This bonus episode dives into how Rick Kelley helped scale Meta’s global sales organization (from 900 employees to 90,000) and the playbook behind building high-performing international teams.
Rick Kelley is the former SVP of Gaming and App Monetization Solutions at Meta and Managing Director of Meta Ireland, where he led a $1B+ revenue organization and played a pivotal role in building out Meta’s go-to-market teams across North America and EMEA. Over his 15-year career at Meta, Rick was instrumental in driving international expansion, especially across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa—helping to localize strategy, scale high-performing sales teams, and bring new ad products to market. Today, he advises founders on global GTM execution, sales hiring, and how AI is reshaping the future of commercial organizations.
This is a clip from the full episode with Rick, an inside look at how Meta built its $1B EMEA business and the lessons every GTM leader can apply to scale globally.
Discussed in This Clip:
- The exact framework Rick used to decide which EMEA markets to enter first
- How Meta built a $1B+ regional business from just three salespeople
- The power of centralization in early-stage go-to-market
- Why you should plan every headcount allocation before hiring
- Creating “optionality” in your sales org to weather change
- How gaming became Meta’s fifth global region
- When to localize sales teams versus staying centralized
- Why AI can make sales more efficient—but can’t replace relationships
Highlights
00:12 — Scaling Meta: from 900 to 90,000 employees
01:22 — How Rick Kelley built Meta’s mid-market sales org from scratch
02:15 — The data-driven framework Meta used to prioritize global markets
04:50 — Why startups should build expansion plans before executing
07:52 — Centralized vs. in-country hiring: Rick’s take for startups
09:49 — The importance of sales ops and forecasting discipline
13:32 — Hiring leaders who scale with you, not limit you
14:59 — How AI will reshape (but not replace) sales relationships
16:09 — From zero to $1B: lessons in efficiency, cost, and culture
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It’s trusted by the fastest-growing companies and has become the category leader in GTM Intelligence.
Learn more at zoominfo.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Rick Kelley (00:00):
I joined the company when there were 900
people.
I left the company when therewere 90,000 people.
The first thing you got to dois figure out what markets
you're going to go after first.
The most effective resourcethat any sales leader could have
is a sales planning andoperation person.
Early days it was no revenue.
And then what makes me a littlebit different than other sales
leaders is I do have a focus oncost, the bottom line, not just
(00:21):
top line.
And that's always been my storyto go to T.
Culture's everything.
If you have the right peoplethere and they're there for the
right reason, then we can makepivots when it comes to new
products, something not working.
When I left, it was close to abillion per year.
Sophie Buonassisi (01:00):
Rick Kelly joined Meta when it had 900
employees and left when it had90,000.
In this clip, he shows theexact framework he used to build
and scale Meta's mid-marketinternational sales
organization, including how toprioritize markets, structure
headcount, and hire forlong-term leadership.
This is a good blueprint.
All right, let's get into it.
Rick Kelley (01:19):
Well, I joined the company when there were 900
people.
Sophie Buonassisi (01:22):
Wow.
Rick Kelley (01:22):
I left the company when there were 90,000 people.
So there were no playbook to gobuy, or, you know, it wasn't
like I was joining something andthen having to refine it.
It was, hey, Rick, go figure itout.
And, you know, I had greatpeople around me to help me do
that.
I wasn't here alone and, youknow, all by myself by any
means.
But the first thing you got todo is figure out where are you
(01:43):
gonna, what markets are yougonna go after first?
You know, should I hire fivepeople for the UK or five people
for France?
Or, you know, how do I, in alimited resource and limited
headcount way, how do I goabout, you know, choosing the
allocation of differentheadcounts?
And so one of the things we didin the early days was create an
(02:03):
economic study utilizingprobably a seven to eight
different characteristics.
What is our user base?
What's the ad global total adrevenue, online ad revenue?
How many users do does Facebookhave in those countries?
And we kind of weighted themall and came up with a score for
every country.
So that meant that if I wasgiven 150 heads, I would know
(02:27):
the order of which I would goand hire them.
You know, I'm gonna hire myfifth person in the UK, then my
first person for the Nordics,and then my third person for,
you know, France, whatever itwas, so that if my boss had
given me 18 new heads, 28 newheads, 38 new heads, I'm not
saying, ah, you know, I don'tquite know how I'm gonna use
them.
I'd say this is exactly how I'mgonna use them, and here's how
(02:49):
much revenue I can actuallyforecast as a result of this,
you know, study that we did overa three-month period.
