There are many reasons to expand your business from the United States to France. Expansion presents new growth opportunities, revenue streams and access to new markets.
France has the second-largest economy in the European Union, and expansion allows businesses to diversify and grow their customer base.
However, simply translating and replicating your existing GTM strategies into a new region will not be effective, as the go-to-market strategy that worked in the US may not resonate with the French market.
That’s why it’s essential to develop a tailored business strategy and GTM plan that aligns with France’s unique cultural, behavioural, and regulatory landscape.
This means reevaluating your approach, understanding how your French customers and prospects operate, and considering how these differences may impact your value proposition, messaging, and ideal customer profile.
Check out how Cognism expanded into France and built a tailored GTM strategy below.
Before building your GTM strategy in France, it’s important to take a step back and understand how your customers in France behave and how their cultural nuances and business practices differ from what you’re used to in the US.
Structuring your GTM strategy around these differences is critical, and failing to do so can impact the effectiveness of your outbound strategy.
Let’s start with the most apparent difference between the two regions: the language.
French is the official language, and, unlike some European countries, English is not as widely used in business, especially outside of major cities like Paris.
That means it’s crucial to localise and translate your content. Hiring French-speaking sales representatives will also improve your customer interactions and help build rapport and trust.
In the U.S., sales conversations often take a casual and direct tone. As Frida Ottosson, VP of US Sales at Cognism, explained:
“In the US, you can call anyone up and keep it super casual with a cold call opener like ‘Hey, how is it going?’.”
“That form of relaxed lingo is how people want to be spoken to in the US. They want to be spoken to as if you already know them.”
Comparatively, a more formal approach is necessitated in France, especially during your initial business interactions.
As Clémence Oiry, Demand Generation Manager in France, explained:
“In France, when it comes to communicating, it’s best to maintain a more formal approach throughout your business conversations.”
“Both ‘tu’ and ‘vous’ refer to the second person. When you don’t know the prospect, it’s best to use ‘Vous’, the formal version of the personal pronoun.”
“Once you’ve built up a relationship, you can switch to ‘tu’ and change how you communicate with your prospect, but it’s hard to start super friendly and casual.”
“When cold calling in France, you should also refer to prospects by their title and last name. It’s best practice to wait for your prospect to tell you when they would prefer to be addressed more informally.”
“Regarding outbound emails, you should also use a structured email template with super formal expressions throughout.”
In the US, your sales reps might be used to quick sales cycles and getting straight to the point during their sales pitches.
Jonathon Ilett, VP of Global Sales at Cognism, said:
“The US is far more to the point, and there’s much less fluff in sales conversations. In the US, businesses are also happier to send on software and are more open to spending to see returns.”
In contrast, with French buyers, you might expect a longer sales cycle with more in-depth presentations and conversations.
So, build trust with your prospects and professional relationships over multiple meetings before getting straight to the sale.
As Clémence explained:
“It’s important to converse with your prospect before getting into the pitch, but remember to ensure your conversations are orientated around the prospect’s business and refrain from asking personal questions.”
“For example, you might ask a prospect where their office is based rather than where they live.”
It’s also worth noting that French employees generally have shorter working hours than those in the U.S., with a legal 35-hour workweek and strict holiday policies.
This can affect your prospect’s availability and the speed at which deals are closed, especially during the off-season.
Clémence said:
“Work-life balance is super important, and we are strict about our work hours. It’s seen as impolite to book meetings outside of work hours or during lunch hours.”
“Throughout July, August, and Christmas, business and productivity will also go down because a lot of people are on holiday. Make sure to consider this when your sales team are booking meetings.”
Understanding how French businesses evaluate deals and approach decision-making is important. This will alter who your sales team targets, how they negotiate and pitch your product, and the length and depth of your sales cycles.
In the US, finding a budget for new tools and products is much easier, and you might be used to reasonably short sales cycles and decision-making processes.
In France, budget allocation for new tools or software often requires sign-off from multiple stakeholders, and decision-making processes take a lot more time.
In France, there’s also a greater emphasis on hierarchy within organisations. That means it’s essential to identify and involve all key decision-makers in your outbound strategy and get buy-in from multiple levels within a company.
However, you can’t go directly to the top decision-maker; you have to progress through the various hierarchy levels before speaking to the department heads.
Clémence said:
“In big companies in France, departments tend to be quite siloed. Here, the decision-making hierarchy is important to consider, as your sales team will need approval from multiple people within the organisation.”
“You also can’t bypass the decision maker, so identifying the champion in an organisation early on is necessary.”
Decision-making in France can also be more deliberate, and sales cycles might be much longer than you’re used to in the US, so your sales team should focus on quality over quantity.
French buyers are typically more cautious and will take more time to evaluate new products and services before committing. That means your sales team should be prepared to answer many product and use-based questions and personalise their pitch to the business’s needs.
That also means handling objections, nurturing relationships, finding any underlying issues, addressing them, and mapping all your information about a customer through research and discussions about your product’s value.
As Clémence explained:
“Decision-making processes tend to take a lot of time.”
