Growing a B2B SaaS Business Across Europe
A Fresh Start, Not Just Another Campaign
Growing beyond your home country is an exciting milestone for any B2B SaaS company. It's easy to get carried away with the idea of opportunity. Those who have done it before might offer words of caution and advice, but they often get labeled as ‘naysayers’ quickly.
The fact is, you can't simply "open up France" on a lazy Friday afternoon and expect to replicate your existing success overnight. Every new country requires treating it as a new launch. This means deep market research, conscious local staffing, localized messaging, relevant functionality, building a robust local partner network, and an integrated marketing plan tailored to that one country.
The Importance of Deep Market Research
Expanding into a new region starts with thoroughly understanding the local landscape. Deep market research is crucial to uncover the different needs, wants, and buyer behaviors unique to your new audience. It's about really getting to know your potential customers, understanding what drives their decisions, and what solutions they seek.
This knowledge forms the foundation of your expansion strategy, ensuring you're not just another foreign SaaS company trying to push a one-size-fits-all solution.
Local market research will address these critical questions:
- How big is your actual market opportunity short, mid, and long term?
- How far do you need to go with sales and marketing localization?
- Do you need to make changes to your product?
- How do you thrive in the local ecosystem?
- How about hiring local talent?
- What’s all of that going to cost?
…and ultimately:
- Given the market opportunity, entry barriers, and necessary investments, what are our goals, our KPIs, and is it actually worth it?
Investing in Sales and Marketing Localization
Armed with insights from your market research, the next step is to craft a message that resonates on a local level. Translating sales and marketing materials into the local language may not be necessary in every country—but for those countries where English is not yet day-to-day business language, having a subset of cornerstone assets in the local language is key. Think vision papers, roadmaps, and case studies that resonate locally.
Localization goes far beyond language translation; it's about tailoring your value proposition to meet the local market's specific pains and aspirations. This might mean highlighting different themes, benefits, features or use cases that are particularly relevant to the local audience—or, in some cases, leaving them out.
Anecdote: A SaaS client had a highly effective customer success story in their European home country. Think local Jeff Bezos — every local brand wanted to hear more about how the vendor helped make that success happen. Yet two countries down the line, that same narrative fell flat. Why? The customer did not operate in that region and had little to no awareness or local pride attached to their success. Not only did the ‘extremely famous local customer’ become ‘just another customer success story’ — it was also irrelevant to prospects in that region.
A localized message ensures that your sales and marketing efforts speak directly to the heart of your potential customers' needs. Coupled with strategic local PR, these efforts help build your brand's presence, credibility, and desirability in the new market. This local resonance is irreplaceable and can significantly impact your growth trajectory.
Tailoring the Tool for Locally Relevant Capabilities
In practice, product leaders are often left out of expansion conversations, but for your GTM teams to be successful in a new country, your SaaS offering may need adjustments. This could range from integrating with local software ecosystems and complying with regional data privacy laws to adding specific features that cater to local business practices.
Depending on your local user personas, language might come into play again: Even if sales and marketing can get away with English content, business users might require local language UIs and help centers. Thankfully, even video content can now be translated quickly and cost-effectively into other languages (#noexcuses), yet it is vital to establish if your user interfaces cater to localization and if it is essential for success in a new country.
Mapping out the must-haves and nice-to-haves, as well as decision-making factors for when to bump them up in the backlog, is critical to avoid a lost quarter on the sales side—or headless chicken development to fulfill roadmap promises made to local clients.
Anecdote: A company I once worked with made a big splash in ‘going France’ and invested significantly in local marketing and expensive events. Yet, the pipeline generated evaporated quickly in the early stages of the sales cycle. Closer win-loss investigation uncovered that the product met the needs of local decision-makers. Yet, French companies had a very different set of adjacent technologies: Many of those vendors barely operated outside of France and hadn't been on the ecosystem radar before. Creating connectors to the most important third-party vendors was an easy fix, but spotting the pattern took a quarter. Half a year of pipeline loss could have been avoided with market research that takes the product ecosystem into account.
The goal is to make your solution not just usable, but indispensable for your new customers, ensuring it fits seamlessly into their existing workflows and addresses their unique challenges.
Staffing and Hiring for Local Efforts
It’s a recurring chicken-egg conversation: Do we need to land in the country first and then hire, or do we need to hire first in order to land properly? Do we hire leadership first, or a sales rep? Or maybe a BDR?
Truth is: There is no one-size-fits-all answer because it all depends on the team you’ve already got and whether you already have customers in the country—or brands that resonate with local buyers. More important than the location of your first hire(s) is their understanding of the target country’s business norms and etiquette.
Anecdote: In a role to bring a US company to Europe, we had the option to hire local reps in the first three countries we targeted—UK, Netherlands, Germany—or hire a local sales leader to operate across all three for a set period hands-on and then expand the team with focused reps. By what felt like sheer luck, I was introduced to Ben (name changed), a seasoned SaaS sales leader with Belgian roots. Ben not only knew how to build a region but wasn’t too pretty to be hands-on for a while. He spoke fluent English, Dutch, German—and bonus: French—and was highly aware of the local business culture nuances. Ben was aided at first by US sales engineers, whose feedback was that ‘he’s so boring when pitching’ because they missed the American bravado. Ben’s experience gave him the necessary resilience to that criticism — because he knew that down-to-earth straight talk is exactly what it takes to win trust and clients in Germany. Two years later, Ben heads up a team of ten as a highly successful market leader.
