December 6, 2022 • 31 mins
In this episode we will talk about B2B sales in Germany with Christopher Cole, a Senior Vice President for EMEA at LeanIX named by Deloitte as one of Germany's fastest growing technology companies in 2022.
We were really lucky to get Chris sharing his multinational sales experience and to discuss with him the following:
- The potential of the German market
- How to generate leads in Germany
- What you need to know about German business culture
- What sales stage takes most of the time
- How important is to speak German
- Why Germans are so thorough in making the decisions
- What is the role of marketing in B2B sales
… and much more, as always
Don't miss the next episode, subscribe to the Start Global Insights podcast on all major platforms and YouTube.
URLs in the episode:
The platform for webinars mentioned by Chris https://www.brighttalk.com/
Speakers Linked In Profiles:
Guest, Christopher Cole https://www.linkedin.com/in/ccole4
Host, Dmytro Shvets https://www.linkedin.com/in/dshvets/
Please, give us your feedback on Apple podcasts or write to the email: podcast@start-global.biz
This podcast is made in a partnership with Do Business With Ukrainians, the platform of Ukrainian business teams you can work with now Work with verified teams.
Access the best, trustworthy small and medium businesses. You may request cooperation with Ukrainian business here: https://www.dobizwithua.com/
Create your international expansion strategy with Start Global, your guide to foreign markets. https://www.start-global.biz/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi, I'm Dmytro Shvets.
(00:06):
Your host at the start Global Insights, where I interview local experts in different countries
about local insights and international expansion experience.
My guest today is Christopher Cole, a senior vice president for EMEA at LeanIX, a software
company that offers software as a service for enterprise architecture.
(00:27):
The company sells in many countries around the world with 40% share of sales in the US.
But today we will focus on the German market, where Chris has many years of sales experience.
Hi Christopher, welcome to the show.
Hi Dmitry, thanks for having me.
Such a pleasure to be on this podcast.
How should I name you, Chris or Christopher?
(00:47):
Yeah, Chris is fine.
I think only my dad used to call me Christopher when he was mad, so Chris is perfectly fine.
Good, and your name sounds not very German.
I suppose you are not from Germany.
And you're absolutely right.
I probably would say I'm quite Germanized by now, but I was born in the US.
(01:08):
I grew up in Latin America, spent so many years in Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, and also
during my professional life spent years in the UK, Middle East, in Dubai to be precise,
but now reside in the beautiful Munich, you know, south of Germany.
Great.
So you have a lot of international experience in your life.
(01:31):
I think so, yeah.
Chris, could you tell us a bit the story of Linax?
What does it do?
Sure.
In a nutshell, Linax is a German global tech company and it was founded 10 years ago.
So we are just celebrating our 10 years anniversary.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
And in 2020, when I joined, we had roughly 363 customers under contract and we will surpass
(01:59):
the 900 customer mark by end of this year.
So quite a significant growth.
Enterprise and mid-market customers across now, over 25 countries as a matter of fact,
and growing, are part of our customer portfolio.
And we like to say we are the Google Maps for the IT landscape of an organization.
(02:19):
So we support an organization to become an overview of their IT landscape.
So an organization that we would typically address would have hundreds, if not thousands
of applications.
And that's where we help to get insight and an overview.
And that is where that analogy comes from.
Just as you get an overview with Google Maps on cities, streets, and traffic, we would
(02:42):
provide an overview on software as a services systems, business applications like SAP, Salesforce,
but also the interfaces and data flows between those systems.
Sounds really impressive.
And I think that to sell this unique solution is also quite a challenge.
(03:02):
When you are selling that, who is your main role in the client?
What is the position of the person that you are selling to?
So typically it really depends on which part or module of our portfolio, but it would be
the CIO, CTO down to the enterprise architect within an organization.
(03:23):
In my experience, to reach this type of decision makers in Germany is quite a challenge, especially
in a cold call way.
How do you do it?
How do you build your sales in Germany?
Yeah, it's not an easy task, obviously.
And to be honest, we ourselves are still maturing in the process to really get as high as possible
(03:45):
into an organization.
We sell to a variety of stakeholders in an organization.
Obviously the EA, Enterprise Architect, being primarily the contact.
But if you look at the entire buying center and the next zone buying center, there's often
a shadow buying center.
You're suddenly dependent on having to deal with an influence map that has 20 or more
(04:09):
people if necessary.
So it will be different roles in the organization.
It would be the user, decision maker, the influencer, the one who initiated that process.
So it's actually quite complex.
And in enterprise, where we typically operate, it's quite hard to actually get access to
the CIO or even CEO.
(04:32):
It becomes much more likely if you go down to mid-market and you will find that those
roles or that part of the hierarchy eventually is part of the decision making.
So you start with lower positions and then climb up to the higher?
It differs really.
I mean, we tend to do both.
(04:54):
Obviously, we have quite good connections on C level as well and try to do it bottom
down.
But equally, it is important that we address the user or the initiator of our project.
And that could be the enterprise architect or head of.
If we know the C level, the CIO through our network, whether that be our CEO or executives
(05:17):
in our organization, obviously it becomes a little bit easier as opposed to having to
work your way up during the sales process.
But you're absolutely right.
You have to go wide in an organization and you have to go high in an organization if
you really want to increase your chances of converting an opportunity into a one deal.
