Many self-assured suppliers, proud of and successful with their high-tech products in the United States, have dreamed of going international only to have those dreams broken on the rocky shores of language and cultural barriers, the high cost of maintaining a local presence, unfamiliar territories, weak relationships and politics.
As a one-time AT&T Inc. executive in Italy, former business development director for Telcordia Technologies Inc. in charge of alliances in Europe and a sales veep for a telecom manufacturing company in Switzerland, Gianni Burzi is familiar with the challenges of doing international business. Last month, his new sales outsourcing company, Adivent, launched in North America with a business model that takes the cost and risk out of going international, though perhaps not the challenge.
By outsourcing sales to Adivent, North American vendors can begin addressing European carriers in as little as four weeks and without the cost of setting up international operations. Adivent can sell business support systems, operations support system and network equipment.
Adivent was founded in June of 2007 by five seasoned telecom executive partners. It is based in Bern, Switzerland. The company has 38 contractors in seven European countries that assume the risk and cost of selling into those countries and more. Adivent has people in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K.
Burzi and company believe sales can be outsourced like any other business process such as accounting or manufacturing. But not everyone can do it. “We behave exactly as if we were the sales force of our principal,” Burzi said.
He said the company’s expertise lies not only in its employees’ history and expertise in telecom. Nor is its differentiator solely in the relationships they have with European providers. “We are not so much experts in products but in the decision-making process of our telecom customers,” Burzi said. “Our clients have a lot of people who know their products very well; they need people who know the procurement process of the carriers very well.”
Despite the downplay of his company’s product expertise, such expertise was a factor in impressing one of its first publicly announced American clients. Aztek Networks contracted with Adivent to begin testing the waters in Europe for its emergency standalone switching products. “The spin-up time on them getting to know our business was very short; they understood our product in our first meeting,” said Steven Bruny, CEO of Aztek Networks.
Aztek contracted with Adivent for its Sales TargetSource program, which is one of four programs offered by the company. Other programs include SalesTargetChannel, which allows vendors to profile, identify, recruit, train and assess their channel partners across Europe; SalesTargetWatch, which monitors target customers for emerging sales opportunities prior to the issuance of a request for information or proposal; and SalesTargetCoach, which is a workshop designed to define the development plan for specific sales opportunities.
