Tales from the Road 5: Beware the Automaton Traveller

It was 1995. We had been selling capital woodworking machinery through two distributors in the USA for years, one in Massachusetts, and another in North Carolina, but we didn’t seem to be getting much business from the East Coast. So I embarked on a three week trip taking in both existing and potential distributors. Many USA distributors will claim national coverage, but the reality is that most don’t have the infrastructure to support their claim.

My children were 10 and 8 years old, and this was to be my longest time away since they were born. So I did two things. I wrote short poems or stories, or notes giving clues on where to find small presents around the house and garden, and put them in envelopes for them to open each day. I traced a map of the USA and made a fridge magnet with a caricature of my head, so they could track my journey. And they did!

I arrived at an awful Holiday Inn near JFK for a stopover before an early morning flight to Vancouver where we had an excellent Canadian distributor. There was a notice on the door warning of the possible dire consequence of opening it to the pizza delivery man! That was based on a couple of recent gangland shootings where the pizza box had been used to conceal a handgun. The pizza was okay and I am still here.

I had been booked into Holiday Inns throughout my journey, and was relieved when Vancouver’s version was cleaner and less intimidating. I was there a few days and made time between meetings to take in the sights and sounds of the city. My abiding memory was seeing white lights in the distance moving up and down a night sky, and it took me ages to work out that they were ski lifts and not aliens landing.

The 7am flight to Seattle was spectacular, flying between mountain ranges on a clear frosty morning. I spent a long, incredibly hectic day there. It was February 14th, and the hippy cab driver who took me from the airport to my first meeting had a box of heart shaped chocolates in a heart shaped box that he was offering to all his passengers that day.

That was the fun bit. I was late for two out of the following four meetings because I hadn’t worked out my logistics properly. I felt constantly on the back foot. Some of the companies I’d identified as being potential distributors were more like local dealers, something that Google Earth might have signalled had it been around then. From Seattle I flew on to Portland Oregon, to arrive in their Holiday Inn just before 10pm when the restaurant was near to closing.

I left my bags at reception and had my evening meal straight away. Something light for my starter- a salmon terrine. When it arrived it wasn’t a terrine at all but a massive piece of salmon caught that day in the Columbia River. I began to dread what size my fillet steak main course might turn out to be. That was enormous too, a real ‘Tom & Jerry’ steak covering the plate. I managed half of it, partly because I was so tired and partly because it was so vast! I had a brandy nightcap, collected my bags, went to my room and fell on the bed.

There I woke up at 3am still fully clothed, got up to use the bathroom, and in my semi-comatose state I walked straight into the wall! The Holiday Inns I had stayed in until that night had been configured with the bathroom on the right as you walked in, a bed on the right, and desk on the left, and then a sitting room area in front of the window. In Portland, they did things differently. My room was the other way round. So ‘SMACK!’ and it really hurt. I woke up later to my 6am alarm to find an impressive bruise developing above my right eye. It looked like I’d been in a bar room brawl, and I was being collected at 6:30am by an important guy I had never met before!

When you travel extensively it’s very easy to slip into automatic. It’s a bit like that feeling you get after driving from London to Manchester, wondering whatever happened to Birmingham? That kind of thing mainly happens when you fail to pace yourself properly, when you put your mind and body under too much stress. And if you are not on top of your game you will reduce your chance of a successful outcome.

So what lessons can be learned?

1. It’s easy to cram too much into a business trip. It isn’t easy to stay fresh and alert if you do.
2. Plan your trips, and appreciate the size of the country, distances and journey times.
3. Research every company you plan to visit. Know their strengths and weaknesses.
4. Google Earth gives a useful impression of the premises you are about to visit.
5. Don’t arrive for a first meeting with a blackening eye. It can only get worse!
6. Children grow quickly in three weeks.


JOHN REED

Gary Grumble new issue June 22nd 2012

Do you remember me having a go at the World Trade Organisation for not coming down hard on marketers of counterfeit goods, China headed the counterfeiters league table by a distance and as a member of the W.T.O. I thought they should have been shown a red card with the threat that failure to put things right could result in their expulsion from the World Trade Body.

