Stefan Repin is the founder of LuckBoosters, a company helping B2B companies with complex and long sales cycles grow demand and close more customers through full-cycle marketing and sales practices. He’s worked all over the world, growing companies by adapting sales techniques to meet specific industry needs while respecting local culture.
Stefan helped one client, a Belgian software developer, enter the South African market. The company’s software consolidates data gathered by drones, information critical to the mining, agriculture, and oil and gas industries rife within the country. Stefan advised the company to build relationships with key opinion leaders to help with introductions. To develop the new relationships, prospects were invited to participate in a company podcast. Twenty agreed, receiving a brochure and a customized toy plane as a personal thank you.
At the same time, Stefan knew that mail delivery and Internet service were inconsistent throughout the country, so he worked with the software company to send three copies of the same material to ensure that potential buyers received the information sent to them. Similarly, the company made available an offline version of its software.
Stefan advised the company to be more direct – and more persistent – in its outreach than it would have been in Europe because it’s how business is done, locally. Relationship-building took time, but in the end paid off for the company.
Another client, Platforce, conducted outreach into Southeast Asia via webinars. Stefan knew that local buyers wouldn’t respond to Internet or email invitations, so advised the company to call each prospect with a personal invitation. In the end, webinars combined with dinner and a custom presentation worked to build trust and sales.
Stefan sees increased sales whenever a company supports a local representative and translates company brochures and related information. Many clients have limited budgets for localization so he asks his client companies to translate marketing material after securing at least five prospects, followed by website translation after just one sale. Building a landing page or microsite based on translated marketing material maximizes the investment.
“Trust” is the recurring theme throughout, he adds – translated, localized content builds and nurtures local relationships.
Links:
Website: https://www.luckboosters.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefan-repin-b2boperations/?originalSubdomain=ie
Connect with Wendy - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendypease/
Music: Fiddle-De-Dee by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
ATTENTION: Below is a machine-generated transcription of the podcast. Yes, here at Rapport International we talk a lot about how machine translation lacks quality. Here you see an example of what a machine can do in your own language. This transcription is provided as a gist and to give time indicators to find a topic of interest.
[00:00:34] Wendy: Welcome back, my friends, to another episode of The Global Marketing Show! And as you know, the show is brought to you by Rapport International. Now, I say this on most of the episodes, and I don't know if you know that you can always have a free consult or a free quote from anybody at Rapport International to figure out the best way to do your localization and your translation.
[00:01:01] So just head over to Rapport Translations R A P P O R T translations.com. And it's easy to navigate through the website, and they always bring us a tidbit.
[00:01:15] So today's is about stress. Do you want less stress in your life? Well, the Danish have a word for this, it's called pyt. It's spelled P Y T, and it's a cultural concept that could be very helpful in our everyday lives. It's how the Danish deal with the little things that cause stress. When you say it out loud, it reminds you to let the irritations go. Like the American phrase, Hey, stuff happens if you say it the clean way. You got a flat tire, pyt. Spill your coffee, pyt. Parking ticket, eh, pyt. So just accept the things are outta your control, reset your attitude and you'll have a better peace of mind.
[00:01:57] So with that, let me introduce you to today's guest. I think we're gonna have a lot of fun cuz he and I were just laughing before we hit record. Stefan Repin is the founder of Luck Boosters, a company that helps B2B companies with complex and long sales cycles to grow demand and close more customers through full cycle marketing and sales practices.
[00:02:25] And he helps people sell all over the world and has some fun stories about how it differes in each country. And a fun note about him is he did ABM before it was known as ABM so Stefan, welcome.
[00:02:42] Stefan: Thank you so much. I did ABM before I was born. Yeah,
[00:02:47] Wendy: you might wanna just, some people don't know what ABM is, so why don't you tell us what ABM is and a little bit more about what you do.
[00:02:54] Stefan: What is abm? It, it's a very simple concept. It's also. In some companies, they also call key management, or key account management. So was that like, let's say you are a big company and you have, let's say on your radar you have of the Fortune, 5, 5, 500, 500 companies, right?
[00:03:13] And you wanna work with like, let's say one of them. Or any of them this matter, right? So instead of like pay, basically doing a pay and spray like pay you, you approach all of them. You've sort of figured out like you're doing your own research and you see and you, and you look into what are the companies that are the best fit for you?
