Entering a new market usually starts with a seemingly simple question: who can we sell to?
In reality, before building a list of companies there are several things we don’t yet know. The ideal customer that works in another country may not be quite the same here. The problem may exist but carry a different priority. Even the person involved in the decision may not be the one we expected.
That is why entering the Spanish market takes more than translating the sales pitch and starting to contact companies.
First you need to check where there is a reasonable opportunity, and then build a way of reaching those accounts without losing what you learn in the first conversations.
Before looking for customers, understand what you are looking for
The ICP is usually the starting point, and it gets adjusted as the market responds.
If a company already sells in other markets, it has information it can use to form a first hypothesis: what kind of companies buy, what problem they solve, who is usually involved in the decision and what circumstances tend to come before an opportunity.
The question is whether those same conditions show up in Spain.
Company size, sector and business model can be similar and there can still be important differences in the buying process. How a company discovers new solutions can change too, as can the level of seniority you need to reach to move an opportunity forward.
Researching the first accounts is exactly how you start to find out.
I wouldn’t only look for companies with certain characteristics. I would also try to identify signals that make it reasonable to get in touch now: growth, new hires, expansion, leadership changes or any other event linked to the problem we solve.
A signal doesn’t confirm a need. It can simply give us a better-founded reason to start a conversation.
And those first conversations have another value: they let us check whether the initial hypothesis was right.
We may find that a particular segment responds better. The decision-makers may be different. The problem may exist but be seen as too minor to justify a purchase. Even the message that works in another market may not get the same reaction.
All of that is part of entering the market.
That is why I wouldn’t try to scale prospecting in Spain before learning something from the first accounts. Raising volume too early can mean spending months repeating a hypothesis we haven’t yet tested.
Sales execution has to learn from the market too
Once there is a first definition of the target accounts, it is time to open conversations.
Here, sales work does more than generate meetings. Every contact teaches you something about how the market responds.
A call can reveal we are talking to the wrong department. A LinkedIn conversation can lead us to someone else. An email can trigger an objection we hadn’t considered. If that information is lost after each interaction, prospecting becomes mere activity.
A multichannel approach is useful precisely because it builds up context around a single account. Using phone, LinkedIn and email at the same time achieves little if each channel goes its own way. Every interaction starts from what we already know.
It is also worth remembering that a meeting on its own doesn’t prove the market is validated.
Discovery is there to check what is really happening inside the company, who is involved in the decision, what impact the problem has and what would need to happen for a solution like ours to make sense.
If the first conversations start to show patterns, those patterns change the strategy.
The priority segment may change, or the message, the roles we target or even the way we explain the value of the solution. Being able to adjust the process matters most when there isn’t yet enough knowledge of the Spanish market.
Entering Spain doesn’t require setting up a local structure, either. Without a subsidiary, hiring a salesperson here also means using an employer of record, which adds €6,000 to €8,500 a year to the cost of the role. An external model lets you sell in the country with no subsidiary, no payroll and no employer of record. You can see the calculation in the full cost comparison.
The point is to find a way of learning from the market without building more structure than the situation calls for.
Spain may be a new market, but the principle is still fairly simple: know which companies make sense, find the people who can help us understand the opportunity and use every conversation to improve the next decision.
The first meetings in Spain are valuable above all for what they teach you about the market. Put that learning to use and a stable sales system grows out of it.
