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export development

The 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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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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