Praveen Joins us on Global Sales Mentor Podcast for Conversations that Drive Global Sales Growth

Welcome to the Global Sales Mentor Podcast for conversations that drive growth. When you are ready to grow your international sales, join the conversation with your host, Zach Selch.

Welcome back. We're really happy to have you here on Conversations That Drive International Sales. And I'm here with my friend Praveen, who is also an international sales manager, also very experienced. but from a completely different area and side of the world. And I think this is gonna be pretty cool to hear the similarities and the differences to international sales when you're dealing with different products in different markets. Okay, so Praveen, can I ask you to introduce yourself and talk a little bit about what you do?

Thank you, Zach, for this invitation. Appreciate it. It's great to be on your pod show. So I'm from India. I'm a salesperson. I have been a salesperson all my life. As far as I can remember, I knew I wanted to be a salesperson when I was in college. I was sure I'm never going to do anything else. I've been a salesperson for almost 20 years as a professional, most of which is in either IT, telecom, services, and products. And a large part of that is in the international market, primarily Southeast Asia and Europe. A little bit of US, but yeah, it's about 6 months or so, or 6 months, 1 year kind of thing. Not relatively less compared to the other experience. I've done everything from selling at $5 a pop to million-dollar contracts, and it's been a nice growth for me from starting small to really big.

Mostly channel or direct or a combination?

I think I've been exceptionally fortunate in my life, my professional life. that I have done everything from selling direct, indirect, setting up my indirect channels, setting up my inside sales team, setting up lead gen teams, managing them, then setting up the entire sales ecosystem for about 12 countries. So, I've done all of that, and each one has been an exceptionally interesting experience. Right.

You learn a lot that way. It's a lot of fun, yeah.

And each culture, each country, each region presents an interesting culture, an interesting challenge. So it's never— it's the same process, but it's a different story every time. It's amazing that you would think, I've done this a zillion times, how difficult is it gonna be?

Right.

And before you know it, it's gonna be difficult.

There's always a little surprise, right?

Yes. Pleasant surprise mostly, but sometimes not so much.

So I'm going to take a little step backwards on a question I wasn't going to ask, but you mentioned always wanting to be a salesman even when you were in college. So I have to ask, because as an American Jew, there's always this bit of, well, why don't you want to be a doctor or a lawyer? And I have to ask, like, as an Indian, when you came home and you said to your parents, well, you know what? I'm sure I'm going to be in sales. What, what did they say to that?

Oh, it's such a beautiful question. I think they are the most disappointed people in the world. So the first disappointment, I mean, I'm going to take a few minutes with you. The first disappointment was that my father wanted me to be a doctor or an engineer. This was the standard route for us.

Right.

And he was disappointed I couldn't make it into engineering. And then I went and did my graduation in science. He said, okay, science maybe. And I did computer science. So that was like a saving grace.

Right.

He said, okay, now you will do a post-graduation in computer science. You're going to do coding, then you're going to go off and you're going to blah, blah, blah. It was all in his head. He plotted everything out, including his grandkids. And by the end of third year, I knew I was never going to do sales because the third year of comp science graduation, you have to do a project. I can say this quite honestly after 20 years that I never wrote a single line of code. I never wrote a single line of code. I just went out and did the presentation. That's it. I did pretty good as the rest of the team. So I knew for sure I couldn't— I'm not going to— I just didn't have it in me to sit in one place for 8 hours and type.

Yeah.

I had a logical mindset, but I couldn't type. That's not me. So I knew I had to do sales. So I was quite clear, I'm going to do sales. And I confirmed it. I had a gap year between my graduation and post-graduation. I took a year off and I worked in sales. I was completely sure I'm never going to do anything else. And that's a good thing and a bad thing in the sense that it's good to know, have clarity that you know what you want to do.

Oh yeah.

The bad thing is you could never do anything else once you're in sales. Once you've tasted that, I mean, you could throw anything else all along, but I'm not going to do it. I'm going to do sales.

I know what you know. And I'll tell you what, there are people— I know people and they say, well, you know, I was in sales for 3 years and then I was in HR and then I was in sales for 3 years and I did project management. And I think you're really not a salesman if you can go— if you can be in sales and then leave sales for something else. It's not in your blood, you know, it's not in your blood. And I know exactly what you mean. Like, I've always, pretty much always known I was going to be in sales, right? And that's, that's that, right? But I know what you mean. That's a funny story.

Just to cap that story off, so I did my MBA for 2 years, right? So they were quite surprised I topped the entrance test. I didn't know that I had topped the entrance test. They were quite surprised I actually studied so much. that I went and did 2 years. They didn't pay too much attention. They thought I'm going to do something with science, systems or something. And I did major only in—

As long as you were at university, your parents didn't care, right?

They didn't care. They really didn't care. At the end of 2 years, I came back and told them I'm going to get a sales job and no, and I want to do it in IT. For one, it just blew their mind. You want to be a sales guy? Why would you want to be a sales guy? You did 3 years of comp science, 2 years of MBA. Now you want to take a bag, go out on the street and sell like the rest of the guys, useless guys. What is wrong with you? It's even— and I don't know how it's in your family, but in my family, everybody has an opinion about everybody else's career.

