RULE #1:
YOUR PRIMARY EXPORT IS “YOU” – NOT YOUR WIDGETS
RULE #2
YOU ARE THE IMMIGRANT – WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ADAPT?
RULE #3
HOW YOU ADAPT WILL DETERMINE YOUR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
UNIVERSAL RULE – Make informed decisions at every step
ASK THE HARD QUESTIONS OF YOUR TRADE “ADVISOR”: BE SURE YOU UNDERSAND EXACTLY WHAT EXPERIENCE WITH ENTREPRENUERIAL START-UPS, IF BEEN a SENIOR MANAGER, SUCCESSFULLY ENTERING NEW MARKETS WRITTEN / IMPLEMENTED BUSINESS PLANS, FACED THE SAME CHALLENGES YOU DO, DEVELOPED AND IMPLEMENTED STRATEGY? HAVE THEY HAD THIER OWN SKIN IN THE GAME – OR JUST COLLECTED A SALARY?
Preparation & Planning = Critical Success Factors
Systematic, international research conducted over 25 years at Trade Shows, Trade Missions, interviewing successful exporters, and in depth reviews of exporting failures, combined with finding in the Academic literature, has shown that your product or service, where you are from, or even why your company exists are really not that important.
The primary success factors are Preparation & Planning that comprehensively address the 3 Rules.
Research was clear: get these right and the market will pretty much take care of itself.
SUCCESSFUL EXPORTER PROFILE TEMPLATE
RESEARCH TO IDENTIFY “THE” SUCCESSFUL EXPORTER PROFILE
Beginning in Peru during the mid 1990’s, we commissioned systematic research using University post grad students to investigate what – if any – common shared characteristics were present in successful exporters. The firms polled were international, mainly from Canada, Australia, USA, EU, UK, Chile, Brazil and Colombia, or Peruvian firms with extensive international business. Polling was conducted at trade shows, trade missions, industry groups and direct contact of the over 100 companies included in our client list. This research continued in Brazil, Canada, various African and Middle East and others until 2013.
During the early 2000’s, the focus shifted from successful firms, to include assessments of often catastrophic failures , where export and international entrepreneurial start up crashed, with losses of a few $10’s of thousands, up to over $10’s millions.
YOUR SUCCESS PROFILE: Organizational Capacity & Management Competences
The results of the research were consistent regardless of country, culture, market or company:
Profiles of the successful and failed groups were distinct, easily qualified and with few shared characteristics.
Profiles of those few firms that survived but had not thrived, also had distinct profiles
The research deliverable was a template to quickly qualify your success potential in a given market, and what rapidly identify what corrective actions may be required to ensure successful market entry.
PREPARATION & PLANNING CONSIDERATIONS
XPM can expedite entry into most markets often in weeks. But if you are not fully prepared to execute, then you are just the dog who chased the car: what do you do when you catch it?
There is no low hanging fruit. If a need exists in a given market then someone else is already servicing it. What is your plan to carve out a piece of market share, then continue to grow it against well entrenched incumbents?
Successful exporters sell not to “markets” but to supply chains hosted within industry clusters in each country, and focus on the broader activity of “doing all aspects of business” not just to flip widgets across the border. Does your plan ignore the usually greater benefits of new markets?
Canada is an exporting powerhouse, but relatively few (<5% of SME output) exports sales are made from Canada. The vast majority are driven by GVC / GCC and full integration into local supply chains, where they generate greater revenue, and benefit from sharply reduced risk, lower costs, longer term contracts and higher margins. What is your plan to compete in this environment?
Planning for export markets too often revolves around obsolete methods proven ineffective over 25 years ago. Those firms following legacy methods almost never gain traction. Are you one of these ?
Full Time Job: Entry into new markets can be relatively low cost, but requires significant resources in executive and management time, developing targeted new capacity in the organization, hiring new staff, and invariably drives an often surprising amount of change. New market initiatives rapidly expand into full time jobs, and demand specific competencies and knowledge generally not available with current staff. This can either be pro-actively planned and managed with minimal drama, or ignored and just deal with the expected series of crisis.
ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITY
Your Organizational capacity development to integrate the changes required to manage the new market is key to success. Too many firms assume that existing staff, SOP’s, IT, accounting and legal will be sufficient, and fail when these new tasks are simply added to already busy staff.
Every organization will be impacted, often dramatically by an entry into new markets.
Our templates will identify what changes are required, what new skills are needed, and how to integrate the new business activity with your organization.
We consistently develop solutions that are affordable, quick, agile and with minimal disturbance.
GLOBAL COMPETENCE of MANAGEMENT
Executive and Management in most SME firms are invariably overwhelmed and lack bandwidth to take on what will be another full time job. Our research was clear: those firms that are willing to make the necessary changes in how they operate and Management structure will be both effective in a new market, and frequently obtain often dramatic cost reductions improving their competitive advantage.
On the other hand, the research was also clear that those who failed to accept and integrate the minimum necessary changes, failed or at best joined the ranks of the survive but not thrive.
SIMPLE, EFFECTIVE AND RAPID SOLUTIONS
We have developed simple, effective solutions to reduce the impact of change and inevitable disruption that result from entry to new markets.
Historically there are just two ways to manage this change:
1) Reactive and wait until something is not working, hopefully avoid a crash, develop an ad hoc solution and continue lurching from crisis to crisis
2) Effective pre-planning where integrated and systematic solutions are developed and become just another part of the day to day operations.
Bottom line is that our methods – that are based on the lessons learned from many successful exporters – will allow you to manage and operate the new market with the same level of confidence as you do at home.