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
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