With Anna Schlegel, Vice-President of Product, International Markets and Globalization at Procore Technologies

Below is a full transcript of this episode

Antoine Rey

I’m Antoine Rey and I will be your host today for this Global Ambition podcast. And my guest today is Anna Schlegel, who’s recently appointed as a VP of Product, International Markets, and Globalization, at Procore. And today will be talking about how you’re transforming the way a company tackles international markets. Welcome to the program. 

Anna Schlegel

Thank you. So nice to see you. 

Antoine Rey

So, you and I go back a long way and I remember well in the early days, even before you joined NetApp, NetApp was that kind of organization that threw translation over the wall to the translation people, you know, and that team and didn’t pay too much attention on the strategic side of going after international markets. And then you came in, in the mix, and some things started to change. Right? It took a little while because those things, I suppose, need to mature. But what I would be interested to hear from you for our listeners is what do you think… if you can pinpoint the two or three things maybe that made them listen to you and the localization team all of a sudden in terms of the international strategy? 

Anna Schlegel

Yeah, thank you. Well, I didn’t start through the localization team, so I was hired to manage the expansion of the Web team. And that’s how I started the conversation of saying, well, this is not just about a marketing website. I think you want to go global. It takes a few other things. And it was good that I was coming from VMware and Cisco and VeriSign and Xerox where I had done this before. And I had a very good sponsor. I had a vice president at that time that said, you know, the things you’re saying seem like really big and you helped all these companies go global, go and talk to the board. 

Antoine Rey

Wow, already at that stage. 

Anna Schlegel

That happened within my first month at Netapp. Yeah. Because they came and I said, you know, I was the head of globalization for VMware. And I started the team at Cisco and I was managing many, many sites at Xerox. And so I think I can help quite a bit. And so it took me by surprise, right, that she said you need to go right away to talk to the board. And the board and C-staff, they were all there. The founders, they were all there listening to me. So she… that’s why I’m calling her a sponsor. 

She slid me into that agenda of the day that there was a board meeting and the founders were there and everything took off from there. I had to prepare one slide. I always tell, you know, what that slide was. And I entered the room speaking in German. And this was here in Sunnyvale. I don’t know, I’ve explained this story many times, but they were like, what is she talking about? What is she doing? What does she want? 

Antoine Rey

Making a point. 

Anna Schlegel

But I made the point that you don’t understand me. You know, our customers don’t understand you. And so and I showed a slide where we were number one. Were we were number two. It was mainly English-speaking countries or countries like Israel or Nigeria or the Nordics. Places where English is very accepted and it’s OK to do business in English. And then I clicked on the same slide to show where we were ranking five or worse, were all the countries where we hadn’t localized anything, or maybe just the website was localized. And they’re like, “oh”. I told them, what do these things have in common? Is that we haven’t done the due diligence and all the good work to get in. Right? And the CEO was awesome. He said, what do you need? And so I had a number in mind. I said, OK, I need this many millions of dollars and I need a team. And he said, go and work with this guy. And very, very quickly, I was able to hire, you know, a great localization manager and the reviewers. And, you know, all of a sudden I was managing the international web team and now we spun up these localization teams. 

And then very quickly, another great senior vice president said, Anna, just don’t call yourself localization service or center of excellence. He said you need to add the word strategy in there. 

Antoine Rey

You don’t want to be the Cinderella of translation. 

Anna Schlegel

No. So it was all these great executives that were guiding me and I was listening to what they were saying because I was very, very new at NetApp. When I joined, they were already 11,000 people. So to navigate, you know, especially, you know… I was a younger woman. You don’t know if you’re going to upset people or they’ll start calling you names and all the beautiful things that happen when you come in with a lot of conviction. Literally, the customers, what they need is that the product works. It’s that it is unencrypted, that it is secure, it doesn’t offer any internationalization issues, that the GUIs are there, the docs are there, that the installation happens very seamlessly. And so that was the ride of my lifetime because NetApp has the largest operating system in the world. 

Antoine Rey

And so it’s clearly being in the right place at the right time and also pushing the right doors where that mentorship or sponsor that you got made a massive difference very early on because, like, a lot of people dream of that for years and never get it. So I don’t know if there’s any advice that you can give to want to say push those doors, make it happen quickly? Right? 

Anna Schlegel

Yeah, you have to be brave. You know, typically people, if you go from the angle of hey, we’re all here to support the company. We’re not siloed. We should not be siloed. We should be working together. And here’s why. You can’t just say, like, you know, I remember my first companies. I would be like, what do you mean this is not localized? But then you need to get smart there and say, hey, if we do these things, we’re going to open international revenue. We can go deeper into specific sectors or verticals. And you will see it’s going to make more money for Japan or for China or for whatever country you choose to. 

Antoine Rey

And that I’ll give you the mandate to approach a sphere of influence that you needed to talk to horizontally in the organization I presume? 

Anna Schlegel

I had to create that because when I started at NetApp, I was one person. And so I had to invent. I remember thinking, how am I going to know who is who and where are they in their maturity model. At that time, the concept global maturity model was not even in Common Sense Advisory, nowhere. But I came up with, like, OK, there’s these many departments I need to see where they are. So I sat down and I created 12 sessions. I wanted it to be finite. I didn’t want it to go forever and ever. But session one was like who I am and who they are. And session two is like, OK, what are we do in marketing? What are we doing in support? Session three is like what are we doing in engineering? And so we got a pretty good picture and we created a steering committee. And then through that, we’re like, wow, you know, we have to keep working together. 