Be careful with relocating your rock-star salesperson because they are successful in their home country and expect instant repetition in another country. Respectfully test-drive if they do understand and respect local cultural nuances.
Also, train your HQ team that supports the region to embrace local customs, business etiquette, and communication styles. Bring in local experts to help fine-tune your approach from marketing to product to HR. Ensure your support staff can handle local inquiries and that your legal team is well-versed in regional regulations. Showing that you value and respect the local way of doing business is crucial for a successful market entry.
Anecdote: Going from the Netherlands to the UK, a vendor relocated their best sales performer—and family—from Amsterdam to London. His Dutch superpowers: charm, easy-going nature, and ‘candor’. The first big sales pitch was over and he called me excitedly: “They LOVE it! They listened very intently. And then they said it was really interesting and they will call us!!” – They did not. ‘Interesting’ in Dutch and ‘interesting’ in British English can be two very different things. Just one of the many gaps to mind.
SaaS growth needs customer satisfaction. Unlike in traditional sales models, your customer success managers and engineers are a critical part of making a new country successful. Increasingly, local customer success representation is a buying criterion for enterprise customers. Consider making a CSM your second hire—third at the latest—and bridge the time until they are fully utilized in a country or region by helping out in the international CSM team.
Only successful and happy customers will renew and—more importantly—will tell your story in the region.
From Pioneer Customers to Local Ambassadors
Your first clients in a new country are likely to be those with a pioneer spirit, ready to take a chance on a new solution that promises to meet their needs better than existing alternatives.
These early adopters are crucial not just for the initial revenue they bring but for the feedback, case studies, and word-of-mouth marketing they provide. They are your first local ambassadors, helping to build the trust and credibility you need to expand further.
It typically takes a few of these ‘beachhead customers’ before your first ‘lighthouse customers’ sign up. Finding and nurturing these local ambassadors will open doors to local industry experts and personalities—and that in turn accelerates your market penetration and is an all-round boost for your sales and marketing effectiveness.
Be Selective About Your First Agency Partners
No SaaS company is an island, especially when entering a new market and your product requires implementation or integration. Building a localized partner network is crucial for market entry. Forget the notion of a 'global' partner; success in new regions is fought and won in the field.
It’s tempting to start by spreading your bets wide and reaching out to as many implementation partners as possible. Often, this comes from the idea that agency partners will bring you deals if only they buy into your superior offering.
Experience has shown, however, that less is more when you ramp up in a new country. Select only a few partners at first—those with a fit on target audience and culture and with a willingness to widen their portfolio. This takes time and trying to rush after any-old-partner-who-may-have-a-deal will not only detract your partnership team but, in the long run, hurt your reputation and your revenue.
As a SaaS vendor, your role is to bring the first deals to the table, be obsessed about the agency’s ability to drive client success—onboard, train, coach, and support like the country's success depends on it. Because it does. You demonstrate commitment, foster mutual growth and you create #fomo. Eventually, those first partners will indeed introduce you to new prospects. And equally important: As your new clients succeed, other agencies will come and call you to team up. That’s when you know you’ve done it.
Local partners bring invaluable market insights, established customer bases, and credibility. These early relationships are pivotal for gaining traction and building a presence in the new market.
Make Signals, Not Just Noise in Demand Generation
Market entry is not a time for half measures. To cut through the noise, there's a certain threshold of investment in demand generation that you must meet. What exactly that investment is depends on the region and how much your competition is already spending. It’s a vital part of your initial market research. Spreading yourself too thinly can mean your message gets lost in the ether.
Anecdote: Moving from the UK and Benelux into Germany, France, and Nordics, a SaaS CMO had budgeted €40k annually for search advertising with an average deal size of €125k estimated for those regions. To even remotely cut through the noise in Germany in that industry at that time, you had to calculate about €10k. Monthly. At the time, the valid concerns (and data) of local marketers were dismissed and €40k contributed zip and nada to the pipeline.
Rather than defaulting to a ‘standard marketing spend matrix 911’, investigate which tactics are likely to make a signal and lead to ROI for each country. It may mean putting all your search ad budget into one country and all your event budget into another.
Starting a new country with Account-Based Marketing (ABM) as the leading strategy is highly recommended. Especially if you have a local sales rep or BDR on the ground and a marketing team member allocated to the country. Generic ‘target account (wish) lists’ are not going to bring you traction fast. Working by buying intent signals ensures that the calls you make actually have a realistic chance to convert.
Creating an integrated marketing strategy and plan requires local expertise and experience. More so than in established countries, doubling down on every new client, event, content asset, and making the most out of them is critical.
The right level of investment ensures you make meaningful signals, attracting attention, and beginning to build the brand recognition necessary for long-term success.
Every Country is a New Start
Expanding your B2B SaaS business into new regions is not a mere extension of your existing operations. It requires a dedicated, localized strategy that encompasses deep market research, tailored messaging, functionality adjustments, building a local partner network, appropriate investment levels, and nurturing local relationships.
By embracing these steps, you're not just launching in a new market; you're setting the foundation for sustainable, long-term success that respects and leverages local nuances. Remember, every new country is a new beginning, demanding your full attention, resources, and strategic foresight.