Oh yeah, it's all personal.

I was the first guy to do an MBA in my family. So they lost their mind. Because the image of a salesperson is with a tie, a white shirt, black man, a bag. Walking house to house or office to office, you know, making a sale.

Right.

That's not what they thought I would ever do. So they had given up on me. So yes. That brought a lot of good memories for me.

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I know exactly what you mean. So can you talk a little bit? So I've had somebody here from oil and gas and I've talked with somebody from healthcare and I'm in healthcare. So talk a little bit about the sales process when you're dealing with software and you're dealing with telecommunications. Can you talk a little bit, and you're going into a new country, talk a little bit about how you do that?

Okay, so I'm gonna give you a really long answer, but hopefully it gives you more insights. Because I started selling IT software in India and it was for the SMB market.

Okay.

And that's probably the toughest market India is a tough market and it's even worse when you're selling to small companies because they want everything.

Indian buyers are the toughest buyers in the world. If you can sell well in India, you can sell anywhere.

I'm glad you can verify that for me. Thank you. It's the same thing. If you can drive in India, you can drive anywhere else.

You know what? I sold in India. I'll tell you, I drove once in India. My whole life, I was in Bangalore.

Oh.

And I had a little bit too much to drink. And I left the pub and I said to the tuk-tuk driver, I said, I'll tell you what, I'll pay you twice if you let me drive home. And so I drove a tuk-tuk on the streets of Bangalore at about 3 in the morning. That's the only time I ever drove in India. And that's it. I was terrified to drive in India. I always sat in the back. Yeah.

It's very interesting because sometimes I say if you look at the traffic in any country, it somehow gives you— it's a sixth sense. There is no science to this. It gives you an indication of how people think.

Have you ever noticed in Vietnam? You could walk out into the middle of the street in Vietnam and everybody parts around you. They're very cooperative. Everything's harmony. And that's the way they think. They're a culture that's very harmonious and India, no.

No. So unfortunately I've never been to Vietnam, but you're right about it.

But yeah, nobody's ever said as harmonious as India, right? No, no.

I think the south of India, especially Bangalore, is much more harmonious. Misfits Delhi. I love Delhi, I have lived there, I love the people, but I think once they are behind the wheel, there is something wrong. Something switches off. That is true of the sales as well.

Right.

In the sense that when you start, the SMB market is exceptionally difficult to sell. They are very price sensitive. They want everything that the Fortune 500 has for peanuts. Nothing wrong in asking.

Right.

So that my training was in that part of the world. Those days I did not learn, or rather it was my own stupidity perhaps, that I couldn't map out this buying process with the sales process. I think it was further down my career that somebody sat me down and said, okay guys, this is what a sales process looks like. This is what it means. I had studied it in MBA, but I never applied it well. So it was mostly instinct.

Right.

And quite interesting, the buyers didn't follow the sales process.

Right.

If they liked you, they bought from you. If you, for instance, you were referred by the right person, they bought from you. Didn't matter what you were carrying. So it was a lot of instinct. And that is very interesting because it really— and if I look back, I think if I predicted what I did with instinct vis-à-vis what I did with process, it's almost the same. It's almost the same. Because your mind kind of picks it up. You know you're going to make the sale. First call, five minutes. You know it's done. Right. That held me in good stead when I went out over the period of next few years. Somebody sat me down and talked to me about the sales process, and you know this is the start. This is the end. This is the funnel. Blah blah blah blah blah. Right. The third part is the actual setting up of a sales ecosystem. So when I went out to sell to a country. We did all the research because selling from India is expensive because you're going to sell in dollars. I mean, you're going to spend in dollars and try to earn dollars where the rupee is really a weak currency vis-à-vis the euro or the pound for that matter. So one, you do a lot of research. Two, it's about setting up a sales ecosystem. It's never about the process per se.

Right.

And the sales ecosystem has to match with the buying process of that business culture. So for instance, the business culture in Greece is relatively different from the business culture in Germany.

Right.

The process, in theory, the process remains the same. But if you drew a graph, if Germany went from N2, 3, 4, 5, Greece went all over this place and you don't know when you reach the place. You reach the place. Not very different from India or Albania or those kinds of countries, right?

You know what? If you map out the cultural indicators of Greece and compare it to the rest of Europe and the rest of Asia, even, okay, so physically it's closer to Asia than anyplace else, but culturally it's closer to Asia than anyplace else. It has a lot of indicators, things like building trust, things like dislike of uncertainty, things like that that are very Asian, are common. So it's interesting. I'm sorry, go on. Yeah, yeah, this is beautiful stuff. Yeah.

Because the way I see it, that part of the Med— the Med part of the world is more in tune with the Middle East, which in turn is more in tune with us, the Asian culture. It's like a leg extension. So I'll give you a good example. 2 things. One, you told me very clearly was relationship. That truly matters. The second thing is the value of a contract, is the value of your word.