(05:39):
Okay, and as far as I understand, you are selling not only to Germany, yeah?
Yeah, you're absolutely correct.
As I said, I'm responsible for the EMEA market and rest of the world.
So I'm very well aware of what it actually means to tap into a new market and having
to deal with the very own specifics of that territory.
(06:03):
Okay, and taking that into account, how would you describe the difference between the German
business culture and the rest of Europe?
What would be the main characteristics of German business culture?
First, probably many of you have heard of the different stereotypes that there might
(06:23):
be when dealing with Germans.
And to some extent, you know that they are true.
You have to obviously pay interest to the fact that there are differences.
And one thing that I always like to say is that there are relationship oriented cultures
where the quality of the relationship is really important, where salespeople seek for common
(06:49):
interests between the vendor and the company.
They care for the maintenance of the relationship.
And then there's Germany, right?
And they're not relationship driven.
They're more like a task oriented culture where sort of sympathy is nice to have.
More important is being reliable, accountable.
(07:12):
And more important is the fact that you have a great product and that the quality of the
product is right.
You're probably also familiar with the Germans being punctual.
And the whole punctual thing comes from them being very sticky to a topic.
They really want to conduct a meeting with a specific agenda.
(07:33):
They are really good in planning, setting milestones and sticking to those milestones.
So there is quite a bit of differences when navigating the different territories and especially
Germany in this case.
But honestly, there's no really black and white.
And I don't really want to say relationship building is not important to Germans at all.
(07:55):
I think the contrary is the case.
And I've really made some quite good experience.
Let's not forget that, especially in our segment, enterprise sales, you deal with your contacts
over a course of six to nine months.
And it's also only the beginning of probably a much larger relationship that will last
for four years.
(08:16):
So the way you actually conduct yourself towards the customer will make a difference.
They will pay attention to, is that a person that I will, once I have bought the software,
would want to spend time implementing the solution and running that solution.
So yes, it's very data driven, milestone driven, but relationships matter.
(08:38):
It's like I am always saying that in B2B sales, you are still dealing with people.
If you don't consider that, then you can fail very easily.
100%.
People buy from people.
So don't underestimate that.
I guess the specific in the German way of doing it, that you probably need to take it
a little bit more slowly.
(08:58):
Yeah.
Let's imagine that, for example, a software company, a software development company from
Ukraine would like to expand its sales to Germany.
What kind of roadmap would you suggest?
If you're really serious about international expansion, you will at some point in time
have to be present locally.
And having said that, obviously if you want to tap into a new market, I think it's very
(09:24):
smart to do some sort of research looking at the competitive landscape and assuming
you have a great product, a large potential in the markets, total addressable market to
TAM with no doubt.
And also given the size of the addressable market of Germany, I would start deploying
resources in the country as soon as you possibly can.
(09:46):
You mean like being present there with own salespeople or?
Yeah.
Eventually at some point.
And if you look at the roles that come into mind as typically the ones that you would
deploy first, it would be sales development and the account executive.
(10:06):
Sales development will be a role that will constantly be changing in the journey because
there will be the ones qualifying any inbound leads that you might have at this point in
time.
Later in the journey, they eventually will change to be more proactively in outbounding
to target accounts.
And then you have the account executive who obviously will benefit from sales development,
(10:32):
creating leads and opportunities, but also the need of an account executive, especially
at this very early stage of entering a market, being someone who himself is a hunter and
himself is very familiar with outbounding.
It will be also the account executive who will sort of have to do part of the heavy
(10:53):
lifting of reaching out to target accounts, most likely sort of the top of the pyramid
accounts that you have in a specific country.
How do you think, is it possible to start this activity remotely, not being present
in Germany?
You can.
We did the same.
There will probably be many reasons to do so.
(11:14):
It will actually take time to build a presence in country.
It will be not the easiest to find talent in the country to onboard them.
So the most likely way for many, depending on where they are in their maturity, would
be in doing it out of their headquarters, out of the Ukraine, for example.
(11:36):
But as I said, no doubt about the potential of the German market at some point in time,
you may want to do it locally and be in country.
So the first step is to analyze the market.
The second is to start your sales and digging remotely.
And then the third one is to establish your local presence.
(11:56):
And probably it is better to do with local person, yes?
And that the person already knows as the network and knows the language, or you can also sell
with English.
Good point.
It really depends, and that's certainly something that is evolving and changing.
Probably a couple of years ago, that wasn't the case at all, where you would actually
(12:21):
would have to speak German in Germany.
I would say it comes down to in mid-market or the smaller accounts get.
Speaking German remains quite important.
But in the enterprise where I primarily operate, you will find that they already have quite
an international setup or staff.
(12:43):
So it has become quite common to conduct those meetings in English.
Okay, clear.
And from your experience, how do you build the initial sales in Germany in terms of,
for example, lead generation?
Are there any tips and tricks how to do that in Germany?
Yeah, I'm not quite sure if there's the silver bullet of doing it.
(13:10):
Probably really depends on the company, on the product, on their maturity and history.
But I can tell you a few examples of how I encountered this in the past, and especially
at Lineix.
We've been always a company who's been really strong in creating a pipeline through marketing,
(13:33):
creating a brand in that specific solution area of enterprise architects and doing that
primarily in Germany and then growing it from there into other European countries.
