The pandemic caused a tremendous shift in global business with the acceleration of distributed work and competition emerging from international markets.  In this new situation, the question arises: What are the important factors for businesses to operate at scale globally?

We’re seeing a new trend of companies embracing the acceleration of distributed work and competition emerging from global markets. We define them as global-class companies. They have the following characteristics:

• They take advantage of access to a larger pool of diverse talent

• They have local knowledge of how to scale the business in each unique market where their employees reside

• They have the ability to expand internationally early in their growth journeys

• They are made up of team members with sought-after skills to support an international footprint

There is a shift in business

According to a recent Accenture Business Futures report, “71 per cent of executives have already decentralised or are planning to decentralise decision-making in parts of their business,” and 82 per cent said they see their business as operating more like a “broad federation of enterprises,” given the “increasingly fragmented” business environment.

This shows that the focus of business operations is shifting from a top-down, centralised HQ model to one based on distributed success and teams with localized missions and focus. Two examples are Meta and Rocket.Chat’s shift to more remote work.

Meta and Rocket.Chat scatters exec team

An example of a company embracing this new future of work is Meta. The Hustle reports that Meta’s execs are working all over the world. The company’s HQ is in Menlo Park, California, but its top team members are dialling in anywhere from Cape Cod to Israel.

Also Read: How Uber reached global scale by empowering localisation

Another example is Rocket.Chat, the world’s largest open-source communications platform. Rocket.Chat has HQs in US and Brazil but operates fully remotely with employees from 70+ cities globally.

Despite being remote, finding opportunities to connect in person are still important. In understanding this, Rocket.Chat’s Co-Founder and CEO Gabriel Engel shared how they set this up: The company’s HQ in Porto Alegre, Brazil, is located in a house with a swimming pool, an outdoor kitchen for weekly barbecues, and a large indoor kitchen.

Engel explains, “Everyone doesn’t have to go there all the time, but it’s an important representation of what the company cares about our headquarters is more about finding interaction and building relationships than being designed for people to just do their work.”

Companies like Meta and Rocket.Chat are realising the benefits of making decisions at the edges instead of clinging to the command-and-control mantra of the past. This goes hand in hand with decentralised innovation, where best practices from anywhere can be implemented globally instead of only being top-down from headquarters.

Introducing the global class mindset

If the way that companies have successfully built international businesses in the past is less effective in today’s global economy, then what should you do?

The answer is: Embrace the global class mindset.

This mindset is based on the notion that everyone must be a leader when expanding globally, not just those at HQ. It doesn’t matter whether the company is scaling in one country or 100; it’s about having the right approach to global growth.

The global class mindset means having the vision to think globally from day one, leveraging a decentralised talent strategy, positioning HQ to be an enabler and supporter of local markets, and implementing a strategy that finds the local way of running a business. This is in direct opposition to the legacy mindset.

Vision: Think global from day one

A “born global” company is a myth. A company must find validation and prove scale in an initial market before expanding to build the right foundation for international success. Instead, global class companies think globally from day one by building all aspects of their business — product, team, culture, operations — to localise for multiple markets.

Also Read: The global fintech market: Getting a piece of the pie

Talent and culture: Distributed strategy

The global class believes that talent is skills-driven, not location-driven. They hire where the talent is, understanding that sourcing talent only from their local area is limiting.

HQ role: Enabler and support

Within global class companies, HQ’s primary roles are to support and enable local teams, not command and control them. These companies practice two-way innovation, looking to gather insights from best practices implemented in every local market as much as sharing a best practice discovered at HQ.

Strategy: Local way

Global class companies strive to find a balance, doing things the local way. They localise the business to fit the local market while staying true to company principles.

In summary, companies born during and after the pandemic will look and operate differently than companies founded before. Like the examples of Meta and Rocket.Chat, these smart companies are taking advantage of access to a larger pool of talent as one way to acquire local knowledge in scaling the business in each unique market where its employees reside.

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Singapore-based global investment firm Lighthouse Canton has made the first close of its newly launched venture debt fund at US$20 million with global institutions and family offices.
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The firm’s regional venture debt strategy comprises a Singapore-based variable capital company (VCC) for investments in Southeast Asia and a Category II alternative investment fund (AIF) for investments in India.

Lighthouse Canton, which will provide debt capital to tech-enabled companies in the region, targets raising US$100 million for this new fund.