Right.

In India, I hope nobody sues me or gets angry with me, but in India, truly what is— sometimes the contract is not worth the paper it's written on.

Right.

What matters is your word. And as you go towards the med, it gets less, less, less, but the value still matters. So if you give a word in Greece that you will do it and you don't do it, you're never going to do business with anybody else. That is the end of it for you. The same in India.

It is all about trust on a personal basis. Exactly. Correct.

That means instinct, relationships, long-term, no games, politics. I mean, not politics of the— like politics in the parliament, I am saying politics of business, business politics that happens there. You need to know all of that.

I was just talking about this with somebody else. Have you ever seen anybody actually get sued? You have a contract with somebody, a distribution agreement, something like that, and they break the agreement. Have you ever seen anybody actually get to court over that?

No. I've personally never experienced that.

Me neither. I always say you can write the contract, you can spend time and effort into a contract. In the end of the day, the contract is about Separation, but it has— you're never going to see somebody get sued over it. So you put all— you spend 6 months building in all these details into your contract. Don't expect to put a lawyer on an airplane to India to sue somebody. It's just not going to happen, right?

No, no. The, the only reason you have a contract is so the legal department feels safe.

Exactly. And then, and you have conditions to separate. You can say, look, at this point you've broken the contract, I've broken the contract, let's each go our own ways without, you know, right? Anyway, I'm sorry, I keep interrupting you, but I'm just having so much fun with your stories. So go on.

So to me, when you talk about a process, I'm looking at business culture and business buying process. It's never in isolation. So the textbook will tell you this is the sales process and this is the buying process. Really good. I'm not saying it's bad; it's good. But it is not to be seen in isolation of the business culture, the the local culture, the local politics, and how do you build a local ecosystem that can help you fulfill the buying process with the limitations that you carry? Let me give you an example of what a limitation.

Please do.

Uh huh. So if you're I I was one salesperson doing five countries. I had three weeks to visit them. Which means practically I get about an hour, 2 hours in each account.

Right.

And typically we're selling to banks, insurance companies, financial institutions, which means Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, all the big 5, 6 guys have 2, 3 account managers sitting there. Now, how— see, the ideal system as per the textbook is you will meet them, you will build a relationship, blah, blah, blah. That's possible if I live there. I don't live there. So how do I create a multiplier effect using my ecosystem to help me do that? That's a game changer because if you're going to visit a customer once a month for 1 hour, what are you going to do to sell to them?

Right.

When you know your competition has 3 account managers meeting them in the morning, they take them out for lunch, they take them out for drinks. In a country like Cyprus, I mean, every guy is related to everybody somehow. So, I mean, practically they're related to everybody. And I have no way of going to break that trust. And we did sell in Cyprus.

So talk a little bit about building up your ecosystem, please.

I think there's a science and art to that thing. When I give us, let's say, Country plan to my boss, it's pretty straightforward. We will do the top 3 SI companies, we will do based on certain parameters and certain indices, we're going to do— this is my partners, top SI companies, we're going to do the banks, this is my implementation partners, the customer service support partners. All of that is almost standard template. He knows, I know.

Right.

Just fill it and give it to him. But the reality is it never works that way. The reality is very different because let me break it down for you. Let us say a country like Poland. It is not a big country, but it is one of the largest populations. It is like 20 million or something like that. If they have, let us say I am talking to the top 5 SI companies in that country, the top SI companies all have relationships with let us say the top 10 banks. They have, no doubt.

Right.

But, the value and the depth and the breadth of that relationship will be really good in only 2 accounts. That is their bread and butter account. 2 banks, that's it.

Right.

Everybody else, they're doing, you know, I just sold them a gate pass or some security system, you know, plastic cards to swipe with. And, they'll put the name there. The website says they know all the 10 banks. Reality is they know 2 banks. Of which one bank is on a phone call away.

Right.

Second, in the buying process, the bank does not necessarily trust the SI. They will trust his ex-CIO, who is the advisor to the board and advisor to the president. Nobody's going to tell you that on the internet. Nobody's going to. This is a collection of intelligence on the ground with conversations, coffee, and beer.

Right.

This, this, the SI will never tell you this. Your partner is never going to tell you this because that means he's going to shoot himself in the foot because he's going to lose leverage on me. Okay.

You're right. You're right. But it's, it's good to articulate that. Yeah.

So there are these little things that you will only be able to find out there. The third thing—

And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Just for clarity's sake. When you say you'll only find that out there, you're talking about an employee of the, essentially the principal of the manufacturer. And I know this isn't the exact terminology you'd use as a software company.

Sure.

But you as the sales manager of the principal are only going to find this out on the ground having coffee with the customer because the SI, the systems integrator who's essentially your channel partner is going to be holding back information to keep sure— to make sure that he continues to be relevant. Just— I'm sort of just making sure that everybody understands this if they're not familiar with all the terminology, right?

And that's—

That's exactly correct, right? Everybody has their own self-interests in this whole value chain, right? And they're not All in 100% alignment. I'm sorry, go on.

