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Export to European supermarkets – the challenge

 Bosnakis Ioannis
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Export to European supermarkets
– the challenge

For many FMCG products the most important channel in the foreign markets is the retail channel, as in many markets the super market chains are controlling more than 80% of the total business volume.
Most of the companies which focus their export efforts on the retail business, underestimate completely the entrance barriers and at the end spend a lot of money without any final result.

What you should before starting to approach retail clients:

Time to agreement 

The process of achieving a cooperation agreement with a retail chain, even if everything goes well, takes time. You have to calculate at least 12-18 months before a cooperation agreement is signed.

Process Milestones

The process with a supermarket chain is quite standardized and predictable, with specific milestones. Don’t hope for shortcuts.

Timing

A supermarket chain is not ready to list new suppliers when you are! Depending on their current agreements, they may have specific time slots to consider on new suppliers. Though, they usually prepare shortlists with new candidates and when the time comes, they will start negotiations with these suppliers. So, you have to get your company on this shortlist first.

Your Brand vs. Private Label

For many product categories, supermarket chains are open to cooperate with new suppliers only for their private labels. Anyway, you have to be clear, which cooperation model you are targeting, as the approach and the proposition is very different for both categories. As more diffused your approach, as weaker your proposal.

Costs

Trying to do business with retail clients is very cost-intensive. Starting from sending of samples up to multiple presentation and negotiation meetings. If 2-3 people of a company have to attend meetings with different supermarkets, the budget for traveling can reach very serious amounts.

Margins

Cooperating with a supermarket is for sure a low margin business and profits will come only through the volume. So you will need to develop a very specific price catalog, if you want to have chances to close the deal.

Packaging and labeling

Supermarket chain are very strict when it comes to packaging and labeling. You will be asked to deliver your products with very detailed requirements.

The agreement is just a next milestone 

Reaching finally the point of a cooperation agreement, you probably think that you have made it. Don’t, this would be a mistake. Having listed a new supplier, the supermarkets start with small numbers in a limited number of their shops, in order to test the customer acceptance and/or your reliability. This means in practice that even at this point you probably won’t make profits yet!

All above entrance barriers should not stop a producer from trying to get into business with major retail clients. In contrary, as better prepared a company starts the approach, as higher the chances of success at the end.

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Benchmarking: the powerful tool for boosting sales

 Bosnakis Ioannis
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Benchmarking:
the powerful tool for boosting sales

The key for a high sales performance are your Unique Selling Points in comparison to your competition. This means your sales pitch has to be based on having evaluated the products of your competitors first.

This may sound trivial, but the reality is that most of the companies waste huge sales potential by not applying a systematic and comprehensive benchmarking against the competition.

So, what are the 6 steps for implementing an efficient benchmarking system in sales?

Step #1 Define criteria

In a first step you should define criteria for your sales benchmarking. A huge mistake would be to do that by yourself, based on your estimations within the company. There is a simple and much better way: you only have to ask your customers! Select customers of which you know that they are purchasing products of your competitors and run a survey about on which product specs and sales terms they are choosing the products. Create a complete list of all criteria.

Step #2 Identify your direct competitors

Identify your direct competitors. Most likely you know the ones in your home market. If you intend to approach new markets you have to make your homework and check the competition there. Don’t get lost in including too many companies, but select the ones who have a similar product range and positioning. All the other are not really relevant.

Step #3 Comparison and evaluation

This is clearly the most difficult part in carrying out benchmarking as it requires absolute bluntness. Benchmarking is not about generating desired results, but real one. Walk through your list of criteria and evaluate all products for each of them separately, justifying each evaluation analytically and in written. Be as rigorous as you can, especially with your products!

For validating your results ask some selected clients to sit down with you and confirm your evaluation.

Step #4 Exploitation of results

Benchmarking is not carried out as an end it itself, but should become an important asset for your company. The first pay-off is to identify weaknesses and to think about ways to eliminate them. Generate a specific To Do list with concrete actions and deadlines.

Step #5 Adjusting marketing policy

Based on the outcome you should re-evaluate your positioning and your sales pitch. You want to emphasize on points where you are specifically strong and to minimize impact of your weaknesses.