[00:03:31] Like, you know, what's, what's the experience you have? How many case studies you have? Who ma what makes you happy, right? Like, does it make you happy working with that type of company? And you make a list of those companies. Then you figure out an engagement strategy, right? Let's say it could be, you can do it digitally, right?
[00:03:48] Let's say you show them landing pages of, of what, of stuff that you can build together, or you can combine it with, you know, like direct mail for example. And help them help the teams that you wanna help, like cooperate between themselves, like, or you can find, find, you can send 'em something funny.
[00:04:07] So the idea behind this, just to sort of, instead of. Instead of doing one to many, doing a one to a to few strategy, right? So you focus your relationship building on these particular companies. And I found it being quite successful with big. So if you're a small fish and you're looking for big fish, like big companies, big corporations, They would really appreciate that because they don't like the, the spray and pray approach because again, it will take a long time for them to take a decision and say, we wanna work with you.
[00:04:37] So you have to sort of put the effort, put the effort into building the relationship with them.
[00:04:42] Wendy: Right. Can you take one client and give us an example and walk us through how, what it looked like? Yeah, of course.
[00:04:50] Stefan: Tell me a story. Yeah. Okay, cool. So I had a a very interesting story. I used to work. I had a client who did software for drones.
[00:04:59] So you have all these drones and, and, and some of them are used for sort of like industrial and for like industrial sort of scopes and, and like mining, for example, agriculture or you know for example in the oil industry, oil rigging and so on. So there was this company in Belgium that. They they were selling like special software management software for drones.
[00:05:22] So like, imagine you have over 50 drones, right? You have a hundred drones which go and serve the territory, right? You send them somewhere and then they look over your over your fields or overly your forest, and they find they can find very different things. They can find parasites, they can find people trying to harm or like, like for deforestation you can, you can find.
[00:05:43] A lot of other things. Right. And all of that can be shot with drones, Haba. So what we did what they were looking for, they were looking for more clients obviously. And we figured out that besides besides Europe, were drones were quite but used, but not so much. There were a lot of drone companies actually in South Africa and what we did in South Africa.
[00:06:05] Yeah. It was very interesting what we did in South Africa. We connected. First of all, we connected with the key opinion leaders, right? There were a few people there was a lady, her name was Kim, and she actually she actually published a guide on how to manage your, your drone fleet, and we got connected with, with, with Kim.
[00:06:24] And our strategy was very simple. We wanted to record the podcast. Episode with all the, all the, all the targets that, that we had in mind, but it was not that easy to get to them, right? Because people are busy and so on. So what we ended up doing is that we because every usually drone people, they're also into aviation.
[00:06:44] And we using Kim, well, we ask her, of course, we made small designer planes for each of the people we wanted to invite on the podcast. And after we and we eventually, we did more than 20 podcast episodes and we covered most of the key opinion leaders in, in South Africa and potential buyers as well.
[00:07:05] And so we, what we did, we sent them after the podcast episode. We sent them the the small, the small planes and the brochure about like our services. And we it was quite successful. We did a after that, the summit, the web summit, we had a lot of. We dedicated it to South Africa and Europe and we had more, like, more than, we had a lot of, more than like 20 speakers coming just from South Africa.
[00:07:29] So like South Africans loved what we do and we closed I think three or four like industrial, like big, big accounts with big, big companies in South Africa. One of them was mining, the other one was agriculture. A third one was oh, industrial. Building building recognition or something like that.
[00:07:48] So they would go and then basically check, build buildings outside so that they're not cracked and they don't have cracks and bridges, buildings, bridges, all these like industrial structures. So it was quite successful. Again, we put a lot of research into this, so we, before, you know, even, even inviting people for the podcast, it was really important to sort of make them.
[00:08:11] Sort of know like what angle to take with each guest, for example, the same as you are doing, right? We're talking about b m because, you know, I'm into b m. Mm-hmm. We we're talking with guests who are also into aviation or certain sports. Of course we would, we would touch the parallels between those interests and, and how can we sort of, we would include a metaphor, how we would use that, how we would use, how we would connect basketball and, and, and mining.
[00:08:37] And sometimes it came. Really funny. There was one particular guy who's, yeah, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I was gonna
[00:08:44] Wendy: say, that's fascinating. The other thing, I just went to South Africa and went on safari and poaching is really big there, so I was thinking a use for drones to manage the poachers in the safari would be fantastic.
