Question

As a small business owner facing saturated domestic markets, how would you approach foreign markets? Develop a strategic plan outlining how you would research markets, get your product to potential customers, handle the financing side of the business, and grow your sales. Include information on what resources are available to help with this process.

Answer 1

Approaching foreign market can be beneficial for the business as it opens new doors by expanding your business and increasing your sales and profits. But before stepping into such market one should have a plan like below -

1. Assess your business first before entering the foreign market. Does it have enough manpower and finances to cater to the huge inflow of demand ? Is everyone on board for such drastic change ?
2. Find a target market where there is a demand for your product and you can have an opportunity to make marginal profit out of your business.
3. Know about the market(country or region) and its business policies,regulatory bodies, currency fluctuations, export relations with your location.
4. Decide what can be more beneficial, a joint venture, franchising, licensing, exporting or direct delivery. Each model once decided will have its own prerequisites.
5. Knowing about the competitors and whats their business practice, their previous months sales trends.
6. Customer demands and how much you are ready to adapt or modify your product as per their demands

For financing , one can check their own assets or reach out to banks for international business loans who also provide credit insurance against non payment of your products from foreign buyers.

For growing sales, you can either

1. Contact the local distributors who have a much better hold and insight of your target market and are well established in your niche.
2. Direct Delivery to the customer reduces the middleman costs but then you will have to focus on stocking the product to fulfill the demand on a constant basis.