Navigating Product-Led Sales and International Expansion: Insights from Vincent Jong

In today's rapidly evolving B2B SaaS landscape, companies face the dual challenge of optimizing their sales processes while simultaneously exploring opportunities in international markets. The intersection of product-led strategies and global expansion presents both exciting opportunities and complex challenges that require careful navigation and strategic thinking.

Drawing from extensive industry experience, we explore the insights of Vincent Jong, a seasoned veteran who has spent 15 years in the B2B SaaS industry. His journey from founding and leading FunnelFox as CEO to taking on product leadership roles at prominent companies like ZoomInfo and Dealfront provides a unique perspective on modern sales strategies and international market entry.

How Did Vincent Become a SaaS Leader?

Vincent's career trajectory offers valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs and product leaders alike. As he shares, "I've been in B2B SaaS for about 15 years. First as a founder of a company called FunnelFox, which I ran for eight years as CEO." This entrepreneurial foundation proved invaluable as he transitioned into product leadership roles at larger organizations, where he expanded his expertise by working with established teams and processes while bringing his founder's perspective to product innovation. "After that, I went into product leadership. So I spent some time at ZoomInfo, running the enterprise products there. Then I moved to Dealfront, where I was a VP of Product and then the CPO, for the past three years."

Recently, Vincent has come full circle, returning to his entrepreneurial roots. "I just transitioned to something new. I'm still helping Dealfront, but I'm also spending more time back to being a founder and building products myself again." This diverse experience across different companies from their foundation to more advanced stages of their growth journey allowed him not only to witness, but to actively participate in several international expansion efforts, which puts him in a unique position to advise on how businesses can effectively scale their operations and enter new markets.

His breadth of knowledge is particularly valuable when considering the complexities of modern sales strategies and international expansion, especially given his experience with Dealfront's merger of two companies—Leadfeeder and Echobot—each with different growth strategies, with the former focusing mainly on product-led growth and the latter relying more heavily on their sales team. While combining these two strategies and trying to get the best elements of each, Vincent has become more and more convinced that, in the B2B SaaS industry, the best growth strategy is neither sales-led nor product-led, but a combination of both: what he calls “product-led sales”.

What’s Product-Led Sales?

According to Vincent, who published a whole book on this topic last year, product-led sales represents a fundamental shift in how companies approach customer acquisition and revenue growth.

The product-led sales approach, which combines automation with human interaction throughout the customer journey, recognizes that while technology can streamline many aspects of the sales process, human insight and relationship-building remain crucial for closing deals and ensuring customer success.

Vincent explains that companies implementing product-led sales often adopt one of two primary models: 

• Free Trial + Targeted Human Interaction

  
  

The first model relies on automated tools for initial customer engagement, data collection, and basic support functions. However, it strategically deploys human interactions at critical moments to enhance sales conversions and provide personalized guidance when customers need it most. "You have a trial, people sign up, and then you qualify them and decide who you want to engage people on.” This approach allows users to experience value on their own, before they come into contact with the sales team, which significantly improves the chances of a positive interaction that leads to a sale compared with cold calling.

• Initial Contract + Upselling

  
  

The second model, on the other hand, aims at securing contracts early in the process and then using the product experience to maintain relationships and identify expansion opportunities. “You sell a contract first through your sales team, and later you use the product to guide people towards upselling or additional modules." In this scenario, sales teams are heavily involved to ensure customers have all the support they need in the early phases of client acquisition, which are often the most delicate. Once the customer is fully onboarded and can proficiently use the product, human interactions can be scaled back, leaving customer success teams to monitor usage data to identify upselling opportunities.  

Throughout his career, Vincent has had the opportunity to see these two models of product-led sales implemented across different companies. What’s more, at Dealfront, the merger of Leadfeeder and Echobot created a unique opportunity to observe different approaches in action.

Implementation Strategies

For product-led sales to work effectively, it’s important to design the customer’s journey in a way that doesn’t create any friction between the part of the process that is handled by automated systems and the part where human agents come in. In fact, in the most successful implementations, the handoffs between automated systems and human touchpoints are so seamless that they are barely noticeable. For instance, when a trial user reaches certain usage milestones or exhibits specific behaviors indicating readiness to purchase, the system can automatically alert sales teams to engage with personalized outreach.