Now I am at it again on the question – “what is the W.T.O   doing to reduce protectionism?”

On the sixth of June 2012 a Press Release from the EC Directorate-General for Trade in Brussels reported a  “ Staggering  Increase” of  Protectionism in the G20 countries. G20 countries being the leading nations in the  world  manufacturing  league table.

What is Protectionism?  broadly speaking it refers to trade obstruction measures used by countries who want to protect their industries from competition from overseas, these obstructions can  take many forms, documentary requirements, pre-shipment inspections, product quality certifications and product marketing, import licences and quotas  --- the list goes on. The intention is clear, namely to slow down or reduce the flow of imported goods.

Protectionism is very much against the principles of   “free trade”  and W.T.O policies of reducing or eliminating  “ Non-tariff barriers”

In the depression of the early 1930’s two U.S  senators  with the surnames of Smoot and Hawley sought to reduce imports into the USA and persuaded the U.S authorities to bring in  higher rates of import duties. What happened?  Disaster!!. Their misguided efforts led to a world wide slump of huge proportions. Does it now look as if the world has forgotten Smoot &  Hawley?.

 The following are 31 countries which the E.C. report names as being monitored :-

Algeria, Argentina, Australia ,Belarus Brazil, Canada, China, Ecuador, Egypt, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, USA, and Vietnam  

The Small Business - we grow too!

I was with a client yesterday in Oxford, started out very small - 4 people with the idea for a new technology in an old area - and now with funding, investment, energy - lots of energy - after 3 years they have 120 people, mostly scientists and they are going to grow very quickly. Why was I there - they need to export. Note the word NEED - the UK market isn't big enough for them!

Just a minute, haven't they read the press? Haven't they seen the news articles on how hard it is to get into export and how companies won't try because they fear failure or at least not getting paid on time? Don't they know how difficult it is with strategic planning, market research, needing skills you can only learn over years? Well, no they don't and to be honest they don't care.

That's not to say they are stupid, far from it - their management team work under AGILITY MANAGEMENT. Agility management? you might ask. Yes, if management plans need to change, change them, don't get stuck in a rut and not knowing about something doesn't mean they can't do it. They know they need help to export, and Strong & Herd LLP was called in to pull the strands together and make sure they don't miss key things as they sell to USA and China. Have they done market research, strategic planning - yes, but they wouldn't call it that. They know their products, know the markets, know their competition and have spoken to their prospective customers - they know their market edge.

What sparked this blog was reading something posted on LinkedIn a couple of months ago (I catch up eventually!), a link to a USA blogger and these words jumped out at me:

Strategic planning is inappropriate for small companies because:

• No time: They don’t have the management time or resources to invest in days of planning.

• Big cost: Because their top teams usually lead their sales efforts, taking them off the road has an immediate negative impact on revenues.

• Small payoff: The payoff of strategic planning is often measured in millions of dollars rather than hundreds of millions, so it makes no financial sense to overinvest in the effort.

• Short-lived: Smaller businesses must continually adjust their strategy so the strategies they develop during a strategic planning session are usually short-lived. They win because they are more nimble, quicker to seize unexpected opportunities, than their larger competitors. Long-term planning can slow them down and kill this advantage.

This doesn’t mean small-growth companies should fly blind. It means they should adopt an adaptive opportunistic approach to strategy. They should plan in the hallway, not the boardroom.

It goes on to say that what the smaller companies need is strategic thinking, not strategic planning - two key words "Why Not?" to out think the Competition, sometimes this happens just because you are new in the industry and don't know how it should work so do it your own way. Use IDEAS: Imagine, Dissect, Expand, Analyse, Sell. According to Kaihan Krippendorff who wrote the US blog the main reasons companies don't do something is because they think it costs too much, customers won’t like it or it’s not technically feasible without testing if it is true. He was talking about all business, but this sure seems appropriate to exporting.

Well, I met a company like this yesterday and believe me it works! Can't wait to see them win the Queen's Award for International Trade in 2013 - they will, you know, because no-one's told them they can't!