When you’re doing B2B sales and want to acquire new clients, you have a whole range of options. One of them is online client acquisition, including what’s commonly known as cold outreach. In other words, it’s reaching out to potential clients who don’t know us yet through email, phone, or social media. This approach makes sense for businesses where the buying decision is a multi-stage process, and the people we’re talking to spend a significant part of their work at their desks, mainly using computers.

The most common practices include sending cold emails, as well as sending invitations and messages through LinkedIn. What allows some companies to replace the work of entire sales departments, which they employed in their foreign branches, to build foreign sales in markets where they debut without the need to establish their own branch in a foreign country, while other similar enterprises face complete failure in this field?

Localness and niche in foreign markets

Before entering the foreign market, it’s essential to conduct a detailed market analysis, including customer needs, competition, and local regulations. We identify the target country and its specific legal and cultural requirements, such as language preferences and business customs. We choose the appropriate business model and create a marketing plan tailored, in our opinion, to the new market. Then, we reach out to local partners or agencies that can assist in establishing business contacts and understanding the local economic environment.

tradehorizons.com/market-entry-blog/2022/03/how-do-firms-go-international-closer-look-at-entry-strategies/

All these statements come at a considerable cost to the company. Therefore, many firms are seeking alternative solutions. The development of online channels has allowed many enterprises to match the achievements of firms that had to rely on traditional channels.

Companies such as Booksy, Brand24, or Woodpecker were able to acquire customers in foreign markets before establishing local branches there. In the case of the latter company, recognition in the US market is sufficient to sell abroad without the need for a foreign branch. Below, you can see how many steps one must plan and then execute to establish a presence in a given market. Is there a way, then, to validate the justification for entering a new market without investing hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars?

tradehorizons.com/market-entry-blog/2023/05/new-market-entry-hub/

__________________________________________

Learn more about our lead generation services

__________________________________________

Evaluating our local footprint and niche market viability in a new territory.

If you’re at the helm of a business or oversee its sales, chances are you receive messages where you’re the prospective client. It’s common for someone to seek a meeting with you to pitch their services or products to your company.

Recall how you respond to such messages. You pay attention to a few fundamental factors:

1. Can you perceive what’s being offered to you in terms of innovation?
2. Is the value proposition brought by the product or service innovative or valuable enough to ignore?
3. If the product or service is new to the market, is the solution’s innovativeness and value significant enough that the names and quantity of customers using it are irrelevant?
4. If you know of similar services or products, does the value proposition resonate with you?
5. Are there other companies similar to your business profile that have benefited from this solution?
6. Is the company contacting you from the same country as yours, and if not, does it serve companies in your region?

Setting aside cases where you know or are familiar with the entity contacting you, your decision to potentially meet with them likely rests on the following assumptions:

• I’m familiar with the companies you work with, and they’re from my country, so I have an idea of how a potential collaboration with you could proceed.
• I don’t know the companies you work with, but I know they’re from my country, so I have an understanding of the principles on which you could have gained their trust.
• I don’t know the companies you work with, nor the exact principles guiding business in your country, but it seems to me that what you’re doing is unique, and investing in novelty early on, ensures that I’ll outpace the competition before what you offer becomes popular.
• If you can evaluate offers from other companies based on such criteria, you can also apply them to your own offer. The conclusions you reach are easy to document and then discuss within your team or company.

Testing your localness and niche

With the outlined value proposition and a client list in a specific market, you can easily juxtapose it with the opinions of your potential clients by engaging in direct communication with them. Through actions like Cold mailing or LinkedIn outreach, you can, in accordance with GDPR (if operating in Europe), reach out to your potential clients to schedule meetings where you’ll discuss how your product or service has impacted the work of your current clients. If you don’t have such clients yet but envision your product in terms of novelty, your narrative will revolve around the potential results achievable through collaboration with your company.

By maintaining the right approach, focusing primarily on obtaining feedback from leads, and only secondarily on sales, you’ll gather data to decide on investing in sales development in that specific market.

Things to avoid:

1. Assessing market potential solely based on sales volume or scheduled meetings. Market feedback is paramount.
2. Making decisions based on results of actions conducted or undertaken for you in a timeframe shorter than 2 to 4 quarters.
3. Evaluating your portfolio as equivalent in every market. After all, what significance would it have for you if a company contacting you, for example, from Germany, performs well with German clients whom you don’t know?
4. Abandoning efforts to acquire initial leads and clients when the first month or even quarter of actions yields no results.
5. (Last but not least) The most crucial aspect is openness regarding your offering. Even if you can’t change it to align with the desires or needs of potential clients (perhaps requiring corporate-level decisions or lacking the ability to pivot the product or service without significant financial investment), I assure you that there are many different ways to present your product or service to someone.

 

In the next episode of Outbound explained: how to build your local presence in foreign markets.

Check out our Campaigns on LinkedIn to learn how to get potential customers for your brand!