Thesis & positioning
Market and competitive mapping. Segment and buyer selection. Pricing and value proposition rebuilt for France. A target account list you can defend.
AD·GALLIAM
Latin — toward Gaul
Your first twelve months in France
A 0-to-1 market entry program for technology companies that already sell well at home — and have never sold a thing in France.
The situation
France is on every European plan. Few get it right the first time.
01
Hire a local rep and hope
Recruit one salesperson, give them a quota and a year. Without a market thesis, a pipeline or a network, most of that year goes to learning.
02
Sell from headquarters
Remote coverage works for inbound. It does not open enterprise accounts in a market where procurement, references and relationships are local.
03
Open an entity too early
A subsidiary, a payroll and an office before the first ten customers. Fixed cost against an unproven thesis.
Why it is harder than it looks
Four things that surprise foreign teams
Buying is relationship-led
Enterprise deals rarely start from a cold sequence. They start from a referral, an ecosystem partner or an existing supplier.
The channel is the market
Integrators, resellers and distributors control access to a large share of enterprise and public accounts. Going direct ignores the shortest path.
Public sector is a discipline
Tenders, framework agreements and purchasing centrals follow rules that take years to learn and cannot be improvised.
Employment is a commitment
Hiring in France is a long-term decision with real cost to reverse. The first sales hire should come after the thesis is proven, not before.
The program
Three markers over six months
We run your market entry as operators, not as advisers. A senior commercial leader on the ground for a fixed period — at a fraction of the cost of a country manager, and no employment commitment until the thesis is proven.
First deals
Outreach from our network. Meetings at CxO level. Qualification against a defined method. Co-selling on live opportunities through to close.
Handover
A documented playbook. Partner agreements in place. Hiring profile, scorecard and interview support for your first local hire.
Track record
We have already built this, at scale
180people led across three management layers
€40Mworldwide framework won, delivered in five countries
3.5×account perimeter growth in eighteen months
10+startups & scale-ups coached, incl. the HEC Paris incubator
- A live network across French enterprise and public accounts, built over twelve years — not a purchased contact list.
- Working relationships with the vendors and integrators that control channel access: Dell, HPE, Lenovo, NVIDIA, NetApp, Cisco, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks.
- Experience on both sides — engineering services and IT infrastructure — from one-week transactional cycles to eighteen-month enterprise deals.
Fit
Who this works for — and who it does not
A good fit
- Software vendors, hardware manufacturers and deep-tech companies
- Proven traction at home, no French presence yet
- Selling to enterprise or public sector buyers
- Deal sizes above €50k
- A founder or VP Sales who will stay involved
Not a fit
- IT integrators, resellers and distributors
- Consumer products or self-serve software
- Pre-product or pre-first-customer
- Looking for a report rather than an operator
- Needing a full-time presence from day one
We work with vendors bringing a product to France — not with the integrators and resellers that distribute it.
Engagement
How we work together
Diagnostic
Two weeks. Segment mapping, your thesis tested against our network, and a written go / no-go on France.
Market entry
Six months on the ground. Senior time, access to our network and co-selling on live opportunities.
Building an A-player team
The hiring profile, the scorecard and the interviews — so the person who takes over is the right one.
Next step
Start with the two-week diagnostic
We map your segment, test the thesis against our network, and come back with a written go / no-go. And you don’t lose a year.
France