CFO's concerns directly, and you can, You know, turn a potential detractor into a sponsor.

Um, And so running into the fire means being [00:23:00] proactive in exposing what that full buying committee looks like and being brave enough to engage them. Yeah, that, for me, is, is the biggest one. I, I love that. And the concrete examples go ahead of running towards the fire I think is, is so important. Like I think too from the marketing standpoint and what marketing needs to do to support that is having that like coherent narrative that addresses.

Uh, all the different audiences, right? Like take the example of like the CFOs looking at cost operations sees kind of disruption to workflow or kind of depending on what the solution is and procurement sees kind of the risk, let's say. Um, you really wanna make sure you're enabling sales with that coherent narrative that they can use and then kind of tailored per.

Uh, per role, but I think it's kind of that interplay between what needs to happen in the, the one to many narrative and then the, the one-to-one and like the sales person push, pushing and probing and asking in all the right places. Absolutely. Because yeah, what, what, what gets the, the business sponsor on the bus won't get the CFO and [00:24:00] vice versa.

You've gotta be, you gotta understand what their objections are and then you have to address them, um, individually so that when they, when they get together in the room where you most certainly are not present. They've all got their reasons for saying yes.

this is Natalie, your Shift and Thrive host. After chatting with lots of CEOs, one thing is crystal clear. Leveling up your company means having a killer Go-to-market strategy. That's what my crew at Magnitude Consulting does every day. If you're trying to step up your marketing game, whether it's strategizing, accelerating your pipeline, expanding into new markets, or getting into AI and automation, let's talk.

No pitch, no pressure. Just good conversation. Visit shift and thrive podcast.com/natalie to schedule a time. Can't wait to connect.

You know, when you were talking about the, uh, the fomo, the fear of messing up, uh, you brought up the jolt effect.

Can you talk about that for us? Sure. And so I, it's actually a [00:25:00] book I keep on my desk, actually, but I keep it in the bookshelf over here. But I, I, I was, I was afraid it might come up, so I wanted to keep it handy. Um. Somatics and Ted McKenna, they actually took advantage of COVID by being able to digest tens of thousands of sales calls because, You know, in an instant, a whole bunch of sales calls that were never recorded and were offline because they were face-to-face across the table were now recorded and online because it, they moved to, to the screen.

And so they were able to look for trends and patterns And so on. And what they found was. Traditionally, as I said, salespeople are using omo, so fear of missing out. They're, they're, they're, they're driving a sense of scarce scarcity and urgency, et cetera, to, to get the deal over the line and early on in the sales process.

That is important still. You gotta, you have to have, you have to keep the customer engaged. You have to remind them why they reached out to you in the first place, why they're [00:26:00] speaking to you of the pain that they're feeling. That's gotta be front and center, but at a certain point. The customer gets to the conclusion, You know what, this is the, the right solution for me, or this is better than what I'm doing today.

And it's at that point you need to flip the script a little bit. And now you need to ensure that the customer just feels comfortable with the decision. And in this book and in the data that they have gathered, they have estimated that's somewhere around 60% of all live opportunities. Are lost to no decision and that's not the customer going, You know what?

My status quo is good enough. I'm just gonna stay with it. That's the customer saying, I think your solution is better than what I've got, but I'm still gonna do nothing. The reason is that this is according to the authors. So I absolutely don't wanna take any credit for the intellectual, uh, firepower behind this book.

I'm [00:27:00] literally just repeating what the, what, what I've learned from them. Um, the, the, the, the, the conclusion is that the buyers today, they fear the mistake of commission over the mistake of omission, meaning. I make a decision to go with you as a vendor and it proves to be wrong. Well, I talked earlier about reputational, uh, risk and indeed potentially employment risk, right?

However, if I choose not to make a decision and it proves to be wrong, well, I'm in the same boat as everybody else 'cause nobody else made that decision either. So we're sharing the, the, this mistake of omission, we omitted to make the decision and we did that together. And so they're afraid buyers are more and more increasingly afraid to, to make that mistake of commission, and that's why they want to bring other people into the mix.