So I think the lesson in theearly days is when you start to
build a sales team, is you know,you don't just do the finger in
the air and just start hiringwilly-nilly based on where you
currently have customers.
You got to figure out whereyour opportunity is and invest
for that opportunity.
I think the nice part aboutbeing in a centralized sales
(03:11):
team like in Dublin or orBarcelona or London, wherever,
is that you can also moveheadcount around based on where
you see in traction and needsand things like that.
And a good example of that ismaybe we overinvested in account
managers and we needed moresalespeople.
Well, then you can move somepeople around based on the skill
sets that you needed.
Or in 2012, we started seeinggaming become this massive
(03:33):
revenue stream for the company.
It ended up being 15% of thecompany revenue back in 2012,
2013 when everybody was gettinga smartphone and had an iPhone
or an Android and people wereplaying games and downloading
games.
It was a boom to the company.
And so one of the things thatmy boss had decided to do was
pull gaming out of the regionalstructure and create a fifth
(03:53):
region for the company, whichwas gaming.
So you've got North Americasales, Latin America, AMIA,
APAC, and gaming.
So it was treated as the fifthregion.
And because I had a prettysizable portfolio of gaming
companies in my AMIA mid-marketteam, she asked me to uh to take
that global role on.
And the next 10 years meant megrowing that business out from
(04:14):
Dublin.
Sophie Buonassisi (04:15):
No, we're big believers here at GTM Fund that
strategy alone doesn't windeals.
Execution does.
But 85% of sellers are stuckmanaging their books and
spreadsheets because their datascattered across dozens of
tools.
ZoomInfo Copilot Workspacefixes that.
It's the first workspace wheresellers actually work, complete
buyer context, your REM data,and AI-powered insights in one
(04:35):
place.
Execution wins deals.
Everything else is really justpreparation.
You can learn more atzoominfo.com forward slash
copilot.
It'll be in the show notes.
And we want to go down thatroute.
I have so many questions aboutthe gaming business itself, but
even before we get there, youbuilt out very intentionally
this plan.
And that way you had a goodidea of exactly which countries
(04:58):
and who you would hire for andthat prioritization framework.
If a startup, for example, orcompany is looking to expand
into a MEA now, would yourecommend that similar playbook?
Or would you recommend any kindof adaptations to it?
Rick Kelley (05:11):
So when I came to interview for the Yahoo role,
and I'm going to go back now acouple of years.
Yeah.
I was, I wrote a 39-pagePowerPoint presentation on how I
would go and build the Europeanmid-market sales team for
Yahoo.
I had been doing it.
I I thought that I had to woothe boss and make sure that I
(05:33):
showed up prepared, notrealizing that he was kind of
trying to get me, you know, tomake the move across the pond.
But my point is that I had aplan and I created it.
And I everything from how we'regoing to recruit, the timeline
of when we're going to havepeople at desk, you know, time
to prospect, time to whateveractivity we needed to do.
And I absolutely think that ifyou're a startup or, you know,
(05:57):
starting to think about whatyour go-to-market playbook looks
like, you need to figure outwho are the constituents that
you want to sell to.
Is it partners?
Is it agencies?
Is it third parties?
Is it direct customers, bigcustomers, small customers?
Lay it all out in a document ofsome sort.
And then you start to put aplan around how do you address
them?
What's the timing to addressthem?
(06:17):
What's the priority of maybeone channel versus another?
And then, yeah, for Europe, Ithink you or any international
team, you have to think aboutwhat markets you go after.
And you need a level ofcritical mass in those markets.
Because if you're only hiringone person to address Italy, if
that person leaves, isineffective, goes on maternity
or a paternity leave, you got tohave a little bit of depth
there in order to keep themarket going.
(06:39):
So these are all things to bevery, very thoughtful about.
And I don't think you alwayshave to put people in the
markets in order to beincubating a market.
You might start that in acentralized team, you know, get
the activity moving, and after ayear or two and the revenue
starts to be meaningful, thenyou can deploy a local office
because that creates a wholeother set of, you know,
(07:01):
dynamics.
You've got to have a legalentity, you've got to understand
local HR laws, which are verydifferent from France to Italy
to Spain to Germany.
And you can't just say, hey,we're going to hire in those
markets and not have a goodunderstanding of what that might
mean if things don't work outin that market or if that person
doesn't work out.
So there's lots to bethoughtful for.
And I think the more that youcan get that on paper before you
(07:22):
start to execute, you can seearound corners better.
Sophie Buonassisi (07:26):
That's great advice.
And like you said, there's alot of different nuances to
every single different countryin AMIA.
