Traditional sales playbooks break down in regulated and emerging markets. Buyers operate under intense scrutiny, approval processes involve multiple stakeholders with competing priorities, and risk concerns outweigh feature benefits. Sales leaders who rely on velocity and volume tactics hit walls fast.
Eric Maida, Vice President of Growth at TrustModel AI, has spent over a decade leading enterprise sales teams across highly regulated industries, including learning technology, AI, and risk management. He has seen what separates teams that stall from teams that scale when uncertainty and compliance shape every buying decision.
“In regulated or emerging markets, buyers don’t start by asking what a product does,” Maida explains. “They start by asking if they can trust it. Sales leaders need to coach teams to sell credibility first.”
Lead With Trust Before You Lead With Product
Buyers face career risks if they make the wrong decision. Compliance failures, regulatory violations, or governance gaps can derail implementations and damage reputations. This changes how sales conversations need to be structured.
Sales teams that lead with product features create friction. Teams that lead with trust, transparency, and education remove it. This means deeply understanding compliance requirements, regulatory pressure, and risk exposure, then proactively addressing them in every conversation.
“When you lead with trust, you position your team as a strategic partner, not just a vendor,” says Maida. “That removes friction from the buying process and shortens the time it takes to build confidence with senior decision makers.”
This approach helps deals close faster when risk concerns are addressed upfront rather than surfacing late in the cycle. Buyer confidence increases when sales teams demonstrate fluency in regulatory frameworks and governance structures. Trust-led selling reduces objection handling because credibility was established before objections emerged.
Align Sales, Product, and Risk Messaging Early
One of the biggest mistakes in emerging markets is misalignment across teams. Sales growth accelerates when product, marketing, and sales speak the same language, especially around risk, governance, and value. Inconsistent messaging creates confusion during deal cycles and erodes buyer confidence.
“As a sales leader, it’s your job to ensure messaging is consistent, accurate, and defensible,” Maida explains. “When sales teams understand why the product was built, not just how to sell it, they gain confidence, shorten sales cycles, and build credibility with senior decision makers.”
Early alignment prevents avoidable friction. Product teams understand buyer objections and can adjust positioning. Marketing creates materials that support complex, multi-stakeholder conversations. Sales teams articulate value in language that resonates with compliance officers, risk managers, and procurement teams simultaneously.
This reduces the number of internal escalations during deals, cuts the time spent answering repetitive questions, and improves win rates in competitive evaluations where governance and risk differentiation matter most.
Build a Sales Team That Sells Into Complexity
Selling into regulated markets is not about high-pressure tactics. It is about discipline and curiosity. Sales leaders need to hire and develop teams who can navigate ambiguity, ask smarter questions, and engage multiple stakeholders without losing control of the deal.
“You need teams who can engage multiple stakeholders and understand how decisions get made in environments where risk concerns drive timelines,” says Maida. “The opportunity is there for leaders who are willing to evolve how their sales teams show up in the conversation.”
Teams that thrive in regulated markets develop fluency in compliance language, build relationships with risk and legal functions early in the sales process, and design deal structures that address governance requirements without sacrificing commercial terms. This creates repeatable, sustainable growth rather than one-off wins that cannot be replicated.
“To drive sales growth in regulated or emerging markets, lead with trust, align your teams early, and build a sales organization designed for complexity,” Maida concludes. “When you do that, growth becomes not just possible, but repeatable and sustainable.”
Connect with Eric Maida on LinkedIn for insights on leading sales growth in highly regulated and emerging markets.
