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About this episode
Chris Perrine didn’t plan to spend three decades in Asia Pacific figuring out B2B sales strategy for APAC. He came out for two years. That was 30 years ago. In that time he founded Springboard Research, built it to nearly 100 people across Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, Dubai, and Delhi, and sold it to Forrester in 2011. He ran monetization at Product Review in Australia. And then he became the first employee of G2 in Asia Pacific, joining as a one-person show in a home office and building the team that made G2 the region’s leading B2B software review platform.
In this conversation with Paul Perrett, Chris talks through what he learned across each stage of that journey. He gets into the mechanics of how reviews actually work in a sales cycle (hint: they’re not just for marketing), how LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini are fundamentally changing the way buyers discover and evaluate software, and what he saw firsthand when he scaled an AI-powered SDR team of 30+ people in India.
He also shares his 80/16/4 rule for localizing GTM – a simple framework for figuring out how much you need to change your go-to-market when entering a new region – and why the number one mistake US and UK companies make when entering APAC is treating their existing GTM as the finished product rather than the starting point.
Chris’ advice is practical, direct, and grounded in real experience.
What we cover in this episode on B2B sales strategy for APAC
- (18:08) Why reviews are a sales tool first, not a marketing asset – and how to use them to close deals faster
- (21:34) How LLMs like ChatGPT are pulling from review sites and changing the way B2B buyers discover vendors
- (25:09) The “grow slow to grow fast” philosophy Chris used to build G2’s APAC business from scratch
- (27:43) His 80/16/4 rule for localizing GTM messaging when expanding into new markets
- (29:44) How to lead a team through a crisis like Covid: what to say, what not to say, and how to hold the line on culture
- (35:15) What it looks like when you build an AI-powered SMB sales team from the ground up: what worked, what didn’t, and what he’d do differently
- (35:28) Why post-discovery AI reports (using tools like Dust on top of Anthropic) skyrocketed conversion rates for junior reps
- (40:17) The real reason AI adoption is stalling inside most sales teams – and why it’s not a technology problem
- (44:04) The biggest misconception US companies have about building in APAC
- (44:18) The one trait every great revenue leader in APAC has, other than curiosity
Quotes that will stay with us
- “Reviews are better for sales than they are for marketing. Sales teams don’t come to reviews naturally – it needs the CRO to really push it.”
- “We didn’t sell research at Forrester. We sold insurance. That CIO is basically saying: if this doesn’t go well, at least I can say the analyst said it was good.”
- “Their [overseas head office] GTM is not the GTM to use. It’s the GTM to start with. Then you innovate.”
- “Don’t ask for permission. Ask for forgiveness. If you’re always asking to do something, you’re not gonna get anything done.”
- “I had a daily reminder to think about AI every day. Some days it was literally just a couple of minutes. But it kept me from just doing what I knew I could do.”
About Chris Perrine
About Chris Perrine
Chris Perrine has spent more than 30 years building and scaling B2B businesses across Asia Pacific. He founded Springboard Research in Singapore, grew it to nearly 100 people across five countries, and sold it to Forrester Research in 2011. He subsequently ran monetization at Product Review before joining G2 as its first APAC employee, building the regional business from scratch into a market-leading operation.
His experience spans company building, market entry, and revenue leadership across ANZ, Southeast Asia, India, and beyond.
Frequently asked questions about B2B sales strategy for APAC
“Grow slow to grow fast” is an approach to regional market entry where the founding leader does all selling themselves before hiring anyone. Chris Perrine used this model when building G2’s Asia Pacific business, spending his first four months alone — prospecting, running demos, closing, and onboarding customers. The purpose is to generate firsthand understanding of what messaging lands, what objections arise, and what the market actually needs before committing to headcount. Leaders who skip this phase tend to brief their first hires on assumptions rather than evidence, which slows ramp and increases mis-hire risk.
According to Chris Perrine, the most important thing a leader can do during a crisis is be honest and consistent. During Covid, his approach was to tell the team exactly what he knew, acknowledge what he didn’t know, and commit to regular updates rather than going quiet. He emphasises that teams respond better to transparency than to false reassurance. The leaders who held their culture through the downturn were the ones who treated their people as capable of handling difficult truths, not ones who shielded them from it.
Chris Perrine sets a daily reminder to spend time thinking about AI – even if only for a few minutes. The purpose isn’t to complete a task or learn a new tool. It’s to prevent the default behavior of grinding through familiar work without asking whether it could be done differently. His framing: if you can do something in 10 minutes the way you’ve always done it, the question worth asking is whether you could build something today that means you never have to do it again. Some days the reminder produces nothing. On others it surfaces a workflow worth automating. The value is in making the habit consistent rather than waiting for a dedicated block of time that rarely arrives.
Next steps
Read the companion blog (coming this week!) for a deeper dive into what Chris covers on B2B sales strategy for APAC. Discover his framework for localizing your GTM and how to deploy AI across your sales team.
Then, explore Firmable to see how Asia-Pacific’s leading B2B data platform helps revenue teams build smarter pipelines across the region. Start with a free trial.
