Hey there Croners!
Welcome back to The Prospecting Masterclass, the original Crono column where we bring you insights and tips from the brightest minds in sales.
In this new episode, we have Petri Rinne, Partner at Rinnepartners and Sales & Growth Coach at Dutchbasecamp.
We’ll dive into his 30+ years of experience helping B2B tech companies scale internationally, uncovering lessons from the field, practical tips for outbound prospecting and his perspective on how sales are evolving in the age of AI.
Petri, to break the ice, we’d love to hear about you, share a bit about your journey and yourself.
I’m a solution sales professional with over 30 years of experience – and I still love what I do. Throughout my sales career, I’ve not only closed deals but also trained solution sales specialists and coached sales teams and management.
For the past two decades, my primary focus has been helping B2B tech companies successfully enter new international markets. This includes developing go-to-market strategies, tactical planning, building local sales teams, and establishing partner channels. My approach is straightforward: start with the end in mind. I focus on understanding exactly what it takes to sign customers and issue that first invoice, then work backwards to create the strategy and execute the necessary groundwork. It’s very hands-on.
Currently, I serve as a Partner at Rinnepartners and as a Sales and Growth Coach at Dutchbasecamp. I also mentor startups and scaleups through the EU Horizon program D2CXEL. Rinnepartners has been the trusted growth partner for ambitious companies expanding across global markets since 2007.
You have worked with hundreds of B2B teams try to scale internationally. What separates those that succeed from those that just add noise?
There’s no single factor that guarantees success or failure.
International expansion is complex and demands careful attention to multiple elements. However, if I had to identify the most critical factor, it would be the team. As Jim Collins wrote in Good to Great, you need the right people on the bus before you can head in the right direction. Of course, success also depends on other crucial factors – adequate funding, healthy cashflow, competitive dynamics in your target market, and strong product-market fit, to name a few.
What is the most common mistake B2B startups make when trying to scale too quickly?
The most common mistake is expanding abroad before achieving true product-market fit and making sure you have a solid and repeatable business and sales process in their home market. I see startups chase international opportunities prematurely – often because they’ve closed one or two deals abroad or received interest from a foreign market – without having proven they can consistently acquire and retain customers domestically.
This leads to spreading resources too thin. They’re suddenly managing multiple markets, each with different languages, regulations, and buyer behaviours, while their core offering and go-to-market motion are still evolving. The result? Bad performance everywhere instead of great somewhere.
The other critical mistake is hiring for scale before proving the model. Companies build out sales teams across multiple regions without first documenting what actually works – the ideal customer profile ICP, the sales playbook, the typical sales cycle. You end up with expensive teams operating without a proven blueprint, each essentially experimenting on their own.
My advice is always:
Create a solid base in your home market first, document what’s working, then replicate it. Scaling is about multiplication, not addition, and you need something proven to multiply.
Multi-channel prospecting is the norm today. How should teams balance channels like e-mail, LinkedIn, cold calls, and video messages to drive conversions internationally?
I tackled this topic in a recent LinkedIn post, so the thinking is current.
Begin by understanding how customers actually experience your business across every interaction point. Prospects don’t categorize their experience into channels – they’ll visit your website, talk to a partner, and engage your sales team without distinguishing between them. Your view needs to match theirs.
The next step is message consistency. Every channel needs to reinforce the same value proposition while speaking to different contexts. Direct sales might dive into implementation details. Partners highlight how the solution fits local requirements. Your online presence builds trust and authority. The lens changes, but the underlying story stays constant.
After that, design intentional transition points. Be explicit about when and how a prospect moves from marketing qualified to partner-led, or from partner engagement to direct sales ownership. Eliminate confusion and coverage gaps – make every handoff feel like a natural progression.
Last, adopt a holistic measurement approach. Evaluate how channels amplify each other rather than viewing them in isolation. If a partner generates awareness that converts through your direct channel, both deserve recognition. Success is about total revenue generation, not territorial wins.
Which non-obvious metric do you look at to measure if an outbound motion is genuinely healthy, rather than just busy?