Why do Product-Led Sales and International Expansion Work Well Together?

For SaaS businesses looking to expand globally, product-led sales can be a very effective way to test new markets while keeping the investment minimal. While any expansion effort presents unique challenges that require careful planning and execution, Vincent's experience has demonstrated that a product-led approach to international expansion can be significantly easier compared to establishing a physical presence right from the start.

"One of the things that can be challenging when you're entering new markets is to hire teams there. And if you're doing sales the traditional way, that means whenever you enter a new market, your first step is to hire people." Here’s where the product-led approach offers a compelling alternative. Vincent explains:

Approaches to International Entry include:

• Gradual Expansion: Rather than committing extensive resources upfront, companies can test markets through product-led approaches such as free trials or freemium models. This allows organizations to gauge market interest and product-market fit before making substantial investments. In this scenario, companies don’t need to invest heavily in each new market from the very beginning, as they can delay hiring resources based in the market, and initially limit their localization effort to the main features of their product, the most prominent marketing materials and the essential support documentation, applying the MVP concept to localization in order to achieve what we call a Minimum Viable Experience in the local market. Once this initial setup is in place, businesses will be able to leverage each market’s response based on activation data to further tailor their strategy.

  
  

• Market Data Use: By analyzing engagement metrics, conversion rates, and user behavior from market trials, companies can make data-driven decisions about resource allocation.

  
  

• Local Recruitment Strategies: Vincent emphasizes that hiring local resources is a huge investment for companies expanding abroad, and therefore it has to be approached strategically, hiring locally only when strictly necessary and after validating market potential. 

Building Market Intelligence

The product-led approach to international expansion also serves as a valuable intelligence-gathering mechanism. As users from different regions engage with the product, companies can collect insights about local preferences, use cases, and potential customization needs.

Vincent provides a concrete example from Dealfront:

This selective approach allows companies to optimize resource allocation while still maintaining global accessibility: "We don't do that for countries in Latin America because we don't have a sales team there. It doesn't mean we never will, but that means people there can buy by themselves. So we will see lower conversion rates there. But they can still do it." By differentiating entry approaches according to market specifics and adjusting their strategy according to the users’ response and the activation data, businesses can remain flexible and avoid allocating too many resources to markets that don’t yet have the potential to sustain them.

Vertical and Market-specific Considerations

The effectiveness of product-led sales strategies can vary significantly across different industries and market segments. Vincent's insights reveal that certain sectors present unique challenges that require thoughtful adaptation of standard approaches.

Large Enterprise Deals

In the enterprise segment, there remains a strong expectation for personalized engagement throughout the sales process. Vincent notes: "The only place where it might work less well at the moment is if you're talking large enterprise deals, because if someone's spending six figures, [...] they are expecting to talk with someone, they're expecting to buy in a certain way."

However, he also points out the economics of this approach: "It's also easier to justify, because if you hire someone and they sell one deal, then you can probably cover the salary already. Definitely at two deals."

Regulation-Heavy Industries

Heavily regulated fields such as healthcare, financial services, and government sectors present additional complexities. Vincent provides a clear example: "If your product or your offering is heavily influenced by regulation, that might mean that you do have to change what you offer. You cannot just offer what you had in one country and go to the next one." For example, a company offering accounting software cannot just take their German accounting software and offer it in the Netherlands, because the different regulatory framework will make it unusable. Regulatory requirements, such as those of a legal and fiscal nature, complicate a one-size-fits-all approach, making it unsuitable, as companies may need to develop market-specific versions of their products or implement additional security and compliance features.

Adapting Strategies by Vertical and Location

Different industries also have varying levels of readiness for product-led approaches. While technology companies and digital-native businesses may readily embrace self-service trials and automated onboarding, traditional industries might require more education and hand-holding throughout the adoption process. In a recent article from our blog, Tamara Ceman also strongly advocated for market-specific activation flows as, depending both on the competitor landscape and on more general local user preferences, while in markets where your product concept is novel a thorough onboarding process will be viewed as a necessity, users in markets where similar solutions are already available, long and detailed onboarding flows might come across as pedantic.