They want other people to have an opinion. They're taking everybody's perspective on board before they make a, a shared or syndicated [00:28:00] choice. And that's what salespeople now need to address through this multithreading we talked about earlier, but also by showing so social proof, by making informed recommendations.

Maybe by, by encouraging the customer to go small at the start, You know, not take down the big deal, take down a small deal, get them comfortable with that small deal, and then expand from there. All of these are tactics that will help to minimize that fomo, that fear of messing up. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's so helpful.

Um, and then I think like with this risk aversion theme, you layer on top of that today's kind of market uncertainty and kind of some folks afraid to pull the trigger just because of kind of the volatility and in the market. Um, and. In addition to kind of building consensus, there's, what else do you need to give them as a, as an organization, right?

Like is it more proof points, is it more peer validation? Like what are the kinds of things you think about, like need to be dialed in at the company level to help, uh, kind of [00:29:00] de-risk, I guess, in the view of the, the buyer? Yeah. So for me it's certainly proof points. I mean, case studies, I mean, yeah. You can read those all day long and You know, twice on Sundays, they only give you so much.

Obviously, they're just super, super positive stories about people. Future, your solution, even better, I think is, uh, You know, setting up a one-to-one call with an existing customer and not being on that call yourself, right? So that there's no pressure. The existing customer is sharing warts and all, right?

The, the, their experience another one that I found to be quite effective over the years was gathering, You know, for late stage pipeline of, of opportunities, getting some late stage decision makers in the room around a nice dinner with a ratio of maybe three to one, so three prospects. Late stage with one, You know, happy customer who's willing to talk.

Around the table. Um, and maybe you do that with two or three different tables in a nice restaurant, high-end restaurants, in whatever city you're [00:30:00] targeting it to work in. Um, so that you're, again, you're giving the opportunity for peers to share experiences. And that's why I think my, my experience when I was at LinkedIn, when I would sit in the prospects and say, look, you might lose your job if you, if you don't do this properly.

My sales team originally were petrified. To have their leader sit down and, You know, say that to a customer who was on the verge of signing a contract. But over time they saw the impact of that. And that was the, the, that you, you build an immense amount of amount of trust. If you're saying to somebody, be very careful about working with us, You know, you've gotta make sure you're, you, you've, look, you've talked this through because there is risk for you because you, you, it's incredibly transparent, right?

And it's the last thing a customer expect. A seller to say right, to be so truthful if you like that, that there is risk and, and calling out that risk, but then helping them understand that you are there. Not only do you see the risk, you acknowledge it, [00:31:00] you've lived it, but you're there to help minimize it indeed as well.

So that, uh, these are tactics that I have found to be effective in, in helping to reduce that FOMO over. Yeah. Yeah, I think those are great. I too am a big, uh, You know, big believer in these kind of like intimate dinners. I think a place that's often overlooked as companies are going to conferences left and right, but they're not thinking of how do we kind of take advantage of like physically being in that location.

I know we've worked with a number of clients to kind of put on these, these small dinners, and I like what you're saying about. Right, the, the warts and all right, whether that's a one-to-one customer call or like just being very, uh, realistic and upfront about kind of the good, the bad, and the ugly. And I think we're in an environment where, uh, everyone like needs more trust to make in making their decisions.

And that's kind of exactly what that does. So I think that's spot. Uh, I wanna ask you, Paul, uh, You know, a bit more broadly, You know, when you're, uh, working with, uh, CEOs and founders today, um, are there any, You know, [00:32:00] big, uh, kind of Go-to-market, uh, mistakes that you're seeing, like any themes from, from the work you're doing?

Yeah, and funny thing is sometimes, You know, I end up working with, with, uh, with firms that have a, a solution that can. Can really help so many different people within their client organizations. And so they kind of, You know, when, when I, when I work with them on, You know, ICP, ideal customer profiling, and I say, okay, You know who, who could be your buyer here?

And they go, well, You know, or your user, your end user. And they're like, well, it could be, could be this profile or that profile. It could be, it could be anybody. And I said, well, that's amazing. The fact that it could be everybody also means it could be nobody, right? Because you are, you are, you're, you're going in there so broadly.