How would you recommendstartups think about that
distribution of sales reps,whether it's centralized or
deployed in countries themselvesacross AMIA?
Should it be a singular countryfocus?
So one country at a time shouldbe distributed across a few
(07:48):
different countries when you'relooking to first come into EMIA?
Rick Kelley (07:52):
It depends on the size of the startup.
And a lot of what I do now postmy my meta world is work with
startups on their go-to-market.
So this is a conversation thatI feel like I have once a week,
if not more.
You know, there's not a onesize fits all, but I have a
bias.
And that bias is to be how doyou have add optionality to your
sales organization?
Meaning if you if you only havefour people to hire and you
(08:14):
think that it's one in the UK,one in France, one in Germany, I
don't know, and another countrythere, I would rather see you
be a little bit more thoughtfuland say, let's put those first
four people in a singularlocation where A, they can learn
from each other.
B, English is widely spokenacross the business world, you
know, in EMIA, you know, less soin certain countries.
(08:35):
But, you know, if you'rehaving, you know, if things are
not as busy in France as youmight have expected, a big
competitor or whatever reason,you know, you could always have
that French person calling intoBelgium, where they speak
French, or Switzerland, wherethey speak French.
You know, Spain, for example,when we hired our first Spanish
um employees, they were alsocalling into Latin America
because we didn't have a LatinAmerican team at the time.
(08:57):
So if you have them in thecountry and it's only one or two
people, it's harder to gainthat optionality and be able to
move people's focus around.
You know, another example in inSouthern Europe is everybody
goes on holidays for all ofAugust.
But if your team isn't going onholidays, you know, what more
could you have them do so thatthey're not ineffective for
three weeks and sitting on theirhands?
And so anytime I talk to astartup, I try and say, look,
(09:20):
you don't have the resources togo put in, you know, 35 people
across the region.
Let's be a little bit morethoughtful about how we can get
more, you know, from a limitedresource there.
Sophie Buonassisi (09:31):
That's excellent advice.
Yeah, I really look for thoseoverlap areas.
So you took us through yourmarket segmentation of IMIA and
where to focus first.
Take us through what happenedafter that.
So you've got your plan, you'vegot your plan approved.
What do the early executiondays look like?
Rick Kelley (09:49):
You've got to get the piping right.
So, how are we reporting onsales?
How are we forecasting, youknow, goal setting?
And in a world where you'regoing zero to whatever, you
know, these things are a littlebit more challenging to get
right.
Um so you got to set up a compplan.
You probably don't want to havean uncapped comp plan, or
(10:09):
because, you know, in the earlydays when your goal is a million
bucks in the first quarter, youknow, it's easy to come in at a
million and a half, and nowyou've come in at 150% a goal
and you're paying out ridiculousamounts of money to your sales
team.
Similarly, you might have overforecasted and you only come in
at 75% to goal, and you don'twant your whole team to be hurt.
So let's look at a comp planthat works for the company and a
(10:32):
comp plan that works for thethe sales or the team itself.
Then you've got to figure outlike operationally, sales ops,
you know, how do we distributethe goal?
How do we forecast?
How are we looking at thepipeline?
So I think the most effectivecross-functional resource that
any sales leader can have is asales planning and operation
(10:53):
person that is focused on thatsegment of the business.
So, you know, as my careerdeveloped and, you know, became
more influential with differentcross-functional partners from
marketing to sales engineering,you know, so on and so forth, my
number one partner has alwaysbeen that sales planning and
operations, the CFO of myorganization, if you would.
Because they're going to helpyou create investment cases,
(11:16):
figure out if your investmentsare working, how are they paying
off?
Because there's nothing easierto go and ask for, you know,
more money to go and grow theteam when you can say, this is
what you gave me six months ago,here's what I've done with
that.
Give me this, and then I can dothis as well.
Right.
Like that's that's the playbookwhere, you know, while the team
was probably 150 people large,give or take, you know, when I
(11:36):
moved on to gaming in 2013 afterfour years, it didn't get there
on day one or day, you know,first, second year, or third
year.
You know, that was anincremental growth along the
way.
And we needed to prove thevalue of every resource that we
were given in order to get more.
So that's always the to me,it's about don't just think
about the salespeople or accountmanagers that need to be at
(11:58):
desk.
What other key roles or leadersdo you need to help you tell
the story and write the rightstory?
The other thing I would say, asthe guy coming in to start the
team, doesn't mean that that wasthe manager of every person
within it.
