S04E03: Effective Enterprise Localization Sales

Intro

Hello, and welcome to the Translation Company Talk, a weekly podcast show focusing on translation services and the language industry. The Translation Company Talk covers topics of interest for professionals engaged in the business of translation, localization, transcription, interpreting, and language technology. The Translation Company Talk is sponsored by HybridLynx. Your host is Sultan Ghaznawi with today’s episode.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Welcome to another episode of the Translation Company Talk podcast. Today we are going to cover effective enterprise-level localization sales. Unlike a transactional sale, a B2B-based long-term business relationship is complex and takes a lot of experience and expertise to develop. Joining me today to speak about this topic is once again Kristin Gutierrez.

 

Kristin Gutierrez is a recognized expert in sales leadership development as an author, speaker, and coach. For two decades, she has worked internationally with Fortune 500 companies as a leader in the localization industry, served on non-profits, and received globally recognized awards in thought leadership.

 

Kristin has a proven track record of developing and implementing sales strategies for busy executives so they can get back to being CEO. In addition, she has a passion for mentoring and developing team members, which has resulted in a higher retention rate and revenue growth. Download Kristin’s free resource at www.beabettersalesleader.com/free.

 

Kristin, welcome back to the Translation Company Talk podcast.

 

Kristin Gutierrez

Thanks, Sultan. Thank you so much for having me again.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

It’s so nice to have you here again. And Kristin, I know that by now most people in our industry know who you are, your brand, your name, your picture, but there are some people who probably are listening to this podcast for the first time. Would you please kindly introduce yourself and tell us about your experience in the context of business development in general

 

Kristin Gutierrez

Great, absolutely. So, I am an expert in developing sales leaders and driving organizations to more revenue. I currently do that within my role as vice president sales for United Language Group. And at the end of the day, I’ve been in our industry for 18 years, having started as an inside sales rep, also known now as a business development rep or a lead generator. And the story is pretty fascinating and transformative. We could talk about that later, but I am also an author and a speaker and a coach. I am currently writing Be a Better Sales Leader, which is coming out summer of 2023.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Wow, fascinating. There’s a lot going on. Kristin, we have discussed your industry experience in the context of localization in the past and many different roles. But I’m interested to learn more about how you’ve seen sales and business development in particular evolve in the language industry over the years.

 

Kristin Gutierrez

It’s interesting, right, because when I started in the industry, CAT tools were becoming supe predominant, and it was like the Trados acquisition by SDL, now known as RWS. Now we’re seeing so much about chatGPT, and I really think the evolution has come full circle it’s all about the people, right? So yes, cold calling and emailing and building relationships is super important, but it comes down to the people who are you working with, who are you calling on, and are you treating everybody as people and not chatbots? Are you doing a lot of your own research on them and just not relying all on the technology? Because at the end of the day, I truly do feel people buy from people they know, like, and trust, and I think that’s the constant that has evolved yet also remained the same.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Kristin, what about your experience in the industry? Why don’t you go ahead and set the stage and share some success stories from your sales career in this industry and how it resonates with you today?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

Yeah, it’s actually the reason I’m writing my book is because I realized that people like me exist who start off in this industry either because they have a career or education background in linguistics or were translators or interpreters, or just simply needed a job like I did kind of right out of college. So, I stumbled into this amazing industry and started as an inside sales rep.

 

And I think the story goes that I was promoted within six months to lead an inside sales organization then at SDL. And I, as a 24, 25-year-old young woman, I needed to learn to lead through ambiguity and I needed to fail forward and I really needed to like grow into my role. And I think that’s so fascinating because as you kind of take a step back and say what makes a great sales leader, I believe there’s three pillars to those, to that success. One is leading through ambiguity and growing into a role, maybe into a role that’s slightly beyond your capabilities. Two, it’s learning how to manage up and understanding how to report on KPIs. And three, it’s professional and personal growth.

 

So, we can talk about those pillars as we go, but ultimately my sales career has gone from inside sales to manager, then as a long time, as an individual contributor, BDM, or AM, and then back into vice president of sales. So, in and of itself, it’s like, it’s an impressive 18 years and how to help other people get there too.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Kristin, let’s talk about the topic of conversation, which is how do you sell to enterprises effectively? I mean, there are different classes and sizes of enterprises, but an enterprise and individual or consumer are two different things. We’re talking in the context of a B2B type of relationship. Give me a high-level picture. You’re a champion in this area. How do things happen? How are things done today?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

Right. Great question, Sultan. B2B sales definitely is different than individual one-to-one. So, I’m glad that you made that distinction. I think when you’re working with a business, selling to a business, you do truly need to understand who the various stakeholders are and how our decisions made and what impacts budgets.

