When founders wake up one morning and decide it is time to expand their sales into another country, their first steps are typically these, and the first three are, almost invariably, unsuccessful. The first one is:

Thinking the strength of the product will do the job.

Founders are, by necessity, in love with the product. God bless them for that. If they weren’t, neither their product, nor their company, would exist.

But buyers tend to be in love with their jobs, not with your product, and so they will go with an inferior product if one of the locals can provide one. B2B sales are, after all, significantly more irrational than we like to think they are, and the buyer’s primary motivation is not to find the best product, it’s to not lose his/her job, and going with the known entity who shares your language and maybe even your hometown is safer than going with the cool new product from another land.

And so step number 1, the product-led entry, fails. The founder, determined, goes back to the drawing board to try step number 2, which gets them closer, but also fails. I will cover that one in the next email. So yes, more to come…