So you've got to hire goodleaders and you've got to invest
in people that A are going tobe able to do the job in 18
(12:20):
months' time when maybe the teamgoes from 10 to 30 people.
Are they still capable ofleading the 30 people that, you
know, so so higher ahead ofmaybe where you think the team
is gonna go?
Because the last thing you wantto do is layer somebody after,
you know, a year or two becausethe the job has just got too big
for them.
So, how can you sell the visionto people that are like, yes,
(12:41):
the team is maybe only 10 peoplenow, but here's what I need you
to do over the next 18 months,and that team's gonna look like
this.
And if they can come on thatjourney, then that's great.
Sophie Buonassisi (12:49):
Yeah, and you essentially, it's almost like
incubating a startup within alarger organization.
You really built it from zero.
Rick Kelley (12:54):
100%.
That's a great way to describeit.
It's like nobody in Memo Parkback in the day, you know, or or
Sunnyvale, you know, in in theYahoo days, knew anything about
the team that I was, you know,developing.
But once you start to, youknow, get the team in place at
desk and putting numbers on theboard, then all of a sudden
they're saying, whoa, let's uhlet's have another look at this.
Sophie Buonassisi (13:14):
And when building out that leadership
team and being really thoughtfulabout those hires, were you
prioritizing certain skill setsaround expansion into EMIA?
So people who had already runthat playbook before, or did you
find that wasn't necessarily acharacteristic or trait or
experience area that you had toprioritize?
Rick Kelley (13:32):
I think back in the day, I try to prioritize
language skills.
So I probably over-pivoted tothat.
Um and then rolled that back.
I ended up rolling it backwhere how can I get good
managerial and leadershiptalent, even if they don't speak
the language to be thedirectors?
And then maybe we could hirethe or or develop the individual
(13:53):
contributors to the point wherethey could be team leaders and
and you know, more juniormanagers and they speak the
language of the local country,but that there's still some
pretty senior talent above themto be able to, you know, build
out a proper go-to-market planfor that particular sub-region,
you know, and as you get biggerand as you get to be a certain
level of scale, you knew you doneed to go from a MIA into
(14:16):
Northern Europe, SouthernEurope, you know, Eastern
Europe, whatever the breakoutmight be, or vertical.
You might say, you know what?
Autos and travel and gaming,whatever, you know, there's
benefits to doing that too.
So you got to sit down and yougot to be able to spar with some
other senior leaders to say,well, here's the pros and cons,
and maybe here's what why thatwouldn't work.
And having the right peoplearound you to do that, I think
(14:39):
is one of the things that I wasout I would always advocate for.
Even if they were a littlepricey to come in because they
were at a more senior level, youknow, in in in a year's time,
you're gonna need thatseniority.
Sophie Buonassisi (14:50):
And how do you anticipate AI now impacting
the potential global expansionand that emphasis on language
abilities?
Rick Kelley (14:59):
Yeah, I'm a big believer in AI, making your, you
know, the world more efficient,no doubt about it.
I think that there are tasksthat take place within a sales
functionality that AI is greatfor, like helping prospect,
helping surface the right.
You know, I just got off a calltoday where, you know, the tool
itself, you know, createsemails for prospects that helps
identify prospects.
(15:19):
It's like a Tinder for umcompanies they can swipe right
or swipe left based on how goodthat prospect looks, you know,
to be a fit for the the productthat they're selling.
There's a lot of things thatthey will do in terms of like
business development umefficiency, and I'm a big
believer in that.
But I also don't believe thatit will replace building
relationships, which I think issuch a big part of sales.
(15:41):
You could probably get a saleover the line just with an AI
type bot or um, you know,utilizing some form of uh
machine learning.
But when things go wrong,people want to talk to people.
Sophie Buonassisi (15:54):
Definitely.
And you mentioned the number150.
So 150 people when you left theorganization to go build
global.
So you scaled, it sounds likefrom zero to 150.
What kind of time frame wasthat?
And what kind of revenue wasreflective of that too?
Rick Kelley (16:09):
Yeah, so day one, I actually there were two
salespeople already at deskbefore I came.
So I was number three coming inas the manager.
And then yeah, it was it wasclose to 150 when I then moved
on, uh, and that organizationgot moved into a different one.
Um early days, it was norevenue.
And then when I left, it wasclose to uh a billion for the
(16:29):
year.
And what was funny is that wewere like neck and neck with the
North America team that was,you know, similar, similarly
built, right?
Mid-market.
And I can remember my bosssaying, that has never happened
before.
Like, you know, how is a MIAthe same revenue as North
America?
And I was pretty proud of that.
