Why start a business based on taking tech companies to Europe? Why is it better than just flying your team over there? Since 2003, Sales Force Europe has focused just on international sales strategy, sales outsourcing and lead generation for enterprise-grade technology looking to expand to new European markets.
Meet Rick Pizzoli our founder explaining his impetus for founding this unique company that's successfully expanded more than 300 tech products and services into Europe.
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Rick
Uh, yeah. My name is Rick Pizzoli. I'm calling in from Madrid, Spain. You won't hear a Spanish accent. I'm American from San Francisco. I moved to Europe over 20 years ago and first to London and now to Madrid and Spain is my home.
Jennifer
So you've been for 20 years from San Francisco to then London to Madrid, that's a huge cultural difference.
Jennifer
It must have shown you so much about why you can't automatically implant an American from San Francisco or otherwise in a European, very European city like Madrid to then do business there because they don't speak the language or culture, right?
Rick
Sure. Or even, even London. I mean, I, I look at myself, I'm actually 23, 24 years ago now when I first landed in London in 1996.
Rick
And I was just so naive about Europe and about how business is done and about the layout of Europe and about the services that are needed. And it's, you know, baptism by fire, you learn on the ground, mistakes are made and likely those. Those mistakes were made on somebody else's dime, but, um, there, there is a lot to learn.
Rick
A lot of value that an American can bring in Europe with kind of a more, uh, let's say aggressive or more proactive, um, sales and marketing strategy. Uh, but at the same time, there's subtleties in Europe and nuances of Europe that you have to get right if you're going to be effective.
Jennifer
So tell me about your experience. You worked with a telco in Europe, expanding the business there. Tell me about how that changed your view of working in tech.
Rick
Sure. Um, the company was, was Nortel Networks. It was a Canadian telecom company selling into the deregulating telecom market. Um, and it was an exciting, really exciting place to be.
Rick
We'd created some new products. We launched them in Europe. Um, I did work with sales contractors to open up some new markets in the Middle East and Africa. So learned a lot about, working with contractors. It was a bit of a struggle because I had to find each individual contractor independently. There wasn't really a team I could turn to.
Rick
So that kind of raised an idea of a need in the market. And then in 2000, I left Nortel and joined a Phagoraptor company as GM of Europe to launch the business. And we hired UK, France, Germany. who really knew the telco market well, um, got into all the big tier one and tier two, uh, telco operators. Um, and, but once they kind of established, uh, POCs and progressing the market, it was really about a halftime job.
Rick
And so we were looking at ways to kind of leverage their time and, and push the Italian guy maybe to sell into, into Spain or. Um, the, the, the German person saw the Eastern Europe, but these were markets that they didn't know. They didn't have the language, they didn't have the contacts, and they weren't nearly as effective in those markets as they were in their home market.
Rick
So, so again, it kind of built on the idea of there's a need for a specialized sales team that can really be qualified for the target market and source to companies. On demand as much as they need it. And in this case, really what this company needed was half time senior sales people in the optical market who knew the telco space and target markets like UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy at the local level.
Rick
Um, and so that's really what I built. I left the telco company in 2002. did some planning and then to 2003 launch Sales Force Europe to really fulfill that need in the space.