“For big companies, specific departments will approve the tools the business is using. They will want to review all aspects of your tools in detail, so go into all your meetings well-prepared. Our sales team has often found it difficult to persuade companies to try something new.”
When expanding into France, take some time to understand your customers’ channel preferences.
That means interviewing your prospects and finding where they get their information and content and how they like to be sold to.
Clémence said:
“It’s accepted that cold calling is the best-selling method in France.”
“Sticking to the more traditional ways of reaching prospects is also important. Prospects view channels like WhatsApp as violating privacy, so it’s best to stick to channels like cold calling and emails.”
When cold calling, remember to consider local privacy rules carefully. You must comply with France’s Bloctel list, like a “do-not-call” registry, ensuring you don’t contact individuals who have opted out of sales calls.
France’s search engine preferences also might differ from what you’re used to. Ensure your website is optimised for French keywords, and consider running paid campaigns tailored to local search behaviour. Google is the dominant player, but the French team also spends its budget on Bing.
Face-to-face interactions remain highly valued in France, and in-person meetings can help solidify trust and accelerate deals.
Trade shows and industry events can also generate new leads, build brand awareness, and provide new networking opportunities.
As Clémence explained:
“Since COVID, it’s a lot more common for meetings to be virtual, especially with startups, but in-person meetings are a lot more common and popular when targeting enterprise clients.”
“We attend a few trade shows in France. For each industry, there will be 2 or 3 key big events per year that you can attend. These will help you find a lot of new opportunities.”
You might find that your ideal customer profile (ICP) in the U.S. doesn’t perfectly match your new customer base in France. When expanding into a new region, you might need to rethink and develop your ICP from the ground up.
Failing to do so can affect your GTM strategy’s impact, leaving your teams targeting the wrong customers.
Conduct ICP interviews to disprove any assumptions, understand how your product will fit into your customer’s working lives and learn how to market your product to their particular circumstances.
Here are a few questions you might ask your ICP during your exploratory interviews:
That way, you can communicate the value of your product or service to your ICP in a way that resonates with their pain points.
Entering a new market also means adapting your value proposition to resonate with local buyers’ preferences and personas. The challenges and business priorities that resonate with US customers might not align with French customers.
When Cognism expanded into France, the French team quickly learnt how different our customer base would be.
Clémence said:
“In the US, our two biggest personas are the sales and marketing personas, but in France, we found that our sales persona was definitely the most prominent. This is where we focus most of our time and budget.”
“The US and the UK teams also look to target the Revenue Operations persona, but in France, there are not as many people in operations positions, so this is less popular and effective.”
“We had to adjust our strategy to these differences. We also targeted more basic pain points and simplified our messaging. We don’t talk as much about intent data or tech stacks as we do in the US, and we found that referring to Cognism as a ‘sales intelligence platform’ confused our buyers.”
“Instead, in France, we tend to use more basic and clear words like ‘data provider’ throughout our messaging.”
“When it comes to our marketing persona, our value proposition is also a bit different. Our customers will use the tool to create lists for marketing emails, but less for paid marketing.”
You should also alter your product messaging, how you showcase value and how you build brand awareness to your audience’s preferences.
At Cognism, partnering with nationally recognised companies in France was crucial, as French customers tend to be influenced by more prominent companies, rather than specific use cases.
Clémence said:
“For us, creating brand awareness within the market was important. When creating case studies, we had to partner with nationally known companies.”
“We found that customers were more convinced to purchase if big, well-known companies were using our tool, as French businesses care a lot about trends and reputation.”
“When we entered the market, the fact that we had acquired Kaspr was super helpful and powerful as Kaspr was super well known in France.”
In France, the competitors and market leaders might differ from those you are used to in the US.
Understanding your competitors’ position in France and adjusting your messaging to highlight what sets you apart will help you stand out.
When entering a region, you cannot rely on your brand as much as you’re used to, so this is key.
As Frida explained:
“When entering a new region, you will not necessarily be known as a market leader, so you must focus on building a reputation.”
“When it comes to your sales pitch, you are often starting from square one. Your primary focus will be educating your prospects, introducing yourself and your product and calling out your competitors.”
“That’s the fastest way we get someone to understand who we are. Then you might ask if they have any gaps with their data.”
Begin by identifying your direct and indirect competitors. Then, you can evaluate how your product differs from your competitors and identify your USP.
You might also study your competitors’ marketing strategies, including the messaging on their sites, and review how they position their product offerings so you can tailor your messaging to local preferences.
Clémence said:
“We have a range of different competitors in France. Our biggest competitor is Kaspr, who we’ve acquired. In France, it’s a lot more common for businesses to use multiple tools within a database and follow a multi-vendor strategy, so highlighting your USP is important.”
“We tend to focus on the quality of our European and French data, and this is replicated throughout our campaigns. We’ve built a lot of comparison pages on Google and Bing and through our LinkedIn Ads.”
“In France, we also mainly target small-medium-businesses and mid-market, rather than enterprise companies. Each segment will have different competitors to consider.”
