If you feel that your business has reached the pinnacle of its potential in its domestic market, it might be high time you considered going global. Doing so could extend the sales life of your existing product range, and it could help you to avoid the demand cycles that plague your current market, so this is definitely a course of action you should consider taking.
To ensure that your international expansion goes off without a hitch, it’s important that you put plans into place and don’t do anything on a whim. Your campaign to expand overseas should be calculated and considered, as one wrong move in this instance could see you lose money and damage your brand.
When you decide to take your business overseas, be sure to put the following advice into practice:
Prepare an international business plan
You should kick off your global growth campaign by preparing an international business plan. With this plan at hand, you will find it much easier to assess your readiness for international expansion and subsequently remain on course with your expansion once it gets underway.
If you’re to build a highly effective and targeted global growth strategy, you must ask yourself the following questions and attempt to answer them in your international business plan:
- Will there be a demand in the location that you plan to expand to for your product range or services?
- What competition will you face there?
- Are there any rules and regulations that you need to understand?
- Will there be vendors in your planned location that are capable of supplying your product to you?
- Are you going to be in need of storage space?
- Do you plan on accepting both USD and foreign currency?
- Are you going to offer discounts to specific buyers?
- Will you be capable of accepting credit cards in the location that you expand to?
Accept help from those that offer it
You aren’t going to be able to take your company overseas on your own, that’s for sure. No matter how much research you conduct on the location you plan on expanding to, you’re never truly going to understand the intricacies of its labor market and countercyclical fluctuations. Whenever help is offered with regards to your expansion, then, you must be sure to take it.
Assistance in this instance can come from a number of different sources. It could come from another company that is already located in the area that you plan to expand to, for instance, as they may offer to help you settle into the area in return for you doing business with them. Or it could come from a global expansion company such as INS Global who offer to keep you compliant with payroll in Japan. The point is, if somebody or something offers to help you hit the ground running in your new location, you should have no qualms in accepting their assistance.
If you don’t want to encounter any problems when you take your business overseas, you must put the above advice into practice when you embark on your expansion process.
