Part 1: Hiring the Right Team
Expanding operations to Asia is a significant milestone for any US/Europe based tech company.
The huge potential beckons, the upside to the current revenue and the seemingly vast greenfield of opportunities to conquer can be exciting and rewarding. This of course comes with a lot of conditions like having the right business model, that the market is ready, and of course a stroke of luck never fails.
As the Asian market continues to grow with innovation and economic growth, many tech firms are still eyeing expansion into the region but with the current cautious climate, it requires even more meticulous planning and consideration.
From cultural nuances to legal complexities, as well as hiring the all-important first team, there are several factors that foreign tech companies must carefully navigate to ensure a successful venture here in Asia.
Being new to the market will mean more challenges because there are simply more unknown areas to you and you being relatively unknown to the market. Less market knowledge, intelligence available at your disposal and fighting with hundred other hirers for good talent.
A bit of background: we have hired close to 30 executives for AWS in Singapore and Amazon when there were less than 3 people there - I remember meeting the hiring managers the same day they moved into the office with plastic coverings on the seats we were sitting on. We have also hired the first 3 salespeople in DocuSign, some of the pioneers in Qlik and Tableau and many others in the past 13 years, lots of them from brands unheard of. From first 5 talents to first 13 to scaling them up 20, 30 hires over a year. Seeing them grow from 20s people to hundreds in a few years.
We have seen hiring sprees and layoffs, scale ups and unfortunately, shutdowns. What has worked and what hasn't?
While this is mainly an article to talk about hiring the right people for your startup, I will also attempt to share the business decisions we have seemed consistent among the more successful ones.
Let’s talk more about hiring first.
Before going straight to hire the “right” type of people, first understanding the type of business you are going after in Asia is probably more crucial. Assuming that you already know the target market and where are the top 3 markets you are going after, is your business “enterprise” or more mid market? How long is your sales cycle in these markets? What’s the buying behavior of such deals in these countries? How to find out if you are not sure?
E.g. If my solution sells to only telcos and the marketing stakeholders of these telcos, with a typical deal size of 1-2 million USD in my current (Europe or US) markets, how long will the decision-making take, for deals of this size for my target Asia telcos, give and take the difference in telco or deal size? Who has to say yes? Well, at least 10 people, from what I hear from telco sales reps.
Compared that to selling e.g. solutions of deal size 30K-50k across all industries to HR stakeholders in mid to large companies. What will be the cost of lead (more BDRs, marketing spend etc?) Likely a shorter sales cycle? 2-3 buying personas? Probably.
This understanding of how your target market buys a solution of your expertise - will give you a sense of the type of background that will make up the sales team or at least the first sales hire.
Typically, the type of first sales lead you want also depends on how much time you have to guide this person throughout the solution sales cycle. The less time you have to oversee, more independent they need to be, typically the more you pay for the ability to be independent.
You probably will want their warm network. Who doesn’t especially when the company is new to the market? The more network they have, and I mean monetizable network, the more you pay too.
Generally, a 3-person team of a lead gen, an AE and a presales work better if you have the budget to start up, especially if presales is a heavy component of the sales cycle. It would be ideal if the AE has channel skills, as you will want leverage. Also, having a good presales is almost half the battle won when it comes to securing your first few clients.
If the lead gen, marketing and customer success can be remotely supported with your current resources, all the better. Less stress for the team as they are carrying less load on them to turnover a profit quickly.
There are virtues hiring a team in Singapore to cover the Asia region as well as hiring in country local team – will cover this another day. But knowing where you want to base the location of these hires will also determine the make of the talent pool and the salary you have to pay for such.
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Coming to what worked, what didn’t? Check Part 2 out