How to Overcome Challenges in Global Markets

Vincent's insights into global scalability and localization highlight several critical challenges that companies must address to succeed in international markets.

Language and Localization

While English may serve as a business lingua franca in many markets, the increased potential afforded by localization is undeniable both from the point of view of sales, where many customers are more comfortable buying in their native language, and from the point of view of retention, where the final users might be reluctant to use a tool that is not available (or doesn’t offer support) in their own language. The weight of the linguistic factor in buying decisions and user retention also varies significantly from one market to another. While in countries like Sweden, Finland, Norway or Denmark being able to use the product in your own language might be considered a “nice-to-have”, this becomes a “must” in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

According to Vincent, it's always hard to quantify the value of localization, and that’s to do with the very fact that it’s almost impossible to identify metrics that relate exclusively to localization, but, at the same time, effective localization can influence positively many strategically important market-specific metrics, such as user activation, website traffic, etc. Despite the challenges in quantifying ROI, Vincent believes in the value of localization, but he warns: "It's something that you need to get management buy-in for, because it does change your processes in a way. I have been in companies in the past where adding every language added a significant amount of work. And I think that's not necessary anymore today with the technology that exists. [...] Having two languages or six shouldn't be that much additional work anymore."

In a context where AI is promising virtually unlimited possibilities in the field of content translation, users are becoming used to getting what they want in their own language, so now the difference is no longer whether your website is available in the users’ language, but rather whether your messaging resonates with them, wherever they may be. That’s the difference between simple translation and localization. While translation is more and more taken for granted, localization can be a growth engine for B2B SaaS startups. In an episode of The Multilingual Content Podcast, our guest Angeley Mullins expanded on this topic, sharing actionable strategies for companies that want to build a global brand that thrives locally.

Cultural and Regulatory Adjustments

Understanding and integrating local cultural and regulatory requirements into product offerings is not just important—it's essential for success.

From the cultural point of view, a simple example that may sound obvious to native speakers of any language that has a gender system, but less so to those speaking English as their mother tongue, is that, depending on the gender of the person you’re addressing, you may need to change some elements of speech, such as the address at the beginning of your communications. As Vincent shares with us: "We need to show if it's male or female, the person that people reach out to because of grammar, because if you don't know, you don't know how to open your message. The grammar rules require you to write it in one way or the other based on which it is." And it doesn’t stop there: In most latin-based languages, gender will apply to every single word in what may sometimes seem a very arbitrary manner. So, for example, the words “minute”, “hour” and “day” might have different genders, which complicates the handling of nested variables such as time indications (e.g. “last updated [X] (minute/minutes) / (hour/hours) / (day/days) ago”), where depending on the gender and number of the variable, other parts of the string, such as adjectives, articles or participles will have to change to align with the noun they refer to. These requirements, which are not immediately evident in English, demonstrate how deeply localization needs can penetrate product functionality, and therefore how important it is to incorporate localization and internationalization best practices early in the process to avoid headaches when it comes to launching in a new market, as remarked by Émilie Némorin in a recent blog article. 

From the regulatory point of view, on the other hand, this can vary significantly depending on the industry and the specific market, so it becomes even more important to carry out a thorough market analysis before launching any international expansion effort. 

Customer Journey Analysis

Understanding how customer journeys differ across markets is essential for international success. Vincent stresses the importance of thoroughly analyzing and adapting strategies to different market behaviors and draws parallels to other conversion optimization practices: "There's plenty of research on that. If you offer people their home currency, they're more likely to convert than if you offer them only US dollars, for example. And with language it’s the same thing, in the end." In Vincent’s opinion, small friction points can compound: "Distrust or confusion also comes in multiple touchpoints. There are a few little things on top of each other. They're not going to leave your website because it's in English, but maybe if your website's in English, your currency is US dollar, and then one or two other things happen, and they're like ‘I don't know. This is probably not for me.’"