But over time, that will probably not be enough.
Or more certainly, I can tell you it's not enough when I look at how Lineix is going
(13:58):
to evolve in the future.
You need to put this also on additional pillars.
And if you look at which are the sources, potential sources of creating pipe, then you
will also probably have a partner ecosystem in place or could have one in place that will
provide you pipeline.
You could have the sales organization doing a significant amount of outbounding through
(14:23):
what I mentioned earlier, sales development or business development, the account executive.
And eventually, once you grow your customer base in the country, you will also have the
existing business being the fourth pillar of the mount generation.
So it's marketing, it's sales, it's partner and it's existing business.
(14:44):
Interesting about the marketing because in most cases, and I've been working a lot with
IT companies, especially with system integrators.
And in all cases, they told me that marketing in B2B is not really needed.
And you say that in your case and B2B and B2B for enterprise, actually, marketing plays
(15:04):
quite a big role.
Well, it used to contribute around 70% of the pipeline.
I mean, think of that.
It's quite phenomenal.
It's not necessarily something I've seen also in other companies.
It was really specific to Lineix, but I do believe that it's still a very important
part.
And as we evolve, that number will gradually go down as we mature in the other sources
(15:30):
of pipeline partner sales and existing business.
But even looking forward a couple of years ahead, I see the contribution of our marketing
organization still being at a very, very high, like sort of 40%.
If you look at marketing, it's all about digital marketing.
It's about campaign marketing, field marketing, which is something we're more and more growing.
(15:55):
So having a support team or a supporting function that will support you in the country to create
webinars, to drive events and to drive prospects to those events.
And I think it's a very critical way for us in conducting business.
(16:15):
Interesting.
Yeah, as well as it is, building now the muscles from the other sources of the pipeline.
So partner sales and existing business.
When you have this lead, so the lead is generated by marketing or by the sales team.
What is the next step?
Is it like a cold calling or email writing?
(16:38):
Is it still working, the email writing?
Because in most cases I hear we did not manage to sell in Germany at all.
So nobody answered us.
And I am asking like, and what have you done?
We wrote like hundred emails and that's it.
And nobody answered.
So is it like not working scheme at all?
(17:01):
And what should you do when you got to it?
It has actually indeed become quite easy to do mass mails nowadays or to literally send
hundreds of emails to contacts of a target list.
But I think what's also becoming very clear that it's not about masses.
It's not about quantity.
(17:22):
It's more becoming a game of quality and how you actually approach every individual customer.
I think if you are not on the path of personalizing your communication towards the prospect, whether
that be through email or even through a cold call, then you're doing something wrong.
(17:43):
We are actually doing that for quite a bit.
We're still optimizing it from a time perspective.
I think we're spending a little bit too much time in personalizing and need to bring that
down a little bit to more in the range of less than 10 minutes per account.
But there needs to be some sort of personalization because if you don't have that, you're missing
(18:06):
the hook of why actually prospects would want to hear from you and why they would actually
respond to you.
So it's not an email.
I think an email is an important part of a cadence that you need to put together that
will eventually have seven, eight measures of which email is one of them.
(18:31):
But the cold call or warm call, depending on where you are, will eventually be also
very important element of that.
And in terms of a cold call, I know that there are a lot of online tools where you can get
personal phone numbers of your potential clients.
Is it okay to use the personal cell phone for a cold call or is it better to call to
(18:55):
the general office number and ask to connect to the relevant person?
Yeah, good question.
If you have the phone number, I would certainly give it a shot.
I don't think there's going to be much difference once you have them on the phone.
But having said that, you can expect that, not surprisingly, they will react quite reserved.
(19:20):
Even if it's an inbound lead and hands already have shown some sort of interest for your
act, you have to remember you're still calling them unsolicited.
So if you act like a sales guy, no doubt they will not be available.
They be very defensive.
It's a tough one with cold calls.
(19:41):
And that's where sales comes into play, I guess.
It's our job in sales to get through those objections, through them being reserved, get
through the first 30 seconds and then eventually they will open up.
There is a few things that can help.
Obviously, you need to have a solution, a product that really solves a problem.
(20:04):
I spoke about cadences where eventually they would have received information prior to the
call, cold call.
So it sort of becomes a warm call.
If you have connected via LinkedIn, that will greatly help.
Don't underestimate the fact that they can relate your name once you have called with
(20:24):
a picture that they've seen through connecting with you.
And then it's also very much about doing your homework and, as I said, personalizing that
phone call.
It's a very specific characteristic that you might need in those specific roles when outbounding.
(20:46):
They have to have a very strong conviction of wanting to help the customer.
The customer immediately will see if it's just the sales guy who's just there to cash
a check.
So you need to be curious to want to really help the prospect.
Okay.
And you already mentioned that you are making a lot of events here online and offline where
(21:09):
you promote the company and actually build your network.
For the company that is not present in Germany, but would like to get connected to this network,
are there any official or the most common places where do IT guys network in Germany?
Yeah, there's just obviously, let's elevate this a little bit in terms of where do companies
(21:37):
actually get information about new products or services around B2B.
And it will be publications, obviously, will come to events in a few moments.
And then in Germany would typically be maybe a handful of ones that are really relevant.
