How to internationalize sales?

After carrying out the strategic plan, defining the sales objectives, making the selection of markets and establishing the best entry method, it is time to sell. But selling is much more than an expression of desire with a number in a sales plan. It is a commitment with ourselves, our partners or shareholders, our collaborators

What are the main 3 problems to solve when internationalizing sales?

1. Changes in consumer habits of the objective we aim for.
2. The difficulty in meeting international sales targets in new clients.
3. Low conversion rate between proposals and sale
4. Changes in consumer habits of the objective we aim for.

Many times our sale is reactive and therefore, we have not developed the proactive sales capacity, we hope that the clients that allow us to meet the objectives reach us. We hope this happens with our commercial premises, with our website, with social networks and also with our stand at an event.

But entering a new market implies a strong discipline of going out to look for clients proactively, whose muscle we sometimes have little developed. For this, it is key to understand the purchasing habits of the target audience, as well as to update our commercial capacities to develop proactive sales tools that allow us to reach the objective

2. The difficulty in meeting international sales goals for new clients.

There are different reasons why we fail to meet the objectives One of the main is not to have a sales process, which reduces variability and increases predictability.

But a sales process is not a bureaucratic tool that takes away our flexibility, but the way to define the steps to follow to achieve the objectives, aligned with the purchase steps of the target audience, with the necessary tasks, the probability of moving forward if we go taking the necessary steps and the difficulty of following nimbly if we do not.

Likewise, it allows us to dimension the commercial effort (measured in process indicators) that unites the daily effort with our sales objective, monitoring the entire process from the moment we make contact with a potential client until closing.

3. Low conversion rate between proposals and sale

It is common to see processes of internationalization, where the offer is more focused than the customer's need, where the product is more explicit than the solution, which often leads to lower prices, extend the cycle of opportunities and not sell value .

There is a quite inverse relationship between how deep we understand the client's concern, with the weight or focus that we put on ourselves. The more understanding of the client, the less is the focus on us.

As the consultative sale implies to understand before proposing, to diagnose deeply before prescribing, it is fundamental to deepen the decision criteria of the target public. This will allow us to identify requirements from the client side, as well as from other key actors that allow us to control the sales process. In this way, we will improve our closing rate, which covers the entire relationship with the client, it is not a specific moment (after the presentation of the proposal) as often often believed.

Therefore, if you are preparing to sell internationally, we recommend you first develop pilots or methodological and technological tests, where you can analyze from the CRM the effectiveness of our process and the proactive selling tools first locally, in order to adjust necessary to achieve growth processes abroad in a scalable and sustainable way, anchored in cultural aspects of the organization, in order to fulfill our personal and organizational objectives. 

Lic. Simón Fuhrman

Director of  Fuhrman& Asociados

SolutionSelling® AuthorizedProvider