So check your narrative at your website, presentation, advertisement and sales tools. Most likely you have to consider on your price policy and sales incentives.

Step #6 Sales team

Last, but not least: share all findings of your benchmarking with your sales team. The need to know strengths and weaknesses of your products and the ones of your competition. This will enable them to manage efficiently customer’s objections and to apply your sales pitch in the best way.

Implementing benchmarking in your sales organization will lead to a significant increase of sales in short time.

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How strong is your export pitch?

 Bosnakis Ioannis
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How strong is your export pitch?

In the last years, the distinction between major, mature and emerging markets has vanished. In all markets there is a hard competition with hundreds of strong competitors.
Buyers on the other hand show limited interest in listing new producers as they have their established, well-selected pool of suppliers.
They have to manage their day to day operation and  listing a new supplier is for them a time-consuming process.
An overwhelming competition and low interest for new listings minimize the chances of your export efforts.
Your only chance to get buyer’s attention is to offer an unique value, something your competitors don’t have.

A good product is not enough

Hopefully you don’t answer “a good product”, because this is the weakest claim you can make. All your competitors say the same.
To develop a compelling value proposition you should follow a structured process:

Step 1 Website

The corporate website is your business card. It is not what will bring you into business, but it can push you out from the very beginning. Your website should have a decent, state-of-the-art design and communicate the main characteristics of your company in a clear and user-friendly way. Though, over-sophisticated, over-loaded websites are not helpful, less is more!

Step 2 Qualifying your prospects

You don’t need a big list of prospects. A very generic market approach cannot lead to results. It is important to work over your prospect data, to evaluate them one by one and finally to select few prospects, who are fitting best to your products and services. The selection should be carried out based on specific, pre-defined criteria. Keep in mind that for example targeting at big retail customers is very challenging!

Step 3 Competition analysis

A strong value proposition starts from knowing your competitors. Before you approach a prospect you should know their current suppliers, analyse their products and identify points where you feel yourself superior.
Important criteria are:

  • product characteristics / product innovation
  • product advisory
  • flexibility in customization
  • marketing tools
  • lead times
  • minimum order quantity
  • price

Step 4 Competitive advantages / unique selling points

Don’t expect the buyer to explore and to recognise your competitive advantages. This is something you have to do, communicating them from the very beginning and to the point.
Focus on characteristics where you have a real advantage, instead of numerating many points, just because it is filling space.
Probably this is the hardest part in creating your value proposition. You need to be confident about your specific strengths!
In reality most of the times, companies make a huge list hoping that one of the points could be the right one for the prospect.
Probably not all of your products in your assortment are equally strong. Instead of presenting all your assortment, prioritise the products of specific interest for the specific

Step 5 Teaser presentation

The information is one thing, to communicate efficiently the information another! Your first goal in approaching a prospect is not provide all the information you have, but to get his attention and to awaken interest. This means that you have to create a teaser with limited, but selective information. Keep in mind you have seconds to convince a prospect to deal with you further. Once you have his attention, he will ask for all further information, which is needed to get into business.
As more customised your teaser, as more convincing it is. Invest time to adjust your teaser template to the profile of each prospect. This investment will pay off.

Step 6 Call script

Due to GDPR regulations you most probably will need to have a call first, before you can send your pitch to a prospect. This first call will last only few minutes and it is important to take your chance for presenting your company and your pitch in a professional and efficient way. There is no space for small talk. Prepare a detailed call script and prepare yourself before starting your calls.

Step 7 Taking advantage of prospects feedback

A common mistake is considering only positive responses as success. The very first goal in export development is the feedback of prospects especially if the decide that they won’t cooperate with you. Talking to them they can provide within seconds important inside information and valuable input regarding your value propositions. The feedback should be documented in a structured way and used within your company for evaluating and improving your proposition.
The value proposition is not a generic company presentation it is a process.
Ask yourself about how strong your current proposition is and make the required improvements.
You will see a significant increase in your export development performance.

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Exports development – There has to be a plan!