[00:08:57] Stefan: They they are, they are, they are doing that. But they're underfunded. They're underfunded. Yeah. What, what? I had a story from a different another guy. He, he had a, he had like these huge drones which were used for transportation and which could, you know, bring 100, 200 kilograms of let's say medicines Cuz UNICEF was contracting this guy and he was saying that Very often he would be approached by these militants military groups asking him to transport ammunition.
[00:09:27] Right. And they would threaten him that, okay, if you if you don't bring our guns, we will sh shoot your, your, your drone down. Yeah. And he had a Yeah, exactly. The guy was Australian and they shot, eventually they shot his drone down and the drone was like around a million dollars. It was a very expensive drone.
[00:09:46] Yeah. It was, it was insured and they were working for unicef, so they, they got the insurance, but still it was big, big loss. And sometimes yeah, Africa is, is, is, is like that, but you have to adapt to certain, certain aspects. You know, whether there is business, there is opportunity. So you have to take the risk.
[00:10:05] Wendy: Yeah. Ooh. I didn't even think about that being a risk, but that would, it's gotta be industry dependent. So that's a great example of of how you did a coordinated outreach to specific companies. And so it was a European country reaching out to South Africa. What did they have to change to adapt their marketing and outreach from Europe?
[00:10:30] You know, from Belgium to South Africa, was it very different culturally?
[00:10:34] Stefan: Oh yeah. Actually, interestingly enough, a lot of people, a lot of aviators from Europe, they go to South Africa to receive their aviation licenses. So and South Africa and Europe are quite similar, but South Africa is way more, I would say, aggressive.
[00:10:53] So you have to be in, if in Europe you have a GDPR and you have like privacy policies and all that. In South Africa, you don't really have any of that. And sometimes, let's say you send mail and your, your mail wouldn't even get there. You know, they, they would just steal the mail and in the, in the, in the local post office, they would just steal it.
[00:11:18] So we, we eventually ended up sending two or three. Copies of the same thing to the local address because mail would get lost then we would sometimes would certainly adapt the software to being used offline because in many, in many places still in South Africa, you do not have very good, a very good connection and that that applies to actually to the whole world.
[00:11:41] World besides maybe a few places such as Europe, where. North America. I've seen that being in Asia, happening in Asia and Southeast Asia. Also, internet is soso locally. Late time, of course. Same, same situation. So you have to adapt and you don't, I would say we were way more direct, way more direct and sort of insistent that we could, could have been in Europe, so we would follow up with phone calls.
[00:12:09] We had to build trust. One thing that I found interesting was that it's very important if in, in, in Europe or and North America, you basically just do business. I would say in South, South Africa, they wanna build the relationship with you first. So you have to be like sort of friends and they have to trust you.
[00:12:27] So if you are, pardon my French, fuck up, where you know you're saying you do not deliver, you might lose the trust forever. They're very, because. Business is risky there, so they have to, they have to trust you. So try to keep your word for them, contracts and all of that. Again, it's, it's, it can be, it can get a real wild so that you have a business tomorrow, you don't, so people don't, don't always believe in contracts and, you know, they might they might forget to pay you a few times.
[00:12:55] So you have to be, you have to be very specific. How, because we had the case like the company, the, the. The company didn't pay us like a large sum because one of the, the, the decision maker, he went on safari and they couldn't find him and they just forgot to pay us. And when eventually they found him and when he came back they paid us, but it was a difficult situation.
[00:13:20] We're thinking about like what to do with the contract and so on. So you have to be mindful of the fact that contracts don't, are not always going to save your rest. So you have, that's why it's important to have a very good relationship with the people you're working, even with accounting as well. You know, cuz they'll be able to help you along the way.
[00:13:39] Wendy: Oh, that's so interesting. Okay, so that is that's a really good comparison between Europe and South Africa particularly, cuz I was just there. So it just brings it all back to me. You've also worked, you've worked across North America, Europe, and Asia, south America. You know, tell me a, a another story about a company that went into multiple markets and what.
[00:14:05] Had to be different to be successful in each market. I'll
[00:14:11] Stefan: tell you about a company that I'm consulting right now actually working there as the marketing is called PLA force and we do what's, I'm sorry, what's it called? Pla Force. Pla Force. Pla Force. Pla force. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's a pharma company.