 

So, unlike calling on different sectors where you might be meeting with one person who controls everything and can make decisions like on a dime, in a business, you’re often having to deal with contracts and legalities and finance, their end finance, and then you’re often dealing with a chain of command of different decision makers and influencers. And so we can talk about the fact that truly calling on enterprises, if you’re calling on the HR department or you’re calling on the training department or you’re calling on the marketing department, you really want to understand who is an influencer to you, who’s going to help you open doors to their colleagues, who’s a blocker, who isn’t necessarily adverse to your solution, but may be already using a different provider solution that they are happy with, and really understanding who are the key players within the company that you’re calling on so that who’s going to help move your solution forward and who might deter it.

 

And then asking all of the right questions to truly understand what the decision-making are timelines and what are the hoops that they, the client, have to jump through in order to get you onboarded as a vendor. So, at a high level, it’s just kind of knowing who all the players are and knowing when to ask certain questions and what are all of the questions that you might want to ask.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. Kristin, what is the difference between regular localization sales and managing the sales process with an enterprise and a B2B framework? I mean, you know, people assume that sales is just a matter of finding a customer and signing a deal and that’s it, but there’s a proper cycle, there’s a lot goes on. Why don’t you talk about that?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

With localization especially, right? It’s, well, ever since the pandemic, we’ve seen a surge of companies and content requiring more and more and more localization than I think previously. We’re kind of seeing now what we saw at the end of the dot com era, which is like the tech and documentation and just lots and lots of content, right? So, it is truly understanding what’s happening at the client side, what’s happening at the buyer’s journey and aligning the sales process to the buyer’s journey.

 

So, are they mature in localization? Are you dealing with somebody who’s been on the vendor or client side? Are you dealing with somebody who’s been in localization for years and years and years? We see a lot of that, but because of the surge of content and because if you look on any website that’s doing career, you know, profiling now, et cetera, you’re seeing an increase of looking for localization managers to hire for the corporations. So oftentimes those companies are hiring localization managers who aren’t as sophisticated as somebody who’s been around for 25 plus years.

 

So, knowing if you’re dealing with a sophisticated localization buyer or maybe somebody who’s newer helps to kind of frame where are you going? Because somebody who’s very sophisticated likely has machine translation already embedded. They likely have lots of different workflows.

 

They probably spend millions of dollars. They probably have multiple vendors. And actually, understanding that framework and landscape is important to seeing how you can bring your company in as a differentiator to what they already have versus somebody who might be new to the company or might be new to managing localization. Maybe they were given this localization program role as kind of something else as part of their job. And they aren’t really sure. They don’t understand the vast, you know, landscape of our abasing industry. They don’t really understand everything that happens.

 

Now you’re more in an educational, the framework looks more like education and look 101, right? Both buyers are very exciting to deal with and sell to. It is just truly understanding who you are selling to and or like what the sliding scale is and making sure that your message is appropriate to them. So, you’re not, it’s not like a one size fits all. And I think that’s what’s truly different about localization sales versus maybe other industries.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Can you walk us through the different phases of an enterprise localization sale cycle? We’re talking about a larger size organization that for example needs an e-learning localization program in place because they’re operating multiple jurisdictions. What type of phases do you have to deal with as a sales manager in order to identify an opportunity?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

Good question, right? So, it kind of boils down to, you know, are you talking to the right people? Are you doing discovery and asking about their needs assessment? Are you truly getting to know what’s important to them? Are you asking all the questions before prescribing a solution?

 

You have to make sure that you’re doing the needs discovery and needs assessment. And then bringing the right people to the table from your organization and from the client-side team so that if, as we talked about earlier, you know, there’s a bunch of people in the background at the client side who are necessary to saying yes to your solution, are they coming to the table and at the conversation when it’s important?

 

So doing initial needs discovery and then bringing the right people to the table go from the vendor side and the client side to having a meeting of the minds to be like, this is what we’ve heard. Does this make sense? Here’s what we’re prescribing. And then truly going away to prescribe the solution that you’re recommending based on the things that you’ve learned.

 

And then from there, it’s depending on the client, you know, you’re looking at negotiation and contracting and then executing the work, which often time takes months and months and months beyond the point where they say yes, right, or like, yes, we’re onboarding you now as our vendor and you’re smiling because you know, it might take a couple of months to see that revenue come through.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. So, as you mentioned, there are different phases and sales enterprise sales cycle and needs assessment is one of them, discovery. What about prospecting? Where do you start? How do you identify a lead that might be a good fit for you to pursue in a situation like this? Do you do your own research on the organization lead in the lead contact or do you have people who do that research and come to you? And then from that moment, you take that on and establish communication with them.

