As someone who has both used and delivered government
services for international trade, I have seen the good and the bad from both
sides of the fence, and it has to be said at the outset that my experiences
have been mainly positive. As an Export Sales Manager for companies between the
mid ‘80s and 2004, I used a number of the services offered by UK Trade &
Investment (UKTI). Latterly, I helped to deliver Passport to Export Services to
North West exporters, including Passport to Export training, and I was also
involved at the time in delivering Passport To International Trade Success,
with the unfortunate acronym of PITS!
Having now run my own international trade consultancy since
2002, overlapping with the last two years of my employment (with the blessing
of my employers I hasten to add!), there are occasions where it has been
important and necessary to refer companies to UKTI services. There is a vital
partnership to be had between both public and private services for
international traders. The two cannot exist without each other. Consultants
like me do not have direct access to a pot of funding that supports companies
with their exporting activities: grants for exhibitions; free and subsidised
training; match funded schemes; the Export Market Research Scheme and other
incentives. However, private consultants frequently possess a depth of
experience in specialist areas, either sectoral or regional, where they can
open doors and shortcut routes to market, introductions to the right market
influencers, agents, distributors and other salespeople, and offer detailed
knowledge that local UKTI services or the Commercial officers out there in the
Posts may not be able to provide.
From my many years of international selling experience, I
know that if your product or service happens to be in a niche or specialist
sector, there will very often only be a few key companies you really need to
talk to in your chosen export markets, with the possible exception of the
geographically larger markets such as the USA and the BRICs. So there are
occasions when direct knowledge of and access to a market can be a better route
to success than a lengthy programme of market research. Conversely, it may take
a lengthy programme of market research to identify not just the companies who
are already established and active in a given sector, but also the new kids on
the block, and those on the periphery of the sector who might be more open to
new ideas on how to market and sell your products or services. Sometimes,
combining both is the best way forward, but one thing is for certain, there is
no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution.
When I was selling Passport To Export, I worked with a UK
greetings cards distributor who were planning to use some of the Passport funds
to exhibit at the National Stationery Show in New York. As part of their
programme while in the market, we arranged for a room to be made available to
them at the British Consulate in New York, and for meetings there with two of
the world’s top greetings cards manufacturers. The cudos of inviting these key
companies to the Consulate really helped in providing a reason for them to
confirm the meetings. When the UK
company returned from the USA, I reviewed their visit and asked what was the
single best experience of their trip? Their answer was unequivocally the
meetings at the Consulate, both with the target companies and with the highly
knowledgeable Commercial Officers who handled Creative & Media.
I have worked with some excellent Commercial Officers in the
Posts over the years, and as an international business traveller I would
encourage others to strike up a relationship with the local Commercial Officers
whenever you have the opportunity, even if it is only for a quick introductory
visit over a cup of coffee. The Posts are there to help you to succeed. I was
researching the floor coverings market in France one year and decided to take
myself off to the Charles De Gaulle Library, and incredibly impressive complex
a twenty minute train ride from the centre of Paris. I was there for four
hours, and as a British person with schoolboy French, trying to find
information about French business I soon had the impression that the shutters
were going up. I was being shunted from one queue to another and was receiving
no help at all. So I commissioned one of the British Embassy’s Commercial
Officers to repeat the exercise the following week, and it took her about half
an hour to obtain all the information I was looking for!
Those are just two practical examples of how government help
can make a real difference to a company’s international activities. The next
‘Tale’ will show how private international trade consultants have helped UK
businesses to succeed in their international markets.
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