[00:14:25] It's a pharma. So the, the icp, the ideal client profile are pharma companies who have a lot of Salesforce. So initially when we started our work, we thought, okay, so let's go digital, right? So we had all these like markets like North America, we had Europe, and we thought, oh, well internet is everywhere and we'll, we'll get there everywhere.
[00:14:48] And the thing is if you go to markets like late in America, like Asia, Southeast Asia entrance is not really everywhere and people are very busy. So so let's say
[00:15:00] Wendy: we were, wait, you said, did you say insurance is
[00:15:03] Stefan: everywhere? No, no, no. Internet. Internet. They don't have Oh, internet. Internet, okay. It's not, not everyone is digital, including, like in, in particular, pharma is very conservative as a market, so, right.
[00:15:16] You have to be, you have to be very personal. The, the level of personal connection is, is, is very important. So what we ended up doing, It's very, it's a very, very weird strategy, but I, I'll, I stole it from someone who's been very successful in pharma at all. We ended up, so we had webinars, right, like webinars online webinars, and we ended up calling people on the phone called calling people pharma companies and asking them to join the online webinar.
[00:15:46] It's a weird strategy, but it does work apparently with With like countries like I would say Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and so on. Because people appreciate they, they might not check their, their email, but if you give them a call, they'll, they'll answer the call and maybe they'll, and they'll, they'll join your webinar.
[00:16:06] That's one strategy that we use and, and work. The second one is if you're working with, with, with distant like markets that are outside Europe that are not, Sort of like third, third world countries, second world countries, and so on. You have to, again, people have to trust you because it's a big decision buying like expensive software.
[00:16:27] And when I'm talking about $10,000 a year, it's already expensive for them, right? So th they need to be able to trust you again, trust level. So what you will end up doing is doing road shows. So let's say you, you, you, you talk to the local Chamber of Commerce. You gather all the pharma distributors in the, in the, in the region.
[00:16:49] You make a nice dinner and you make a presentation about the product you sell or the problems you, you, you, you, you, you help solve in that way. You go basically region by region. You go to Cambodia, you go to Thailand, you go to Vietnam, you go to Laos, Malaysia again, Indonesia, Bali and so on. So you go to each country separately and you take it as a separate market.
[00:17:12] So you cannot put, like, if you take America and Canada, it's quite easy because they're sort of like together. In Europe, you have to localize in, in Asia, you have to localize 200%, right? Because people don't not, not everyone speaks English like most, most educated people do speak English, but not everyone does, and they're a little bit shy.
[00:17:35] So you gotta have local rep local representative there, a, to bring trust to the, to the table so you will get more trust. Second, they want to have this physical touch where they can come and, and touch you and then see you personally, you know, and in case they have a problem, they'll reach out to your representative.
[00:17:51] So you, we have, we've tried selling in the Philippines where people speak English quite well without the local representative and. We didn't, we were like observing that comp companies that we were like, sort of like they were in the sales pipeline, they would always go with the competitor and like, or competitor or other, like, you know, they wouldn't choose our solution.
[00:18:14] We're thinking, why is that? And it was always in the last a hundred meters, you know, like basically sign the papers and you're done. And they would always choose someone else. And then we realized it's a trust issue. So we deployed Local representative and the deals stopped with the deals stopped stalling, and it, it, it went much better.
[00:18:33] And in addition to that, now we're assigning road shows to the Philippines and we're planning to assign road shows to all these other countries where we will sort of cruise different cities in, in the region and show us, you know, that we are there, we're here. Do some handhold, handholding and, and show that, that were real, that we're there for them.
[00:18:56] Right. So
[00:18:57] Wendy: you mentioned localization for Cambodia and Thailand and for all the bunch of countries you listed off. Can you talk to me more about how you localized?
[00:19:11] Stefan: Yeah, good question. So, Well look for example, but first I don't have as, as a, as a, I don't really have a big budget there. So how we localize is very simple.
[00:19:25] We had our documents in, in English, like under procedure. I would ask once we had decent demands, so we had, let's say our benchmark was like five. Once we had more than five potential customers in the, in the pipeline, we would ask. Usually the sales representative for that region would say, okay, so we need to adapt the information into the local language.
[00:19:48] So we basically, well again, I told you we didn't really have our budget is quite low, but we sort of translated all the documents into that particular language. And once we agreed also with the local representative that once. We close one or two big accounts in the region, it makes sense to also have a website in that particular language to bring even more trust.