It would be the CIO Magazine, Computer Week, Heise, CDNET, and actually other financial
(22:04):
publications that are in Germany, like Handelsblatt and Wirtschaftswoche.
There's also quite an, and it's been there for years, but the fact that there are software
review sites like G2 and Peerspot where you as a software vendor can actually list your
company and solution.
(22:25):
And we see accounts also searching through those to understand how the landscape is.
Plus a variety of obviously analysts.
Ping of Greatly for us is a close and strong collaboration with Gartner, Forrester, IDC,
and others.
So it is quite a good idea to get into this media and to start building your brand awareness
(22:50):
before you are going to some network.
Yeah, why not?
That for sure will work.
Something that we're currently doing today too is going on on-demand platforms where
you can see webinars.
There's one that we are using.
It's the Brighttalk platform, and it's quite a great information platform for any company
(23:13):
that might want to hear from your solution.
So if you sort of over time establish a solid set of webinars, videos on your solutions,
it'll be a great place for them to find them there.
So obviously live webinars, which we're also doing, but yeah, there's countless opportunities
(23:33):
almost nowadays for conversation.
Okay.
And how transparent are Germans in negotiations?
Yeah, no, the Germans are quite direct.
They're quite honest.
That's just part of the value pyramids that they have.
So typically a yes is a yes, and also a no needs to be openly communicated towards German
(24:02):
counterparts.
I think what Germans value quite a bit is that you're open and honest and proactively
address if you see any issues, maybe hurdles or concerns along the way, and do that early
and not too late in the process.
They will find that quite disruptive and will not like that at all.
(24:28):
It might come across as sometimes being aggressive or undiplomatic or crude, but the Germans
communicate in a very straightforward way.
It's just how it rolls here.
I just remembered a joke about the Germans, about the language, and it really reminded
me about the situations that I've been meeting in Germany while negotiations.
(24:54):
So the joke goes about the translator that is translating German speaker, and the German
speaker is starting the speech, and then the translator keeps silence for quite a long
time.
And guys are asking the translator, why are you keeping silence?
And the translator says, well, I am waiting for a verb.
(25:18):
Yeah, yeah, I was about to say correct.
And in this regard, so as the verb goes to the sense of the sentence, yeah, it goes at
the end.
I think that Germans are more like a thorough thinking person.
So they do not make quick decisions because they need to think through the whole sentence
(25:40):
yet understand the sense of it and then only then to answer that.
So that's maybe the characteristics of the general behavior.
And for those who does not speak German, it looks like they are not very proactive and
quick in answering.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
(26:02):
And I was just thinking of how that actually translates to my sales process.
And you could indeed say that the Germans are very thorough when actually making decisions
much more probably than in any other culture.
And you can actually see that if you look at the velocity of how an opportunity progresses
(26:27):
in the sales process.
And I give you an example.
We at Lena X, we have six sales stages beginning with discovery, with presentation, with evaluation,
stakeholder approval, negotiate, and then you win or lose a deal.
But if you look at where exactly we spend a lot of time when trying to collaborate with
(26:47):
the prospect, it's in the stakeholder approval part.
That's where you literally need to convince the entire influence map, the buying center
on making a decision.
And we have a six to nine months sales cycle, and the majority of that time is actually
spent in that decision process.
(27:07):
100% agree.
Germans wouldn't want to make a decision if they're still lacking information.
So that's where they are really sorrow in doing so.
And closing this question with language, how do you think, how important is to have marketing
materials in German?
(27:28):
From a scale of zero to 10, I would say 12.
That's how important it is.
They would probably expect a top notch documentation, like going on a website, doing research of
the website, even going into the imprint is super important.
(27:50):
For many, it is making a decision as to whether the vendor or the supplier has that seriousness
that is required in order for them to actually conduct business with you.
Building trust, obviously, I don't think we spoke about that, is super, super important.
(28:11):
And you do that through obviously those sales tools, sales kits, whether that be brochures,
prospects, website, and so on.
100%.
I mean, that needs to be top notch.
What do you think is the biggest challenge in selling in B2B in Germany?
I have an example of a former employee of mine.
(28:33):
His name was Patrick.
Up until now, it's one of the best account executives I have ever worked with.
And I used to schedule calls with him before nine o'clock in the morning because at nine
o'clock he said, hey, sorry, boss, I need to go.
It's not customer time.
And he would literally dedicate his entire day to make sure that he would support customers
(28:57):
in any way possible.
And I saw that when meeting with customers, they would get back to me and say, listen,
Patrick is doing a phenomenal job.
He's very reliable, very structured.
I have a question.
Almost never takes more than just a couple of hours for him to reply back.
(29:18):
And Patrick's attitude towards that was always, hey, I'm not going to shut down the notebook
before I actually have answered to every customer email that I have in my inbox.
So I always try to do it in a very timely manner.
And now we've been talking probably about German culture for the last 30, 40 minutes.
(29:38):
But you can see how important that is to being punctual.
And I need to understand that the German culture is a single focus time culture where everything
is based on step by step decisions, milestones.
And they really like that.
If you mess that up, it's going to be difficult.
(30:00):
Okay.
I have the last blitz quiz, if you don't mind.
So this ruining the stereotypes about Germany.
Sure.
Shoot.
Okay.
So the first one, Germans love rules.
They are bureaucratic and rules oriented.
