Opening a new region means proving the GTM again

A company can have product market fit somewhere and still be at the beginning commercially in a new region.

The product may work. The reference customers may be impressive. The sales deck may have been tested hundreds of times. But the local buyer can have a different budget, a different approval process and a different reason to delay.

That's why I see regional leadership as another version of building GTM from zero. You inherit useful evidence, but you have to establish which parts travel.

At Ripple, my work included regional market expansion for crypto payments, alongside forecasting, customer segmentation and pipeline processes. That combination matters to how I think about a regional mandate: the market choice and the operating model need to be developed together.

Give the first market a precise definition

“Europe” is a territory on a map. It is rarely specific enough to be the first commercial hypothesis.

I would start with a particular customer type, workflow and reason to act. For a payments business, that might mean a defined corridor and the institutions needed to support it. For an AI company, it might mean a particular operational task within a sector where the product can be deployed with manageable changes.

The point is to find a group of prospects whose buying conditions are similar enough that learning from one improves the next conversation.

I would compare possible starting markets on more than their total size. Can we reach the buyer? Does the problem have an owner? Can we deliver with the product we have? Can a successful customer provide a reference that matters to the next one?

A smaller initial market can be a better choice if those answers are clear.

Separate local objections from product objections

A regional team needs a way to explain why a deal is stuck.

Sometimes the issue is market readiness. Sometimes it is procurement, implementation capacity, language or the way budgets are allocated. Sometimes the product simply doesn't solve the problem well enough.

Those explanations imply different actions. Hiring more salespeople won't fix an implementation dependency. Localising the website won't create urgency. Building a requested feature may be a mistake if it only serves one exceptional buyer.

I'd keep a short record of the obstacle, the evidence behind it and who could resolve it. AI can help organise call notes and compare objections, but I would insist on checking the original conversations before turning a repeated phrase into strategy.

The value of that record is the decision it enables. Should we change the segment, adjust the offer, use a partner, invest in a capability, or stop spending time on the opportunity?

Put boundaries around the first deals

Early customers in a region often ask for exceptions. Some are sensible. Others quietly turn the region into a separate product business.

I would distinguish what we expect to reuse from what we are doing for one account. That includes implementation work, commercial terms, support requirements and product changes.

Take a hypothetical AI workflow vendor entering a new market. Its first customer wants a custom data integration and local support coverage. Both might be worth providing. But the regional forecast should account for the people required to deliver them, and the team should test whether other prospects need the same work.

Otherwise the first impressive contract can create a misleading picture of the region's economics.

For me, regional ownership includes the responsibility to say when a deal looks good in the revenue forecast but creates obligations the company is not equipped to meet.

Ask for the authority the target requires

A regional leader who can only hire sellers and repeat the global pitch has limited control over the result.

Before taking on the target, I would want explicit agreement on which segments I can prioritise, what I can change in the commercial approach, how I can use partners and how product decisions will be escalated. I would also want a shared definition of what counts as evidence that the market is working.

My first ninety days would focus on a narrow customer thesis, conversations with buyers and delivery partners, and a small number of opportunities where the path to deployment is understood.

I would report revenue and pipeline alongside time to a useful customer outcome, implementation effort and the requirements recurring across accounts. Those measures help separate a promising market from a collection of expensive exceptions.

The aim is to give the next hire something they can actually repeat. By then, “we should expand here” ought to mean a recognisable customer, a reason to buy, a way to deliver and an economic case for doing more of it.