Palantir Taps Former Salesforce Exec Blaise Roulet To Be Head of Sales in Europe
Palantir has a problem with sales. The cat is out of the bag. They admitted it recently citing their focus on product as a distraction for sales.
The good thing is, they are trying to fix this problem. One of the best ways to fix a problem is to get the best people in the business that can get the job done.
Preferably, these people have experience working with the problem you need to get done and are able to eagerly attack the problem in a new setting to embrace new challenges.
Enter Blaise Roulet.
Blaise Roulet spent the past 7 years at Salesforce, most recently serving as the Senior Vice President in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, & Africa) region. According to his Linkedin, he was "Responsible to drive the growth and ongoing success of Salesforce’s largest and most strategic customers, by developing long-term strategies to ensure that our top customers achieve maximum value from their partnership with Salesforce."
Why Palantir Needs This
Having dedicated people who understand the sales process inside and out is vital at this stage of Palantir's growth. They hired a former Oracle sales executive to lead their EMEA region in January. Now, they are finding sales executives who can manage entire sales operations for Europe.
Europe is also a market that is especially important for Palantir. While they are expanding commercially, it's obvious given the content they have put forward publicly about how deeply they want to align themselves with European governments and achieve sticky, quality revenue.
Palantir is already working with the UK's National Health Service and the UK Ministry of Defense. They are working with Lithuania and Poland on their Ukrainian refugee crisis efforts. They recently expanded and launched entire offices in Germany, advertising that they were hiring heavily in the region.
In order to dominate Europe, from the commercial and governmental side, Palantir has to have people in that region that understand the market , understand go-to-market strategies, and deeply understand how to get salespeople to explain their product in a way that converts when trying to secure deals.
A bit more on Blaise:
Blaise has twenty-five years of experience in the IT industry. Prior to Salesforce, he created several businesses in Europe. He founded a consulting company, that he managed within five years to grow it into one of Switzerland’s leading e-commerce and CRM players. After selling the company to leading digital agency, Isobar, in 2012 he took a senior role in the agency’s management team. During the same period, he founded an other company that offered payment solutions to e-commerce businesses.
Blaise also founded a business development accelerator, which he ran for over 10 years, helping innovative tech start-ups go to market. Passionate about the sales & customer relation, he co-founded and ran Premium Coffee, the exclusive distributor of Nespresso B2B in the Nordics.
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