Yeah. No, no, it's perfectly all right. And it's not very different from real politics in the sense that there are no permanent friends and enemies. There are only self-interests. It's not that he's a bad man. He's only there— or a bad woman. He's just looking out for himself and his family. That's perfectly okay.

Right.

Reasonable.

And he, at one point or another, somebody has screwed him over.

Right. Correct.

He is figuring you could screw him over too. He does not know you yet, so he is protecting himself, right?

Yes, and I can understand that. I never took it personally, ever. He also needs to— he or she, sorry, when I say he, it also means she. There have been a lot of women who have been good partners for us. It also depends on who is working for him. Let me be clear. If I know the CEO of the top SI, Does not necessarily mean he has all the value because his top 3 account managers are more important than him or her, because those are the guys with the relationships. The screw-up, I am so sorry about it, the problem is that it is such a small market, they are so big in Japan, and the shows are so big, they can only go to the top 3 SI. They are all revolving around the same companies.

Right. That is a really important point. That's a really important point. Very often you're the VP of sales of a manufacturer, of a principal, and you say, well, I'm going to talk to the boss of my distributor, my partner. And he sits behind a desk all day, right? He doesn't go out.

Right. No.

But his— the people under him, or him or her, you're right, I should use gender-neutral terminology, but the people under them Are going to be maybe the ones who really own that relationship. And you have to talk to them. And you have to build mindshare with those people because they decide every morning what they're gonna sell, right? And they're the ones, if they don't wanna sell your product, you're screwed, right?

Right.

Yeah, I'm sorry, go on, yeah.

And the interesting bit is, now if he moves company, basically this company, your partner lost that account. Because he takes the relationship with him.

Of course.

And that's—

and I don't know about in your field, but I know in healthcare there's a huge turnover in sales, in high and good salespeople of distributors.

Correct.

So very often you're working with somebody for 3 or 4 years and boom, he goes and he changes to another distributor. And then you have to decide if you want to follow the salesperson or stay with the distributor. Because you have to balance what's going to be the better way to protect your relationships, right?

Correct. Correct. And that also is also— now you flip it over and look at it from the buyer perspective.

Right.

Because the buyer is comfortable not with the company, but with the person. Right.

Person. Right?

So sometimes I go back to the buyer and I say, look, this is happening. I know. This is the inside story. I know he's already spoken to you. You tell me, do you want me to stay with this company or do you want me to stay with the person?

Right.

I will do what you want me to do.

Have you ever started out by going to an end user and asking them to recommend an SI to you, a partner?

Oh, experience speaks. See, that's what I normally— after some time, I decided I'm not gonna go to SIs anymore. I'm going to my end user, I'm going to sit with that CIO, I'm going to tell him, tell me, sir, who is your best SI? Who are you happy working with? I'll work with them.

Exactly!

And he will, after 2 meetings, he will tell me.

Exactly!

And he's not going to say it in the office. You've got to take him out for a drink, and then he's going to tell you.

Exactly, yeah!

And the interesting part, Zach, is this has happened, that he introduced me to a new company. He said, go meet the new company, they're fantastic. I found out later that he is related to the CIO.

I don't want to know those details, but yeah, that's what happens, right?

And I said, fantastic, this is the best leverage that I can ever get.

Yeah, I always say you need this relationship to sell, and what you said in the beginning is exactly true. If you're going into Cyprus, one day a month, you can't ever build up this relationship. So what do you do? You outsource this relationship. You find somebody who has the existing relationship, right?

Correct.

That's our job. And what I find which is crazy is sometimes people will say, you know, our product is so technical, we need somebody who has a, you know, a doctorate in programming so that they can make sure And I'm like, that isn't what they need. They need to be the cousin of the customer, right? They need to have that relationship. They can buy the technical skills. The cheapest part of a value chain is the guy who installs the system, right?

Correct.

I mean, how difficult is it to find somebody to install or service the system compared to finding the guy who has that relationship?

Correct. So, in my sales process, I would say, guys, you just be the face, open the door, shake hands, tell me whom to take out for dinner. You close the deal for me. I will come and do the demo, the proof of concept. We will do all of that.

Right.

Just make sure we don't slip the deal.

That's it.

In some countries, it works. Sometimes, I know buyers don't want to work with partners. The partner is only there so that when the RFP is released, they can show a local guy. Otherwise they wanna directly negotiate with me.

Right, 'cause I think they're gonna get a better deal that way, right?

Correct. So it depends on, sometimes the buyer decides and you follow what the buyer wants. That's perfectly okay.

Right, 'cause you need to close the deal at the end of the day. And the buyer, if the buyer is convinced that he's not gonna get a good deal Working with a partner, that you have to work with the buyer, right?

Correct. And the sales process is not as simple as it is in the textbook. Remember, we talked about the flanking techniques, flanking tactics, and all of that. And that starts even before you enter the market.

Right.

Because the moment you walk into a market and you start talking to the CIOs, let's say, for the discussion. For instance, IBM was a competition of ours, really bad competition.

Yeah.