 Bosnakis Ioannis
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When it comes to the development of exports enterprises often lose their business logic and start to hope.

For example, they hope that a buyer or an agent which they met in a trade fair will turn out to become a major client and proceed to significant sales.
Or they hope that a request received by mail will be the start of a strong cooperation.
You never know, but for sure this is not the right way to develop sustainable international sales!
There are some basics every company has to respect in order to develop business abroad.

1. Strategy – Which are my target markets and why?
2. Product positioning – Which of my products have the best chances? What are my specific strengths which makes me interesting for buyers?
3. Targets and budget – What are my export targets per year? What budget I need to develop the market?
4. Promotion tools – How can I present my products and my strengths?
5. Client identification – Which are the clients I am interested in?
6. Buyer communication – How and in which time I can approach these buyers efficient and in a professional way?
7. Controlling – What is the feedback from the target market? What adjustments we have to do in order to optimize the market development?

The development of foreign markets has the same requirements as the sales development in your home market. Follow a plan and results will come.

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Make the difference – How less becomes more

 Bosnakis Ioannis
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Buyers of major markets like Germany, France and UK, are constantly bombarded with propositions from all over the world.
A common mistake: dispatch as much information as possible in order to attract attention regarding the company and products. The result is that buyers get simply overwhelmed and these approaches end up in their waste bin.
The key for successful buyer attention is:
  1. To be “to the point” and to summarize in the first approach these characteristics, which are important for buyers and make them feel that it is worth to invest their time. This first impression should demonstrate that the company not only has interesting products, but is also capable to meet the specific requirements of the market.
  2. To communicate the information in the buyer language. Even in times of internationalization it makes a difference for buyers and their team.
  3. To show presence in the market. It gives a lot of credits when a company lets somebody see that it doesn’t try to develop business remotely, but that it has permanent presence in the market and local points of contact and associates the buyers can communicate with.

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Exports of small food producers – challenges and opportunities

 Bosnakis Ioannis
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emmanouel margaritis

What are the challenges and opportunities for small food producers to develop exports?

One main barrier of course is the money, as exports require a minimum budget, independently from the size of a company. Many costs are not elastic, which means that the financial burden for a small company is very high.

But, it is not just about the money. For a small company even offering great products it is very difficult to get attention of buyers and become listed.

What are the most common mistakes small producers make?

I would point out two main issues: persistence and patience. The development of new partnerships cannot be achieved with few tries and in short time. As I like to say, a “No” from a buyer very often is not the end, but the beginning of the communication.

Keep in mind that in all product categories there is huge competition and buyers are overwhelmed by product propositions every day. All producers claim to have great products, so this is not the pitch which will lead to success.

What is a realistic time horizon for getting results in exports?

It depends on lot of factors as which market you want to develop, the channel and the unique selling points of your products. Export development is a matter of systematic efforts for years. Companies never stop to invest in developing their business in their home market, but surprisingly they expect to achieve exports within few months. This is not realistic.

Emmanouel Margaritis, born 1965 in Dortmund, Germany, has studied at RWTH Aachen business administration and marketing and has worked for international companies in different industries. He is one of the founding partners of Axis Blueschild an international export consultancy, managing many export development projects at international level. Since 2019 he is CEO of Global Food World.

Are exhibitions a good investment for small food companies to develop their exports?

My answer is a clear No. Waiting in a small booth for buyers to step by is an illusion. No buyer will come. They are an opportunity for exhibitors to meet their business partners, not to search for new suppliers. They have not time for that during a trade fair. If you want to meet a potential buyer during a trade fair you have to attract him many months before and get on in his meeting agenda.

Trade fairs have an decreasing output and you see that in many industries major, international fairs are even closing.

Though many producers we are talking to still feel happy about spending a lot of money, returning with many business cards finding out after months that the final results have been marginal.

There are smarter, cheaper and more efficient ways to develop your exports.

What are the more efficient ways?

A personal approach and a strong pitch.