And I told that to the teambecause then the team wore that
as a badge of honor as well.
(16:50):
Um, but the the truth of itmatter is is gaming was a big
part of that revenue piece ofthe pie.
And, you know, you could haveCandy Crush, which is by King,
uh now owned by Activision.
They're sitting in London, butthey want to advertise to every
person around the globe.
So, you know, that might be inyour region in a MIA, but that's
(17:10):
a big advertiser.
And so that's one of the waysthat we got up to, you know, 900
million pretty quickly after,you know, it was about three and
a half years when we got tothat point.
So yeah.
So that's what, you know, kindof part of the idea was
incredibly efficient when itcame to cost of sales, when it
came to revenue per head.
And I I always really tried to,and kind of the, you know,
(17:31):
maybe what makes me a little bitdifferent than other sales
leaders is I do have a focus oncost, on, you know, uh the
bottom line, not just top line.
And I like to be a reallyefficient sales channel and a
really cost effective one.
And that's always been my storyto kind of
I joined the company when there were 900
people.
I left the company when therewere 90,000 people.
The first thing you got to dois figure out what markets
you're going to go after first.
The most effective resourcethat any sales leader could have
is a sales planning andoperation person.
Early days it was no revenue.
And then what makes me a littlebit different than other sales
leaders is I do have a focus oncost, the bottom line, not just
(00:21):
top line.
And that's always been my storyto go to T.
Culture's everything.
If you have the right peoplethere and they're there for the
right reason, then we can makepivots when it comes to new
products, something not working.
When I left, it was close to abillion per year.
Sophie Buonassisi (01:00):
Rick Kelly joined Meta when it had 900
employees and left when it had90,000.
In this clip, he shows theexact framework he used to build
and scale Meta's mid-marketinternational sales
organization, including how toprioritize markets, structure
headcount, and hire forlong-term leadership.
This is a good blueprint.
All right, let's get into it.
Rick Kelley (01:19):
Well, I joined the company when there were 900
people.
Sophie Buonassisi (01:22):
Wow.
Rick Kelley (01:22):
I left the company when there were 90,000 people.
So there were no playbook to gobuy, or, you know, it wasn't
like I was joining something andthen having to refine it.
It was, hey, Rick, go figure itout.
And, you know, I had greatpeople around me to help me do
that.
I wasn't here alone and, youknow, all by myself by any
means.
But the first thing you got todo is figure out where are you
(01:43):
gonna, what markets are yougonna go after first?
You know, should I hire fivepeople for the UK or five people
for France?
Or, you know, how do I, in alimited resource and limited
headcount way, how do I goabout, you know, choosing the
allocation of differentheadcounts?
And so one of the things we didin the early days was create an
(02:03):
economic study utilizingprobably a seven to eight
different characteristics.
What is our user base?
What's the ad global total adrevenue, online ad revenue?
How many users do does Facebookhave in those countries?
And we kind of weighted themall and came up with a score for
every country.
So that meant that if I wasgiven 150 heads, I would know
(02:27):
the order of which I would goand hire them.
You know, I'm gonna hire myfifth person in the UK, then my
first person for the Nordics,and then my third person for,
you know, France, whatever itwas, so that if my boss had
given me 18 new heads, 28 newheads, 38 new heads, I'm not
saying, ah, you know, I don'tquite know how I'm gonna use
them.
I'd say this is exactly how I'mgonna use them, and here's how
(02:49):
much revenue I can actuallyforecast as a result of this,
you know, study that we did overa three-month period.
So I think the lesson in theearly days is when you start to
build a sales team, is you know,you don't just do the finger in
the air and just start hiringwilly-nilly based on where you
currently have customers.
You got to figure out whereyour opportunity is and invest
for that opportunity.
I think the nice part aboutbeing in a centralized sales
(03:11):
team like in Dublin or orBarcelona or London, wherever,
is that you can also moveheadcount around based on where
you see in traction and needsand things like that.
And a good example of that ismaybe we overinvested in account
managers and we needed moresalespeople.
Well, then you can move somepeople around based on the skill
sets that you needed.
Or in 2012, we started seeinggaming become this massive
(03:33):
revenue stream for the company.
It ended up being 15% of thecompany revenue back in 2012,
2013 when everybody was gettinga smartphone and had an iPhone
or an Android and people wereplaying games and downloading
games.
It was a boom to the company.
And so one of the things thatmy boss had decided to do was
pull gaming out of the regionalstructure and create a fifth
(03:53):
region for the company, whichwas gaming.
