Working with advisors
What to look for in a GTM advisor for MENA and GCC SaaS
How MENA and GCC SaaS founders can tell a useful GTM advisor from a slide-deck consultant, with the questions to ask and the red flags to watch for.
A good GTM advisor for a MENA or GCC SaaS company has personally sold in the markets you're targeting, has carried a number and built teams, and will help with the actual work, from the sales process to the CRM, as well as the strategy. Before you hire one, ask them to walk you through specific decisions they'd make for your company. Experienced operators can do that in detail.
What matters most
Regional experience. Selling in the Gulf, Europe and the US are very different. Ask which of those markets the advisor has personally sold in or built teams in, and what they learned there.
Cross-border experience. Expanding into a new market brings problems you don't have at home: compliance, time zones, hiring remotely, adapting your pitch. Someone who's taken a company from one region into another will spot those early.
Operator depth. Ask what number they carried and how big a team they built. Advice is more useful when it comes from someone who's been accountable for revenue.
Willingness to do the work. Early-stage companies rarely need another strategy document. They need someone who will help build the playbook, set up the CRM, sit in on calls and coach the team.
Stage fit. Make sure they've worked at your stage. What works at a 500-person company often doesn't work when the founder is still doing most of the selling.
Questions worth asking
- How would you decide whether we should go to the US or Europe first?
- What would you change in our sales process after listening to two discovery calls?
- How would you structure our first two sales hires and their compensation?
- What should our pipeline look like six months from now, and how would we know it's real?
Red flags
Be careful if they can't name the markets they've personally sold in, if every answer is a framework without an example, if junior people will do the work after a senior person wins the deal, or if they promise specific revenue numbers before they've seen your pipeline.
Start small
I'd suggest starting with a short diagnostic or a scoped project before committing to a long retainer. It lets both sides see how the working relationship feels and gives you something useful either way.
Where I fit
I'm Charley Longfellow, a GTM and sales advisor working through Closeworthy. I've spent 25 years in tech and 18 in revenue leadership, at companies including Yahoo!, Netflix, SurveyMonkey and Userpilot, and I've built sales teams in the Middle East, Europe and the US. You work with me directly. I help shape the strategy and then build it with your team.
If that sounds like what you need, take the Revenue Leak Diagnostic or book a diagnostic call.