Sell overseas with flair

Wanna do business overseas? Here’s a key list of to-dos.

Overseas selling is a premeditated sport because as long as you follow all the rules of the game and roll out your activities in a well thought out way, you are bound to be successful. Countless books and articles talk of strategies to market overseas or account management philosophies. So I am going to spare you to agony of reading another such article.

Instead, I will focus on sharing some of my insightful experiences in areas that I believe are critical for success in this challenging real life sport.

No short term plans

We all plan our businesses, especially overseas marketing. But we go wrong when we plan only for the year ahead. I believe that any planning needs to be done for a minimum of three years. Also, this should be a micro level plan that includes revenues, expenses, staffing plan, number of clients, infrastructure plan, etc. This is very important as this will give you a true picture of what your budgets are, what revenues you can expect, what pitfalls you can avoid and forecast etc. As they say , “The devil is in the details”.

Why I believe this helps is that this kind of plan helps you look ahead and see how todays actions will affect the plan 6, 12, 24, or even 36 months later. It is imperative for business owners to have a 36 month visibility.

For instance, I closed two large overseas IT services deals last month. One was a multi-million multi-year deal and another was a very large three-month deal. The day I closed these deals I knew that my whole plan had changed. This is because the milt-million multi-year deal now gave me a safety net for a couple of years when I could safely take a few risks on the marketing, where as the 3-month large project needed me to staff up immediately without having any longitivity plan for the 40 odd people.

Reach via research

Most Indian businesses selling overseas have all tried cold calling using a call center type concept and email marketing lashing out at any and every email address that they can lay their hands on. Yet these seem to be hollow means of reaching out. This is because no one bothers to check who the intended target is or how one can add value to a person’s business by offering your services.

The best way to reach out is to do a thorough research on the target company, draw up a lost (at least one) value that your company can offer, understand the company’s area of expertise, identify its business problems then suspect solutions to such problem. Remember, every business has problems. If you don’t find any, you aren’t looking hard enough !

Another important thing is to understand that nothing can replace face time with the prospect. You cannot acquire a customer remotely. Please note that I said “acquire a customer” and not “get a project”. The difference being in acquiring a customer you get repeat business because the customer understands that you are willing to invest time to understand and then solve his/her business issues.

Burning marketing Dollars

One of our biggest concerns is how many marketing dollars to burn before expecting results. There is no ready answer. If you and the prospect do not “connect” in the first two hours of engagement; it would be difficult to acquire him/her as a customer. What I mean by “connect” is the ability of the prospect to guage your sincerity and interest in working with him/her.

For IT services I have created a formula that I believe is fair returns a vendor can expect:

Initial order = 5 X Initial Marketing and Sales Investment

Second Order = 10 X Initial Marketing and Sales Investment

Third Order = 30 X Initial Marketing and Sales Investment

The formula usually works unless your prospect connects with you immediately and puts you onto a large opportunity.

Update yourself

It is imperative to be up to date with the sports calendar and current events of the country you are selling into. One must not only understand the intricacies of the local sports but also about current favorites. Also one must have opinions on current events happening in that country and internationally which are politically neutral and one must express them when asked. It becomes quite uncomfortable if you can’t cook up a conversation outside business. And most importantly, please do not talk shop when you are out socializing. Unlike us they “work to live” and not visa versa!

Of course, last but not least, it is critical to be well dressed and groomed. Overseas clients give us business not only for our cost effectiveness but also because they are comfortable with the person they are dealing with. This means that while we are strategizing and presenting we must make this look good!

Happy Hunting!

Issue BG40 Jul04