If it is written, should be done in any case.
True.
Germans are very punctual perfectionists.
(30:21):
To be late is almost a crime.
True.
The business negotiations are very formal, including the usage of last names and titles.
Most of the time, so true.
Germans are unfriendly, especially to foreigners.
False.
There is a strict separation between work and private life.
Don't call on Friday after 16.
(30:42):
No one answers you.
True.
Germans are humorless.
Not if you really get to know them.
So I would say false.
That's it.
So thank you.
Thank you, Chris, for an interesting conversation and so many insights and experience.
I think it will be very, very valuable for our listeners.
We once again appreciate you inviting me.
(31:03):
It's been a pleasure being on this podcast.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm Dmytro Shvets.
(00:06):
Your host at the start Global Insights, where I interview local experts in different countries
about local insights and international expansion experience.
My guest today is Christopher Cole, a senior vice president for EMEA at LeanIX, a software
company that offers software as a service for enterprise architecture.
(00:27):
The company sells in many countries around the world with 40% share of sales in the US.
But today we will focus on the German market, where Chris has many years of sales experience.
Hi Christopher, welcome to the show.
Hi Dmitry, thanks for having me.
Such a pleasure to be on this podcast.
How should I name you, Chris or Christopher?
(00:47):
Yeah, Chris is fine.
I think only my dad used to call me Christopher when he was mad, so Chris is perfectly fine.
Good, and your name sounds not very German.
I suppose you are not from Germany.
And you're absolutely right.
I probably would say I'm quite Germanized by now, but I was born in the US.
(01:08):
I grew up in Latin America, spent so many years in Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, and also
during my professional life spent years in the UK, Middle East, in Dubai to be precise,
but now reside in the beautiful Munich, you know, south of Germany.
Great.
So you have a lot of international experience in your life.
(01:31):
I think so, yeah.
Chris, could you tell us a bit the story of Linax?
What does it do?
Sure.
In a nutshell, Linax is a German global tech company and it was founded 10 years ago.
So we are just celebrating our 10 years anniversary.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
And in 2020, when I joined, we had roughly 363 customers under contract and we will surpass
(01:59):
the 900 customer mark by end of this year.
So quite a significant growth.
Enterprise and mid-market customers across now, over 25 countries as a matter of fact,
and growing, are part of our customer portfolio.
And we like to say we are the Google Maps for the IT landscape of an organization.
(02:19):
So we support an organization to become an overview of their IT landscape.
So an organization that we would typically address would have hundreds, if not thousands
of applications.
And that's where we help to get insight and an overview.
And that is where that analogy comes from.
Just as you get an overview with Google Maps on cities, streets, and traffic, we would
(02:42):
provide an overview on software as a services systems, business applications like SAP, Salesforce,
but also the interfaces and data flows between those systems.
Sounds really impressive.
And I think that to sell this unique solution is also quite a challenge.
(03:02):
When you are selling that, who is your main role in the client?
What is the position of the person that you are selling to?
So typically it really depends on which part or module of our portfolio, but it would be
the CIO, CTO down to the enterprise architect within an organization.
(03:23):
In my experience, to reach this type of decision makers in Germany is quite a challenge, especially
in a cold call way.
How do you do it?
How do you build your sales in Germany?
Yeah, it's not an easy task, obviously.
And to be honest, we ourselves are still maturing in the process to really get as high as possible
(03:45):
into an organization.
We sell to a variety of stakeholders in an organization.
Obviously the EA, Enterprise Architect, being primarily the contact.
But if you look at the entire buying center and the next zone buying center, there's often
a shadow buying center.
You're suddenly dependent on having to deal with an influence map that has 20 or more
(04:09):
people if necessary.
So it will be different roles in the organization.
It would be the user, decision maker, the influencer, the one who initiated that process.
So it's actually quite complex.
And in enterprise, where we typically operate, it's quite hard to actually get access to
the CIO or even CEO.
(04:32):
It becomes much more likely if you go down to mid-market and you will find that those
roles or that part of the hierarchy eventually is part of the decision making.
So you start with lower positions and then climb up to the higher?
It differs really.
I mean, we tend to do both.
(04:54):
Obviously, we have quite good connections on C level as well and try to do it bottom
down.
But equally, it is important that we address the user or the initiator of our project.
And that could be the enterprise architect or head of.
If we know the C level, the CIO through our network, whether that be our CEO or executives
(05:17):
in our organization, obviously it becomes a little bit easier as opposed to having to
work your way up during the sales process.
But you're absolutely right.
You have to go wide in an organization and you have to go high in an organization if
you really want to increase your chances of converting an opportunity into a one deal.
(05:39):
Okay, and as far as I understand, you are selling not only to Germany, yeah?
Yeah, you're absolutely correct.
As I said, I'm responsible for the EMEA market and rest of the world.
So I'm very well aware of what it actually means to tap into a new market and having
to deal with the very own specifics of that territory.
(06:03):
Okay, and taking that into account, how would you describe the difference between the German
business culture and the rest of Europe?
What would be the main characteristics of German business culture?
First, probably many of you have heard of the different stereotypes that there might
(06:23):
be when dealing with Germans.
And to some extent, you know that they are true.
You have to obviously pay interest to the fact that there are differences.