They were already selling when I joined in more than one hundred countries. The problem was that most of it was in English. And so what we did, which was a lot of fun, is we were able to see before and after Anna. And when I say Anna, I mean my team. Because the revenues started going up, the stickiness of the product started going up. So that’s why I was going to ask next, like, the proof is in the pudding and it’s really associated with revenue and, you know, like revenue by geographic zone or…? Yeah, yeah. Well, basically, when I joined NetApp, I think the international revenue was 28 percent, 30 percent. So they were making good money already from international. But a lot of it was from Australia or Canada or the English-speaking countries. 

And so I said, hey, we’re leaving money at the table at places like Japan and China. They weren’t even thinking of getting into China at that time when I was just coming from VMware, where I have traveled with the CEO to open the office in China. Right? And so we started tracking where the revenue was coming from. So what are the English countries? What are the non-English speaking countries? And I am very proud of the progress because, you know, the day I left, four weeks ago, the international revenue was at fifty-two percent. And so that’s a lot of money that we’ve been able to unveil and convince and working especially a lot with sales teams, channel teams, OEM partnerships, joint ventures. I mean, NetApp is a really big deal as a Fortune company. They have a lot of moving pieces and so you need to infiltrate each one of those departments. 

What we did is we found a major champion inside each one of those departments. And the champion and us we worked on spelling exactly what is it that they need to do to support these hundred and forty countries. So it’s a lot of fun. 

Antoine Rey

That led you to become a senior member of their leadership team there as a VP and now moving to Procore. Entering that company at a much different position than you were at NetApp at the time. So what is the first 100 days, I guess, at Procore look like? Well, first 30 days even? 

Anna Schlegel

Yeah. I haven’t even been here for 30 days. So when you… it’s the same as when I got into VMware or Xerox or VeriSign or NetApp. I’m listening, I’m listening a lot. And then you see, you know, like in any company, some executives are very global savvy and some are moving very fast. Some are can’t wait, you know, to participate and support me. And so I’ve been extremely welcome. I mean, my days have like 13 meetings in each one of the days. But now I start to see what is it that we need to do. 

But it’s longer-term. It’s a very long play where we’re going. Although Procore already has a pretty good idea and strategy of where we’re heading. And they are already selling in more than 100 countries, which is interesting, right? When you get in and everything is still in English, these companies, it is not just Procore, but they can be very successful selling in English, but they can go so far because basically the platform has been built to work in a particular country. Right. And so then as they start hiring country managers and sales leaders, then I’m going to get an earful of like, hey, now I need this, this, this, this and this. 

Antoine Rey

OK. And so, like, who’s your initial… Have you already mapped your initial sphere of influence? Do you have a mentor again? Or sponsorship? It might be made easier because you’re entering the company at a much higher level than you did. 

Anna Schlegel

Yeah, yeah, I do. I do have a sponsor, actually. I’m about to meet with him right after this. And I’ve already formulated the big rocks of the things that I see. And that’s what listening does, right? I think they’re very good in some areas. And then we’re going to have to step on it in some other areas. But yet the understanding… So for anybody that enters a new company, and I have a few friends, it’s interesting that all of us just made a shift to go and globalize a new company, the first 30, 60 days it’s a lot about listening. And start, you know, you start seeing the vision in your head, then you start mapping it down or whatever. 

Antoine Rey

Mapping the sphere of influence and the gaps and the challenges? 

Anna Schlegel

Yeah, yeah. Not so much. You know, I don’t go so much focusing on the gaps because this is change management and all these companies have people that have been trying to do this for a while and they’ve been successful in maybe globalizing or localizing specific areas. But I’m trying to go in… 

Antoine Rey

Praise what they’ve done so far? 

Anna Schlegel

A more strategic way of saying, hey, we’re going to… these are the five big rocks. And then I spell out, you know, what will it take.

Antoine Rey

And you show them as well, like how well they’ve done so far in certain areas, like praise them on what they’ve achieved today? 

Anna Schlegel

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Of course. I mean, they’ve been selling… So Procore has been selling in Australia and in the UK and Latin America and Canada and they’re meeting all their numbers. But we can do better and we will do better. 

Antoine Rey

Well, fantastic. A long challenge ahead then. 

Anna Schlegel

Yes. It’s going to be interesting to see how long it takes to establish a different phase like maturity, but also in terms of like building the global mindset with everyone and getting everyone on board too. Yeah, I think, you know, it’s good. They have half of the battle is won at Procore. Because they have one of their number one OKRs is to go global because they understand they have a very saturated US market. So the revenue opportunity, I think it’s 80 or 90 percent is going to come from the international. 

Antoine Rey

So like you said, that’s half the battle already. Like, if everybody is taking their lead from that high-level strategy. 

Anna Schlegel

Yeah. If you’re a globalizer and you’re in a company that doesn’t get it, just move out. 

Antoine Rey

Move on. 

Anna Schlegel

It’s still really it’s very, very hard. Especially the first couple of years can be very exhausting because you’re constantly evangelizing and repeating your vision at so many levels, at so many departments. Right. And I know people get hired to be under the CMO or under the Engineering leader or under the Product leader. But one thing to showcase is that going global and nailing your idea or your program or your product or your platform everywhere takes… it’s like a team sport. It’s going to take everybody right? 

Antoine Rey

Anna, we look forward to seeing the progress. Certainly, thanks for coming on the show. And we look forward to hearing again from you very soon. 

Anna Schlegel

Thank you. 

Anna Schlegel

Vice-President of Product, International Markets and Globalization at Procore Technologies