Generic campaigns are not producing any result. A producer has to do his homework, by researching buyers fitting to his products one by one, identifying in a next step the relevant contact person, starting a personal approach and be ready to make a short, strong pitch. In reality you have only few seconds when starting a communication to explain why a buyer should consider on your products. Many producers are not sufficiently prepared and present just another good product. Again, this claim is not enough!

If not a good product, what else?

You have to focus on the real unique selling points. People are looking for more healthy, authentic, story-telling products. A producer should be able to communicate how his products are meeting these trends. Another important point is that buyers are evaluating aspects beyond of product specifications like lead times and flexibility for customisation.

Are new trends in food & beverages an opportunity for small producers?

Only theoretically, as buyers still don’t want to deal with many small producers day by day. This means that for a small producer the chances to get listed remain limited. This market paradox was for us the reason to develop the Global Food World project.

What is the Global Food World concept about?

Global Food World is offering significant benefits to both, producers and buyers. Producers can develop exports with a small subscription instead of huge budgets and become part of a strong, selective and international portfolio. Buyers on the other hand, have access to a variety of selective products, dealing with one partner. So, Global Food World is not a promotion portal, but a innovative facilitator solving real operational barriers on both sides of the food business.

How do you select producers for your portfolio?

Of course we are looking for products, which are fitting to our concept of high quality, authentic and story-telling products. But even more important for us is the commitment of producers. We are not interested in producers, who are looking for quick-shot business, but for partners understanding the challenges and willing to improve themselves step by step meeting the requirements of our B2B customers. It takes months and years to open a door to a strong buyer, but only seconds to close it for good. So we are not in a wrong rush and we expect our producers to share our vision for sustainable cooperations.

We have talked about the barriers for small producers, what about their strengths?

For me the most important strength of our producers is the fact that they are not managers doing a job. All of them are family-owned businesses producing products they really love and care about. We have many producers in our portfolio which are new companies started with passion to create innovative and well-designed products. We don’t want to argue with buyers about a cent more or less, but to convince them with great, unique products. This is what Global Food World is about.

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Covid – The next day for businesses

 Bosnakis Ioannis
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The last weeks we all were concerned to stay healthy and to try to understand the Covid pandemic, which came into our life in so short time. The unprecedented lockdown provided us plenty of time to give many of thoughts.

Most of the companies had to manage in no time huge decline of turnover, but at the end of a short crash is always somehow manageable. The problem of covid is that initial hopes for a quick recovery are dispelling.
Not even the experts can foresee the development of the next weeks, but what we can be sure about is that even in best case scenarios the normalisation will take many months or even years.
Even worse, the overall financial impact is still to come.

So the big question is what we can do to secure the survival of business and to minimise the threats and losses?

Realism
The first step to make is a realistic assessment of the situation. Statements like “we will make it” are ok for private discussions with our family and friends, but not a roadmap for your company. Realism does not mean to be pessimistic, but you need to try for an accurate evaluation of things to come.

Immediate actions
We need to understand the importance of taking immediate, specific and decisively actions. In this unique situation it is no exaggeration to say that every day counts!

Disruption
Forget about how you were doing business until yesterday. The next day will be very different referring the what and the how.

Your action plan should consider on:

• Costs: Minimize immediately your fix costs. This is painful, but there is no alternative. There are many options to transform your fix costs into flexible costs without any discount on your operation and performance. In contrary, you will be probably surprised about how new ways of running your operation can optimise your overall efficiency.

• Digitalization: Implement and setup digital tools at all levels of your company. Forget about travelling and personal meetings for a long time. Take advantage of digital communication tools and think about digital promotion and sales of your products. What appeared to be impossible up to now, most likely has to become possible now!

• Demand: For most of the companies demand of current customers and current markets will drop significantly. Important is that this development won’t be a bad surprise. You should expect it. The good news are that there are still many customers and many markets you don’t sell yet. Now is the time!

• Innovation in products and services: never waste a crisis! Consider the crisis as an unique opportunity to think about evolving and innovating your products and services. Take advantage of the current setback and transform it into an opportunity.

Stay optimistic
Panic and anxiety are in the human nature, but in business they are the worst advisors and lead to bad results. Don’t spend time on never ending theories and discussions and proceed day by day. Each day of taking actions in the right direction will pay off sooner as you think.

