How to leverage GTM teams during an international expansion

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Go-to-market teams are often the unsung heroes of successful product launches, marketing campaigns, or strategic pivots. Once a CRO calls the play, this team needs to execute, whatever the weather or terrain. One area where this function is perhaps most tactically deployed is during international expansion.

Expanding a business across borders is a process fraught with challenges: Whether it’s following regulations, acquiring the right talent, or adjusting to the prevailing culture, it’s a potential minefield. This means GTM teams are often rebuilt to facilitate these ambitions.

Revenue Brew spoke with three professionals on why GTM teams are an essential part of the process of going global.

Playing by the rules

Ivan Houlihan is SVP and head of Western US at IDA Ireland, the country’s foreign direct investment agency.Houlihan’s job is to help businesses looking to expand abide by European regulations.

“There’s obviously various types of regulations that will possibly apply to you, whether it’s [the] Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, the EU AI act,” Houlihan said.

Houlihan posits that, rather than being a hindrance, if strategized correctly, regulations can actually be used as an asset by GTM teams, as they provide defined frameworks that can create predictability.

“What we hear from our clients too is that gives them a bit of a balance and a perspective as well. It gives them a framework to plan around, so we’d be very much of the view that regulation is good,” Houlihan told Revenue Brew.

Finding talent overseas

ProofPoint, an enterprise cybersecurity and compliance company, worked with IDA Ireland during its recent expansion into Cork, the second largest city in Ireland.

“The logistics, introducing us to companies, introducing us to universities and colleges, the tax credit, the R & D grants, all of this added up to making Ireland a very welcoming territory for us,” said ProofPoint CFO Rémi Thomas.

Talent was also a major factor in the company’s expansion, as IDA had assured ProofPoint that the infrastructure from universities and businesses had already been built. This allowed Proofpoint to scale at its desired speed.

“Today we’re probably between 160 and 170 [employees] so our ability to recruit was faster than expected,” Thomas said. “The attrition has been low, lower than what we see in the US. Not only are we finding good talent and we’re able to get that talent on board quickly, but the people when they are part of the culture stay with us.”

When in Rome, GTM as the Romans do

John Schoenstein, CRO at customer engagement platform Customer.io, has led international sales at companies like Oracle and Microsoft and has advised onGTM strategy for at least six other companies.

From that experience, a few trends emerged. First, GTM strategy differs regionally. What might work in Europe might fall flat in Latin America or Asia.

“I’ve seen it happen a few times where smaller companies try to expand to Asia Pacific and Europe and Latin America all at one time,” Schoenstein said. “Unfortunately, when you do that, it often stretches the team in a lot of different directions, and it’s difficult to get traction in any of those geographies.”

Cultural differences can also pose a challenge. To address this, Schoenstein recommends investing in local talent and creating effective partnerships to ease the transition.

“If I were to give any advice to a CRO…one of the most important components would be investing early in local leadership and thinking through the partner strategy,” Schoenstein said.

Schoenstein said a company’s ideal customer profile (ICP) can often dictate how much of its team it needs to change during international expansion. For example, competing among large enterprises often requires more external talent with established relationships and geographic familiarity.

“[In SMB and mid-market], you can probably keep 70% of the team that you’ve got and add 30%. But if it’s enterprise, it might be the inverse of that. It might be keep 30%, add 70%,” Schoenstein said.