But let’s look at how we got here.

1.  The Entry Point

All media and tech companies are looking for growth, and very often that means looking at INTERNATIONAL Growth and breaking new markets.

One of the critical steps to tap into new markets is breaking into Europe.  And in Europe, the UK is the biggest and most strategic market to break, with Global CEO’s ranking it as 3rd most important country for investment, jointly with Germany, behind only US and China.  In fact, despite recent political turmoil and Brexit, business bosses are ever more bullish about UK in PwC’s 26th annual Global CEO Survey:  Only 9% selected UK as growth market in 2020, now up to 18%.

This is the first key market reality behind Lancelot LDN, which initially led to our existence:  deliver a London based headquarters to our clients

 

2.  Follow The Money

A decade ago, the global financial crisis and high unemployment rates led many Portuguese individuals and entrepreneurs to seek opportunities outside of the country’s limited economy. The small domestic market also compelled startups to focus on global expansion from the outset. However, today the situation has changed. Portugal not only boasts a thriving community of domestic tech companies, but it is also attracting foreign investment and talent in the tech sector. The government and local entrepreneurs are actively providing support and resources to foster innovation and continue this growth. Portugal has invested heavily in its economy in recent years, which has helped to spur a digital based economic revival.

Portugal has been the fastest-growing European tech hub since 2017 until the market growth was interrupted by the pandemic. But 2021 has already been the year of recovery for Portugal’s software market.

Sherlock Holmes used to say that if you want to solve a mystery, you should follow the money.  And the money clearly indicates the Portuguese Tech Boom:

• Home Heroes

  • Online luxury fashion platform Farfetch, coding software provider OutSystems and cloud-based contact centre Talkdesk where the first to put Portugal on the technology map. 
  • A new cohort of startups are coming through the ranks, with companies such as Unbabel and Uniplaces growing rapidly.  For a country of 10m people, Portugal has produced a rather impressive number of large tech businesses for its size.
  • Startups based in Lisbon are worth  €2.1 billion as of 2022 – a three-fold increase from half a decade ago.

• Investment

  • Last year, Lisbon welcomed its highest ever number of foreign investments in the software & IT industry, the sixth year of growth in this regard.
  • The city’s venture capital market has increased fourfold in volume of transactions, compared to 2017.
  • Attracting non-EU tech talent to Portugal has become easier thanks to Portugal’s Startup Visa and incentives for returning expats (50% income tax discount).
  • Foreign investors also gain from Portugal’s non-habitual tax resident regime, essentially a ten year tax break for skilled professionals living in Portugal.
  • The arrival of the incubators (Lisbon now has some 32 of these).

• Talent

  • Companies like Cloudflare, Google and others have chosen Lisbon as a base:  “Lisbon’s tech growth has been tremendous and [the city] is doing a great job of attracting talent. It has the potential to be the next great European technology ecosystem… We chose Lisbon because of its strong tech talent, quality of life, time zone and political stability,” says John Graham-Cumming, chief technology officer of Cloudflare.
  • The location and time zone of the country are advantageous for international travel. Being the closest European country to the US and Canada, it supports easy accessibility for international travel. The country has only a one-hour time difference from Central European Time and shares the same time zone as the United Kingdom, which makes it convenient for scheduling meetings and conducting business with both European and North American partners.
  • Educated and diverse tech talent at a competitive cost.
  • Portugal ranks 26th out of 63 countries in the World Talent Ranking, with a talented tech workforce of 90,000 programmers. Although this number may not be the highest in Europe, Portuguese developers have a strong technical education, excellent proficiency in English, and hands-on experience with cutting-edge technologies, making them a valuable asset to any company.
  • The Global Skills Report 2021 highlights that Portuguese developers possess advanced skills in computer networking, database development, and software engineering. Additionally, according to HackerRank, Portuguese developers are among the most skilled in Java, SQL, and Python.
  • Not only do they possess top-notch technical skills and a strong educational background, but the cost to hire software developers in Portugal is also relatively low.
  • The city is attracting an increasing number of foreign residents for four consecutive years, resulting in about 90,000 new arrivals in 2019.
  • The city is known for its reputation in attracting and retaining talent and is quickly becoming a leading technology ecosystem in Europe, often referred to as “the California of Europe” or “the warm Berlin.”

• Events

  • Lisbon attracts a plethora of International events given its infrastructure, location and climate.
  • The most relevant of which is the Web Summit, the largest and most important global tech conference. The latest edition gathered roughly 80,000 attendees, including some 2,000 startups and 1,500 investors.

This is the second market trend driving Lancelot LDN’s growth;  tap into the digital ecosystem in Lisbon, extending it’s benefits to our clients.

3.  The Result

As a result of these two strategic directions we have setup headquarters in London and Lisbon, looking to service our clients across Europe.  We currently run operations from two hubs:

London

• The European HQ for Lancelot LDN
• UK Commercial and Operations Team
• Client teams

Lisbon

• The European Commercial and Operations Team
• Marketing Team

The difficulty for an incoming player is that Europe is a highly fragmented territory, despite the (mostly) common marketplace.  They will absolutely need local market experts to succeed and that is where Lancelot LDN comes in.   Our ambition is clear:  to help our clients achieve a 60% reduction in local hiring costs and expansion overheads for their European operation.

