2308 - Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Business Growth Strategies with CSV Group's Yuliia Solovyeva

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0:58With us right now, it's Yulia Soloviova. Julia, you are the founder and CEO of the CSV Group. You're found on the web at thecsvgroup.com. Julia, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me, Josh. Happy to be here. You are in beautiful Ireland right now. And, Julia, I'd love to learn before we talk about the work that you do with the CSV Group. When you're not at work, I don't know what you've been into lately, hobbies, movies, music, TV shows. I like to ask, you know, what have you been geeking out on lately? And anything come to mind? Sure. So my main hobby is psychology.

1:45I'm a fan of transactional analysis, a method created by Eric Bjorn, the author of Games People Play. I enjoy learning about people, relationship, and also about myself. and it helps me a lot in my business as well. When I work with the clients, I can understand them more. Behind that, I love sports. For me, it's about discipline, mental health. It keeps me strong and focused. And of course, I enjoy traveling with my family, both around Ireland and abroad. Now that my son is a little bit older, we can finally go back traveling to the US, by the way, Josh. And don't worry about the long flights and enjoy the long trips as well.

2:30So I just pulled up the Wikipedia article for transactional analysis. Give us like one tip, like a level 101 level observation that is really important for leaders today to understand around this psychological theory. uh yeah i would just mention that transactional analysis is about centers on the concepts of three ego states it's parent adult and child which influence how people think feel and act in different situations so sometimes during the conversation with the clients you can identify whether it's a position of the parent adult sometimes or even a child one who wants something now immediately at the term and then you can act appropriately in front of them so that you can both win uh the deal or win the best condition if you speak about the client so it's all about you know the states of being uh in one or another position yeah and it looks like the kind of the seminal work for this uh theory is um eric burns it's from 1964 the book games people play are Are there any other books or maybe YouTubers that you follow that you're like, oh, yeah, this is really good?

3:55Like, what would you where's a good entry point? So there is a transactional international transactional school in my own country in Ukraine. So, yes, I have lots of like, you know, teachers over there. So I'm trying to, you know, to work with people sometimes just to get to know more from, you know, specialties over there. because it's just my hobby. I'm not working as a psychologist, right? So I speak a lot with the people who work and practice psychological view within this method. So yeah, cannot recommend probably more YouTube videos over there, but you can read a lot about transactional analysis.

4:37Oh, this is fascinating. Yeah, I'm okay. And listen, in this interview, Yulia, I'm okay and you are okay. So just kind of bring it up. We're both okay. All right. So, Yulia, tell me about the CSV group and the work that you do. All right, no problem. So, we are a company that helps businesses grow. We are helping startups. We're helping global brands. We help different types of companies. In simple terms, we help founders and teams enter new markets, win bigger clients, and increase their revenue. We always begin with the basics. Who exactly you want to sell to? why they should buy you and how to reach them.

5:21And here's what differentiates us from the typical business consultants. We don't just hand over a strategy and walk away. Together with our legal team, because we have a legal team in our group, we also open a very powerful growth channel, which is public and commercial tenders. These are official, transparent competitions where companies can secure big contracts. We help our clients use this channel to grow in a way that's structured, fair, and scalable. As we all know, working within the B2B sector and building relationships takes lots of time. And tenders are one of those channels that may help you to reduce sales cycle, build trust faster, and access opportunities.

6:08So this is something that we do as our core sales services. Then we provide with go-to-market partnership support. We set up CRM systems and AI tools to simplify the work of the company. We provide fractional BD support for companies that need immediate execution. We provide our staff, our experts to act as a part of the team for once for months to implement strategy, run tenders, build partnerships, and set up CRM AI services, ensuring growth is not just planned, but also delivered. Yeah. Well, Yulia, I would imagine you probably see some patterns when it comes to gaps or revenue leakage. What would you say would be some of the biggest areas where you see companies and business owners maybe making some suboptimal decisions in their maybe acquisition or where you just see revenue leaking?

7:18so i think i would say the biggest mistake in this sector what i can see is that the companies jump in everything without preparation and they get zero results or they over complicated the processes right so they're trying to develop their digital marketing they would like to go directly to the market and sell they would like to attend tenders and at the same time they're not ready for that as they do not have the level that the market is expecting from them. For example, if we speak about the tenders, they might not have all the productive abilities or the requirements that the buyer is looking for.

8:01Or, for example, if they're focusing just on one channel that might not work, it also might be a problem. And I would say probably if we speak about the trends and how to fix it, I'm seeing that outcomes should be over deliverables. Most teams are done buying another kind of BD plans, CRM rollout, or action list. They want results. They want warm introductions. They want real buyers, their qualified pipeline, and deals moving to close. And that's what the company should focus on. Yeah. And then, like, how do you go about fixing these things? Because I would imagine sometimes you're working with a client and they just kind of get entrenched into certain ways of doing things.

