Those of us who have been in international trade for many
years know the feeling well. We have all walked into a new challenge with a new
company and asked ourselves ‘where on earth do I start?’ And after those brief
moments of panic subside, we have realised that the answer is incredibly
simple: ‘start with what you have got!’ That rule of thumb applies whatever the
size of the organisation, but crucially there are still too many companies who
have traditionally seen their exporting activity as an ‘add-on’ to their
business, rather than an integral part of long term sustainable growth, vital
to the company and not to be treated as a business backwater. ‘If it works it
works’ is simply not good enough.
It is only by starting with what you have got that you know
where the gaps are, where the challenges are, and where the good news is. I can
remember walking into one company where they didn’t even have a filing cabinet
(remember them?) for exports, just a pile of folders on a desk. But that is
what I had to start with, and I found by rummaging through every bit of paper
therein that there was some good potential in our selling partners but a lot of
dead wood. My first job was to fly to Hamburg to stop our distributor in Kiel
from sueing us. My predecessor had failed to keep his promises about the level
of marketing support provided to this fabulously hard-working and dedicated
distributor, who after 18 months had lost all patience. There was no contract
in place, and the threat to sue was more out of frustration than serious
intent, but the fact that I had made the effort to visit him and draw up a new
plan paid dividends.
My second job was to fly to see our ‘best performing’
distributor, who were based in Dublin and referred to in an earlier Tale. Sure,
they had the largest turnover of any of our distributors, but they did not pay
their bills and they had exceeded the credit limit we had agreed with our
insurers. They also had severe cash flow problems, and I had absolutely no
desire to find out why. I just wanted a decent distributor who paid their
bills. In the end, I stopped their shipments, and in hindsight that was
probably not the greatest idea because the company eventually went bust and I
failed to replace them with anything better. On the flip side, we had stopped
pretending and it allowed us to move on and locate significantly more valuable
and reliable business elsewhere.
You guessed it. My third job was a problem too. Well partly
a problem anyway. Our French distributor was a very nice guy and he had won
some interesting and prestigious projects for our company, but he too had been unilaterally
stretching his payment terms which were supposed to be 60 days. There were some
significant bills that had reached the 180 day point and nobody had challenged
them. When I did, the distributor did not immediately have the funds to pay. So
we had to put together a plan that would bring him back in synch. It was a
struggle but he was worth the effort, he carried on bringing in new business
and the plan worked.
Much of the rest of the portfolio I inherited were one-off
or sporadic orders and enquiries that had come our way in the previous year or
two, where little or no further contact had been made. The guy who gave me the
job said at interview that ‘to be better than the last guy you just have to
turn up!’ I spent the rest of my first couple of days following up outstanding
opportunities, and I can remember being surprised that almost all the people I
contacted were grateful to have received my call, and most of the projects were
still ‘live’.
So I had started the ball rolling, and now needed to devise
a plan to build export turnover from £400,000 to £1 million within two years.
It transpired that some of our exports had been achieved via distributors that
were common to our sister company, and who had been given the distinct
impression that they also had exclusive rights to sell our products. So I had
an internal and external battle to bring that to order on the grounds that my
sales commissions would then be based wholly on my own efforts. I needed direct
relationships with all of the people who were selling our products. It is the
only way.
I had started in my new role in mid-August 1997 and by
Christmas that year I had visited all of our important selling partners, to
learn about their businesses and to put action plans into place. In early November
I had spent a week exhibiting at Batimat in Paris where we shared stand costs
with our (now compliant) French distributor and generated some good business
together. And it’s the word ‘together’ that best explains the way in which our
export business was driven forward from that point. We worked closely with our
selling partners, agents, distributors, and not just in reacting to their
needs. The plans we put into place covered a number of areas: project analysis
and timetabling, so that I could forecast sales better; a programme of visits,
both to provide product training and to support them with key customer
meetings; UK factory visits so that our selling partners saw more of the
company than just me; and a marketing programme which included brochure and
sample book translations, attendance at exhibitions or a commitment to exhibit.
So the ball had very much started to roll, and in a later
Tale, I will summarise some of the strategies that led us to £1 million of
export sales by Christmas 1999. The plan worked, so always have a plan!
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