“What do I absolutely need to know before going to Germany?”. “Do I have to open an office in Berlin?”. “I hire a Country Manager?”.

I have lost count of the number of times entrepreneurs have asked me these kinds of questions.
It must be said that with 80 million inhabitants, the largest GDP in the euro zone and an anthology of large international groups, specialized SMEs and Tech companies, Germany is often the first market looked at by French start-ups seeking to internationalize.
However, many end up breaking their teeth there and never manage to take advantage of the potential offered by our neighbor across the Rhine. 

As Country Manager Germany, Switzerland and Austria at Trainline, Europe's leading app for train and bus travel, I had the chance to open up Germany from (almost) zero. Today, Germany is one of our biggest markets.

This article is a summary of everything I learned during these years. It will help you prepare, launch and sustainably develop your start-up in Germany while avoiding the most common pitfalls. It is aimed at entrepreneurs, Country Managers, business developers or anyone involved directly or indirectly in the development of the German market. Auf geht's! 

1) Hire a native speaker

Has a member of your team done German LV2? Bank! You ask him to prepare your launch in Germany: translate the product, write the launch press release, answer the first emails from customers, engage in conversation with local partners... What seems like a cheap short-term solution will turn out to be quickly put a brake on your growth. 

The key to a successful launch in Germany is hiring a German. You need someone who's lived there, understands the culture, knows your industry, and knows how to get their hands dirty. Depending on your organizational structure, this person could be a Country Manager or a Business Development Manager. From experience, and I preach a little for my parish, Country Managers tend to have more impact. Their scope being broader, they have the necessary freedom to change mentalities internally and facilitate the transition from a start-up focused on France to a resolutely international organization. I will return to this point a little later. 

Hiring a German Country Manager can be difficult and good profiles are rare. This will be all the more true if you have no plans to open an office in Germany. I strongly advise you to appeal to the German community in France (such as the excellent DCFA which regularly organizes meetups in Paris). Otherwise, Linkedin is probably the best search engine to find interesting profiles. As with all rare profiles, candidates will probably already be in the job, which can quickly increase the score when it comes to making an offer.

2) Locate your product

Once the ideal candidate is hired, one of their first tasks will be to “localize” the product. Localization is not limited to translation, it is all the tasks necessary to adapt your product to a new market. 

Translations

German is a difficult language to learn and its pronunciation can give you cold sweats. The grammatical structure, based on declensions, has more in common with Latin than French. And what would German be without its extended words? Yes, “Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung” really exists. It is therefore essential to have a flexible product that can accommodate these specificities. 

The following sentence, also called the translation key, perfectly illustrates why:

"Emmanuel Macron has sent a purchase request expiring on 03.04.2019 à 9:23"

Under the hood, this sentence could be transcribed in two different ways in the code:

• Flexible key: {requesterName} sent a purchase request expiring on the %A %d %Bat%H:%M
• Concatenated key: ui.requesterName + ui.purchaseRequest + ui.expiryTime

The flexible key will allow translators to easily adapt the sentence to the specificities of German (or any other language) by changing, for example, the order of the words. Conversely, the concatenated key is rigid and difficult to change, especially when these keys (ui.requesterName for example) are used in several parts of the product and in different contexts. Maintaining a multi-language product with concatenated keys can quickly become unmanageable, to be avoided at all costs!

Let's go back to our example: in the German translation, the order has been reversed and unlike the French version, %Hh%M is no longer at the end of the sentence.

{requesterName} Hat eine Kaufanfrage, die vor %A %d %B um %Hh%Mbestätigt werden muss

As you will have understood, flexible keys are essential. Don't forget that each new release can contain its share of new keys, translation will quickly become a full-time job. It is essential to internalize this work in order to guarantee the quality of the work and maintain a coherent tone in your different languages. 

Format & Typography 

• Time: hh:mm (eg: 20:10 p.m.), 
• Currency: use either “xx €” or “xx EUR”, with a space between the price and the currency,
• Quotes: „This is a German quote“,
• Dates: dd.mm.yy. If you wish to indicate the day, you can write it in full.  

There are open-source libraries like ICU4U that make it easy to implement date formatting across different countries, which can make your job much easier. 