The post Lancelot LDN’s Strategy for European Growth appeared first on lancelotmedialondon.com.

1.  Overwhelming recruitment effort.  

You’re spending so much time recruiting, onboarding and training new sales staff… everything else is being left behind.

Exasperated by the time it takes to recruit, onboard, and train sales staff until they are fully operational and generating revenue?  And are you making decisions fast enough as to not loose talent to your competition? 

Recruitment is a massive and ongoing investment of time and resources, in roles that historically have one of the highest turnover rates in organisations.

Alongside the hardships of execution around this, there is also the opportunity cost of where Founders are focusing their efforts.  Driving recruitment is a massive distraction and time constraint which, if not managed properly, may lead to problems elsewhere in the organisation.

Focus is key, and recruiting – especially when trying to push for growth – is a distraction.

2.  Acceleration

You are market ready, looking to ramp up your revenue growth, but you simply don’t have enough (or right!) resources to drive the cadence you are looking for.  

It may be that your inhouse sales team delivers consistently in closing deals, but is not generating demand, leads or pipeline at scale.  

Or that your team (inhouse or otherwise) is being pulled into managing sold deals, rather than handing off to the Customer Success Team.

Either as a full service solution, or a complement to your existing setup, GAAS will help you accelerate at your maximum potential.

3.  New markets

You have cracked your domestic market, and growth could come from new markets rather than trying to increase market share wherever you are active.  

New geographies require local market insights at all levels, building out local pipeline, intelligence, existing network / relationships, understanding of local culture, etc.

And the speed you achieve traction in these markets, depends on the speed you can roll out your local teams.

In conclusion

There are various routes to success, and choosing the GAAS route is one of them.  But choosing GAAS must be an intentional decision on how you approach and manage your sales process, and it’s success is directly related to how active a role you play in managing performance.

The post 3 signs you need to consider Growth As A Service appeared first on lancelotmedialondon.com.

Focusing too early on Lead Generation or Sales without a well thought out and deployed Go To Market and sales strategy is brutally inefficient.  Most start-ups are grinding to get their initial sales.  Even around the €1-2mm ARR mark, more often than not sales are being made by Founders, and not ready to scale.

Most start-ups are grinding to get their initial sales.  Even around the €1-2mm ARR mark, more often than not sales are being made by Founders, unready for scale and without a clear process or methodology.  Which inevitably creates 3 problems:

1. Perpetuates not having any clarity on WHY or HOW people are making the decision to buy the product;
2. Leads to hitting a revenue wall pretty early on;
3. Ends up creating a loss in revenue once the Founders move on to problems which arise with actually delivering the sale;

This yo-yo effect understandably creates a very acute and clear pain point for Founders, who sooner or later look at outsourcing sales given the underlying value proposition:

• Specialised selling for Software / SAAS / Martech / Blockchain / etc 
• Cost Savings around outsourcing vs in house headcount
• Faster deployment and speed to revenue

Whilst these are REAL and VALID arguments for Mid Market Scale-Ups or Enterprise players, they will most certainly be insufficient for Start-ups given the rather ominous assumption that they are BUYER READY, or that they have the inbound basics are already in place (SEO, optimized sales funnels, content / thought leadership strategy, etc).

Outsourcing Lead Generation or Sales without a well thought out and deployed Go To Market and sales strategy is brutally inefficient:  time and money spent throwing extra sales resources at a problem which isn’t fixed at its core, resulting in the same problem we started out with… aggravated by the passing time.

This exact pain point is why Lancelot LDN came around:  we provide a Growth As A Service model for tech start-ups, moving them from founder-led / little market traction through to a ready to scale sales operation.  

We also understand start-up Founders are very careful with their outgoings (or they should be!), so we make a point of clarifying exactly what it is that you can expect from us, over our relationship.  This can be broken down into two key moments: 

1. One initial 12 week consultative cycle – broken into two 6 week mini cycles – to ensure you are ready to scale your sales operation.  
2. Ongoing 12 week implementation cycles, working with whatever Sales Operation Model we have built together.

That’s it.  No black box, just a very clear and transparent process to get you to where you need to be.   Implement, analyse, adjust, repeat.

Let’s apply the 5 Why’s process to why this helps start-up Founders:

• Why?  The faster you get there, the more value your company will have;
• Why?  The technology marketplace is very much valued on speed of growth, because it proves scalability;
• Why?  The same way an MVP proves you have worked back from the business results you’re trying to achieve to build a product people want, revenue growth proves you have figured out how to sell it too; 
• Why?  It’s possible to take a venture to 7 digits revenue just out of grind.  But the only way to $10m and beyond is through scalable technology;
• Why?  If you need an answer to that question, you are probably my mum trying to figure out what it is we do again (let’s call it “techy stuff”, mum!);

Objectively, we get your business ready to increase sales, given increased resources.  Reach out to see how we can help you.

Meanwhile, check out Gartner’sFuture of Sales 2025: Why B2B Sales Needs a Digital-First Approach – always food for thought!

The post Founder-led Revenue: The Pains Of Growing Start-up Sales appeared first on lancelotmedialondon.com.