French consumers respond best to marketing that speaks directly to their pain points, use cases and industry trends.
Expanding into new regions means creating a tailored marketing strategy and localising your content to your French audience rather than translating your website, marketing materials and sales enablement assets that worked for you in the US.
As Liam Bartholomew, VP of Marketing at Cognism, said:
“It’s easy to assume that you can replicate the success of your core region, but it isn’t guaranteed. You need to do your background research.”
“We think about ‘warming up a market first’ to create demand before we move into it fully. If you fail to do this, your expansion might be harder and more expensive.”
So, start by building awareness in the market before launching full-scale sales operations.
At Cognism, the team started by building a French version of our website and focusing on SEO to drive traffic and organic inbound requests.
That meant hiring an SEO Content Manager in the region before anything else. This helps provide local knowledge and expertise whilst building an SEO engine.
The team assessed which keywords to rank for and created brand-new SEO content. The top three keywords to target were:
Then, the team focused on building the media machine and creating a tailor-made demand-creation strategy for the region.
Clémence said:
“We started from scratch, focusing on paid activity, SEO, blogs, and strategic collaborations and partnerships. We first identified all the high-performing content in the UK and the US that was bringing in pipeline and revenue. We then localised these pieces to our French audience.”
“We also started building our media machine. We have a podcast, run live events and collaborate with other SMEs and key influencers in the market to create short-term projects.”
“For example, we collaborated with a marketing SME on a demand generation academy to build awareness in the market and gain as big an audience as possible.”
Working with influencers and companies on campaigns, podcasts, and webinars can give your content authority and credibility while also increasing reach.
Here, you might want to ask your ICP who they follow and trust. For example, the French team worked with Elric Legloire, a sales expert in the French market known for using AI for prospecting, to create a highly relevant piece of content specifically for the French audience.
Here’s an overview of the French media machine:
The DG team in France has used its media machine to build awareness and accelerate deals.
For example, they invited the Head of Partnerships from a target account onto their podcast, Le Ring, and organised a content collaboration project.
They also partnered with other well-known companies in the region to host a live event and invited the Head of Sales from this target account to join.
Involving and engaging with these key stakeholders helped close a new six-figure deal with their company.
After entering a new region, it’s important to evaluate and measure the effectiveness of your GTM strategy.
That way, you can understand what is working and what might need to be fixed and improved.
These might include:
When expanding into France, selecting the right data provider is crucial. The tools and data sets that have worked for you in the US might not provide the best coverage in France.
Instead, it’s important to work with a local data provider and equip your sales team with the most accurate and up-to-date information on your prospects.
Here, you’ll want to prioritise providers that understand the local market nuances and maintain GDPR-compliant data practices.
Roxanne Taku, Head of EMEA Revenue Strategies and Operations at Airwallex, told us:
“When it comes to leading a regional operations strategy, there might be tools or data sets that have better coverage in EMEA than others.”
“When it comes to enriching firmographics and professional information, we use Cognism, as they have the best coverage in Europe.”
When expanding into France, it’s essential to remain compliant and understand the regulatory landscape, especially regarding data protection, employment law, and corporate taxation.
The General Data Protection Regulation is a European Union regulation aiming to protect EU citizens’ personal data and privacy.
It governs personal data, emphasising transparency, data minimisation, security, and accountability. Personal data includes information like names, IP addresses, or location data.
France’s Data Protection Authority plays a critical role in enforcing these regulations.
The GDPR significantly affects sales and marketing activities because it often involves collecting and using personal data.
Under the GDPR, sales and marketing teams must obtain explicit consent from individuals before sending them direct marketing communications and must provide them with an easy way to opt out of marketing communications at any time.
It’s important to be aware of employment laws in France. There are strict regulations regarding hiring, contracts, and terminations, so seeking legal counsel before hiring is vital.
For instance, France has rigid rules on notice periods, employee rights, and benefits.
The legal standard in France is a 35-hour workweek. Any work beyond this is considered overtime, and employees are entitled to a minimum of 5 weeks of paid vacation per year.
Employers need a valid reason to terminate an employee, such as poor performance or misconduct. Terminations must follow strict procedures, including a formal meeting with the employee and written notification.
Employees are generally entitled to a notice period before termination (typically 1 to 3 months), depending on their seniority. Employees who are dismissed after working for the company for at least 8 months are entitled to severance pay.
Corporate tax rules in France are specific, and even remote selling into France may make a company liable for VAT or other local taxes.
France applies a corporate tax rate of around 25%, and businesses may need to register for VAT, depending on the type of sales and services they offer.
Collaborating with tax professionals who understand the French system is critical to avoid legal complications.
When expanding your business from the US to France, simply replicating your US strategy and expecting success will not work.
Cultural norms, communication styles, relationship-building, and decision-making processes vary across each region, and what worked for your business in the US may not have the same impact in France.
Instead, your GTM strategy must account for and reflect the cultural nuances, behavioural differences and regulatory and market-specific changes in France.
So before expanding, reassess your competitive positioning, pricing, outbound strategy and value proposition and tailor it to these differences.