For companies with sound business models and viable unit economics, venture debt is an alternative source of growth funding, which is gaining traction amongst regional startup companies now.
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In recent years, Asia’s startup ecosystem has witnessed a boom, attracting 38 per cent of all venture capital deal flows globally (source: State of Venture 2022 Report, CBInsights) last year. At the end of 2022, there were 1,205 unicorns globally, with 27 per cent hailing from Asian countries such as China, India, South Korea, Indonesia, and Singapore.

Also Read: What is venture debt financing? How can startups use it to their advantage?

The Indian startup ecosystem is the third largest in the world, only behind the US and China, with nearly 10 per cent of all global unicorns based in India — and is posed to grow further.
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“As the pace of venture capital activity continues to grow, it is logical that we would see a rise in venture debt demand,” said Sanket Sinha, Lighthouse Canton’s Global Head of Asset Management. “In more mature venture ecosystems such as the US and Europe, venture debt has risen to 15-20 per cent of the total VC funding, whereas this proportion is less than 2 per cent in India and Southeast Asia. Given the growth of the venture ecosystem in India, we see tremendous opportunity for venture debt, and we expect the size of this market to grow 3-4x in the next five years.”

Headquartered in Singapore, Lighthouse Canton is a global investment institution with wealth and asset management capabilities. It oversees over US$3 billion worth of assets under management and advisory (as of September 30, 2022).

The new debt fund is the second launched within one year focused on the venture ecosystem. Earlier this year, it partnered with Nueva Capital to launch its maiden venture capital fund, LC Nueva, focused on pre-series A and series A companies in India.

Lighthouse Canton also runs Founders’ Ecosystem, which helps startups and founders enhance performance and plan for their personal and business legacies at various stages in their life cycles. The initiative provides added value through other venture investments, business solutions, and personal wealth management services.

These solutions range from funding solutions for companies across the capital structure to pre- and post-monetisation funding needs. It also works closely with the founders and senior management on business structuring and personal wealth solutions.

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2022 wasn’t the easiest of times for tech companies. Tesla Stocks plummeting, Facebook retrenchments, FTX crash — all this has culminated in a terrible time for tech companies, and this has further been exacerbated by record high I/r, further fueling a funding and tech winter. Whether you work in a Fortune 599, SME, or startup, we still have to run our businesses and close deals.

Over the past 10 years, I’ve been fortunate enough to travel around the globe to seal deals with a myriad of companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies and across locations in the US, Europe and even Greater China.

It’s fascinating how different everyone’s objectives are. Some looks at achieving higher MAU growth, and some looks at reducing the cost of acquisition, some looks at acquiring new markets and revenue streams.

As different as it is, it all boils down to certain key principles — can we support the company to solve a pain point and achieve its goals? And if our answer is yes, we can still do some good business. 

Here are some learnings along the bumpy road of sales that I would like to share.

Understanding your prospects

With the pressure of month/quarter-end targets coming in, more often than not, we are often overly zealous to sell to our prospects without considering whether they have an actual need for our product.

We are often too eager to sell on features with it being the best and fastest software without knowing whether the speed of a software is a pain point for them. Did we enquire more to understand whether there’s a legacy system they would need to change? Or have they just bought new software already, and we are too late?

Conversely, if we get to understand deeper, could we actually gather from them that there’s a management mandate for them to look for such a new system? Could we even understand a ballpark figure of their budget — such that we don’t price ourselves out of the bid? What is the more important requirement for the team?

Also Read: A tech worker’s 2023 recession game plan

And if we understand this deeply, we could translate how our product can truly solve their pain points and deliver measurable gains for them. An important thing to note, too, is that clients would feel that we care to know about their situation and when they reveal their side of the story between both parties,  there would be this “magical” bond that is created.

Once this happens, there would inadvertently lead to an interest to know more about your product, as you have heard their side of the story, and now it is fair that they would want to know more from you.

This is where you can do your amazing presentation on how your product can indeed be a value match for them. If all goes well — bam! You should have the deal in no time at all (bearing in mind the legal, procurement, and finance loops that you would need to overcome along the way).

Finding the right person to speak to

At times this can seem to be deceivingly straightforward. Certain schools of thought would be — let’s target the CEO, the Founder, and we would close this 100k deal! Does it often happen? Or we identify a job title like Marketing Manager/Sales Director/VP, and we close this 10k per month recurring SAAS deal? Is it as straightforward as it seems?