 

Kristin Gutierrez

I think this is the million-dollar question, right? I don’t mean to be whispering, right, the million-dollar question is how to prospect in this industry because if they’ve been around forever and you’ve been around forever, it’s a lot easier if you’ve established yourself as a credible source on LinkedIn and on social media and as an expert in sales. You do have an easier opportunity to connect one on one, but you have one chance, and you better make it meaningful, but very likely you’ve got a team of new BDRs who don’t understand the industry yet, right? You’re training them up, the lead generators, you’re getting them to know the industry and you’ve got a variety of industries as a corporation, as a vendor, you’ve got a variety of industries that you’re serving.

 

So even if you can one off like make introductions and get set up meetings and do the thing, how do you do? It’s like the volume. And I think it’s like, we go back to basics, it’s cold calling, it’s emailing, it’s using third party tools like ZoomInfo to do the research. Who does the research really depends on the structure of your sales organization? I mean, that could be a whole other podcast, right, but like setting up a successful sales organization so that you have hunters hunting and you have people really closing, but then you have support levels, i.e., inside sales or business development reps who are facilitating research and exporting lists.

 

The other thing that’s really important to always remember is your CRM is already full of contacts, right? And maybe they told you not yet, not right now, but that doesn’t mean not tomorrow or not the next day. So, have we touched those people eight to 10 times a year and are they still in the same role that they were when we originally brought them into our CRM, and what is their story? So, it’s a little bit of like net new outreach, cold calls, emails. It’s a little bit of retargeting existing contacts, cold calls, emails. And then it’s a lot about like, what is the LinkedIn presence of the LSP and of the individual sales reps and how are you using that to your advantage to open the door to relationships and drive forward conversations?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

When it comes to establishing a relationship with a B2B client, you cannot simply assume you can sell to them in the first conversation. That’s a mistake a lot of people make. I mean, if you look at some of the LinkedIn messages, people simply think that you would buy from them just because they sent you a message. In your opinion, what works effectively to build a trust and open up the channel for identifying a need or a gap to fill?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

Yeah, it’s really about making what’s in it for them. Because we all get prosecuted all day long on LinkedIn with people just going for like the throat, right? And it doesn’t make any sense because I get it, I get it. But like, where are you asking me about me? So, let’s turn this back, right? Ask them what’s in it for them. And if they feel that there is something in it for them, they will respond because now you’re being genuine and you’re building that relationship. So if you’re target shooting on LinkedIn and you know so-and-so or you know their name or they’re talking on a lot of podcasts and they’re doing a lot of things for the industry and they’re at the client side and they are a buyer and you want to do business with them, like I said earlier, you have one chance to try to make it right with them. And so, you have to make that message meaningful and all about them so that they open it and that they respond, right? Because they can respond and say, thanks for reaching out, not right now. But if they start to ghost you like they would because they’re just being bombarded by messages, then you’ve really lost that chance, right?

 

And in a cold message, it’s more about putting the right amount of content out there at the right amount of time. And depending on the industry you’re targeting, I hate to say it, but that’s what makes localization sales so tricky is because the way you sell the healthcare is different than the way you sell to legal law firms, which is different than the way you sell to enterprises and corporations, which is different, you know, software is different than manufacturing is different than e-learning.

 

So, it’s all a little different and it’s understanding the nuances of that. And it’s setting your salespeople up to be subject matter experts or SMEs within their vertical and within their expertise so that they’re producing more relevant messaging and they’re taking time to research stuff about their potential clients and making it about them.

 

So right, it’s the long game, knowing that it’s the long game and that once they say yes to a meeting, that’s just simply like, yes, I’m willing to talk to you for two seconds in a grocery store line, but that at no means like, I’m going to sign you over a million-dollar contract. And if you treat them like a short-term transaction, that’s just how they’ll treat you.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Back to the sales cycle, Kristin. How do you determine which phase of the localization buying cycle is the prospective client situated at? I mean, they could be thinking about localization, or they may not know what localization is or they could actually be looking for a vendor. So how do you determine which phase they’re located at?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

To me, it sounds so like natural to say this, but maybe it isn’t. You just ask. In terms of like getting to know somebody and getting to understand them, and if they’re willing to have like a two-way dialogue, you ask. And you do that either directly to them if they’re engaging with you or you do it through targeting the rest of the organization by identifying different stakeholders within the organization, different departments who might have a need, right, and or depending on the industry, there might be content online available to say they’re going to RFP or they’re doing something else that demonstrates that they’re looking for a solution.