So I, I try to give direction around defining as narrowly as possible the ICP. Um, and we use, we use a concept, again, not my concept of a wedge. So even though all of [00:33:00] these people here could be your, could be your users and your buyers, there's a great risk that they'll all be looking at each other to sign the contract and put their hands in the pocket to, to spend the budget.

So you gotta go in with your very tight wedge, get that person to engage, to evaluate, to see the value to purchase, and then you can expand afterwards and, And so that's the guidance that I try to bring when I'm dealing with. Founders. And the great thing about founders is their level of enthusiasm and energy is off the charts.

That's also the bad thing, because often founders are, are the, are the least critical of their own solution. Uh, which actually leads me to the second piece of advice that I often bring to bear with them, which is, You know, find that narrow edge. Get in there rocket, but be ready that if it doesn't work, be ready to change.

And, You know, a couple of firms that I'm, that I'm working with at the moment, actually as an investor, I, I take [00:34:00] great, uh, solace in the founder's willingness to literally. Shift their business model dramatically because they found that what they thought was the right approach hasn't been working. And they pivot.

Entire pivot is a very heavily used word in, in that stage of business these days. But they're pivoting their business models and they're pivoting their target ICP, uh, because they're not precious about the original idea. And you have to be ready to, yeah, to give up on that original idea. Yeah, I talk to a lot of investors and, uh, sometimes that's kind of a, a key piece that they say about the founders that are successful and the ones, uh, who are not is the willingness to, uh, kind of call their baby ugly or Right.

Evolve, find, find the fit. And I think, like as you say, that can be. The ICP, it can be something you brought up earlier around like is there a different kind of entry point into the solution, like a smaller kind of POC or a try before you buy type of a [00:35:00] model. Is it a shift in the Go-to-market model? Right, like partnership or ecosystem led rather than kinda sales or, or, or product led.

Um. So I think it's, it's so important to not be swayed and kind of do too many things at once. But then also when you see that something is, is not working, be be ready to, uh, to evolve. And I think on the ICP, it can feel very scary to, uh, say, okay, this is the audience we're focusing on. And kinda to the exclusion of, of others.

I always make the point, it's, uh, as, as much as it might feel, uh, kinda risky or scary, it becomes risky and expensive not to focus, right. And so I think that's a, a point that often, uh, kind of helps, helps founders do things a bit differently. Uh, I'm curious, uh, Paul, to take us in a slightly different direction.

Um, I know you've done a lot of work with, uh, kind of building and leading international sales. Uh, organizations. And I wanna talk a little bit about the, [00:36:00] uh, the cultural piece. So, um, can you talk a bit just about, You know, how you, how you think about, uh, different Go-to-market approaches, different ways of kind of thinking about, uh, sales across, uh, different geographies?

Sure. Well, the first thing I would say on culture is that the culture you choose in terms of which company you choose to work with and for, um. Often says more about who you are than the culture into which you were accidentally born. So like I've worked in very multicultural international business over the years, and I, I often feel more in common with my colleagues from different countries than I do my, my, my, my compatriot.

You know, who live around me, right? So be why? Because, You know, I, I, I'm, I'm born in Ireland. I'm born Irish. I'm thrilled and flattered and honored. I wouldn't want to be anything else, but it was [00:37:00] accidental, right? I just happened to be there. But I, I've consciously chosen to work at companies like Forrester and at LinkedIn and at Inclusive, where I leaned into the same culture and values that my colleagues did, and I felt, I, I felt, and still feel that very strong bond.

With those people. We've got so much in common, even though we come from different countries and backgrounds. But then in terms of how do you build out a, an international business, uh, across cultures and across markets? Well, You know, there's a continuum right? On the one, on the one end of the continuum, you could say, Hey, You know what?