So you've got North Americasales, Latin America, AMIA,
APAC, and gaming.
So it was treated as the fifthregion.
And because I had a prettysizable portfolio of gaming
companies in my AMIA mid-marketteam, she asked me to uh to take
that global role on.
And the next 10 years meant megrowing that business out from
(04:14):
Dublin.
Sophie Buonassisi (04:15):
No, we're big believers here at GTM Fund that
strategy alone doesn't windeals.
Execution does.
But 85% of sellers are stuckmanaging their books and
spreadsheets because their datascattered across dozens of
tools.
ZoomInfo Copilot Workspacefixes that.
It's the first workspace wheresellers actually work, complete
buyer context, your REM data,and AI-powered insights in one
(04:35):
place.
Execution wins deals.
Everything else is really justpreparation.
You can learn more atzoominfo.com forward slash
copilot.
It'll be in the show notes.
And we want to go down thatroute.
I have so many questions aboutthe gaming business itself, but
even before we get there, youbuilt out very intentionally
this plan.
And that way you had a goodidea of exactly which countries
(04:58):
and who you would hire for andthat prioritization framework.
If a startup, for example, orcompany is looking to expand
into a MEA now, would yourecommend that similar playbook?
Or would you recommend any kindof adaptations to it?
Rick Kelley (05:11):
So when I came to interview for the Yahoo role,
and I'm going to go back now acouple of years.
Yeah.
I was, I wrote a 39-pagePowerPoint presentation on how I
would go and build the Europeanmid-market sales team for
Yahoo.
I had been doing it.
I I thought that I had to woothe boss and make sure that I
(05:33):
showed up prepared, notrealizing that he was kind of
trying to get me, you know, tomake the move across the pond.
But my point is that I had aplan and I created it.
And I everything from how we'regoing to recruit, the timeline
of when we're going to havepeople at desk, you know, time
to prospect, time to whateveractivity we needed to do.
And I absolutely think that ifyou're a startup or, you know,
(05:57):
starting to think about whatyour go-to-market playbook looks
like, you need to figure outwho are the constituents that
you want to sell to.
Is it partners?
Is it agencies?
Is it third parties?
Is it direct customers, bigcustomers, small customers?
Lay it all out in a document ofsome sort.
And then you start to put aplan around how do you address
them?
What's the timing to addressthem?
(06:17):
What's the priority of maybeone channel versus another?
And then, yeah, for Europe, Ithink you or any international
team, you have to think aboutwhat markets you go after.
And you need a level ofcritical mass in those markets.
Because if you're only hiringone person to address Italy, if
that person leaves, isineffective, goes on maternity
or a paternity leave, you got tohave a little bit of depth
there in order to keep themarket going.
(06:39):
So these are all things to bevery, very thoughtful about.
And I don't think you alwayshave to put people in the
markets in order to beincubating a market.
You might start that in acentralized team, you know, get
the activity moving, and after ayear or two and the revenue
starts to be meaningful, thenyou can deploy a local office
because that creates a wholeother set of, you know,
(07:01):
dynamics.
You've got to have a legalentity, you've got to understand
local HR laws, which are verydifferent from France to Italy
to Spain to Germany.
And you can't just say, hey,we're going to hire in those
markets and not have a goodunderstanding of what that might
mean if things don't work outin that market or if that person
doesn't work out.
So there's lots to bethoughtful for.
And I think the more that youcan get that on paper before you
(07:22):
start to execute, you can seearound corners better.
Sophie Buonassisi (07:26):
That's great advice.
And like you said, there's alot of different nuances to
every single different countryin AMIA.
How would you recommendstartups think about that
distribution of sales reps,whether it's centralized or
deployed in countries themselvesacross AMIA?
Should it be a singular countryfocus?
So one country at a time shouldbe distributed across a few
(07:48):
different countries when you'relooking to first come into EMIA?
Rick Kelley (07:52):
It depends on the size of the startup.
And a lot of what I do now postmy my meta world is work with
startups on their go-to-market.
So this is a conversation thatI feel like I have once a week,
if not more.
You know, there's not a onesize fits all, but I have a
bias.
And that bias is to be how doyou have add optionality to your
sales organization?
Meaning if you if you only havefour people to hire and you
(08:14):
think that it's one in the UK,one in France, one in Germany, I
don't know, and another countrythere, I would rather see you
be a little bit more thoughtfuland say, let's put those first
four people in a singularlocation where A, they can learn
from each other.
B, English is widely spokenacross the business world, you
know, in EMIA, you know, less soin certain countries.
