North West firms target North America for latest expansion drive
Two North West businesses have revealed expansion plans, focused on North America.
Manchester-based contract lifecycle management (CLM) software vendor, Summize, has opened a new office in Boston, while Blackburn-based sales training franchisor, Sales Geek, has announced two state-wide master franchises in Florida and Texas.
Summize has launched a US subsidiary, Summize Inc after reporting new ARR growth of 107%, making it the third year in a row of triple digit percentage growth.
It is planned that more than 40% of Summize’s revenue will be attributed to US clients in the next 12 months as the company focuses on maintaining strong growth and building a local presence to serve the large addressable market in the region.
The new office is based in the prestigious Seaport area of the city and will provide a scalable base for Summize to expand its American client portfolio which already includes PTC, Nsight, Miami Heat, Day Wireless, TriMark and Avantus.
Creating career-defining opportunities for its UK colleagues, several members of the team have made the move across the Atlantic to establish the new Boston base with further local recruitment planned later in the year as the team expands.
CEO, Tom Dunlop, said: “We’ve been planning our US expansion for some time and now we’ve established our US base, we have a real catalyst for further international growth. We love Boston because it’s a thriving hub for tech companies, there’s no shortage of talent and it has great transport links to the rest of the US and back to the UK.
“Now that we have a local presence, we’re looking forward to adding to the growing number of US logos we already have in our portfolio and expanding the same culture we’ve fostered in the UK to our new office. Boston has a new CLM vendor in town.”
Steve Klin, Summize chairman, said: “The move to the US was always a part of the plan for Summize, and one of the primary reasons for the Series A investment last year. It’s a huge market and there’s a genuine need for technology to better manage contracts.”
Meanwhile, having expanded to more than 30 offices across the UK since its launch in 2017, Sales Geek has launched its brand in the USA, after Joe Heikkinen and Gene McCabe opened master franchises in Texas and Florida, respectively.
James Denny, Joe Heikkenem, Gene McCabe, Richard Few
Joe Heikkinen’s career in sales includes time in B2B, pharmaceutical, biotech and medical devices. His roles in sales leadership began at AstraZeneca where he held a variety of director level positions. He then moved into a VP of Sales role at Getinge Group in 2011, and most recently was the Senior Vice President (Head of Sales and Global Field Operations) at Stemline Therapeutics.
Launching similarly in Florida, Gene McCabe moved from IT leadership into sales in 2007, as a multi-state account manager for Accredo Specialty Pharmacy, a division of Express Scripts, becoming Sales Director in 2014, then joining Cigna’s Evernorth group as Senior Director, Sales & Account Management in 2021, before launching Sales Geek.
Sales Geek founder and CEO, Richard Few, said: “As you can imagine, we’re unbelievably excited to be launching Sales Geek in the US and we couldn’t think of anyone we’d be happier to be doing that with than Joe and Gene.
“When they visited us in Blackburn, we had a fantastic time showing them exactly how we operate here in the UK, demonstrating our culture and we are looking forward to working with them to develop Sales Geek in their own territories in the US. The guys are going to smash it.”
