Offer Now Closed

There’s been a lot of talk among exporters in Britain about the new Bribery Act

It seems that British governments have been criticised for doing too little to discourage a tendency towards corruption in international trade, especially in a number of less rigorously regulated markets.

I think I must be a bit sheltered, dealing mostly with the markets of Western Europe with the occasional foray a little further afield, past where that once notorious barrier known as the Iron Curtain used to mark a divide between East and West.

I suppose it’s just possible that I’m missing the subtle signs, but I’ve yet to feel a need to respond to any suggestion that our business might develop a little more rapidly if I were to make a contribution to some kind of ‘benevolent fund’ in order to grease the wheels. For others, things may be somewhat different, I’m sure.

The media coverage of this new legislation brought to mind this short verse, written by one Humbert Wolfe in the 1920’s:

You cannot hope to bribe or twist,

Thank God! The British journalist.

But, seeing what the man will do

Unbribed, there's no occasion to.

I think his wry observation says something about how the British abroad might still be perceived in some instances. I have certainly been aware in previous employment of a certain ‘head in the sand’ attitude among some business people, suggesting that what they didn’t see couldn’t hurt them.

My boss has been impressing on me the need to ensure that we comply with the new requirements, and having taken time to think about it, it’s not difficult to see how a company could easily fall foul of the new regime. As I understand it, a business could now be liable for prosecution in instances where bribes or gifts were offered in order to give them some advantage even if the company was not aware.

Like it or not, the new law is now enforceable and we, along with every business that trades internationally, is going to have to take some reliable advice and review our practices. I’m not a legal expert and am forced to admit that I need some helpful and reliable guidance on this new requirement. In this instance, I have to accept that there is no room for leaving anything to chance. We are taking professional advice and intend to follow it closely. I recommend that others do the same. “I didn’t know” is not going to cut any ice from now on.

Information on the Bribery Act is available from Business Link

Norway or the Highway?

I’m visiting customers in Norway and Finland. It’s an interesting time to be in this part of the world. It’s almost the summer solstice and it doesn’t really get properly dark.

Norway is a remarkably good market for my company. In point of fact, sales have risen dramatically this year to make it my second best market in Europe after Germany. This is surprising really, given that it only has five million people, but at the moment at least it is better for us than countries such as France, Spain and Italy with at least ten times the population.

Norway has benefited greatly from North Sea oil, and is now among the wealthiest countries in the world. For visitors, it’s frighteningly expensive. A main course in a fairly ordinary restaurant is typically about twenty five pounds in Oslo, and taxis are a major expense. Oslo at least has an efficient and reasonably priced public transport system.

My first meeting with my distributor reminds me that he is the reason why sales have gone so well in the country. He runs a small but growing business, not unlike ours, and is very proactive. I show him a new product range we have introduced on the home market, and am not really expecting great results here, but he is genuinely enthusiastic. They are outside of his core market, but from his remarks, it’s clear he knows this sector well, mentioning a couple of companies I already knew about and it’s clear he already knows them personally. In a country with a small population, people in similar industries tend to overlap and have good contacts, at least the more entrepreneurial people do.

I’ve yet to persuade him to visit us in Britain, which is disappointing as I want him to understand a bit better what we do and I also want some key colleagues to know him and share his enthusiasm. What we have developed is a strong sense of mutual trust. I tell him frankly about some production problems we have been having that have contributed to delays in completing some orders. He is very understanding and appreciates the open approach. He talks about how he can handle this with his customers, and together we come up with some ideas to improve the service.

From our meeting we have quickly agreed a plan of action and part with a shared sense of enthusiasm and positive outlook.

In my experience, it’s the quality of the representation and the relationship that I am able to build with them that is the key to success in most markets. For a small business in a competitive market, finding a suitable representative can be the biggest challenge. Strong players are often less interested because they have already built a successful business with other suppliers and see no good reason to change. In those circumstances, what I am usually looking for is a proactive and enthusiastic ‘wannabe’ who ideally has sufficient financial and other resource to really get to grips with target customers, and invest time and resources, for example in buying stocks.

Getting to this position takes time and patience, and I have had a least two disappointing experiences with distributors who certainly seemed to tick all the right boxes but never managed to deliver on their promises. I’ve learned that success factors are often quite elusive, and I find out a lot from regular visits and from talking to people, things that no market research could ever begin to tell me. I’m increasingly wary of people who preach a rigid, formulaic approach to export sales, for example by insisting that markets are developed in a certain order and in laid down ways with representatives who conform to a strict criteria. It’s important to have a plan, but business is about what’s possible. I’ve spent quite a bit of time running around quite a number of European countries and developing business where the right opportunity has presented itself, which more than anything means potential representatives with an appropriate attitude and who deliver on their promises. I can’t find out who they are from my desk in England.

It so happens that Norway has been one of our early successes, but that doesn’t mean it’s a suitable first market for anyone else. Certainly, it’s wealthy and accessible but then so is Sweden where success has so far eluded me. On this trip, I’m excluding a visit to Sweden, simply because I think I can make more progress elsewhere. I’m not ashamed to admit that at this stage in our development, I’ll take the easy pickings (what some people call the ‘low hanging fruit’) and come back later to work on the bigger challenges.

From Norway, I’m making the short hop to Finland, mainly to meet with a young distributor we’ve been working with for a few months. His business is still in the development stage, but I’ve been pleased with the sales performance so far. He’s been less happy with some of our delivery times, but I’m glad he’s been open about the problems experienced.