(08:35):
But, you know, if you'rehaving, you know, if things are
not as busy in France as youmight have expected, a big
competitor or whatever reason,you know, you could always have
that French person calling intoBelgium, where they speak
French, or Switzerland, wherethey speak French.
You know, Spain, for example,when we hired our first Spanish
um employees, they were alsocalling into Latin America
because we didn't have a LatinAmerican team at the time.
(08:57):
So if you have them in thecountry and it's only one or two
people, it's harder to gainthat optionality and be able to
move people's focus around.
You know, another example in inSouthern Europe is everybody
goes on holidays for all ofAugust.
But if your team isn't going onholidays, you know, what more
could you have them do so thatthey're not ineffective for
three weeks and sitting on theirhands?
And so anytime I talk to astartup, I try and say, look,
(09:20):
you don't have the resources togo put in, you know, 35 people
across the region.
Let's be a little bit morethoughtful about how we can get
more, you know, from a limitedresource there.
Sophie Buonassisi (09:31):
That's excellent advice.
Yeah, I really look for thoseoverlap areas.
So you took us through yourmarket segmentation of IMIA and
where to focus first.
Take us through what happenedafter that.
So you've got your plan, you'vegot your plan approved.
What do the early executiondays look like?
Rick Kelley (09:49):
You've got to get the piping right.
So, how are we reporting onsales?
How are we forecasting, youknow, goal setting?
And in a world where you'regoing zero to whatever, you
know, these things are a littlebit more challenging to get
right.
Um so you got to set up a compplan.
You probably don't want to havean uncapped comp plan, or
(10:09):
because, you know, in the earlydays when your goal is a million
bucks in the first quarter, youknow, it's easy to come in at a
million and a half, and nowyou've come in at 150% a goal
and you're paying out ridiculousamounts of money to your sales
team.
Similarly, you might have overforecasted and you only come in
at 75% to goal, and you don'twant your whole team to be hurt.
So let's look at a comp planthat works for the company and a
(10:32):
comp plan that works for thethe sales or the team itself.
Then you've got to figure outlike operationally, sales ops,
you know, how do we distributethe goal?
How do we forecast?
How are we looking at thepipeline?
So I think the most effectivecross-functional resource that
any sales leader can have is asales planning and operation
(10:53):
person that is focused on thatsegment of the business.
So, you know, as my careerdeveloped and, you know, became
more influential with differentcross-functional partners from
marketing to sales engineering,you know, so on and so forth, my
number one partner has alwaysbeen that sales planning and
operations, the CFO of myorganization, if you would.
Because they're going to helpyou create investment cases,
(11:16):
figure out if your investmentsare working, how are they paying
off?
Because there's nothing easierto go and ask for, you know,
more money to go and grow theteam when you can say, this is
what you gave me six months ago,here's what I've done with
that.
Give me this, and then I can dothis as well.
Right.
Like that's that's the playbookwhere, you know, while the team
was probably 150 people large,give or take, you know, when I
(11:36):
moved on to gaming in 2013 afterfour years, it didn't get there
on day one or day, you know,first, second year, or third
year.
You know, that was anincremental growth along the
way.
And we needed to prove thevalue of every resource that we
were given in order to get more.
So that's always the to me,it's about don't just think
about the salespeople or accountmanagers that need to be at
(11:58):
desk.
What other key roles or leadersdo you need to help you tell
the story and write the rightstory?
The other thing I would say, asthe guy coming in to start the
team, doesn't mean that that wasthe manager of every person
within it.
So you've got to hire goodleaders and you've got to invest
in people that A are going tobe able to do the job in 18
(12:20):
months' time when maybe the teamgoes from 10 to 30 people.
Are they still capable ofleading the 30 people that, you
know, so so higher ahead ofmaybe where you think the team
is gonna go?
Because the last thing you wantto do is layer somebody after,
you know, a year or two becausethe the job has just got too big
for them.
So, how can you sell the visionto people that are like, yes,
(12:41):
the team is maybe only 10 peoplenow, but here's what I need you
to do over the next 18 months,and that team's gonna look like
this.
And if they can come on thatjourney, then that's great.
Sophie Buonassisi (12:49):
Yeah, and you essentially, it's almost like
incubating a startup within alarger organization.
You really built it from zero.
Rick Kelley (12:54):
100%.
That's a great way to describeit.
It's like nobody in Memo Parkback in the day, you know, or or
Sunnyvale, you know, in in theYahoo days, knew anything about
the team that I was, you know,developing.