Response-to-meeting conversion rate – specifically, the quality of replies, not just the quantity. Most teams obsess over activity metrics: emails sent, calls made, meetings booked. But I look at what happens after someone responds. Are prospects asking thoughtful questions? Are they bringing colleagues into the conversation? Or are you getting polite – circle back next quarter – responses? A healthy outbound motion generates engaged responses. If your team is booking meetings but prospects show up unprepared, cancel frequently, or ghost after the first call, you’re creating activity, not pipeline.
I also recommend watching the time-to-second-meeting ratio. How quickly do prospects want to advance to the next conversation? When your outbound resonates, buyers pull you forward. They’re curious, they have questions, they want to explore further. When it doesn’t, you’re pushing – constantly chasing, sending follow-ups, trying to manufacture urgency.
How is technology, especially AI, reshaping go-to-market and prospecting strategies across countries?
The adaption or AI varies a lot depending on the market, the US leading the pack. There are multiple tools in the market already to manage most of the activities in the sales process. AI agents are looming behind the corner to replace sales reps in the future. Market intelligence happens faster and what took weeks of research – understanding competitors, identifying decision-makers, mapping market dynamics – now takes days. We can make smarter decisions about which markets to enter without burning months on preliminary work.
You can now localize messaging for different regions and verticals while maintaining your core value proposition. Your German team runs different campaigns than your Spanish team, but both stay strategically aligned. In the future, personalization expands into those AI agents who offer a customer friendly buying experience.
But you have to be careful: I’ve seen companies over-automate their outbound, generating thousands of AI-written emails that technically work but feel hollow. AI gets you in the door faster, but it can’t build trust or navigate complex B2B sales cycles. Use it to amplify your team’s effectiveness, not replace the human elements that actually close deals.
How do you see the role of the sales team evolving in an international expansion context?
In early international expansion, your first sales hires are really market scouts. They’re not just closing deals – they’re validating assumptions, testing messaging, identifying the real buying triggers in that geography. The feedback loop between these early reps and leadership determines whether your expansion succeeds or stalls. You should consider using experienced fractional sales professionals, with local knowledge and network. This way you keep your costs under control without jeopardizing quality.
As you scale, the role splits into two tracks. You need hunters who can break into new accounts and establish your presence, and farmers who build depth within existing customers. In international markets, this split matters even more because customer acquisition costs are higher and local references are gold. Your farmers become your best marketing asset.
The biggest evolution I’m seeing: sales teams as channel orchestrators. They’re no longer just direct sellers – they’re coordinating between partners, inside sales, customer success, and marketing to create the optimal path for each prospect. This is especially critical internationally where partners often have better local credibility than you do.
The winners understand that in new markets, your sales team’s job is to build a repeatable growth engine, not just hit quarterly numbers. Once they prove what works, you can scale it. That’s the mindset shift – from individual contributors to system builders.
What is one lesson you’ve learned “in the field” while helping entrepreneurs expand globally?
The old phrase still holds true: think global, act local.
When expanding internationally, don’t try to manage it remotely from headquarters. As I mentioned earlier, there are experienced ex-country managers and sales directors who can help you enter new markets faster and with significantly less risk.
Start lean. Work with local expertise to validate the market, close initial deals, and build momentum. Once you’ve proven the model and your pipeline is growing at a sustainable pace, then consider the heavier investment of opening offices and building your own team (if it makes sense).
Too often, when I ask companies about their go-to-market strategy, they say: “We opened an office in Berlin and hired a sales rep.” That’s not a strategy – that’s an expense. Strategy is understanding how you’ll win in that market before you commit the capital. The sequence matters: prove the market with experienced local talent, establish a repeatable sales process, then scale with infrastructure. Not the other way around.
Finally, if you had to give one piece of advice you’d give a B2B founder looking to expand globally, what would it be?
My advice: resist the temptation to chase every opportunity.
Instead, dominate one market completely, document what works, then replicate it methodically in the next. International expansion isn’t about being everywhere – it’s about winning deliberately, one market at a time.
Start with the end in mind: know what it takes to sign customers and send that first invoice in the new market. Then work backwards to build the strategy, resources, and team to make it happen. That discipline – not speed – determines who succeeds internationally.