 

So based on what you’re seeing online, it could be on LinkedIn, it could be on their website, it could be on forums or associations, there could be clear indicators that this company is looking for something. That in and of itself is a short-term leash to say like, okay, now it’s either finding the right person or emailing the right person to say like, we’re offering what you’re looking for.

 

But often it’s having that dialogue with them, building the trust, and then asking them to get to know them by asking the right questions along the sales cycle, they will open up and start to trust you and say, yeah, this is something that we’re looking at re-evaluating in two years, great, mark it down. This is something that we’re actually evaluating right now, or this is something we’re looking at in a month or two, it just depends.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So, assuming a prospect is identified, that is a good fit, but they’re not in the mood for localization due to any reason, as you just mentioned, what is the most effective means of maintaining that relationship, which will at some point become business down the road? How do you get them to move to the next phase in the buying cycle? Just nudge them a little bit.

 

Kristin Gutierrez

I think there’s two approaches to this truthfully. One is sell them something they don’t know they need, right? So, make a compelling event with your company’s differentiators and or something that you’re innovating. So, innovate alongside of them and prove that despite them being the right person and saying I’m not ready to buy, they now can’t look away. This is the golden rule for being able to secure clients that are really in bed already with another vendor and they are not looking at all, but now you’ve shown them something that they can’t turn away from. That’s a whole strategy.

 

But the other strategy is more common, which is like make sure you’re staying in front of them, make sure that that relationship building was real and genuine, and show them industry news, show them stuff from Nimdzi, show them stuff from Slater, right? They might not know, depending on if they’re super mature or immature in terms of localization buying experience, they might not know about all the vast resources in our industry. Share with them the multi-lingual magazine, right? Show them the resources without a scarcity mindset of showing them the idea that like, oh, there’s all these other vendors in the industry because you’re establishing yourself as a person of expertise and they will trust that and respect that. And by staying on their radar, they will come back to you when the timing is right. So, I think there’s the two approaches.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Kristin, enterprises, I’m talking about larger organizations. They obviously work in very structured and at times multi-layered, rigid, solidified ways when it comes to partnerships. RFPs are common and oftentimes some of the larger players are involved in such calls for proposals. How would you stand out from the competition to form this enterprise business relationship?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

It’s, RFPs are hard. You have to be honest with yourself as a sales team. Are you a column fodder or are you helping to charter and create and craft that RFP? Those are the ends of the spectrums and then are you somewhere in between? For the audience, column fodder would be, hey, I’m a client. I’m a big organization. I have to buy translation services, or we have to renew our translation services contract. I’ve got to go to X number of vendors. You just happen to be one of the vendors I go to. There’s no relationship. There’s no insight. There’s nothing. Now, we as a sales team have to decide, is this RFP lands in our inbox or we find it, but it’s truly column fodder. Are we going to respond? That’s a whole other conversation.

 

The other side of the coin is I’ve built this relationship based on some of these tactics and tips we’ve talked about earlier. The client’s like, oh, this is great. I really love all this information you’re providing to me and these mimsy reports and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I am being talked, I am speaking with other vendors and I really want to organize this in some sort of way that I can get a compare of apples to apples so you see if you can help set the client up for success by helping them write the RFP, write the questions that would contain the RFP that would then go out to the other vendors.

 

So, depending on if you’re strategically advising on the RFP or your column fodder would kind of the beginning of the question was, and I think I answered the question, but just to come full circle, some of the larger players, how do you stand out from the competition? That’s how you stand out. Are you a column fodder or are you advising? If you’re a column fodder, you’re going in with your core differentiators and you’re going in with what makes you and your company unique and special and you’re, this is awkward to say, but you’re kind of hoping and wishing and praying that they see that through the generic responses and that’s why you have to make a decision, are you going to participate or not? A lot of times you do, right, and then if you’re advising the client, they obviously see you as a trusted advisor and you’ve already asked all the right questions to know how to write the RFP so that it’s favorable for your company’s outcomes, so you’re naturally set up as being different and having a differentiator and it depends.

 

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Sultan Ghaznawi

Kristin let’s decouple enterprise sales and business development, two different things. While they are both used interchangeably, you mentioned them earlier that business development supports the sales team. So, business development creates an opportunity for sales to happen. Please provide some details about how this work and the enterprise localization partnership framework takes place. How is it done? The difference between sales and business development teams. Some companies do both in one team, some of them separate them. So, what’s the advantage versus not having them separate?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

Yeah, this is a really interesting question, Sultan, because in my 18 years, I have seen it change. And I think every LSP does it different and then they all kind of start to do the same and then they all go back, it’s so funny to me.

