Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Advisory #14 - International Growth Cheatsheet




As every business matures it seeks to extend its reach, seeking new territories for its products and services. 

You may be interested in opening your business in another state or you may be interested in expanding internationally or to emerging markets.  However, if 86% of businesses fail to achieve their strategic plans (Harvard Business Review), what are the skills that you are missing or need to be aware of to ensure that you can grow your business successfully into new and emerging markets. Just as importantly, what are the dangers you need to avoid?

Based on our experience in LATAM, Asia and the US, The Advisory Partnership has prepared a list of skills, essential to your interstate or international expansion.


Project Management
You need to be efficient.  You need to have a tight project team with clear roles so that you can make decisions quickly and change course if operational realities reveal that you need to head in a direction other than you anticipated.  

Your project needs clear leadership and a decision-making hierarchy but be careful not to over-manage; too many layers of management will stifle decision-making. Your start-up needs to be able to act dynamically and respond nimbly to situations as they develop.

Research Skills
Find out everything you can about your target market. Make no assumptions.  There are no short cuts here.  Working in isolation from your desk at head office will not be enough to get the feel of an international market and to understand how it works on the ground.  You have to get on a plane and spend some time there. Don’t spend a day; spend a week or a month if you can.  It will pay you back with speed to market; delivering faster revenues and fewer expensive mistakes.

Networking Skills
You need to find businesses and individuals that have entered similar markets and learn about their experiences.  You need friends who’ll tell you how it really is.  What worked for them and what didn’t? 

How a market presents itself externally will be very different to how it operates internally.  You need to know the difference.   Find a local consultant who can partner with your own project manager to help you understand the market intimately and be sure that your consultant has the credentials and contacts to deliver the connections that you don’t have on your own.

People Skills
Your business will rise or fall on the success of your people so you need to have the right team before launch. A key appointment to your new market should be an HR manager or agent and they need to be a key part of your start-up leadership team.

Hire people who have done what you do before; people who are already credible and trusted in your area of operation and who’ll be able to hit the ground running with your product and service. Hire the best people you can within the available budget and don't make any false economies.  Low cost labour with limited experience will slow you down, they will require induction and training.  Start-up is not the time to be moving slowly.  


When you start to make appointments, hire a mix of local employees and trusted experts from your business.  This way you’ll have the best combination of skills to deliver not only your company’s expertise but you’ll also have local credibility and a built-in understanding of cultural sensitivities.  

Structure your operation in this way to help you successfully navigate sales and operational issues in the local markets. 

Multi-Tasking.  
As you expand, it's very likely that you’ll be performing a local and international role at the same time.  This means you’ll be working on your new markets at the same time as your home operation, probably across different time zones. This is exhausting so you need to be highly organised for it to be sustainable.  Structure your meetings formally to a tight, action-based agenda and allow for separate informal catch ups to understand any day-to-day personal challenges. 

Culture
There’s no such thing as a unilateral 'global' approach because you need to adjust your behaviour for different types of interaction with different locations and work to overcome language and cultural barriers.  Employment expectations, language capability, education and culture may all be markedly different to how you normally operate and you will have to make some allowances in your process to ensure that you get the best from your team.  

There is your way of operating and the local way, the right way for each new market will be somewhere in the middle and you need to find that sweet spot. Your success is dependent on working out which is the right approach and managing accordingly. 

Operational Excellence 
Once you’ve hired your local talent, you must now surround them with everything that is great about your organisation.  Send in an "SWAT Team" from your own business and surround your new team with all the skill, passion and enthusiasm that has made your business great at home.  Avoid a fly-in-fly-out approach.  Give them some time to bond and to really share the essence of what your business is all about. The time and energy you put into helping your new team out now will save you in the long run. 

Product Management
You may have a product or service that has been hugely successful in your own market but you still need to be sure that there aren’t regional variations that may completely negate the effectiveness of that product in a new environment. Be prepared that your product or service may need to be adapted to cater for the requirements of the new market.  Do your research and test the market in advance before committing to a costly launch of an inappropriate product. 

Technology 
Make no assumptions about technology; particularly if your product is within the digital or online sector.  Public internet and business connectivity are not a level playing field worldwide. If you are entering emerging markets particularly with a new technology product, be mindful that traditional processes can still dominate due to poor Internet performance in some countries.

Growing your business into new markets can be one of the most rewarding things you can do in your career but keep in mind that whatever new market you enter, it’s is not your home territory. You need to continually compare your strategy against operational reality to ensure you have the best set up for success.


The Advisory Partnership assists its clients with operational strategy and structural change, delivering outputs that are scalable to meet the challenges of technological change and International growth.


Post by James Douglas
Other Posts by The Advisory Partnership


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