The moment I'm in, he already knows who I am. They know my products. They know exactly how they competed with us in other markets. All that information is available to competition already by the first meeting. So do I. I already know. What I don't know is the local face. I don't know how he thinks. That's where the channel partner makes a huge difference. He will tell you all those secrets.

Yep.

For instance, is this salesperson offensive defense? What I call offensive defense, that is, he never defends his— if defense is an offense.

Right.

Right? Or is he diplomatic? Is he the cunning kind? What is it? So we can expect certain pushback. Oracle, you know, for instance, is always going to be aggressive. That's the kind of people they hire. Then I will have my cousins from the rest of India who are trying to pitch the same business. So there is multicultural, international, global, and local.

Yeah.

And you want to compete with all of them. And there could be expensive products, and then there'll be cheap ripoffs. Local startup, they're just gonna give it for free. That's the same thing. The bank's father-in-law's cousin is doing startups. So, you know.

So I have a specific question for you that's gonna, that I have to ask. So when I go in selling internationally, one thing that I tell people this all the time, I have an advantage. Because if I go in and I say this product does well in the US market, then it already has some type of credibility.

Right.

And I'm competing with, say, Germans, maybe Japanese, and Americans for the most part.

Right.

Now you're going in competing with IBM and Oracle and companies like that. And you're from India.

Right.

Now, and you've been doing this for 20 years. So now people say Software India, that makes sense. There are some really good big Indian software companies. 20 years ago, it was a different story. So you're going in really at a disadvantage and you have to beat that. You know, and Americans don't very, very often don't get that because we really start off with a big piece of the work done. We have credibility based on the— the only reason we have credibility is because everybody's watching American TV shows. Everybody knows about America and they figure nobody would buy a crappy product in America. So we must be okay. So we've already taken that step. You're going in or you went in without that. You know, in the beginning, probably it was like, well, why would I buy Indian software when I could be buying IBM? So Talk a little bit about that. That has to have been very, very interesting, very difficult.

It's a fantastic question, Zach, because nobody else has ever asked me this. And this is someone— this only can somebody from international sales understand. So you've touched on a very, very interesting subject. That is the brand value of your country.

Right.

Okay. So the US has a brand value, immaterial of the product, immaterial of the person.

And I would even say it's like only one of maybe 4 countries in the world that really have solid brand value for manufactured goods right now, right?

Correct. From the IT world, it's the US. That's it. If you look at the IT world, it's always the US. Whether we like it, don't like it, agree, disagree, it's the US. If you're from the US, then you're pretty much up there as far as the customer buying list is concerned.

Right. You've taken one step forward ahead of the competition without even trying. Exactly.

Correct. Just, just, just simply because you're from there. And that's a good thing, something we should learn. The second, when I did, when I did go international, India was, uh, was on that cusp of moving up, right? So they knew India, India, but the brand was positioning was really, um, different, right? Yeah, we were the sweatshop, the IT sweatshop of the world, right? So they always thought of us as you guys do services I can't imagine you guys doing product.

Right.

So that's like, we're good at IT, what makes you think we can't make a product? Ah, but you guys do software services, you said. So when they're thinking, they're thinking bodies, people, sweatshop, IT, that's one. Second, if you're from IT, it should be cheap.

Right.

Why should it be cheap? I mean, it's a product, it has value, doesn't mean it's cheap.

Right.

So why should— The first thing they think is price should be down. There is no reason.

Oh, yeah.

The positioning is different. Those days, positioning was different. Third, and I don't mean to be politically incorrect in any way, but it's a fact of life you must understand, is that I'm going from Asia to Europe.

Oh, right.

Culturally, I'm disadvantaged.

Oh yeah.

With all due respect, my color is on the wrong side.

No, I understand that. Because as you know, you could— everybody knows a really politically correct German friend. That said, 80% of Europe, the first thing they're going to see when they think of you is— they're not going to think of you— there's a lot of racism. Right? And there's a lot of— there's much more immigration in the working-class level than there is in, you know, in America today. We talk about, you know, Indians being doctors and so on. But 40 years ago, it wasn't like that. And in Germany today, you know, there is racism, right? So you're dealing with that. And that has to be, you know— Again, you're starting from a huge disadvantage and the fact that you're successful is really interesting starting from this disadvantage, right?

Correct. So I think most people forget, especially even ourselves, Indians going out, or let's say our bosses who send us out, forget that you are, or rather they prefer to ignore, I suppose. So we really had to do this work. So one is to acknowledge there is reality, 2, how do we overcome this reality? Because not everybody is comfortable working with people that are not of their own culture. 3, language is a huge issue in Europe. It is the same as in India. If I go from Bangalore to Delhi, we speak different languages. That is a disadvantage. Now, the solution to that, I understand, is this ecosystem that you need to build. I'm coming back to that. The key to those ecosystems is you. It's just you. That's it. Nobody— the product doesn't really matter unless it's a world-class product and it's proven. If that's the case, then they don't need a sales guy.

Right.

