How Koreans become #1 in global sales

What was discussed

Yeoul described how Tiro pivoted from a meeting-notes tool to a conversation-as-asset platform. The product started by recording what was said in meetings, but the real value turned out to be turning those conversations into organizational assets. At the time, B2C accounted for 60 to 70 percent and B2B for 30 to 40 percent, and the shift toward enterprise was just beginning.

Getting into enterprise required security certifications. Earning ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2 took time, but crossing that threshold itself became a moat. The real competitive edge, he said, is not technology but institutional knowledge — the knowledge accumulated inside an organization.

His Japan market strategy was concrete. Selling remotely and meeting customers in person are completely different things. Going to the customer in person was ultimately the only way to close the gap. On the technical side, he shared how Tiro's AI agent architecture separates a wiki/memory layer from an ontology layer.

Son Ye-jin began with her career path from Boeing aerospace to SaaS leadership. Workato is an integration and automation platform that connects complex enterprise systems, and the key, she said, is finding the one problem out of 500 that only Workato can solve.

Her learning method was striking. She repeatedly listened to recordings of peers' sales calls and absorbed the patterns. In the journey from landing the first enterprise customer to scaling to million-dollar deals, she shared the reality of cold outreach: send 400 emails, get 16 responses, and 8 progress.

In the Korean market, change management is the biggest barrier to AX (AI transformation) adoption. Changing people and processes is far harder than deploying technology. She was candid about burnout too — without a structure where the team supports each other, it is not sustainable.

In the roundtable, nine groups shared rejection stories and AI use cases. Topics included the importance of timing in B2B sales cycles, the difference between authentic and AI-generated content, managing internal stakeholders, and regional market dynamics. Both speakers arrived at the same conclusion: crossing barriers becomes a moat, and you have to be close to the customer.