We are going to standardize every step and every aspect of our Go-to-market from, from soup to nuts. And I don't care if we're selling in Saudi Arabia or Senegal or You know, France or Frankfurt, it doesn't matter. It's all gonna be the same and you're gonna lose a lot of business or you're going, you're gonna lose a lot of opportunity from not being culturally aware and culturally sensitive.[00:38:00]

The other end of the continuum is you acknowledge, oh my goodness, You know, all these places are different. So we're going to allow every particular market to operate absolutely independent of each o, independently of each other. And You know, the downside there is, You know, you might win business locally, but you won't be able to scale it and serve it in an economical way, right?

Because now you've got lots of little businesses without any economies of scale, all running around doing the wrong thing. So what I, what I have found to be. The happy medium and and most beneficial over the years has been to standardize and operationalize as much as you possibly can of the Go-to-market, but then hire for and trust to the local expertise to take that, as used to call it in the telco industry, that last mile.

To take those last, take what you've got and to adapt to the local environment, the local culture, how you go about engaging those customers. Um, You know, [00:39:00] in the Netherlands, You know, the concept around having a working lunch is very different from having one in Italy or even in Belgium actually, which is, which shares a border.

And, You know, a language to a certain degree. With the Netherland, the way they go about a business launch is dramatically different. And if a, if a Dutch person tries to have a Dutch business launch with Belgians, it just, it just doesn't sit as well and, and vice versa. So you have to have that local resource, that local capability to bring that last piece.

But you also need to standardize and operationalize. And, uh, it's finding that blend is, is the fascinating part. It's a, it's a puzzle. But it's a hell of a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's great advice, and I appreciate what you said about the, uh, kind of the company culture versus, You know, the, the country you're born into.

It reminds me a bit of. Uh, kind of the, the friends you choose versus the family you're born into. And there's kind of likeness in, in both, but in different ways. Um, I'm thinking too about this, like the, the level of [00:40:00] standardization, um, between kind of corporate versus what to, what to personalize, uh, for the, the needs and kind market maturity and everything of each individual.

Country, uh, because from the marketing standpoint, we've seen it kind of go, go haywire in a number of different ways. Um, and I think similarly, like it's helpful to have a corporate marketing function that is overseeing the business globally. And if it's a smaller company, even just one person, um, but then not leaning on that person to do the, the in-market, selling in the, uh, sorry, marketing in the different regions and whether you kind of hire.

A marketing person or team locally, or work with a kinda agency or or marketing partner. Um, it's that same kind of model of, uh, You know, you want the operations and kind of the overarching structure to be at the corporate level, but then you need to recognize that, You know, different countries operate differently and, um, have to, You know, tailor, uh, on so many [00:41:00] different levels.

For sure. And, and sometimes the economies in different market, the economies of your business are gonna be different from market to market. And, uh, You know, and you, you can choose, you can choose to, to just focus in the highest grossing markets for yourself, or you can pay attacks on internationalization and say, okay, You know, in this particular market I'll be paying the, the sales rep the same.

Her quota is gonna be a little bit lower because that market is not yet mature. So it's about what's your appetite? Are you, are you willing to take, You know, lower economies in, in an emerging bus, emerging market? Or are you just gonna stay in your core market forever? In which case you'll never grow beyond, You know, wherever you started your business.

Yeah. Uh, I'm sure the answer to this question is going to be a bit of a, it depends, um, but do you have any general advice around, You know, how quickly to expand into other [00:42:00] regions, how to know when you're ready, anything along those lines? Wow. Yeah, I mean, it, I, I won't give define numbers here because as you said, it really does depend.

But I would say, You know, product market fit in, in, in, in a, in a core or a couple of core markets first, where you've got your, you've got your process and You know what's working. You've been, You know, you've done a lot of AB testing. You know who your ICP is, You know how to engage that. ICP, You know how to close the deal in a, in as optimum amount timeframe as possible.

And now you've brought in a bunch of clients. There's still plenty more to go, but you, you've gotta, you've got an operation that you can now adapt to other markets. Uh, so I wouldn't be in a rush. To go out there and say, I'm, You know, I'm, I'm, I'm global first. Um, although today as digital businesses, we can be global first, right?

We can be selling to anybody [00:43:00] anywhere in the world. I would be looking to capture a meaningful portion of my core market. Start paying my bills, start making sure that I've got turnover and I've got repeatability in my business. And then I'd be looking to, uh, to scale and adapt that elsewhere to look for customers with a similar profile, albeit in different markets.

