ST Global: Places we couldn’t even find on a map
When we were first asked us to write this post, we were rather excited. Very few people get to see the hard work we put in during the early hours of the morning.
So, how do we explain what we do?
Do we compare it to Boom Beach, where strategy always wins? Where you can’t get to the next level without strengthening a home base and having enough ammo or troops to take the offensive and conquer new land?
Maybe it is best to talk about how growing international is a start-up within a start-up — but with resources we didn’t have before.
At the end of 2014, our leadership asked us to leave everything we were working on to grow our international market. Of the three of us (Brittney included), nobody had sold internationally. Heck, there were places we couldn’t even find on a map.
We had salesforce.com, a phone, and thousands of hotels to sort through in every country outside the US and Canada…
What were we supposed to do? Do we learn to speak French, German, Finnish?
We found that we had a lot of questions to ask ourselves…
Question 1: What’s the pitch? No idea.
Question 2: Is it safe to walk to work at 6am in the pitch dark? No idea.
On call after call and demo after demo in those first early mornings, we quickly learned that we have been here before.
In 2013, no one in North America knew of Social Tables. We gave ourselves a simple goal: Find as many ambassadors of the Social Tables brand, call them customers (or as we all like to say: partners) and have them help evangelize our mission.
This led to us finding Hyatt Calgary. Calgary is where we found our champion at Hyatt, which led to a conversation with Hyatt Corporate, and now us working with the entire chain. We then grew relationships with all the major management groups, brands, and chains in North America.
In 2015, as we began our international growth, we took the same approach. We sat down with Brittney and identified where we thought we would have our most success:
- What countries did meetings most? Which cities? Bonjour, do you speak English?
- Do they diagram?
3. What chains are over there? Ever heard of Grange Hotels? Nah.
4. Does being foreign make me unapproachable?
5. Do I say “cloud-based”?
Sometimes we were off, sometimes we were on point. Or in Boom Beach terms, Zookas and Warriors might take a hit one battle but crush an island on the next (diamonds on diamonds on diamonds ya’ll).
To do this we needed to do one thing: listen.
Yes, we were listening to our potential new customers. But this time we had a unique advantage — we could turn to Social Tables and ask for help. At Social Tables, every individual plays a role in the growth of the company.
Our Customer Success and Account Management teams have stepped in and helped translate an email, video, or demo in another language, ensure a smooth onboarding and renewal process. This has given us invaluable knowledge of how our customers use Social Tables.
Our Marketing team has accelerated our sales process by targeting and messaging new leads, speaking to our new customers, and building content for us to reference.
Our Product team has built a solution that outclasses any other in the market with features that most people we speak with, didn’t even know could be possible.
And here’s why our four pillars are great. While maybe using them in a different way, our pillars were still applicable and here’s what we were thinking about…
High Risk, High Reward
Call, call, call. Any country, any city. Try different messaging. Speak to different departments. Send weird emails.
No Because, Yes If
Don’t let language be a barrier. Find different ways of helping them understand. Educate them, show them, acknowledge them. Be cross-cultural. Adapt.
Fail Fast, And Often
Diagramming? Nope. Collaboration? Nope. France? Nope.
Meeting room set ups? Yep. 3D? Yep. France again? Yep.
Ship All Day, Party All Night
Come in at weird hours. Say Bonjour. Go to Spain for a week.
Because of all of this, we are at a turning point in our company’s history. We have hired an employee in Singapore. We will hire in Europe. These new pieces will help grow our company’s mission and values around the world.