 

I see three layers in sales because I also see outside layers. I see sales support, I see solution architects, I see engineers, I see, there’s a lot of people supporting sales, but if we can put sales in a box, I see business development reps or inside sales being a layer, which companies have operated without since the beginning of time and it’s almost, it’s not needed, right? It’s a good support layer. Then you’ve got true sales, right? You differentiate true sales from account managers. That’s the difference I’ve seen in the industry. So, for a very long time at Lionbridge, I kept what I hunted.

 

So, I account managed all of my own accounts. I personally, as an individual contributor, loved that. I might have loved it because of the way I was groomed and raised within the SDL, the original SDL world, which was more of like a true enterprise world versus kind of where I went after that, which is more of a transactional world, like there wasn’t really any business to groom. You won one and you moved on, you won another, you moved on. So, where you, we’ve got a client who programmatically spends 20,000 or 200,000 or $2 million a year with you, right? Over and over and over, it becomes an interesting conversation with the C level to say, should our business have hunters and farmers, or should everybody be a hybrid, or should there be a combination of?

 

So, I don’t have a true answer. I think one of the things that I personally adapt that advising other clients on is what is the best structure for you based on what you tell me is your structure, right? So once a client would say to me, hey, this is kind of what we’re looking to do from a sales perspective, then based on my experience, I could say this might be what works for you. And I think that it’s not a one-size-fits-all, ironically, like nothing is in this industry, how you structure sales. But I think this is what you see, you see a combination of inside sales, BDMs, and AMs. And it’s just really like, what is right for your business?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Well, let me ask you about something that’s very dear to you, performing sales effectively at an enterprise level also means ensuring the right fit between the client’s needs and our localization solution. You love the word outcomes. Please describe how you determine and how you would develop that fit. Basically, how do you do outcomes-based translation sales?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

Yeah, it’s interesting, right? It becomes all about the client. So instead of us selling what we want to sell for our sake, we’re selling more what the client needs to buy, and that’s the differentiator right then and there is like an outcomes-based methodology or a framework, really to drive forward the concept of these clients who are senior buyers, who are completely happy with their current vendors for years and years and years and are spending millions of dollars that you know you want a piece of, right? And you want a piece of it because at the end of the day, your company has a responsibility for driving revenue, but you might know them, you might have met them years ago, you might have heard about them, you might be seeing them on podcasts, and it’s really like how do I get them to know and trust me when they’re already super happy with their current provider.

 

This is where an outcomes-based framework really comes into play because it’s using the client’s knowledge that they’re providing to you, kind of what their current state is and what their future state is and what the gaps are in their current state, what’s preventing them from getting to their future state, and you’re creating pilots and frameworks around getting them to their desired outcomes. But again, this is me like wedging myself into a corner where I’m like, yeah, like Sultan’s a key buyer that I want to target, I’m going to figure out how to get Sultan to answer my LinkedIn messages or respond to my phone calls or emails, right?

 

In the world where you’re really calling on the masses and you just need to drive a lot more revenue to the company, it’s still all about them. If we remember that sales are about our clients and not about us, that’s where you can attach yourself to their outcomes. They might have an outcome requirement of more time to market, faster time to market. They might have an outcome of driving down costs. They might have an outcome of better quality, right? And so, if it’s time to market, you might look at machine translation as an option. If it’s quality, they might be having a problem with their current vendor machine translating stuff when they actually need transcreation or just like a better white glove service around human translations.

 

So, it really comes back to like, what is the needs assessment of the client and what are you learning about them and then attaching your solution to their desired outcomes.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let’s talk about enterprise localization maturity. You briefly mentioned this earlier, but from enterprises that have no idea about how to localize to ones that are extremely mature and structured. You mentioned that there are folks that have been in the industry for over 20 years managing such teams. How can you make sure your sales activities are effectively carried out in order to meet that specific client’s unique needs?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

It’s a million dollar, it’s a lot of million-dollar questions here, Salton. You know, as a sales leader, there’s a responsibility to manage KPIs and that comes down to tasks. Are we doing the things that we say we’re going to do to close deals? It comes down to having deals, having meetings, doing the calls, doing the emails and you know, in order to go from clients, potential clients not knowing us to becoming lifelong multi-year clients, there’s a lot that has to happen in between.

 

And ironically, that’s kind of like the whole second pillar of my book of how to be a better sales leader, which is the KPIs component and managing up your performance to your boss and to the C level so that, you know, as we’re trying to onboard bigger and bigger clients and more and more clients, maybe they’re the same size clients, but like as we’re trying to onboard them, there has to be transparency around what are the deal values, what is the probability of those deals closing, what various stages of those deals are those deals at, who are the champions within those deals, who are the blockers, what are the blockers, are they other vendors, are they people, right, are they solutions, are they things that we don’t offer and just truly like a 30,000-foot view into deal management.