8:51And I'm sure that you get some objections. You know, if you're saying, yeah, listen, I think you need to stop doing this. And they're like, but we've always done that. And it might be tough. And maybe sometimes it's attached to, you know, certain people within the organization. So sometimes these can be scary decisions. Absolutely. So we normally have a long discussion on what has been done before. Did it work well? What results did it bring? And what you are looking for, right? And as I mentioned at the beginning, what differentiates us that we can produce outcomes using like our core service, like attenders itself, that actually kind of guarantee like, you know, like a market dialogue.

9:39It's absolutely a transparent procedure in Europe where you can meet with a buyer directly, with a person who has a contract on the table, right? So we can provide these kind of things. And at least we can guarantee that you will meet this buyer and understand the market needs. And then understand if you are ready for this market, you need to understand if you're ready for big contracts, if you have the right staff to do that, if you have the right people to do so, if you have scale to do that. And that's what we are doing with the company. We kind of help them with a technical, legal, marketing front, aligning with PACs, nailing compliance, legal work, just to make sure that the company is ready to go to the market and scale.

10:25Yeah. Yulia, let's give our listeners something that they can do today that they might be able to get some clearer, more objective view of cash flow or how things are working there. What's one bit of advice you could say, listen, today, here's what I want you to do? Sure. I would recommend to look up the public procurement portals in your markets. They're free and open. I'm sorry, what was it? Like procurement portals, like open website, like Tenders Electronic Daily, United Nations Global Marketplaces. Just look at those platforms to check the tenders, procurement contracts open. Even if scanning them will show you the scale of opportunities that exist and the type of buyers who might be looking for you.

11:19Yeah. And these would be local. I know you've done a lot of work with governments, associations, and, you know, listen, these are entities that all need things. And, you know, there are certain companies that know that world, and then there are other companies that they don't. And, you know, it takes a little bit of education, I know, to kind of, you know, learn the ropes there. but it sounds like you're a fan of seeking after contracts in those networks. Yeah, absolutely. So definitely you can check the conditions over there. So you don't need like a special skills to understand the requirements.

12:05And then, of course, probably for the deeper details, you might need a specialist who runs through that process before. and here we come for that. So we analyze the opportunities you choose. We can search for more of them if you want to enter new markets. We can select those standards for you. We can arrange market dialogues. We can pack your company in terms of the storytelling, in terms of marketing, in terms of requirements that the buyer is looking for. And then we can help you with registration, e-signature, documentation, buyer question, compliance, bidding with everything, and make sure you want this tender.

12:48Are there any trends around AI that you're particularly a fan of? And then I guess just, you know, how do AI-enabled solutions factor into the work you're doing, or do they? Yeah, I'm a fan of AI at work, so it helps so much to optimize the working processes. So what, for example, we are doing over here, we help businesses set up CRM systems and AI tools like AI agents in a way that truly matches how they work. That means designing the right structures for sales, support and client journeys, connecting the CRM to core processes to data flow smoothly. So, for example, we had a case with a very famous telecom company where we provided AI tool support like it was an AI agent.

13:40And we significantly improved the net score from 7.7 to 9.2. So the AI agent replied to the customers in the ways that nobody will recognize that it was not a real person. but it was done so good that we saw the results in that score immediately. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, I know you've got some resources, Yulia, to our friend that's been listening here, your website is dcsvgroup.com. When somebody goes to your website and they want to learn more about the work that you're doing and particularly if there's any value or content that you would recommend, where should they click on? What should they do?

14:31So I would say that they can check, first of all, the services we do, and they can check insights, the last news. We have YouTube channel as well. You might probably see it on the website as well. So where I tell more about go-to-market strategies. So it's Global Entrepreneur on YouTube, so you can find it as well. and of course you can get in touch with us and we'll provide you probably with the list of opportunities for your specific business needs and then you can decide whether you're ready to go for that or you still need to improve part of your business sectors in order to go to the bigger contracts but tenders again as I said it's not the only one services we support so again If we speak about different types of companies who would potentially go to another market, like, for example, we had a client from Eastern Europe who actually was focusing on eco-packaging.

15:35It was a startup that wanted to expand into the Middle East. So we found out that this client was focusing on four markets at a time with no, let's say, Arabic materials, localization, no understanding the regulations and partnership. Together, we focused on one region. It was the Dubai and Abu Dhabi markets as a pilot market. We repackaged their brand and positioning for their local mindset, translated materials into Arabic, and secured a local distribution partner. We also guided them through certification, logistics, legal setup in free zone. And just in five months, they achieved test sales within the premium restaurant showcased in the summit in Abu Dhabi, focused on their area.

16:24And we signed two contracts with a local supermarket chain. So this is also the kind of services we do. We help companies grow in that way, not only tender. So, again, if you'd like to know more, probably you can visit the YouTube channel, my website, and get in touch with us so that we can tell you more about our experience and our case studies that might be helpful for you as well. All accessible at thecsvgroup.com. Yulia Soloviova, you're the founder and CEO. It's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much, Josh.

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