Strategic Implementation and Best Practices

Successfully implementing product-led sales strategies while expanding internationally requires careful planning and execution. Based on Vincent's experiences, several best practices emerge for companies embarking on this journey.

Start with Strong Foundations

Before expanding internationally, ensure your product-led sales motion is working effectively in your home market. Vincent advises focusing on learning velocity: “Going in with smaller deal sizes allows you to learn faster because sales cycles are shorter."

Prioritize Market Selection

Not all markets are created equal. Vincent warns against following trends blindly and encourages instead to carefully evaluate what moves make the most sense for your specific company. "Try to have that in mind, instead of just blindly saying ‘Everyone's going to the US, we should do it too’, because you could end up burning a lot of money. And that's money that's not really available anymore in today's environment." Thoroughly assessing the potential of several markets and planning a soft launch in several at the same time may allow you to reduce spend and gather real-world data, which will be invaluable to refine the strategy for each market going forward. 

Build Incrementally

Vincent recommends a gradual approach to team building in new markets: "Instead of right away hiring a team in another country, maybe take one person who speaks the language and get them to generate enough revenue so the country pays for itself." This approach provides validation before major investments and can provide the basis to make a good business case for management buy-in, making it easier to grow from there.

Invest in Infrastructure

Successful international expansion requires investment in supporting infrastructure. Vincent notes the importance of having proper processes in place: "You need to have a good process in place that doesn't slow you down." This includes considerations for product localization, marketing materials, and customer support across different languages and regions. These areas need to be interconnected and support each other, so the customer journey feels “complete” for the specific market and there are no missing pieces. If, for example, you invest in a brilliantly localized marketing campaign in Germany, but when the users decide to download your app, they find out the interface is only available in German, this will create friction, which might cost you the deal. 

Measure and Iterate

When measuring success in new markets, Vincent recommends realistic expectations: "Definitely expect lower conversion, of course. So if you're thinking about the beginning of the funnel, where it's about creating awareness, getting people to your website, and getting them to convert, expect lower conversion by definition." However, he emphasizes that product usage should remain consistent: "When people get into the product, they should be getting value. I don't expect too much of a difference actually. I would expect very similar behavior."

What’s the Role of Sales Teams in Product-Led International Expansion?

In a product-led environment, the role of sales teams needs to evolve, operating a significant shift from traditional sales approaches. Vincent explains: "If you're doing product-led sales, the role of the sales team is often more to help people use the product and to get to value, to implement best practices, to maybe help them onboard the rest of their team, to help them have internal conversations with other stakeholders that may need to give approval."

This represents a fundamental change in how sales teams operate: "You're helping increase conversion of a process that exists in your product." The focus shifts from purely selling to enabling customer success and accelerating time-to-value. Whereas in traditional sales cycles the moment a customer purchases the product essentially marks the end of the relationship between the sales rep and the customer, in a product-led environment it marks the beginning of that relationship, so the role of the sales rep becomes much more hybrid, incorporating the function of customer success agent. 

Final Thoughts

The convergence of product-led sales and international expansion represents a powerful opportunity for companies to accelerate growth while managing risk. As Vincent Jong's journey shows, success requires balancing automation with human touch, global scalability with local adaptation, and growth ambitions with careful resource management.

Vincent's parting advice emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and adaptation: "Going in with this automatic approach allows you to try different countries much faster." The key is to remain flexible and responsive to market feedback while maintaining a clear vision for growth. By leveraging product-led principles to reduce market entry costs and accelerate learning, companies can build sustainable international businesses that deliver value to customers worldwide.

As the business landscape continues to evolve, the principles Vincent shares—combining product-led efficiency with strategic human intervention—will become increasingly important for B2B SaaS companies seeking to compete on a global scale. The future belongs to organizations that can effectively blend technology and human expertise to create seamless customer experiences across borders and cultures. At Undertow, we understand that international expansion can be both a challenge and a great opportunity for B2B Saas companies, which is why we are committed to helping you create and manage a localization strategy that fits the unique context of your business and supports your growth goals. Get in touch if you want to find out more.