That is very good advice, so thank you, Paul. Um, I wanna end our conversation on maybe a bit more of an introspective note and thinking, You know, over the course of your, your career, what would you say is the best piece of advice that you've been given? Or at least kind of the piece of advice it's, uh, shaped you or stuck with you most?

So I would say one piece of advice that I've, I guess is it advice? I guess it was somebody would've said it to me originally. I kind of live my life by is, is, is feel the fear and do it anyway. So, You know, [00:44:00] there's a lot of decisions in our lives that, that we, that, that can instill uncertainty and fear, frankly.

Fear. Um, and just because we're afraid of it, that's not a good enough reason not to do it. Um, it's gotten me in trouble over the years. I would have to admit, You know, there are some decisions if I look back. I go, well, You know, if I probably hadn't made that decision, it might have been better. But, uh, I actually, for me, fear, I fear my greatest fear is not doing something.

It's, it's, it's, I have a greater fear of not doing something than I have of actually doing it, or a greater, I, I fear the regret of not doing something is a better way of putting it than fear regretting doing it. So I, when I have a choice, I tend to feel the fear and do it anyway. More recently, actually, uh, again, going back to Charles Rothstein.

Um, when I was going into my first PE-backed environment, uh, Charles is now a full-time operator, uh, operating partner in a PE firm. So I [00:45:00] called him up and I said, what's the one thing I need to know about, You know, a PE environment that maybe I don't know yet? And he said, it's the, it's this, he, the moment you accept the offer, the fuse gets lit and actually.

That's not just a PE environment, that's any environment particularly, You know, if you're in GTM and if you're a senior leader, if you're invited into a business, be it public, private, pe, You know, vc, it doesn't matter. They're not bringing you in because things are going great. It's not like, Hey, we're making so much money.

Come on in and join. Right? They're bringing you in because there's something that needs fixing. And in today's environment with shortened horizons, uh, particularly in our current economic climate, um, there's not the luxury of time that we've had in the past to kind of pause, evaluate, figure stuff out, and then, You know, tweak around the edges.

The fuse gets list the day [00:46:00] you say yes, and the expectations are that you're gonna drive change quickly. So just be aware of that. I think that's great advice, and you brought it full circle back to where we started, right? In today's times, in, uh, a world where we need to constantly kind of evolve and transform, uh, You know, we don't have a choice, right?

And so that, You know, that really, uh, really does resonate. Um, and as we wrap up today's conversation, can you let listeners know how they can reach you if they wanna get in touch? Sure. Um, You know, probably no surprise at this point in the conversation, I'm a very active LinkedIn member, uh, proud member of be on LinkedIn And so you can always find me there, Paul Terry.

Um, there's a few Paul Terry's on there I guess, but You know, you'll find the right one. Sounds great. Thank you. Um, and thank you so much for everything that you shared today. I loved hearing. Uh, so much of, of what we talked about from the lessons learned around change [00:47:00] management with the, the social selling, um, the fear of, of messing up and kind of the shifts in what, how today's buyers operate and what that means for, uh, what salespeople need to do.

Um, and the conversation about narrowing the ICP, uh, and being able to, to pivot quickly. So thank you so much for all of this, Paul. My pleasure. Thank you, Natalie. Uh, my pleasure as well, and thank you too to everyone who's listening. If today's conversation sparked something for you and I'm sure that it did, please pass this along to another leader.

We all know that insights like this really fuel fresh thinking and help all of us drive real transformation in our companies and in ourselves. So thanks again, Paul, and this has been another amazing conversation on Shift and Thrive. I'll see you all next time.

That's a wrap for this week's episode. For show notes and more visit Shift and thrive podcast.com. A special thank you to our sponsor, magnitude Consulting, bringing [00:48:00] you the thinking power of a growth consultancy and the getting it done Power of a full service marketing agency to help B2B companies fuel their growth.

For more information on magnitude and to get your complimentary transformation readiness assessment, visit magnitude consulting.com/. Get ready. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week.