Sometimes if we are lucky, it happens, but more often than not, it doesn’t happen. 

No hard and fast rule on this, but my take is for us to truly understand what the roles and responsibilities of this individual are. Is a Marketing Manager fully in charge of all marketing spent, or would this be actually decided by the VP of the company? Would a CEO/Founder really decide on a new CRM/productivity tool, or would they delegate the decision to the VP of Sales?

In a nutshell, we need to understand their goals and whether they are the key decision-makers for this initiative. All we need to do is just spend five minutes understanding your prospect’s key responsibilities respectfully.

Recalling one experience where I spent hours and more than 10 calls speaking to one of my supposed targeted job titles and not spending time to understand their goals and whether they hold the budget. My thoughts were that this individual would talk to me so much because he/she would like to give this contract to me. In the end, it just turned out that the prospects enjoyed having a good conversation! Needless to say, I didn’t hit the target for the month. 

As we all know, time is money. How can we then avoid such a situation and hedge against it?

Engaging multiple individuals within a company

For most companies, unless it’s buying a cup of cappuccino for themselves, most deals involve multiple individuals making a purchase. Regardless of the size of the company and even in mundane situations, just to decide the type of corporate gifts, the colour of the banner or even the website tagline — there would be at least two individuals that would need to come to a consensus. Why not, then, start this process early on?

Also Read: How to use email sequences to win more B2B sales deals

More often than not, if we have just an individual sitting in a meeting, the chance of conversion reduces significantly —  as there’s a high chance the prospect may not be the decision maker, and he may be attending the meeting because he/she has a KPI for the number of meetings.

On the other hand, they may be genuinely keen on what you have to offer, but they are flooded with too many tasks, and your proposal is probably at the bottom two on their priority ladder.

Adding on, there’s basically no one internally to keep them accountable for what you have suggested! Before you know it, their boss, the real decision maker, has allocated the budget to another company! And down the drain goes all your hours of hard work in preparing the proposal, call and follow-up.

Now, here’s my proposition on why we should involve at least two representatives on a call. Firstly, just imagine what goes on behind the scenes when two people would like to meet you. Do they say there’s nothing better to do this afternoon, let’s meet up with a vendor? No.

Most of the time, it’s a case of, this product could potentially be beneficial for us, shall we sit in to listen together?

Secondly, if one of the job titles forgot to follow up with you, there would be another to remind him/her during a follow-up from yourself. There would be accountability internally from the team and to you and your organisation.

Thirdly, you just save yourself about two hours if you would have to travel to the place to pitch to the other job title, which you can then allocate to another new sales prospect. Woohoo, time was saved, and the pipeline doubled!

Does a “yes, I’m keen” translate to a signed contract?

Some of us often get excited when we hear that the prospect mentioned that he/she is keen to make a purchase with us. We forecast this as a deal at our month-end, indicate it as a part of our pipeline, send a contract and wait for the surreal and beautiful signature to return.

Also Read: How can businesses double their revenue in a post-COVID-19 world

One week went by, and the mailbox was still the same. Multiple follow-up emails are met with radio silence. One month went by, and still no contract. What went wrong here? I would like to imagine this situation as one with crows cawing at the back and us just waiting for a beautiful dove to deliver this signed contract across the globe.

We need to understand that, more often than not, people would love to give you the answer you would love to hear, and their way of conveying this would differ from geography to geography.

I used to pitch a product to a company, and they told me they were keen. I told them that the most basic model would start from a few thousand, and they said yes. I told them the best and most expensive would be close to six figures, and they also indicated a yes.

This makes me slightly doubtful about their actual intention. How is it possible that they would buy anything and everything?  This is a situation where we need to understand whether there is a true buying intention or if they are sugarcoating not to hurt our feelings.

Possible ways for us to understand their full intention and the thorough process would be to drop a follow-up email for them to indicate that you would send a contract to them and ask them when they could return the contract in terms of response timing and written interest. Then, attempt to schedule a follow-up call within the next couple of days to run through the deliverables. 

If this is met with interest and positive responses, you may actually be onto something. If this is somehow met by radio silence, we could probably just mark this deal as a loss and probably reconnect at a better time again. 

To sum up, I know some of these may seem pretty straightforward, but I hope for others, this would provide some fundamental sales tips early on for you to close more deals in 2023.