It's going to sell more or less by itself. 2, you can— and you brought the interesting point about the country brand. The product that I used to sell was the A market leader in my country had non-existent outside my country. Nobody even heard of us.

Right.

So basically it was zero.

Right.

So is there an easy way to do it? There's no easy way to do it. It is an uphill task. The first few customers you may actually end up buying. This is a fact. 2, you may have to buy your partners, which means they're going to have a lot of leverage over you. They're going to demand a lot of percentage, effort, blah, blah, blah, but that is how you build it. 3, you look at nearshore successes. For instance, the easiest success to get will be for me in the Gulf.

Right.

Then go from there. Use the Gulf as your leverage and then jump. I personally chose, I said, I am never going to visit the Gulf, I am going to Europe. I am going to go up against it the way it is. The strategy we decided to approach was the peripheral markets as opposed to the main markets of Europe.

Right.

Example is a country like Albania. Nobody gives a rat's ass. I'm so sorry. Nobody gives a— nobody cares so much about Albania because the market is so small.

You know what? I have about this much money from Albania, you know, because when I go into places, I transfer money into local currency. And then when you leave, I remember in Albania, once you got to the airport, there was no way of changing your money back. So I left and I said, Okay, next time I come to Albania, I have about $100 in Albanian money. And it's been 10 years. It's still in my pocket. You know, that's it. Right? So, but that's a good, that's a really good strategy. I always tell people from America a similar thing. I say, you don't want to go to Japan and Germany first. Go to the smaller countries on the periphery. Make your— I always say, make your mistakes there.

Sure.

Especially when you're starting out. Right? So that's a great— so you were talking about Cyprus before, Albania. What other countries were good targets for you?

For me, it was the Med region, except Spain, because Spain is really a big market. So Greece, Greece's sisters, Cyprus, then you have Albania, then you have— then you go to the Central Eastern European countries, which are more open to these kinds of products. They're more price sensitive. They know Indians because of their connection with the Soviet Union.

Right, right.

So there's a little more cultural familiarity. And then you come around, you, I mean, you don't stop trying to get into Frankfurt and the UK, but you don't expect a lot.

Right.

If you spend 10 hours everywhere else, you spend 1 hour here.

But if you have a couple of reference sites in the EU, that's a lot, makes it a lot easier to get you into Frankfurt, right?

Correct. We had 2 strategies. One was the EU strategy and the non-EU strategy. For instance, some of the Central Eastern European countries are not part of the EU yet. They are in the application process. They were independent, so we could actually sell them directly.

Ah, yeah.

Greece and Cyprus and the rest of them, they were part of the EU, so the banking system was integrated with the European Bank, European Central Bank. We had to also keep that in mind. The good news is if you get into one of them, they are all part of a bigger chain.

Exactly.

You find if you get into Cyprus, you could get into 7 countries.

I did that. It is really funny you say that. About 18, 20 years ago, I did the same thing with Cyprus. I was selling a product that wasn't that great. It was okay. And I didn't have a European reference site.

Right.

And I went into Cyprus and then I would tell people that I had a Europe— like when I talked to people, they'd say, well, do you have a reference site in Europe? I'd say, yeah, I have a European reference site. Can I come in and talk to you about it? And then when I came in, they would be like, Cyprus, really, Zach, really, Cyprus?

But you got the meeting.

But I would say, I got— it is Europe. I said I had a European reference site, I have a European reference site.

Correct. The interesting bit with the banking is that a lot of these banks or chain of banks were based in the EU, but were all capturing market share in the peripheral countries. So they would have customers, bank branches, or country branches in Czech Republic, Slovenia, Poland, Romania, Hungary, and so on.

And they were growing. I mean, it's difficult to get market share in Germany, right? People have been banking with the same bank for generations.

Correct.

But you go to the ones that only have been capitalistic for 30 years, there's a lot more— those are much more vibrant, living, changing markets, right?

Correct. Very dynamic. This comes back to what you talked about, is your brand value of your country vis-à-vis the local culture, and what is your brand value as a person in that culture. You can choose to go either way. You could choose to start from the EU and go work downwards to the other countries or work backwards, or you could do a two-pronged approach, because the guy in Romania will not be able to make a decision without consulting with, let's say, Italy. So you start in Romania, make a builder case, then go to Rome or Milan and say, hey guys, we have this. And then those guys will say, okay, I think you have a great position, blah, blah, blah, we love it. Now why don't you talk to the rest of them as well?

Right.

So the ecosystem should be able to support all of that. For instance, when you had a rollout for 7 countries, I needed to ensure that my ecosystem is able to support them locally. Because even if my guys from India were to implement it, the local banking, the teller, the cashier speaks Romanian. There is nobody from Greece speaking Romanian. He speaks English. We needed a local guy who could speak in Romanian, support me, but also has a decent relationship with Greece so that they're not flustered. Now, try and imagine that it's a 3 by 3 matrix of complexity. And this is just the beginning.

And I'll tell you what, I always say, you know, uh, one of my favorite sayings is that they, they used to say, um, you know, people would say, well, Fred Astaire is such a good dancer. And you say, yeah, but Ginger Rogers has to do everything he does backwards and in high heels, right? And, and well, we're— the work we're doing, it's like selling but it's 5 times as complex, right?

