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.