Tone: In order to be human while remaining courteous, I recommend addressing customers with “Sie” followed by their first names. 

Hello Ralf, old Dank für your Message.

Hello Ralf, thank you for business message.

Avoid the too familiar “du” and the too formal “Herr/Frau”.

Respect for privacy 

One of the German clichés that dies hard concerns their quasi-obsession with respect for privacy, and for good reason: the Germans are extremely attached to it. Is right. It is therefore essential to be in the nails. 

• Imprint : this page, obligatory in Germany, may be related to the imprint. It must include a series of information about your company (name, social status, address, telephone number, etc.) and be accessible via your footer. Failure to display it exposes you to a fine of up to €50. Believe me, there are people who will check that this page is indeed available on your site. 
• Data protection/GTC : These sections are not specific to Germany, but must nevertheless be translated. 
• “Abmahnungen” : A great German specialty which consists of sending warnings to consumer associations, regulators, banks or any other authority in order to complain about your service. These associations can then turn against you. This method is particularly popular with angry customers. If you receive any, do not panic, check that you are in your right and respond politely to calm things down. 

Payments

If you think that the Germans use the credit card as much as the French, you are sticking your finger in the eye. Without cash on you when paying, you'll often be forced to retreat to an ATM, especially in Berlin's trendy restaurants. According to historians, this cash culture has its roots in the hyperinflation that traumatized an entire generation during the Weimar Republic. 

To pay for their online purchases, German consumers also go their separate ways. Names like SEPA DD, Sofort or Giropay may not mean anything to you, but these means of payment are nevertheless extremely popular in Germany. Here is a quick overview of what you should, or should not, offer in addition to payment by credit card:

• PayPal: The service created by Peter Thiel experienced explosive growth in Germany in the early 2000s, notably by profiting tremendously from its integration with Ebay. It remains extremely popular and captures 15% of German online payments. Essential. 
• Sofort/Giropay/Paydirekt: Bank transfer methods that integrate into your payment flow via a Webview. The main advantage is that thanks to this Webview, the customer always pays on the Sofort/Giropay/Paydirekt page of his bank, regardless of the merchant. This tends to reassure customers a lot. Less expensive than Paypal for merchants, these methods also have relatively low fraud/chargeback rates. No need to add more than one, one will suffice. Slight advantage to Paydirekt, which has been growing strongly since 2018. It offers the advantage of being integrated into all Sparkassen, German local banks. Essential
• SEPA DD (formerly “Lastschrift”): The customer signs a mandate which gives the right to the merchant to come and withdraw his account. Only compatible with EUR accounts. Popularized by mail order, it is losing momentum and little used by young customers. With a chargeback of up to 13 months (!), I strongly advise against it. To avoid.
• Payment by invoice: Customers pay the invoice once the goods are received. Very popular with merchants of physical goods. Klarna is very strong in this sector. Essential (for the sale of physical goods)
• “Vorkasse”: Customers place their order and usually have 7 days to pay the amount due by bank transfer. The order is shipped after receipt of funds. This often involves manual reconciliation processes. To avoid.  
• There are a multitude of other less important means of payment and popular. In order to be sure not to miss anything, I still advise you to look at what your competitors are offering.
• Choose a PSP whose offer will allow you to quickly add local payment methods. From experience, Stripe and Adyen do the job perfectly. 

FAQ 

In order to quickly build a library of relevant FAQ articles, translate the 10 most read French articles, and adapt them if necessary. A good FAQ is clear, concise, and includes GIFs illustrating what you're talking about (Giphy Capture is a great tool for this). Add new articles based on recurring questions to your customer service. 

Pledge of trust : You have certainly already come across these badges, labels or certifications that line the German sites. Very popular with companies, they can be divided into two main categories: 

• Customer reviews: Companies like Ekomi or Trusted Shops offer merchants to collect the opinion of their customers after the purchase in order to display an average (generally flattering) on ​​their site. On top of that, they do a (quick) merchant audit. These solutions offer two great advantages: display a widget with its average on its site in order to reassure new visitors, and use the rating in the form of stars in its Adwords ads and organic search results. Empirically, results & ads with these stars show better CTR (click through rate) than without. Technical integration is simple and these solutions work for all languages. To consider.
• Certifications: “TÜV” (Technischer Überwachungsverein) is an institution in Germany. Companies wishing to be certified submit to a fairly thorough audit of their processes. Once the audit has passed, they will be able to boast of being certified to ISO standards and display the TÜV logo on their packaging. For some years now, TÜV has also offered its services to online platforms. Very expensive, these certifications offer little benefit. To avoid.  