But once you start to, youknow, get the team in place at
desk and putting numbers on theboard, then all of a sudden
they're saying, whoa, let's uhlet's have another look at this.
Sophie Buonassisi (13:14):
And when building out that leadership
team and being really thoughtfulabout those hires, were you
prioritizing certain skill setsaround expansion into EMIA?
So people who had already runthat playbook before, or did you
find that wasn't necessarily acharacteristic or trait or
experience area that you had toprioritize?
Rick Kelley (13:32):
I think back in the day, I try to prioritize
language skills.
So I probably over-pivoted tothat.
Um and then rolled that back.
I ended up rolling it backwhere how can I get good
managerial and leadershiptalent, even if they don't speak
the language to be thedirectors?
And then maybe we could hirethe or or develop the individual
(13:53):
contributors to the point wherethey could be team leaders and
and you know, more juniormanagers and they speak the
language of the local country,but that there's still some
pretty senior talent above themto be able to, you know, build
out a proper go-to-market planfor that particular sub-region,
you know, and as you get biggerand as you get to be a certain
level of scale, you knew you doneed to go from a MIA into
(14:16):
Northern Europe, SouthernEurope, you know, Eastern
Europe, whatever the breakoutmight be, or vertical.
You might say, you know what?
Autos and travel and gaming,whatever, you know, there's
benefits to doing that too.
So you got to sit down and yougot to be able to spar with some
other senior leaders to say,well, here's the pros and cons,
and maybe here's what why thatwouldn't work.
And having the right peoplearound you to do that, I think
(14:39):
is one of the things that I wasout I would always advocate for.
Even if they were a littlepricey to come in because they
were at a more senior level, youknow, in in in a year's time,
you're gonna need thatseniority.
Sophie Buonassisi (14:50):
And how do you anticipate AI now impacting
the potential global expansionand that emphasis on language
abilities?
Rick Kelley (14:59):
Yeah, I'm a big believer in AI, making your, you
know, the world more efficient,no doubt about it.
I think that there are tasksthat take place within a sales
functionality that AI is greatfor, like helping prospect,
helping surface the right.
You know, I just got off a calltoday where, you know, the tool
itself, you know, createsemails for prospects that helps
identify prospects.
(15:19):
It's like a Tinder for umcompanies they can swipe right
or swipe left based on how goodthat prospect looks, you know,
to be a fit for the the productthat they're selling.
There's a lot of things thatthey will do in terms of like
business development umefficiency, and I'm a big
believer in that.
But I also don't believe thatit will replace building
relationships, which I think issuch a big part of sales.
(15:41):
You could probably get a saleover the line just with an AI
type bot or um, you know,utilizing some form of uh
machine learning.
But when things go wrong,people want to talk to people.
Sophie Buonassisi (15:54):
Definitely.
And you mentioned the number150.
So 150 people when you left theorganization to go build
global.
So you scaled, it sounds likefrom zero to 150.
What kind of time frame wasthat?
And what kind of revenue wasreflective of that too?
Rick Kelley (16:09):
Yeah, so day one, I actually there were two
salespeople already at deskbefore I came.
So I was number three coming inas the manager.
And then yeah, it was it wasclose to 150 when I then moved
on, uh, and that organizationgot moved into a different one.
Um early days, it was norevenue.
And then when I left, it wasclose to uh a billion for the
(16:29):
year.
And what was funny is that wewere like neck and neck with the
North America team that was,you know, similar, similarly
built, right?
Mid-market.
And I can remember my bosssaying, that has never happened
before.
Like, you know, how is a MIAthe same revenue as North
America?
And I was pretty proud of that.
And I told that to the teambecause then the team wore that
as a badge of honor as well.
(16:50):
Um, but the the truth of itmatter is is gaming was a big
part of that revenue piece ofthe pie.
And, you know, you could haveCandy Crush, which is by King,
uh now owned by Activision.
They're sitting in London, butthey want to advertise to every
person around the globe.
So, you know, that might be inyour region in a MIA, but that's
(17:10):
a big advertiser.
And so that's one of the waysthat we got up to, you know, 900
million pretty quickly after,you know, it was about three and
a half years when we got tothat point.
So yeah.
So that's what, you know, kindof part of the idea was
incredibly efficient when itcame to cost of sales, when it
came to revenue per head.
And I I always really tried to,and kind of the, you know,
(17:31):
maybe what makes me a little bitdifferent than other sales
leaders is I do have a focus oncost, on, you know, uh the
bottom line, not just top line.
And I like to be a reallyefficient sales channel and a
really cost effective one.
And that's always been my storyto kind of
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