All right. Welcome to another episode of Sales Transformation brought to you by Ledium. I'm your host, Colin Mitchell. And today I've got Chris Parker on. Yeah. And, and you mentioned something earlier that I'm curious, cause, um, you know, all companies, uh, you know, lots of changes, uh, have to be willing to be adaptable. Um, and you kind of mentioned that the team is, um, kind of used to
that. So curious, you know, with a fully distributed team, you know, working through, you know, different things and, and being adaptable, you know, what are some things that, um, you have done to kind of build a Yeah. You know, again, I think what it really comes down to is just having
the right type of people on the team. Honestly, I think, you know, it's important that you're able to kind of, you know, cultivate that type of team by not only hiring externally, you know, the right people, but also promoting and developing the people that are working really well in terms of not only their performance but also from a cultural perspective. And that really lean into those types of activities that do
help, you know, the team connect. So that's certainly been something that I'm very proud of is the fact that we've made several promotions over the last three years. And it continues to be something that's really important for us to make sure that again, you know, we can keep that knowledge within the walls of our team, but also just lean on the people that have brought us to where we are from not only a performance perspective, Yeah. And where is the team kind of spread out?
Like what does the team kind of look like today? You know, Yeah. So, yep. Yeah, so we actually do have a global client base. So when we first started to scale the team, we did orient ourselves a little bit more towards the East Coast and central time zones, just to make sure that we did have coverage for the prospects and customers that are in Europe. Um, so I would say, you know, we definitely skew to towards
the East coast. Um, but we do have, uh, sales reps and, um, solutions architects across the country in the U S and then, um, we recently brought in. Uh, leadership, um, to help us scale out, uh, Mia, uh, specifically in the UK. And they're also going to help us grow into the APAC regions as well. So that's kind of the next phase of growth. And that was really the most exciting kind of development over the last few
Yeah. And is there anything, um, that you could share, you know, I know selling into different countries and stuff, right. There's different cultures, uh, different ways of doing business. Um, any learning curves that you've kind of hit along the way of, you know, having a global customer base.
Um, and then also now, you know, hiring leadership, you Yeah, so again, I think the fact that we have very strong product market fit really helps us in many ways, and it sort of feels like a cheat code in sales, but we definitely do. you know, that has served us really well. So, you know, as it relates to how we're able to scale when we do have strong product market fit is that
we're able to meet the customers where they already are. So being that we have had a global client base has really helped us just make decisions that are a little less risky as it relates to actually putting boots on the ground and staffing up the team in the physical locations of
that audience. But again, it really just goes back to even when we were scaling US, making sure that we had time zone coverage so that we could optimize towards the buying experience and make sure that we were doing our best to kind of serve the demand that we had. And that's what we continue to do. So, again, being methodical about that has definitely helped us out. And again, you know, you're able to minimize
risk by already having that customer base. But not only that, we actually not only had customers, but we did have a global customer success team to serve those customers. So ideally, that is kind of the order that I would recommend. Again, it really starts
with product market fit. But if you can first actually have customers outside of the region that you're starting with, and then focus on supporting those customers so that they do refer other prospects and customers to your business, then you're in a pretty good spot to start adding some reps. So what we did is we actually added two ICs, two account executives, in the London area. for about six months just to kind of explore, you know, what the communication would be
with a team that was a little bit more spread out. And after, you know, ramping them up, we brought in the leadership, the second and first line leadership there to help us really, you know, double down and build out that strategy Yeah. Yeah. Well, Chris, it's been, it's been awesome having you on. I'm just kind of curious if you have any final thoughts as we wrap up, you know, for sales leaders that are trying to scale globally or trying to, you know, get into new markets or
expand their team into other markets. And then where's the best place for people to connect with you or find out more about customer customer Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I think, you know, again, my final thoughts would be. definitely center your strategy around your customers. It sounds a bit cliche, but it truthfully is the way to go. If you're doing anything other than
being customer-centric, then it's really self-serving. And it's really a very big bet that not a lot of companies are able to get perfectly right. And of course, you know, nothing's going to be perfect, but you always want to kind of minimize the risks. So by centering your decisions around your customers and your audience, you're in pretty good shape to minimize risks. So that would be my kind of parting words, if you will. And then you could definitely find me on LinkedIn. And
customer.io is our URL. So please check Awesome. We'll drop the link there in the show notes to make it easy for everybody. Thanks again, Chris, for coming on the show. Appreciate it. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share the show with your friends, write us a review, help us so we can reach more sellers and sales leaders to transform the way that