 

I think at the end of the day is kind of where the crux of the answer to this question comes, is what is the overall deal management structure for your organization, for your sales organization, so that you’re spending the right time on the right deals that have the most opportunity and most likeliness to close, right, without ignoring all the rest of the deals based on, maybe the timing of the deals is a little bit further out or maybe there’s some things going on in those deals that makes them not as priority today as these others.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let’s briefly talk about sales enablement and the kind of tools you need to make sure you deliver an effective sales experience to your enterprise clients. Can you talk or describe what these tools are and why we need them?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

Yes, probably we need a whole sales enablement team if we have the opportunity to have one, but the CRM is definitely something that we need to have, and I have known from my colleagues who have gone on to work at other LSP’s, it’s not as common to have a CRM as I would originally think, so RAS Tactics, number one, have a free HubSpot account, right, because it is free, right, at a certain level, but there’s a lot of great CRMs out there, so do some due diligence and looking for the right CRM that’s going to work for your organization.

 

Above and beyond that, it really depends on where you currently are as an organization, revenue-wise, what your growth strategy is for the next three to five years and what your budget is already for having sales enablement or sales operational team members in place or not, and from there, it becomes additional tools to help with forecasting, homegrown tools potentially to look at quota attainment and achievement and measuring and managing, and then there’s also third-party tools for emailing like Zoom Info I mentioned.

 

There are tools like Chorus or Gong that record calls and the client consents to that ahead of time, and it’s a great training tool to use for coaching your sales rep since you can’t physically be on every sales call as a sales leader. These tools provide both a manager’s opportunity to coach their team and the individual contributor’s opportunity to capture notes from the call without having to type everything like as they’re listening, and then just also an opportunity to reflect because I think that the best sales people, no matter where they win or lose a deal, they’re spending time to reflect what happened, what they could have done better, what was out of their control, things like that. I think CRM, recording calls, homegrown tools, and or other third-party tools, it really just depends on the budget and where the organization is.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Kristin, let’s talk about how the sales teams, especially in enterprises, they’re perceived. If you think about it, enterprise sales leaders bring in two large enterprises or companies together. I see the analogy like parking two cruise ships side-by-side at a port and convincing them to work together. Do you think there’s enough appreciation of the effort on both sides today in our industry?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

No, I would love to see that because you know, like, it is interesting, right? So many of our largest clients have a multi-vendor approach, and therefore we’re answering your question. We are not the only crews at the port, right? So, we are naturally parked side-by-side. I think the value of attending Loc World or any other conference like in your specific industries niche, like a life science, like DIA for life sciences or legal conferences if you’re calling on law firms, like depending on what niche or industry you’re calling on, I think it’s important to go to those conferences and to meet other industry sales people and to do podcasts like this and to be seen and visible on LinkedIn because everybody moves from one LSP to another.

 

So first of all, we should just all be friends already, right? And we should learn to collaborate and cooperate with-in accounts. I do have one account where the joke for me is I was on maternity leave and another LSP swooped in and stole my business. The client was super gracious to like kind of tell me what happened, and I happened to know the guy at this vendor. So, I call him up and we laugh, like, okay. And we actually do cooperate in the account. We’ve been on calls together in the account. I think that’s the exception to the rule. And it’s really cool because we’re both acknowledging, like, hey, I’m here and hey, I’m adding value over there. And that’s okay. Right? Because naturally we’re in the account together anyway. To answer your question, I would love to see more of that. I just don’t think it’s happening right now.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Fair enough. Kristin, are enterprises expecting to find solutions that fix their problems through supplier sales leaders like yourself, or do they expect solution providers that speak their language to approach them? How do they look for solutions when they have a need?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

Yeah, it’s interesting. I truly think right now so many people working on the client side has either been there forever or they come from the vendor side. And they are so smart. So again, there’s the two buckets, right? I put the one bucket up here, the really 25 years maturity and then the newer. So, let’s talk about both. I think with the clients who are super sophisticated, there’s big teams of them, right? There’s more than one head of localization or lots of people doing the localization function, driving the strategy forward. They know what they need and they’re looking for it. They’re finding you at conferences or they’re finding you on LinkedIn literally or they are responding to your email outreach and they’re saying we have a need, and the solution needs to look like this. That is them driving it forward.

