Employee Spotlight: Q&A with Xavier Pochon, Regional Sales Manager (France) at Nasuni

Nasuni sat down with Xavier Pochon, Regional Sales Manager in France, to talk about gaining traction in a new market and what makes his job rewarding.

Xavier came to Nasuni in 2024 to lead the company’s expansion in France. Bringing with him over a decade of experience across enterprise IT and cybersecurity, he’s taking a proactive and collaborative approach to the role. A little over a year after joining, he’s motivating a high-performing team to turn a promising territory into a thriving market.

Q: Can you introduce your role and tell us what you’re responsible for?

As a regional sales manager my goal is to develop Nasuni’s presence in France. Before I joined, we were quite reactive in the French market. If we got an inbound lead in the area, someone from the US or UK would take it on, but there was no one dedicated to the region. Now that we have some big name clients in France and are gaining traction, we wanted to become more proactive.

Q: Do you remember how you first discovered Nasuni and what drew you to the company?

It’s a funny anecdote, actually. I’d been working for a large company for nearly two years and was thinking of trying to find a smaller company to move to, but I wasn’t actively looking. One day I received a phone call from a headhunter. I told him, “You have five minutes to convince me that this is worth listening to.” And we ended up talking about Nasuni for fifty minutes. He got me really excited about the opportunity to join a fast-growing company with lots of potential in the unstructured data management space.

Q: Can you talk me through how the team has evolved since you joined?

When I started in May 2024, I was the first person on the French team. Just a month later, an SDR and a solution architect joined me full-time. Nasuni’s enterprise sales cycle is 18-24 months, so we had to jump into the job immediately to try and find projects to build a pipeline. That’s exactly what we did.

One of the things I really love about my team is that everyone was excited by the challenge of developing an emerging territory. That meant that we approached it together with real focus and commitment. As a result, we’re looking to close our first significant project by the end of the year. It’s fantastic to be part of a team that is extremely motivated to make this journey successful. There’s a sense of pride in what we are achieving, which makes the job really rewarding.

Q: Which other teams do you work most closely with and what makes those collaborations successful?

Every deal is different, so we work with a range of different departments to benefit from their experience. We collaborate with the professional services team to design the best possible architecture for our customers. We work with product management to demonstrate our capabilities by sharing the product roadmap. I’m actually about to have a call with our founder who is going to help us on another project!

One of the strengths of Nasuni is how much collaboration there is between teams. Everyone supports each other. At previous companies, I really missed that feeling of being part of a team — of being part of something — but I’ve found it again at Nasuni.

Q: How do you see Nasuni’s brand values coming through in your day-to-day?

The constant support from the company and the management has been amazing. When I joined, there was no solution architect or SDR on the team. During the interview process, I asked how they would support me as the first recruit. In response, they hired French speakers in every one of those roles.

The other part I really like is that the company invests in people, develops them, and progresses them. Every product and sales training is covered — which is fantastic for a company the size of Nasuni. The number of internal promotions I’ve seen in the past year alone is more than I’ve seen in many years at previous companies.

Q: What can you tell us about your life outside of work, to help people get to know you a bit better?

I grew up by the sea in Brittany, so surfing has always been a big part of my life. Since moving to London, I’ve started wakeboarding in local lakes and doing stand-up paddleboarding on the river. These days, my weekends are mostly spent renovating a house my partner and I bought last year. Working on the house and in the garden with the dog is less risky than extreme sports!

If you’re interested in joining our expanding international team, take a look at the recent career opportunities at Nasuni here.