I understand that it’s going to be a challenging season for many, but if my articulating my two cents could help you close just another deal for 2023, it would indeed be very heartening.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

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Total food delivery spending in Southeast Asia (SEA) grew a modest five per cent to reach US$16.3 billion in 2022 after two years of COVID-19-driven deliveries boom, according to a new report by Singapore-based Momentum Works.

In its third edition, the organisation offers in-depth insights into SEA’s six core food delivery markets –Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

The report revealed that for the first time in three years, growth was driven primarily by the region’s smallest food delivery markets, including the Philippines (increased by US$0.8 billion), Malaysia (US$0.6 billion) and Vietnam (US$0.3 billion). Meanwhile, larger markets such as Singapore (decreased by US$0.4 billion), Thailand (US$0.4 billion) and Indonesia (US$0.1 billion), recorded a GMV decline as COVID-19 became endemic and economies reopened.

It also stressed the urgency for companies to focus on profitability.

“Major players pivoted away from cost-intensive business models such as dark stores for groceries and dark kitchens for food delivery. This trend is expected to continue into 2023, with Shopee planning to refocus on its core business in e-commerce, and DeliveryHero rumoured to be divesting its operations in a few Southeast Asia countries,” it wrote.

Also Read: foodpanda: Taking Asia’s food delivery ecosystem through the pandemic and beyond

The report stated that as of the end of 2022, Grab is estimated to account for 54 per cent or US$8.8 billion of the region’s food delivery GMV, a 16 per cent increase from the year before.

Foodpanda is estimated to contribute 19 per cent or US$3.1 billion of the region’s GMV, a nine per cent decline from 2021.

Gojek and Shopee are estimated to maintain their food delivery GMV at 2021 levels at US$2 billion and US$0.9 billion, respectively.

“The competitive landscape became a lot more muted in 2022 compared to 2021. New entrants such as Shopee and AirAsia have gone back to focus on their core sectors, while incumbent players adopt a much more conservative expansion strategy. With profitable growth being the biggest focus now, food delivery players are experimenting with a variety of strategies to improve delivery margins and strengthen consumer loyalty via advertising, subscription programmes, and more. We believe profitability is attainable with volume, density and operational efficiency,” said Jianggan Li, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Momentum Works.

In experimenting with new strategies, players with a large consumer reach and merchant base will have the edge over others.

Also Read: Are Singapore’s food delivery apps charging users more during a pandemic?

The report also stated more defined online and offline strategies are also expected as merchants differentiate their channel offerings: Food delivery continues to form a substantial part of a merchant’s overall sales, even after the dine-in resumption.

“As a result, merchants are creating more differentiated offerings and promotions for dine-in and food delivery to reduce cannibalisation and maximise sales for both channels. Similarly, delivery players are expanding into the offline space through features such as dine-in coupons, restaurant reviews, and more.”

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Mayani, an agri-fisheries startup providing sustainable market linkage to smallholder farmers and fisherfolk in the Philippines, has secured US$1.7 million in oversubscribed seed funding anchored by Silicon Valley agtech VC AgFunder through its GROW Impact Fund.

Atlas Ventures, Accelerating Asia Ventures, Ocean Impact Organization, TheVentures, and Plug and Play Ventures also joined.

Jimenez family (known for establishing broadcasting giant GMA), the families behind the Malaysian conglomerate OSK Group, and Philippine retailer Abenson Group also participated.

This deal marks AgFunder’s maiden investment in the Philippines.

Mayani’s technological stack was initially funded through grants from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Also Read: Can agritech solve the world’s growing food security problem?

Mayani began its supply chain operations in Southern Luzon by focusing on fresh lowland produce such as lettuce and eggplant. It has since expanded in various agri-categories, including poultry, processed commodities like Liberica coffee, and high-value fruits such as honeydew gold.

Currently, the startup directly sources harvests from a grassroots network of over 139,000 smallholder farmers across five regions in Philippines’s populous and largest island Luzon.

It then leverages demand-matched supply data to achieve efficiencies in a shorter route-to-market with fewer intermediaries as they deliver fresh produce and even sustainably caught seafood downstream to buyers. Those buyers comprise B2B players like international hotels and restaurants, food processors, and supermarket chains such as WalterMart, Robinsons Group, and MerryMart.

The resulting value chain creates cost savings on the part of buyers while making their supply chain more resilient and dependable.

On the other hand, the farmers’ farm-gate and post-catch incomes are boosted by at least 30 per cent while reducing food loss by 20 per cent.

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