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The Asian giants are shaking

 Bosnakis Ioannis
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For many decades know, high-volume producers from Asia seemed to have a clear competitive advantage in “big business” due to their production capacity and their ability for low prices.
Recently, this law seems to become questioned. Big producers see their sales stagnating or even dropping, especially in the European markets.
The winners of this development are much smaller companies with incomparable smaller production capacity.
So the question is, what exactly is happening in the markets?
The answer is that the business model in Europe is changing. Even high volume customers in many European industries, especially in consumer goods, are not willing anymore to place big orders and to receive them after 3-4 months.
What they ask today for, is to work with smaller quantities, renewing more frequently their product assortment.
And even more important, they expect from their suppliers, a proactive consultancy in product optimization and product innovation.
Sometimes a small technical product adjustment can lead to significantly lower production costs or an improvement of the end – product.
High – volume producers have all assets in their hand to meet the new market requirements.
Cooperating with strong customers all over the world, they have a good knowledge for international market trends and a tremendous number of product designs in their database.
Though, turning these assets into innovative consulting services for their customers and to leave their comfort zone of large-scale production batches is another issue.
It requires a completely different way of doing business and affects the interaction with the customers, the production and the logistics models.
In the textile industry for example, Asian producers are used to work with an “upon order” production logic. What they have to do, is to take the risk of creating, based on their specific know how, own assortments and offer them with the option for smaller quantities and short delivery times. To do that, they would need to establish European warehouses with repackaging facilities, a model which would enable them to deliver the products within few days.
With such a new approach, they even could unlock significant new business potential, cooperating with medium-sized customers and entering in online business, which they cannot serve today.
This is a new, disruptive business logic and many large-scale producers still refuse to accept it, as their practices are turned upside down!
The reality is, that adaptating the new market requirements is extremely difficult, but at the same time a matter of survival.
We all know many cases, where big, international market leaders, giants in their industry, have disappeared within very few years, due to a wrong evaluation of the market changes.
Fall or opportunity, this is something which depends on the ability of Asian producers to transform themselves from pure manufacturers to product developers.

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Digital tools in export business

 Bosnakis Ioannis
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The product range and the characteristics of your products can be a strong competitive advantage for your success in exports.
Is this the case?
So, how do you present your products to your potential customers in foreign markets? Sending probably powerpoint presentations with an unlimited number of pages? Or do you wait for a chance to present them later on?
You minimize your chances from the very beginning if you are not able to exploit your strengths. Even worse, you may turn your competitive advantage in a disadvantage!
As bigger your product assortment, as more difficult it is, to present it in a professional way to customers.
At this point we come to the point of digital transformation, a phrase often used, but even more often completely misunderstood. Digital transformation is the integration of new technologies in all aspects of business operations. It has specific importance in export development, where a company has to manage a physical distance to its clients.
One of the most important and efficient digital tools refers to the presentation of your products.
A digital product catalog can help you to
  1. Present all your products in a clear and structured way
  2. Provide even detailed technical information for all products
  3. Include user-friendly tools which will allow your customers to identify quickly products of special interest
  4. Let your customers mark their specific preferences
  5. Prepare specific and customized propositions to them
  6. Get much better prepared for personal presentation meetings, which usually have high costs for you and should be as successful as possible
A digital catalog is not an e-shop, but a innovative B2B tool.
In relation to the overall budget of export development, the costs for a strong, digital presentation tool are limited, but it will dramatically increase the performance of your export efforts and positively surprise the potential clients from the very beginning!
At the end it is a strong service to your customers. With a good navigation logic, they can in seconds select products or get the information they need.
In a second step the digital catalog can be extended and include order functionalities, making it for your customers very easy to order your products. This can save for you and your customers time and costs.
Product availability, delivery times, transportation costs, all these are information, which can be communicated through a digital system, without back and forth with unlimited mails.
Digital presentation and sales tools are the future, not only for B2C business and consumer goods. Every producer with a wide product assortment, should take advantage of new technologies and increase his sales performance, especially in exports.

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