Listen to your customers 

Forget expensive market studies and research institutes! When starting out, the best way to understand what customers want is to do customer service. 

When I joined Trainline (Captain Train at the time), we didn't have dedicated customer support for German speakers. I immediately started looking for a good profile for this position. As explained at the beginning of this article, finding a person whose mother tongue is German in Paris is anything but easy, especially for a position in customer support. Seeing the customer tickets piling up, I had no choice but to take care of it myself. And guess what? I found it great!

Every day, I received suggestions, complaints, bug reports from our early adopters. I spent a lot of time discussing with them in order to better understand their expectations, find out what they thought of our competitors, what was missing in the product, etc. In fact, I spent 5 months doing a customer survey, for free, while managing support. These first customers often became ambassadors of our service and convinced their families and friends to become customers in turn. This technique does not "scale", but it does create an excellent base to start with. Fun fact: I even received personal thanks in App Store reviews.

Taking care of customer service while opening up a country is obviously not manageable ad infinitum, it is therefore essential to plan your hiring upstream. 1^er A support member of your support team should have a good pen, write flawlessly and be ready to build a team as sales develop. He can also take care of translations.

3) The Evangelist

As Country Manager of a new country, you will find that your market will often not be given priority internally. And for good reason, its share in the overall turnover of your start-up is probably low, even insignificant. It will be your mission to convince your colleagues that Germany has great potential: so get ready to spread the word! As soon as you feel comfortable in your new role, organize a presentation on your market for all collaborators. 

Here is a list of topics to cover:

• Introduction to Germany (political system, key figures, economy, Toni Kroos' hairstyle),
• The online market,
• Your market (the most important part),
• Your competitors,
• The German team of your start-up,
• State of play of your activities in Germany (what has already been done, what remains to be done),
• The strategy to conquer the market,
• The roadmap (business and technical).

Now that your colleagues have become experts on Germany, you must ensure that future new recruits will too. At Captain Train, training was high on the agenda for new recruits, but it was mainly focused on France (the historic market). Adding a mandatory session on Germany, and later on the DACH zone, allowed me to make sure that the new captains also had the keys to understanding these new markets.

4) Get started! 

Now that you're all set, it's time to launch your product in Germany. Here is a suggested plan, in 4 steps.  

Phase 1: Foundations

• As soon as you arrive in your new position, meet your colleagues, spend time with them, participate in all internal events. 
• Test the product thoroughly, documenting all your research. 
• Even if you are a nugget of French tech, there is a good chance that no one knows about your start-up in Germany, so you are starting from 0. Document yourself on your market, read everything you can and go talk to people who deal with Germany in other start-ups in order to get their feedback. 
• Once you feel ready, do the presentation discussed above. 

Customer acquisition is the key to your success, so start it as soon as possible. Focus on acquisition channels that are typically the most effective:

• SEO: The ROI for SEO is asynchronous, hence the importance of starting to create content as soon as possible. Start by identifying the keywords that bring the most traffic to your competitors using tools like Searchmetrics or Similarweb. Identify those that generate a significant number of searches without being too competitive (typically, “car” will not do, far too competitive). The ideal is to find 5 and use freelancers to start producing content optimized for search engines. You will find very competent people on Upwork.  
• SEM: Take advantage of the work done for SEO and launch a few Ad Groups around your keywords. Start small, 4 Ad Groups are enough, and follow the performance on a weekly basis. Do not hesitate to do A/B tests on “Ad copy”. If you don't have an in-house SEM team, hire a freelancer to set up these first campaigns. Ideally, this person already knows your industry. It will save you a lot of time. 

Phase 2: Cast off!