 

I think on the other side of the coin, it’s like understanding what the buyer journey is and its people. It really is people because outside of their day job, they are moms or dads or brothers or sisters or coaches, baseball coaches or like Amazon buyers, right? These individuals are consumers. And what I need to buy a pair of size nine toddler sneakers for my two and a half year old because he’s outgrown size eight, it’s a bad example, but I go and do all of my own research and then I make the decision that’s going to be best for our budget and best for what I know is going to fit his foot kind of a thing, right?

 

I think in the buyer’s journey, what’s happening because those people who are moms and dads etc. are going back to their day jobs and now, they’re buying localization. Even if they’re not 25 years in the industry, I think they’re doing a lot of their own research anyway, which is another reason why at the beginning of the podcast, you should be mentioning Slater and Nimdzi and all these great resources we have because they’re already doing the research anyway. If they’re sending a lead request through your marketing form, 99% of the time they’ve sent that lead request to like five, 10 other vendors, right? And it’s a little bit of responsiveness and it’s a little bit of like, yes, I did some research, I found out that you might be selling what I need to buy.

 

And so, it really depends on the super sophisticated and they know they need a niche solution and they’re looking for that one thing or have they looked at a bunch of stuff, they kind of know what their need is, they need an employee handbook translated into Spanish, right? And now they’re just looking for somebody to help fulfill that and then to educate them along the way. A loaded question or a loaded answer like they all are.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Well, very, very informative, of course, Kristin, is it common for enterprise localization sales leaders like yourself to find a seat at a table where clients discuss their large projects? It has become more commonplace for cloud solution providers, for example, or other IT solution providers to attend internal meetings. Like we have several IT solutions, engineering solutions, and we had these cloud providers send their engineers talk to sit down in our meetings where clients talk about projects and objectives for that matter. Is localization there yet? Are we that type of a partner for our customers?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

I want to believe yes. And I just want to believe that it’s harder to earn a seat today at that table than it was 10 years ago. I don’t know what happened, but like in the 2010, I started in 2005, and about 2010, I had my feet under me as my own individual contributor being a business development manager, and I was traveling all over, and I was meeting with clients, and I was putting together round tables in cities like Indianapolis, Indiana, which was like pretty arbitrary if you think about it, right? But like, and I was calling together localization managers from Indianapolis in a particular sector to say, come to this hotel at this conference room for an hour and a half on this day, and we’re going to have coffee or donuts or whatever. And I brought one of my solution architects, and we had a round table.

 

That’s not actually answering what you’re talking about, but like that’s how open everybody was to like stop sharing and collaborating. Where they are potential, they were competitors potentially and or just like other companies in that space. It was a local event for them. It was like no frills. It was certainly nothing like big and fancy cost me a hundred bucks, I remember, right? And like, and we had very meaningful conversations. We used to do that all the time. And then we also would be invited to the client. Never forget this other meeting where I went where like, yes, we flew in, or at least I flew in, maybe my support team was on the phone. And the head, it was like an RFP, but like the head of the RFP was there and three or four for other colleagues were there.

 

We can’t ignore the fact that the pandemic sent so many people home and then dispersed the office, meaning that where everybody maybe used to be centralized in one location. Now people are allowed to work elsewhere. I think that is prohibiting the ability to, but maybe it’s not physically in person. Maybe it’s still virtually like getting together. I hope that we come back to that space where clients recognize the value that sales and sales leaders in our industry bring and the knowledge that we have because we’ve worked at other vendors and or at the client side, right? And it becomes like a thought sharing environment again. I hope we can come back there. Really fun.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Makes sense. Kristin, how do you see enterprise sales, especially in the localization sector evolvement the coming years? Is it going to be, you know, do we have to learn new skills? Do we have to learn about new things or new client behaviors going to change? What are your predictions?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

What an interesting conversation. So, we’ve hit on the other two pillars of my book. I just mean for like be a better sales leader, we’ve got this third pillar, which is all about personal and professional growth. And I think we should always be learning, and we should always be growing.

 

So as individual salespeople, have you gone through formal training? Are you researching what your competition is doing? And are you trying to stay on top of sales as a thing, right? Like, like, are you becoming a better sales professional, right? And are you becoming a better sales leader? Are you learning how to be a better sales leader? That’s for one, as it relates to the industry also, it’s, I really think like how it’s going to evolve. It’s going to come back to the people. We’re in this phase of chat GPT and all of the AI and empty and empty and everything like that, right? We’re in that phase now, but it is going to come back to the people, like, great that the AI is good for a lot, right? It’s good for stuff. It’s good for all of this, but then it’s back to the people and back to those relationships. And this is kind of how we started this conversation. I really think it’s coming back to relationships.