Correct, correct.

'Cause you have to deal with those cultural issues and you have to deal with the matrix of who's gonna do what part of this and how do people think about it, right?

Correct. So when we talk about, just to link it back to the question you asked me of country brand value.

Right.

And so I think the only way for me to overcome that was my personal brand value.

Right.

Because if I'm starting at -3 and the guy in the US is starting at 0, I needed to overcome the minus and then build on that.

Right.

And I am the only face of my company because I'm not going to bring my CEO for an introduction meeting.

Right.

My VP is not going to visit until there's a demo in place and he says, okay, I don't have the time for this unless you have a demo. So the only key way is yourself, your brand. 2 is the ecosystem you build. Therefore, the partners you choose will decide your fate.

That is beautiful. Exactly. Exactly. And so I basically say your partner mindshare is the heart of your business and you have to get the right partner and you have to get that partner really wanting to sell your product. And if you lose that, you're done, right?

Correct.

Ah, that's great. So I've taken up a lot of your time already. I'm having a lot of fun because, because first of all, it's, it's, it's always great talking to it, to a real international sales professional and somebody who has a fair amount of experience, and we can share stories. And I also love the fact that you're coming at it like— I recognize how difficult it is not having that country brand to lean against. Right? Because you're coming at it from a really difficult position. So before we finish up, let's just, let's throw me out a story. Tell me a story about like, I'm guessing you've had 1 or 2 instances where you've gone in and somebody has just treated you really badly over, you know, over the fact that you are from India or something like that. Do you have any stories that are just hilarious? I'm sorry to put it that way. But— Any good stories about like a really bad meeting?

I will give you 2 stories to illustrate 2 different points. So I was in this Mediterranean country, I won't give you the name so that I— this was my early part of my initial visits and I was not very familiar with that country yet. So I was walking by to get dinner and I was probably the only brown guy there. That place. The other brown guys were from different parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, blah, blah, blah. And those were all immigrants who tried to jump into Europe through that country.

Right.

So I was not wearing my suit. I was wearing my, you know, jeans, my faded jeans and my shirt. And I think in the first 15 minutes of me walking on the street, I got pulled over by the cops. I was like, okay. This, this was initial days. So it hit me straight away and I realized, okay, I have to learn. This is an important lesson for me to learn. Unfortunately, I was not carrying my passport that day. I normally used to carry it.

Right.

But fortunately, for some strange reason, the cops decided to believe me and I showed him my hotel keys, my card, and all of that. He said, okay, so next time please carry your passport with you and I'll let you go. I was fortunate and unfortunate, but it was a very important lesson I learned very early on.

Yeah.

In material of what the guy in the company treats you, you are what you are when you're outside. There's nothing wrong, nothing wrong. I have nothing against those people. It is what it is.

Yeah.

Let's deal with that. Second thing, initially, when we visited these international markets, pretty much everybody, and I won't say everybody, pretty much everybody thought of us as a sweatshop.

Yeah.

It was not a personal, you know, they didn't ill-treat me personally, but they thought whatever I bought was about low-cost services. You're gonna sell them some bodies and be done with it. That's the mindset they approach you. It took them for a little while to begin to understand That we could do complex stuff. 2, we could add value in terms of processes.

Right.

3, we actually can change their business because we were talking process management, process restructuring, process re-engineering. We started talking about asset management. For them, it took them some time to figure this out. Can these guys from a third world country actually talk this shit?

Right.

Okay, they're actually talking sense now. And when that shift happened, that's when they began to trust us.

Oh yeah, yeah.

So it's not one story, but it's genuinely across the board.

Right. I'll tell you what, like what people don't get, and I'll tell you what I said to my kids a long time ago. I said, let me tell you about how hard people work in India. I said, you know, because you think about it, how many people applied for every spot in your university program? Do you remember that?

I will give you my example and you'll be shocked.

Yeah.

The way we have it in engineering, when I wanted to become an engineer, was there's 50% reservation, blah, blah, blah, like you have information in your country.

Right.

So for the general category who didn't have reservation, there were 2,000 seats. And I think there were like 60,000 or 80,000 applicants.

Right. Exactly. And people don't get that. So I worked with people. I remember when I was working, I was selling to Reliance and I was spending a lot of time with people. And there were guys there, there was a guy I was working with who remembered literally hundreds of numbers from my proposal. Like part numbers. He had this incredible mind. And he was maybe in his 20s, and he was somebody's assistant. And I talked to him once, and he goes, yeah, I live about 2 hours from here. So I go, so I get on the train every day at about 5:30 to be here, so I'm here when I need to be here by 8:00.

Right.

And he goes, and I probably leave here at about 8:00 to 9:00 every night, so I'm back at my house at 11:00. because I can't afford to live any closer. And he said there were like, you know, again, it was, you know, 70, 80, 100 applicants for every spot in the university he went to. And he was number one in his class. And then, so these are the people we're competing with, right? So when you say to somebody in Germany, they're like, well, I don't know if I can trust you. You're a sweatshop. And you're like, you don't understand. It's as though everybody in my company, went to Harvard, and is working 80-hour weeks trying to make a better product. Right?