[00:20:13] I know, Wendy, that that's what you're doing with localization. I think it's incredibly, incredibly important what what you guys are doing, and I think a lot of companies when they go off when, when they leave Europe and they go to to conquer the world, they go to Asia, they go into Latin America, they go into Africa.
[00:20:33] I think they forget about the fact that those not everyone speaks English. And you look, you have to localize your brochures. You have to localize your documents cuz that's, that's just not in, that's inefficient selling if you have it in English. Even just simple, inefficient selling. It's not gonna, it is you're, you're not gonna sell as, as much as as you can and you will not be able to educate all, all your market.
[00:20:58] And that's really important tou, educate your market in, in the country with your target with your like, go-to market strategy.
[00:21:07] Wendy: And what types of materials do you, do you recommend your clients localize?
[00:21:15] Stefan: Oh good question. First of all the benefits and the pain points of your product localize it first.
[00:21:21] You can have it as a brochure. You can have some metal cards in the local metal cards printed for the local sales. So sales rep you can have. We also printed, let's say in in Spanish, we had the comparison. So we compared our solution to other competitors. We also had that in Spanish. For, for local markets in late am.
[00:21:46] Once we'll go to Brazil, we'll have, of course, in Brazil and Portuguese basically anything that that, that shows, like anything that, that, that's like bottom of funnel content. So that could be how decisions are made. Business cases. Also, please translate them pain points, benefits also should be localized.
[00:22:06] Mm. Be cars, they said. Yeah, anything, anything that like helps, helps take a decision on your last a hundred meters. That has to be localized.
[00:22:18] Wendy: Yeah, it's very interesting to me that you, you talked about the relationships and building trust and then the materials for translation are bottom of the funnel.
[00:22:28] So you didn't even say website. It was more so stuff that you'd hand out in person or, or deliver.
[00:22:36] Stefan: Yes, because I'll tell you this, like the website. Yeah, of course it's important to localize the website and that should be done at the same time, but, Look, b2, B2B is a, is a, is a, is a sphere where personal trust is way more important than company trust.
[00:22:52] So I'll trust, I, I know your company, Wendy, but I, I'll, I'll trust you way more than I do your company because I know you personally. And that's the case for most of the b2b, most B2B brands. So people follow people on LinkedIn. That and that, that's, that's just a fact. That's why we are empowering, first of all, our sales reps with the documentation they can, they can show just like sort of pass along and, and then, and then we are in the process because it is gonna take a lot, a lot of time to localize a whole website.
[00:23:27] Imagine how many ma how much materials you have there, right? If you have a, you have a, if you have a, let's say a budget, of course it, it makes sense, you can do that. But if you are. If you're sort of understaffed and you're, you're just getting there, testing the ground we decide, like for example, in this case, we decided to first, to to localize all the handouts and then lo work with the website and like sort of change the language for that.
[00:23:56] Yeah. What's
[00:23:57] Wendy: interesting about that, when we're working with clients that are trying to work within a budget, we say that if you're going to do the benefits, pain sites, brochures, comparison business cases, that's the information you put on the website. So you do one translation and then you do a microsite that can be, that you can navigate easily to from your website.
[00:24:19] Then you've used the same content. It's not additional translation.
[00:24:24] Stefan: Well, you are smarter than me. Thank you for the advice. You got it.
[00:24:30] Wendy: I just happen to be in the industry and have worked with companies to do this. So
[00:24:36] Stefan: that, that's, that's, that's great advice. So like, again, going back to bm, right? So if you have you can create a microsite where you sort of like a, a content well, a content content deck where you'll translate Not all the, all the information, but just like a part of it, which you consider the most important.
[00:24:53] Yeah, that's, that's great. Okay.
[00:24:56] Wendy: Right. Cuz oftentimes there's those extra blogs and there's, you know, press releases and stuff that doesn't really need to be translated when you're entering a market. Yeah. What what types of companies do you work with and that, that you recommend Go international?
[00:25:16] Stefan: Good question.
[00:25:17] Anyone who can scale, anyone who can scale anyone who wants to make more money. But let's say, let's say pharma is one industry where companies tend to go in international because it's quite standardized. The, the products are quite standardized. Software, I would say I work, I worked a lot with software and tech vendors that's quite international as well, and it's easily scalable because, You all you have is your data on the servers, and you have the applications also on your servers.
