Apr 09 2009
USA Export: Selecting a New Market
If you’re involved in USA export, you know it’s easier to obtain new business from your existing distributors than to develop new customers.
Once your opportunities with existing customers have been exhausted, you should focus your expansion on creating new customers in the geographical market where your company is physically located. You can make the task of creating new business easier, and limit your travel expenses by starting close to your home office and gradually expanding the radius of your prospecting. It’s not too difficult to manage this process in your domestic market. But, everything changes when you start looking at taking USA export products into international markets.
Which international markets do you want to focus your efforts on? Where do you start? Is it better to first look at the size of a particular market, like China? Or, would it be more rewarding to look at markets where the barriers to entry are not as complicated as they are in China? For example, the business culture in the Western European market is most similar to ours in the US.
Whatever foreign market you are planning to enter, gather information and be prepared before you attempt to position your products there. The US Commercial Service provides a wealth of information about business development and USA export. They’ll even help you identify prospects for your products.
Bottom line, unless you use an export management company, you are the one who must travel to this international market and determine which distributors are qualified, and which are not qualified. Your potential customers will want to get to know you personally, and form a relationship before they’ll feel comfortable buying from you. That means you may need to visit with them personally, three or more times before you finalize an agreement. In general, it’s not uncommon to see a sales cycle as much as 6 times as long as the sales cycle you’re accustomed to in the US. So, get ready for some extra travel.
As always on the USA export blog, we hope this information has helped you understand more about exporting. If you have questions, please post a comment or contact us at the XL Group.
This is good one to read. There are a few free trade samples I hope useful for export business.
I am interested in how online marketing can reduce exporting start up costs. Some of these articles touch on this topic, but I would appreciate some additional information in your future updates or articles. GREAT work! Thanks!