How to win in Europe

Advice from the EMEA experts

Earlier in June we held an event in London for EMEA VPs of high-growth US companies. This post contains some insights that might prove useful for EMEA VPs who couldn’t attend in person.

When I held such a job — at Twitter, a decade ago — I envied colleagues in the US who could access a community of peers, be they CEOs, CROs, or CTOs. In Europe we seemed to work more in isolation, learning from our mistakes rather than from the experience of predecessors.

Our “Excelling as an EMEA VP” event was a small step to encourage the development of such a community in Europe. All the speakers (see below) had extensive EMEA leadership experience at high-growth US companies and the audience consisted only of the top executives leading in the region.

As the discussion unfolded about how to be successful in the EMEA VP job, a few themes emerged:

1. Make a fast start
2. Resist the urge to reinvent everything
3. Influence HQ
4. Know when to lead

Below is a selection of quotes and insights from our speakers and attendees:

Make a fast start

• “An EMEA landing team is an easy win.” Bringing a few high-performance, influential people from HQ is a great way to kick-start the region. Preferably from a mix of functions — not just Sales but Recruiting and Customer Success too.
• “My key hires were not Sales hires.” Hire a senior person in Marketing, People Ops, and Sales Ops early. Marketing creates the conditions for Sales to win. People Ops enables you to rapidly scale your org. Sales Ops gives you the metrics to make accurate decisions.
• “Invest in Marketing before Sales.” As product-led-growth companies mature, their primary growth lever changes: Stage 1 is word-of-mouth, Stage 2 is Marketing, Stage 3 is Sales. Make sure to correctly diagnose your stage in Europe. Don’t jump to Sales without first ensuring that the other two stages have been properly invested in. Your first job as Europe leader might be to reset the expectations of the exec team at HQ.

Resist the urge to reinvent everything

• “Spend 30% of your time meeting customers.” Your calendar should not be crammed with internal meetings. A key part of the job is to figure out what to copy from the US business and what to change. The only reliable way to do so is to understand differing customer needs across countries. You should not delegate this to your team, you’ll be more effective at HQ if you have personal customer stories to tell.
• “France is harder than Germany.” Contrary to widespread advice, you don’t have to change the US playbook to win in Germany. What works in the UK and Nordics will likely work in Germany, though it helps a lot if you hire a team of Germans (based in or out of Germany). France is much harder — you most likely have to hire people in Paris to win there.
• “Customer stories + PR is a winning combo.” You won’t have much marketing budget in the early days, so invest in customer case studies and PR. They’re cheap and highly effective. Also consider a CEO roadshow in which the CEO “launches” the region.

Influence HQ

• “You have executive buy-in on Day 1 but not necessarily Day 365.” Ensure you continue to have executive buy-in past the honeymoon period. Regular trips to HQ, Europe OKRs in the company’s global OKRs, fostering 1:1 relationships across the C-team at HQ and the board…these are all ways to ensure continued buy-in. Present to the board and whole company on a regular schedule.
• “Reporting lines are worth fighting for.” Although it’s most common for the VP Europe to report to the CRO, reporting to a co-founder or even the CEO gives you influence beyond Sales. Just as important, make sure your key functional leaders in Europe (e.g. Head of Marketing, Head of HR) report to their global head of function at HQ. That will give them greater influence and ensure better resourcing.
• “Send wine to the CTO!” Be creative about influencing Product and Engineering. Make sure you use the product and understand how EMEA customers use it. That will earn you more respect from Product than handing them a Top 10 list of requests. Establish a Customer Council and ensure EMEA customers are part of it. Relocate a Product Manager to EMEA. And if all else fails, send expensive wine to the CTO!

Know when to lead

• “Never waste a crisis.” As markets crash and companies embark on cost-cutting exercises, there are doomsday predictors everywhere. Don’t be one of them. Turn this moment to your advantage. It will be easier to hire people. And even if you’re not hiring, use the slowdown to optimise your business in a way that’s impossible in the go-go growth times.
• “Don’t be a whiner.” As EMEA leader, you’re not just the champion of EMEA in HQ, you’re the champion of HQ in EMEA. Don’t fall into the trap of complaining about HQ as if they’re a different company. Such whining is cathartic in the short-term but toxic in the long-term. Take a leadership stance and push back hard on whining from your team.
• “As EMEA GM your job is to build an EMEA culture, not just a Sales culture.” Even if your functional expertise is in Sales, it’s vital to recognise that you’re in a new job now. Cross functional success is the mark of a successful EMEA business. And it’s often easier to develop this blueprint in the regions rather than in HQ where functions sit on different floors.

Special thanks to Ruma Bose, Johann Butting, Gina O’Reilly, Anup Khera, Colm O’Cuinneain, and Olivier Sabella — every insight in this article came from them.

Stephen is a partner at Frontline Ventures and co-leads FrontlineX, a fund that helps US companies expand into Europe.