[00:25:49] And basically you can scale that easily into different markets, but you have to be mindful of how you do that. Again, create microsites as, as Wendy as you mentioned here. As I would say con conservative. I would actually say conservative industries like oil and gas, tele communications. What else is there?
[00:26:10] All those, all these like industries, they are quite, if you go, wanna go because they're quite old and even in very distant countries you will have some sort of local monopoly where like some sort of like local oligo poly, so you can try and, and, and maybe break it down or something. And so obviously conservative markets are something that, that like like let's say industries that would make sense to scale globally.
[00:26:40] Wendy: Okay. So you work with, it sounds like a lot of software and more mature industries.
[00:26:47] Stefan: Yeah. Yeah. I like, I like, I like industries where there is competition because if there is no, I'll tell you this. In industries where there is no competition, it means that there might be no market, right? So you'll have to, you eat a, a lot of Say trust from the investor or from the founder, Uhhuh, because you'll have to create a demand.
[00:27:07] You'll have to educate the market. You have to show them the pain. You'll have to teach them. And that takes a lot of, takes a lot, a lot of effort, like so much, so much effort then that most of the founders I know that don't have the patience. So they just pivot or they just close or they just tell investors.
[00:27:24] That was, that was it. It was a good run. So, It's be like, it's easier to go into a market where there is some competition, but it's not very strong. And you know, every player has, there is no, there is no monopoly. But, and, and every player has a sort of like a share of the market, maybe 10, 20% and you have five ma major players or so.
[00:27:45] Because if you've, because for me at least it means as a marketer, it means that there is no clear positioning and the, the, the market is fluctuating. So the market So you have a place for innovation and brand, and these are two things that will, will make or break your business. So you have a strong brand and you have some innovation.
[00:28:08] Not, I'm talking not about features that everyone has, like like I'm talking about like real innovation, where you look into what customers really need. You look into their. And to their jobs to be done. What are they trying to get? Like, you know, what they're trying to achieve with, with, with the products that are on the market and the fact that there is a, there is a, each product has a, let's say 10, 15% share or less.
[00:28:35] It means that none of them is actually doing a great job. It means that, Well, they may be doing a good job for one category of users, but not for everyone. And that there is room for improvement. And that's the type of industries I would like to go after. That's a
[00:28:51] Wendy: really good answer. Cause I typically would say, oh, I'd rather go after an industry where there's minimal competition so I can build a name in the area.
[00:29:02] But you're right, there's a lot of education that has to be done in that area, so it's. And we do much better with, at Rapport International when we've had somebody come to us that has had bad translation and they say, Ooh, I need somebody who can really do high quality. That's a good prospect for us.
[00:29:23] Stefan: Correct. I was I was working with a company I was three or four years ago when I was a part of the agency and they were selling Application, application, store optimization, basically like getting your app higher in, in the rating. Mm-hmm. And they were, mm-hmm. Their source of demand was actually bad, bad reviews.
[00:29:42] They would literally scrape the, the app, app store, the Play store and the Apple store for applications which had bad reviews and they would go and sort of create a, a strategy around like, well engaging with those companies and saying, look, you have bad reviews. These are. Particular ways how you can guys improve.
[00:30:00] And they also, they had those like microsites you are talking about. So because they figured like a pattern that, let's say the user interface was bad here and here, and they would create a pattern for maybe five or six cases and they would show it to different companies and that's how they landed clients.
[00:30:16] It was quite efficient, I'd say. Yes.
[00:30:19] Wendy: Yes. That's fantastic. Speaking of optimization and microsites, you said you work with a lot of software companies. One thing that I've seen with software companies is that they don't think about international growth until it's too late and they don't build their platforms that can be localized or translated.
[00:30:39] What, what have you seen in that area?
[00:30:44] Stefan: Yeah. What I've seen in that area. Let's say I've seen many companies in Europe trying to to conquer the United States, but, and there, you know, tech people have this like mindset that, oh, we're all digital. So if it's the website is in English and our communication is in English, it means that we'll conquer America with, or Canada with, you know, just because it's in English.
[00:31:05] But it's, it's not the case here. You, you really have to go into, you really have to get there into the market then. Start talking to people and key opinion leaders. In no case when there is this company called LEM list, L e m L i S t.com, and they, their closest competitor, SalesLoft and they were thinking about strategies, how can they conquer the American market?