• Germany is a federation, which makes it much more decentralized than France. There are 15 cities with more than 500 inhabitants (compared to 000 in France). Choosing your office can be difficult, it will depend in large part on your interlocutors. Capital, center of politics and resolutely internationally oriented, Berlin is usually a good choice. Munich and its powerful economy also offers many advantages, especially if you work in mobility (BMW and Flixbus are based there, Daimler is not very far, in Stuttgart). Finally, if you are into Fintech, the financial center that is Frankfurt can be a good idea. The main thing is that you are close to your partners, your industry and talent. 
• Rent a place in a Coworking and develop your network. Take key people from your start-up (CEO, product, marketing) with you for a few weeks so that they “live” your market. Use your office to host Meetups and do more in-depth client interviews. 
• If your product is not yet available in Germany, now is the time to launch it! In order to get customer feedback, go and meet them. I spent a lot of time in German train stations talking to travellers, asking them their opinion on our product, understanding their expectations, etc. Believe me, everyone has something to say about trains when you ask them at a station… Once you've collected enough reviews, go to your product team with a list of features needed for Germany, ranked by importance.  
• Hire a news agency that knows your industry and has good contacts in the media that interest you. Avoid international agencies: your budget will not allow you to have access to their best agents. From experience, the most effective agencies are the large “boutique” agencies. Insist on working directly with the founder, they are usually the ones with the best network. The monthly cost (retainer) is generally lower than in France or the UK, so do not hesitate to negotiate. In order to be able to change agency quickly, do not sign a contract with more than 6 weeks' notice. 

Phase 3: Launch

• Organize your launch party with your press agency. Invite influential journalists in your industry, influencers, politicians (if relevant), other start-ups evolving in your sector as well as your best customers. Your management team and the Germany team will also have to be present. Avoid long speeches and make the event interactive. The best way to get good press for your launch is to get your product tested! Organize workshops so that participants can fully understand your offer.
• Now that you know the local ecosystem, organize regular Meetups and give talks. Your agency can help you get slots at big tech events, but the best opportunities will come from your own network. 
• Partnerships can be a very cost-effective way to gain new customers. However, negotiations can be long and implementation difficult. Don't waste time negotiating partnerships that won't have a significant impact on your P&L. 

Phase 4: Acceleration

• If your numbers are good, start growing your team. Start by hiring someone for marketing/press and a support person. Lobby internally for organization by country: having a Product Manager and developers dedicated to your country will allow you to go much faster. 
• The question of opening a local office will certainly begin to arise. Don't hide your face: hiring German employees in large numbers in Paris will quickly become complicated, so you might as well take the plunge now and move to Germany. 
• When you have decided to go to Germany, you will certainly have to set up a subsidiary under German law. It will even benefit you in industries where politics plays a major role. In other cases, it will even be essential (for example to obtain local approval). Do not try to save pennies and treat yourself to a good lawyer to mount the structure.

Bonus: Austria and Switzerland

When your German business is well established, you can turn to the other two German-speaking countries (three if you include eastern Belgium), Switzerland and Austria. Good news: you will be able to reuse a large part of your work on Germany in these two countries, becoming Country Manager DACH will therefore be a logical continuation. 

• Austria: ideally placed between continental Europe and Eastern Europe, Austria is a very dynamic market. Apart from a few very specific terms, you can use your German translations word for word. Another good news: customers pay mainly by credit card, so you won't need to add local payment methods. 
• Switzerland: With one of the highest GDP/inhabitants in the world, Switzerland is a very interesting market. One of the challenges inherent in the country is to have three official languages: German, French and Italian. Although German is the most widely spoken, you will need all three in order to cover the whole territory. Swiss German includes a lot of specific terms, do your research beforehand so you don't make dumplings. An example: Swiss Germans do not say “Bahnticket (train ticket in German), but “Billet”. Take a look at your local competitors to make sure you don't miss a thing. 

Conclusion 

These tips are based on my experience, so they may not apply to all start-ups and in all markets. I mainly worked on the launch of B2C e-commerce start-ups, B2B companies will face very different challenges. 

Experiment, innovate, test and do not hesitate to ask for help. If I have learned one thing during this adventure, it is that the majority of people, even the busiest, will take the time to help you. Why ? Because they've been there too. Viel Glück!

Mounir Laggoune, Country Manager DACH @Trainline