 

So, evolving to make sure that you’re using the technology, you know, as it, as it, as it should be used, but that you’re not forgetting that people buy from people they know like and trust and you’re not forgetting to empathize with individuals and not forgetting to remember that the people who are buying from you are also human. They’re at Amazon, they’re on their phones or coaching their kids, T-ball games or doing whatever they’re doing when they leave their jobs, right? So, let’s reconnect to humans and see if we can use that to like make us better and drive forward this industry.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. So, you spoke about your book. Let me ask specifically about it. Please share a few words about this latest initiative over yours. I’m excited to learn what it is about and when we expect to get in the market. What can you tell us?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

Well, and I would love for everybody to sign up at beabettersalesleader.com/free for a giveaway. Well, first of all, just to be notified of updates to the book, but also, I’m doing a giveaway of three things that make great leaders. So, you’ll get that download right away when you sign up.

 

But kind of to conclude on the book itself, it is broken into three pillars like how to become a better sales leader. It won’t necessarily go into like specifics of prospecting and the ins and outs. It’s more about that second pillar, which is all about being a better sales leader or driving more revenue to the business if you’re a CEO, how to make, how to help your business sales function drive better results. It is looking at KPIs, what KPIs are relevant for you and your industry. We know in our industry, it’s emails and calls and meetings and LinkedIn messages and deals or opportunities that ultimately drive quota, which results in revenue, right?

 

But really looking at your industry and like what are those metrics, learning how to manage up, learning how to communicate with your C level, learning how to potentially communicate with the board that drives your organization and what is relevant to them and then knowing how to communicate that up versus knowing how to coach your team, what motivates them, what drives them forward.

 

This whole concept of micromanaging and what to do with it, et cetera, right? So, this whole second pillar of my book really dives into the tenants of what makes sales and what drives more revenue to the organization. So, I’m excited for you to see it. It should be out summer of 2023.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Very much looking forward to it. Kristin, as we reach the end of this interview, please share your thoughts and words of advice for our sales leaders in the localization industry. What should they be looking at, preparing for and what’s coming their way in the next 24 months?

 

Kristin Gutierrez

Yes. Well, I can’t predict the next pandemic or the war or the recession, thank goodness. But I just think like there’s always going to be something, right? And so, keeping your team agile, keeping them up to date on industry trends and what the clients are looking at, what the clients are buying. Stop assuming you know what people are buying and start asking all the questions to really understand like, this is what’s happening right now, and this is how we must apt our solution.

 

Sometimes it’s turning that dial 1%, where we think they need human translations, but really, they need machine translations. And the assumption that you need perfect quality, unless you’ve told me you need perfect quality, let’s run through an outcomes-based framework and test the quality of the different layers of translation to see if that’s going to suit the client’s needs.

 

So, I think it’s kind of the core concept here is agility. Keep the sales team agile. Keep them doing all the prospecting, all of the emails and figure out what your differentiators are as a company to stand out against all of the other competition. And don’t be afraid of this competition. The industry from a vendor side is full of wealth and knowledge and people like myself willing to collaborate with other vendors for the sake of helping our clients drive better outcomes and or seeing where we might complement each other. There are so many vendors selling their services to vendors. Let’s get better at doing that.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

What a fantastic conversation, Kristin. I really, really enjoyed it to be honest. There’s so much to process and I’m sure everyone learned at least one thing related to sales and relationship management in the industry to apply to their business. You’re always full of energy and information, bringing such a nice vibe to our whole industry. And with that, let me thank you for your time and all the information that you shared with me today.

 

Kristin Gutierrez

Thank you so much for having me, Salton. It’s always a pleasure. I look forward to doing it again soon. Thank you.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Effective enterprise sales development requires a structured and well thought out system of serving clients with unique and often complex needs depending on the industry and vertical. As Kristin mentioned, the way localization is sold to an enterprise in the legal sector is very much different from an organization that operates in the healthcare industry. It is very important for sales individuals and localization to understand their clients, their clients’ industries, the problems, and challenges they’re facing and use the terminology that resonates with them. Selling and solving a problem are two different things, but often it is the latter that results in long-term business relationships. Gone are the days of transactional selling, but sadly, even today, a majority of our industry thinks with a transactional mindset and that needs to change if such translation and localization providers want to stick around in the future.

 

That brings us to the end of this episode. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Kristin Gutierrez. She literally gave us a masterclass in effective enterprise sales.

 

Her book is on the way. I’m very excited to get a copy, hopefully an autographed one and I suggest you should get yours to learn how to become a better sales leader. Trust me, she knows what she’s talking about or writing about in her book.

 

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Translation Company Talk podcast on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your platform of choice and give this episode a five-star rating. Until next time.

 

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