[00:31:28] And they were trying this digital strategy and that digital strategy and trying to do it all online. And at some point they figure it out. Listen, we, if we don't get on the, on our enemy's turf, We won't be able to win. So they contracted a few a few influencers a few market influencers who knew a lot of salespeople locally in the, in America and Canada.
[00:31:51] And they started doing a lot of evangelism like product evangelism, brand evangelism, and building community, all in those local markets. Again, we're talking about meetups, we're talking about dinners with, with sales leaders. We're talking about Get togethers, offline events, all of that. They had to fund all those activities, which are sort of like, which, which mean the dark funnel.
[00:32:15] You can't really track them, but those things actually move your business forward when you're coming on on such a big market, in rich market, such as the United States or Canada. So thinking that only with digital, you'll get there and you'll able to localize in a different market that's. That's big time bs.
[00:32:32] Like that's being very naive, I would say.
[00:32:35] Wendy: Yeah. Yeah, that, that's a good part. Good point. I've never heard of it called the the dark funnel. So that's something I'll add into the sales and market, our A V M strategy.
[00:32:46] Stefan: Dark social, dark social, they call
[00:32:48] Wendy: it also dark social. Yeah, we've worked with some companies where they have thought ahead and then they've given us access.
[00:32:55] To their backend and had us go in and translate the software there cuz they had mirror platforms in there and so it was really easy for them to launch across different languages and countries. So unfortunately we have run out of time. Cuz this has been a fascinating conversation with g, with the, the selling market.
[00:33:15] And you know, I'm gonna ask this question at the end. What's your favorite foreign word?
[00:33:23] Stefan: Wabi Wabisabi.
[00:33:26] Wendy: Yeah. What's that
[00:33:29] Stefan: mean? Wabisabi means in traditional in Japanese, it means, basically, it, it's about accepting the imperfection and sort of transience of, of the world. That the, the beauty is being beautiful doesn't mean that you're perfect.
[00:33:46] Being beautiful means that you're imperfect. If you look at things that the nature created, most of them are imperfectly beautiful, right? Mm-hmm. And and we should, there is a, there is an interesting concept in, in Japan, they, if something like a cup or, or aup or something is broken, they don't mand it in a way that they don't fix it in a way that you won't see where it happened.
[00:34:12] Instead, they would actually. Paint with gold, with the golden color, the, the part where it was broken or torn, which would show that you're, you're being perfect broken, basically, which shows that, you know it's, it's a part of the WAA concept. So yeah, that's, that's the part I like. That's
[00:34:33] Wendy: fantastic.
[00:34:33] There's something in the Native American culture too that captures that, that when they sow something or make something, they'll be something a little bit off to capture that, that it doesn't have to be perfect. I'm probably not articulating. Well, if any of the listeners know more about it, please let me know and I'll.
[00:34:51] We'll do a tidbit about it from Rapport International, but I love that Wabisabi is great. Any final recommendations for our listeners?
[00:35:02] Stefan: If you guys need if you guys thinking you're thinking of, of getting localized in a different country, please go to Wendy. If you're thinking about selling in a different country, then come to me.
[00:35:12] I'll help you with, even with free advice, I'm always open to consulting for free and helping out the community and, and business people. Being a founder myself, I know how hard it is to, to build a business alone. And you obviously, everyone needs friends, so I'll be your friend. Wonderful.
[00:35:30] Wendy: How can people reach you?
[00:35:32] Stefan: Just Google luck boosters.com. L U C K B O O S t s.com. Or just find me Stefan rap in, just Google. Google me and you'll find my LinkedIn profile. Just drop me a message and you'll get the help needed.
[00:35:48] Wendy: Excellent. So you can find all the links on the, the show notes wherever you're listening to the podcast.
[00:35:53] His name is spelled s t e f as in Frank, a n rep, n, last name r e, p as in Peter, i n. Thank you so for listening. Really appreciate if you give us a five star or forward this episode along to somebody that might be interesting and Hearing about how to sell international. This was a lot of great advice and I really appreciate it, Stefan, for you being here, thank you so much.
[00:36:23] Stefan: The pleasure is certainly mine. Thank you so much. Thank
[00:36:26] Wendy: you. So tune in next time or we'll have another great guest for you to, how to expand internationally.
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