And one thing that I always like to say is that there are relationship oriented cultures
where the quality of the relationship is really important, where salespeople seek for common
(06:49):
interests between the vendor and the company.
They care for the maintenance of the relationship.
And then there's Germany, right?
And they're not relationship driven.
They're more like a task oriented culture where sort of sympathy is nice to have.
More important is being reliable, accountable.
(07:12):
And more important is the fact that you have a great product and that the quality of the
product is right.
You're probably also familiar with the Germans being punctual.
And the whole punctual thing comes from them being very sticky to a topic.
They really want to conduct a meeting with a specific agenda.
(07:33):
They are really good in planning, setting milestones and sticking to those milestones.
So there is quite a bit of differences when navigating the different territories and especially
Germany in this case.
But honestly, there's no really black and white.
And I don't really want to say relationship building is not important to Germans at all.
(07:55):
I think the contrary is the case.
And I've really made some quite good experience.
Let's not forget that, especially in our segment, enterprise sales, you deal with your contacts
over a course of six to nine months.
And it's also only the beginning of probably a much larger relationship that will last
for four years.
(08:16):
So the way you actually conduct yourself towards the customer will make a difference.
They will pay attention to, is that a person that I will, once I have bought the software,
would want to spend time implementing the solution and running that solution.
So yes, it's very data driven, milestone driven, but relationships matter.
(08:38):
It's like I am always saying that in B2B sales, you are still dealing with people.
If you don't consider that, then you can fail very easily.
100%.
People buy from people.
So don't underestimate that.
I guess the specific in the German way of doing it, that you probably need to take it
a little bit more slowly.
(08:58):
Yeah.
Let's imagine that, for example, a software company, a software development company from
Ukraine would like to expand its sales to Germany.
What kind of roadmap would you suggest?
If you're really serious about international expansion, you will at some point in time
have to be present locally.
And having said that, obviously if you want to tap into a new market, I think it's very
(09:24):
smart to do some sort of research looking at the competitive landscape and assuming
you have a great product, a large potential in the markets, total addressable market to
TAM with no doubt.
And also given the size of the addressable market of Germany, I would start deploying
resources in the country as soon as you possibly can.
(09:46):
You mean like being present there with own salespeople or?
Yeah.
Eventually at some point.
And if you look at the roles that come into mind as typically the ones that you would
deploy first, it would be sales development and the account executive.
(10:06):
Sales development will be a role that will constantly be changing in the journey because
there will be the ones qualifying any inbound leads that you might have at this point in
time.
Later in the journey, they eventually will change to be more proactively in outbounding
to target accounts.
And then you have the account executive who obviously will benefit from sales development,
(10:32):
creating leads and opportunities, but also the need of an account executive, especially
at this very early stage of entering a market, being someone who himself is a hunter and
himself is very familiar with outbounding.
It will be also the account executive who will sort of have to do part of the heavy
(10:53):
lifting of reaching out to target accounts, most likely sort of the top of the pyramid
accounts that you have in a specific country.
How do you think, is it possible to start this activity remotely, not being present
in Germany?
You can.
We did the same.
There will probably be many reasons to do so.
(11:14):
It will actually take time to build a presence in country.
It will be not the easiest to find talent in the country to onboard them.
So the most likely way for many, depending on where they are in their maturity, would
be in doing it out of their headquarters, out of the Ukraine, for example.
(11:36):
But as I said, no doubt about the potential of the German market at some point in time,
you may want to do it locally and be in country.
So the first step is to analyze the market.
The second is to start your sales and digging remotely.
And then the third one is to establish your local presence.
(11:56):
And probably it is better to do with local person, yes?
And that the person already knows as the network and knows the language, or you can also sell
with English.
Good point.
It really depends, and that's certainly something that is evolving and changing.
Probably a couple of years ago, that wasn't the case at all, where you would actually
(12:21):
would have to speak German in Germany.
I would say it comes down to in mid-market or the smaller accounts get.
Speaking German remains quite important.
But in the enterprise where I primarily operate, you will find that they already have quite
an international setup or staff.
(12:43):
So it has become quite common to conduct those meetings in English.
Okay, clear.
And from your experience, how do you build the initial sales in Germany in terms of,
for example, lead generation?
Are there any tips and tricks how to do that in Germany?
Yeah, I'm not quite sure if there's the silver bullet of doing it.
(13:10):
Probably really depends on the company, on the product, on their maturity and history.
But I can tell you a few examples of how I encountered this in the past, and especially
at Lineix.
We've been always a company who's been really strong in creating a pipeline through marketing,
(13:33):
creating a brand in that specific solution area of enterprise architects and doing that
primarily in Germany and then growing it from there into other European countries.
But over time, that will probably not be enough.
Or more certainly, I can tell you it's not enough when I look at how Lineix is going
(13:58):
to evolve in the future.
You need to put this also on additional pillars.
And if you look at which are the sources, potential sources of creating pipe, then you
will also probably have a partner ecosystem in place or could have one in place that will
provide you pipeline.
You could have the sales organization doing a significant amount of outbounding through
(14:23):
what I mentioned earlier, sales development or business development, the account executive.
And eventually, once you grow your customer base in the country, you will also have the
existing business being the fourth pillar of the mount generation.
So it's marketing, it's sales, it's partner and it's existing business.