Developing export business is usually more about building successful relationships with the key people than anything else. Product, price and all the other ‘P’s that make up the so-called ‘Marketing Mix’ I learned about at college are all important factors, but at the end of the day people buy from people they trust. Building that relationship with our key contacts is what I enjoy most about my job and, as we have seen in Norway with the rapid growth in business, it’s what really makes the difference.

Born to be Wild

What makes an effective sales person?

Is it a skill that can be learned, or are people born to it?

I’ve been pondering these questions after discussing them inconclusively with a friend over a curry a few nights ago.

I suppose I have worked in sales or sales-related roles for most of my adult life, ever since, as a spotty teenager, I sold flat-packed furniture to an unsuspecting public at weekends while completing my education. Looking back, I think that experience was really quite formative. It was a menial job, but the manager was someone I found to be inspirational, and the opportunity helped me to uncover talents I didn’t know I had.

Effective selling is firstly about communication. The manager at the furniture shop once told me “God gave you two ears and one mouth. That’s because he wanted you to listen twice as much as you talk!” And there’s an important rule, I think, for anyone in a selling role (and that covers a lot more people than just those who have the word ‘sales’ in their job title!) Listen to what the customer is saying. It’s so tempting, especially when there is a sales target to reach, to try and brow-beat a customer into buying what you have. But I learned a long time ago, that while I may be able to sell something to somebody that they didn’t really want, if I do then most likely I will never sell them anything again.

In most export roles, I think it’s fair to say that relationship building is paramount. When I talk to a potential customer for the first time, I very rarely come away with a sale, mainly because I am not trying to sell them anything, except for the idea that they might like to do business with my company. In international sales, there are cultural barriers to overcome, prejudices and preconceived ideas. Patience and persistence are my watch words.

Some knowledge of the country I am selling to can come in handy, too. I seem to have a lot of customers who are fanatical about football, and keeping up to date with their local teams and their progress has become a bit of a habit. Understanding the local economy and national affairs can be useful too, I’ve found, as well as knowing a bit of local history.

I’m not saying that my way is the only way or even the best way to approach export sales. All I am saying is it works for me.

Can someone learn how to be successful in export sales? Yes, I think so. But much of that learning will inevitably take place in the field. And success also requires an open mind, a willingness to learn and ideally, a genuine interest in other people.

A theology student once went to his tutor and asked him if he could recommend a good book on humility.

“Yes!” Replied the tutor, “Mine!”

And that I think is a crucial lesson for anyone in international sales. The day I think I know all there is to know about effective export sales is the day I stop being an effective export sales manager. The first rule to succeeding in this game is understanding how little I really understand

Accidents Will Happen

Welcome to Accidental Exporting.

There are many aspects of successful exporting that require careful planning and meticulous attention to detail, from compliance with legal and contractual (such as letter of credit) requirements to financial control, packaging and freight management.

In this blog, I am looking at a very different aspect of exporting, and that’s the basic activity of developing business. I have to accept that there is as much a need for careful planning here as there is in the other activities I mentioned above. It’s just that when it comes to sales, the plans often don’t work out like I thought they would.

The reason for this is very simple; People. They rarely act in what I would consider to be a logical way. Every one of my customers is a complicated mix of emotions, prejudices and cultural baggage that makes it very difficult for me to accurately predict what they are going to do.

International business, like all business, is much more of an art than a science in my experience, and developing business is the art of the possible. I have been responsible for developing new business for my employer in Europe for the last three years, and the experience has always been baffling, if enjoyable and rewarding. The only thing that I can honestly say has gone right over that period has been that business has grown. Oh and that it has been profitable, too.

Take yesterday, for example. I received the biggest order I have ever won. It was from a brand new customer, too. Great news? Well, yes. But it also goes straight into the file in my memory entitled ‘baffling and unpredictable customers’. I have been, you might say ‘courting’ this customer for over two years now. I really thought he was going to be a certainty from the first time I made contact. He was using a material identical to one of our core products. We already sell to his competitors. Our prices are competitive and we offer excellent delivery. There was no logical reason why I couldn’t win this business. But I didn’t.

Firstly, this guy’s factory in Germany had an enormous fire. For him it was a disaster that threatened the survival of his business. For me, it was an opportunity delayed. Surely when he got his feet back on the ground, so to speak, he’d need to re-stock urgently and that would be the ideal time to turn to me? No it wasn’t, at least that wasn’t the way he saw it. Recovering from a major disaster like a fire meant taking no chances. It meant, among other things, choosing known suppliers over new kids on the block. The major objective was to return to business as usual.

Just when I’d well and truly given up on winning his business, and taken him off my ‘sales funnel’ list (more about that in a later instalment, probably) he came to me, quite out of the blue, and requested a quote for a finished product, one that I would never have even thought about pitching to him since, as far as I was aware, they don’t use them in Germany. I was right about that point, at least. He wants to buy them for customers in Scandinavia.

We quibbled and jostled about price for a few days, then yesterday he placed the order. And now he wants to talk about the materials I’ve been trying to sell him for the last two years, too.

This experience has been typical for me over the past few years. Sales that I think are in the bag often escape my grip, while others that seem like pie in the sky seem to just fall into my lap. I don’t think I’m alone in this. In working to develop new business in other countries, we are dealing with a lot of unknowns, not least the culture and working practices of other countries.

Some people try to tell me that Europe is a ‘single market’ these days. I have a word for that notion – RUBBISH! Across all kinds of sectors, national borders still mark the point at which people do things completely differently.

In the coming weeks I'll be sharing my experiences in developing export business. I’ve got things wrong in the past, and no doubt I will continue to make mistakes. But experience so far has shown me that provided I keep putting in the effort, the results can and will continue to come. Sochiro Honda, the founder of the Honda Motor company once famously said, “Success is 99% failure.” I think I know what he meant.