I mean— Correct.

Like that's, and that's what we're competing with. And that's what I said to my kids. I'm like, okay, you want to be lazy? That's fine. When the market opens and these people from Asia who are working that much harder than you are not being discriminated against, you are going to be overwhelmed. Right? So you had better work hard and be prepared. 'Cause when the— if the playing field was level, you're gonna get drowned by all these people who are working that much harder than you are, right?

Correct. And I think the key difference, I mean, you're right everywhere. Just one little point is that level of hunger.

Oh yeah.

It's both physical and up here.

Yeah.

And I think that—

Why are these people working so hard? Why is that kid at Reliance spending 4 hours a day on the train He's going to train for that job because he's hungry and he knows he could either have a job that pays him $12,000 a year or if he does really well, he's going to be very comfortable. Right?

Correct. Correct. Yeah. And there's competition all the time. There is always somebody trying to take your job. It's not personal.

It never ends. Well, look, there are a billion people over there, right? Everybody's competing. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

So I think it develops a different kind of mental attitude in the sense that, have you heard of the word called jugaad? Have you heard of that?

No.

It's a very famous word in India, mostly in Delhi. It means, English closest version I can think of is to innovate.

Okay.

But innovate in a clever way with whatever you have.

Right, yeah.

So we could turn a water pump into a tractor, things like that. So you have to innovate all the time just to survive.

Yeah.

So you're perpetually thinking, you're hungry, you're thinking, I've got to make this happen somehow.

Oh yeah.

I think in the last 20 years, even in my own country, I think some portion of my population has kind of lost it, but the country is so big, they don't have— they can't be—

There are always hungry people. Look, there are always hungry, intelligent people coming up who want to improve themselves.

Right.

And they're feeding into the software industry. They're feeding into the medical industry. They're feeding into all these other industries. And then they're creating a very strong workforce. So I'm all for Indian products because I think, yes, there are some cheaply manufactured things, but there's also some very high-quality stuff coming out of India. and very, very good people coming out of India, right?

Sure.

But you're starting from the— you have that disadvantage. And I think America, we've had that advantage for 50 or 70 years. I think we're going to start losing it to some extent, because you can't hold on to it forever. Nobody's going to say— we're not the same manufacturing powerhouse we were in the '60s and the '70s.

I look at it a little differently. Just for your benefit, let me share this with you.

Please, please. And for the 12 people who are going to watch this, right?

I am sure there is more. The way I see it, the US is the oldest, if not the oldest, almost the oldest democracy in the world, as I see it. Your declared independence was 1776. You gained independence in 1783, something, when the British left, something around that time. You had a good 200 years to build up the country to where you are. Relatively speaking, India is a really old ancient culture, but as a nation state, we are about 70 years.

Right.

We still have a long way to go. The way I see it is, The US is where it is because those 3 generations before that worked there, hindsight, to get where you are.

Definitely. And we had 2 other advantages that other people didn't have. We had a real influx of capital, which essentially means we gave a lot of free land to people because we took it away from the natives. So a lot of people got a free farm from the government, which is a big advantage. Then the other thing which I think is an advantage is everybody came from someplace else. Okay, so some people were English, but that was 10%, and some people were German, that was 10%.

Correct.

We're not stuck with the old ways. One of the things that India had to do was essentially forget some of the 3,000 years of culture that was locking you into a certain position to become a capitalistic democracy. Right?

Correct. Correct.

So that's taken some time. But once— but now I think you are going full steam ahead. Right?

Correct. Correct.

And, you know, the innovation that I'm seeing out of India, the hard work that I'm seeing out of India, I don't see among a lot of— like people who are American, whose grandfather was born in America, almost are never working that hard. Right? They've become a lot slower, a lot lazier. Right? Some of the immigrants are.

Correct.

So I think, yeah, you have an advantage. And we're on our— we have a slightly downward slope with that. And that's— I think that's the way the world works. That's perfectly fair. I don't have a problem with that. Right? I think that's the way the world works. And that's fair.

Yes, everybody goes up and then everybody goes down and they go back up again. It's normal flow of life. So that's perfect. You're okay.

I'm just going to say we should start rolling things up because again, those— I don't want to stretch this out too long. I want to let you get back to your life and I want to make this to the point where the viewers don't start wondering what they should be doing now. So thank you very much, Praveen. I had a blast. Anything you want to tell anybody? Anything you want to promote? Anything you want to talk about before I let you go?

Well, thank you for the invitation. I really enjoyed this conversation. I run a community called Sales Adda, which is a community for sales professionals in Bangalore. Many of your audience may not be from Bangalore. But if you're there and if you like something that we do, reach out to us, share us your inputs. Really helpful if you go to the YouTube channel and especially on LinkedIn and support some of the stuff we're doing.

Great. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, Zach.

Appreciate it.