(14:44):
Interesting about the marketing because in most cases, and I've been working a lot with
IT companies, especially with system integrators.
And in all cases, they told me that marketing in B2B is not really needed.
And you say that in your case and B2B and B2B for enterprise, actually, marketing plays
(15:04):
quite a big role.
Well, it used to contribute around 70% of the pipeline.
I mean, think of that.
It's quite phenomenal.
It's not necessarily something I've seen also in other companies.
It was really specific to Lineix, but I do believe that it's still a very important
part.
And as we evolve, that number will gradually go down as we mature in the other sources
(15:30):
of pipeline partner sales and existing business.
But even looking forward a couple of years ahead, I see the contribution of our marketing
organization still being at a very, very high, like sort of 40%.
If you look at marketing, it's all about digital marketing.
It's about campaign marketing, field marketing, which is something we're more and more growing.
(15:55):
So having a support team or a supporting function that will support you in the country to create
webinars, to drive events and to drive prospects to those events.
And I think it's a very critical way for us in conducting business.
(16:15):
Interesting.
Yeah, as well as it is, building now the muscles from the other sources of the pipeline.
So partner sales and existing business.
When you have this lead, so the lead is generated by marketing or by the sales team.
What is the next step?
Is it like a cold calling or email writing?
(16:38):
Is it still working, the email writing?
Because in most cases I hear we did not manage to sell in Germany at all.
So nobody answered us.
And I am asking like, and what have you done?
We wrote like hundred emails and that's it.
And nobody answered.
So is it like not working scheme at all?
(17:01):
And what should you do when you got to it?
It has actually indeed become quite easy to do mass mails nowadays or to literally send
hundreds of emails to contacts of a target list.
But I think what's also becoming very clear that it's not about masses.
It's not about quantity.
(17:22):
It's more becoming a game of quality and how you actually approach every individual customer.
I think if you are not on the path of personalizing your communication towards the prospect, whether
that be through email or even through a cold call, then you're doing something wrong.
(17:43):
We are actually doing that for quite a bit.
We're still optimizing it from a time perspective.
I think we're spending a little bit too much time in personalizing and need to bring that
down a little bit to more in the range of less than 10 minutes per account.
But there needs to be some sort of personalization because if you don't have that, you're missing
(18:06):
the hook of why actually prospects would want to hear from you and why they would actually
respond to you.
So it's not an email.
I think an email is an important part of a cadence that you need to put together that
will eventually have seven, eight measures of which email is one of them.
(18:31):
But the cold call or warm call, depending on where you are, will eventually be also
very important element of that.
And in terms of a cold call, I know that there are a lot of online tools where you can get
personal phone numbers of your potential clients.
Is it okay to use the personal cell phone for a cold call or is it better to call to
(18:55):
the general office number and ask to connect to the relevant person?
Yeah, good question.
If you have the phone number, I would certainly give it a shot.
I don't think there's going to be much difference once you have them on the phone.
But having said that, you can expect that, not surprisingly, they will react quite reserved.
(19:20):
Even if it's an inbound lead and hands already have shown some sort of interest for your
act, you have to remember you're still calling them unsolicited.
So if you act like a sales guy, no doubt they will not be available.
They be very defensive.
It's a tough one with cold calls.
(19:41):
And that's where sales comes into play, I guess.
It's our job in sales to get through those objections, through them being reserved, get
through the first 30 seconds and then eventually they will open up.
There is a few things that can help.
Obviously, you need to have a solution, a product that really solves a problem.
(20:04):
I spoke about cadences where eventually they would have received information prior to the
call, cold call.
So it sort of becomes a warm call.
If you have connected via LinkedIn, that will greatly help.
Don't underestimate the fact that they can relate your name once you have called with
(20:24):
a picture that they've seen through connecting with you.
And then it's also very much about doing your homework and, as I said, personalizing that
phone call.
It's a very specific characteristic that you might need in those specific roles when outbounding.
(20:46):
They have to have a very strong conviction of wanting to help the customer.
The customer immediately will see if it's just the sales guy who's just there to cash
a check.
So you need to be curious to want to really help the prospect.
Okay.
And you already mentioned that you are making a lot of events here online and offline where
(21:09):
you promote the company and actually build your network.
For the company that is not present in Germany, but would like to get connected to this network,
are there any official or the most common places where do IT guys network in Germany?
Yeah, there's just obviously, let's elevate this a little bit in terms of where do companies
(21:37):
actually get information about new products or services around B2B.
And it will be publications, obviously, will come to events in a few moments.
And then in Germany would typically be maybe a handful of ones that are really relevant.
It would be the CIO Magazine, Computer Week, Heise, CDNET, and actually other financial
(22:04):
publications that are in Germany, like Handelsblatt and Wirtschaftswoche.
There's also quite an, and it's been there for years, but the fact that there are software
review sites like G2 and Peerspot where you as a software vendor can actually list your
company and solution.
(22:25):
And we see accounts also searching through those to understand how the landscape is.
Plus a variety of obviously analysts.
Ping of Greatly for us is a close and strong collaboration with Gartner, Forrester, IDC,
and others.
So it is quite a good idea to get into this media and to start building your brand awareness
(22:50):
before you are going to some network.
Yeah, why not?
That for sure will work.
Something that we're currently doing today too is going on on-demand platforms where
you can see webinars.
There's one that we are using.
It's the Brighttalk platform, and it's quite a great information platform for any company
(23:13):
that might want to hear from your solution.
So if you sort of over time establish a solid set of webinars, videos on your solutions,
it'll be a great place for them to find them there.
So obviously live webinars, which we're also doing, but yeah, there's countless opportunities
(23:33):
almost nowadays for conversation.
Okay.
And how transparent are Germans in negotiations?
Yeah, no, the Germans are quite direct.
They're quite honest.
That's just part of the value pyramids that they have.
So typically a yes is a yes, and also a no needs to be openly communicated towards German
(24:02):
counterparts.
I think what Germans value quite a bit is that you're open and honest and proactively
address if you see any issues, maybe hurdles or concerns along the way, and do that early
and not too late in the process.
They will find that quite disruptive and will not like that at all.
(24:28):
It might come across as sometimes being aggressive or undiplomatic or crude, but the Germans
communicate in a very straightforward way.
It's just how it rolls here.
I just remembered a joke about the Germans, about the language, and it really reminded
me about the situations that I've been meeting in Germany while negotiations.
(24:54):
So the joke goes about the translator that is translating German speaker, and the German
speaker is starting the speech, and then the translator keeps silence for quite a long
time.
And guys are asking the translator, why are you keeping silence?
And the translator says, well, I am waiting for a verb.
(25:18):
Yeah, yeah, I was about to say correct.
And in this regard, so as the verb goes to the sense of the sentence, yeah, it goes at
the end.
I think that Germans are more like a thorough thinking person.
So they do not make quick decisions because they need to think through the whole sentence
(25:40):
yet understand the sense of it and then only then to answer that.
So that's maybe the characteristics of the general behavior.
And for those who does not speak German, it looks like they are not very proactive and
quick in answering.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
(26:02):
And I was just thinking of how that actually translates to my sales process.
And you could indeed say that the Germans are very thorough when actually making decisions
much more probably than in any other culture.
And you can actually see that if you look at the velocity of how an opportunity progresses
(26:27):
in the sales process.
And I give you an example.
We at Lena X, we have six sales stages beginning with discovery, with presentation, with evaluation,
stakeholder approval, negotiate, and then you win or lose a deal.
But if you look at where exactly we spend a lot of time when trying to collaborate with
(26:47):
the prospect, it's in the stakeholder approval part.
That's where you literally need to convince the entire influence map, the buying center
on making a decision.
And we have a six to nine months sales cycle, and the majority of that time is actually
spent in that decision process.
(27:07):
100% agree.
Germans wouldn't want to make a decision if they're still lacking information.
So that's where they are really sorrow in doing so.
And closing this question with language, how do you think, how important is to have marketing
materials in German?
(27:28):
From a scale of zero to 10, I would say 12.
That's how important it is.
They would probably expect a top notch documentation, like going on a website, doing research of
the website, even going into the imprint is super important.
(27:50):
For many, it is making a decision as to whether the vendor or the supplier has that seriousness
that is required in order for them to actually conduct business with you.
Building trust, obviously, I don't think we spoke about that, is super, super important.
(28:11):
And you do that through obviously those sales tools, sales kits, whether that be brochures,
prospects, website, and so on.
100%.
I mean, that needs to be top notch.
What do you think is the biggest challenge in selling in B2B in Germany?
I have an example of a former employee of mine.
(28:33):
His name was Patrick.
Up until now, it's one of the best account executives I have ever worked with.
And I used to schedule calls with him before nine o'clock in the morning because at nine
o'clock he said, hey, sorry, boss, I need to go.
It's not customer time.
And he would literally dedicate his entire day to make sure that he would support customers
(28:57):
in any way possible.
And I saw that when meeting with customers, they would get back to me and say, listen,
Patrick is doing a phenomenal job.
He's very reliable, very structured.
I have a question.
Almost never takes more than just a couple of hours for him to reply back.
(29:18):
And Patrick's attitude towards that was always, hey, I'm not going to shut down the notebook
before I actually have answered to every customer email that I have in my inbox.
So I always try to do it in a very timely manner.
And now we've been talking probably about German culture for the last 30, 40 minutes.
(29:38):
But you can see how important that is to being punctual.
And I need to understand that the German culture is a single focus time culture where everything
is based on step by step decisions, milestones.
And they really like that.
If you mess that up, it's going to be difficult.
(30:00):
Okay.
I have the last blitz quiz, if you don't mind.
So this ruining the stereotypes about Germany.
Sure.
Shoot.
Okay.
So the first one, Germans love rules.
They are bureaucratic and rules oriented.
If it is written, should be done in any case.
True.
Germans are very punctual perfectionists.
(30:21):
To be late is almost a crime.
True.
The business negotiations are very formal, including the usage of last names and titles.
Most of the time, so true.
Germans are unfriendly, especially to foreigners.
False.
There is a strict separation between work and private life.
Don't call on Friday after 16.
(30:42):
No one answers you.
True.
Germans are humorless.
Not if you really get to know them.
So I would say false.
That's it.
So thank you.
Thank you, Chris, for an interesting conversation and so many insights and experience.
I think it will be very, very valuable for our listeners.
We once again appreciate you inviting me.
(31:03):
It's been a pleasure being on this podcast.
Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.