Reading Notes: Global Sales-01

  • Differences between international & domestic sales

    • existing relationship of trust (must be established)
    • demands and workflow of customers
    • the process of internal information

  • the more skilled, motivated and trained people that are selling your product, the more you will sell.

  • Global distribution agreement
  • Distributors
  • Manufacturer’s representatives
  • Consultants

Your success is directly tied to distributor mind share

check the legal issues of every aspect of international trade carefully.

  • Do not treat this as a joke or something to try to get around
  • Don’t try to cheat, bribe or ship product to places that your government doesn’t want you to.

  • changes will be much larger in scope, much more expensive and much slower than you foresee

  • Distributors are concerned about their future and consernded that a manufacturer are thinking about future products. But if they don’t believe they can sell the products i have today, don’t want to work with them.

  • Localization: Things can be believed in is products that are designed for multiple international market

    • example: software that works in different languages

  • Language is probably the most relevant change in a product.

  • second: addressing a funamental difference in electricity or plumbing or installation in different markets

    • make it easier for customers to by and incrementally increase sales.
    • Putting in electrical current adapters in today’s world is pretty much a no-brainer

  • Don’t confuse a sales problem with an engineering problem - it is very seldom profitable to change products to fit each market

  • In many fields, especially healthcare, communications transportation, and security, there are market requirements that are not specified by law

    • need to clarify whether a requirement is a leagal requirement or just that the market is used to: convention / tradition.
      • can be deal with by getting reference with very unhappy key opinion leaders who also don’t like the local manufacturers.
    • but legal requirements must be obeyed (CE Certification in Europe Market)

  • Don’t let your contributors or end users know the timetable or pruduct feature package for changes or new product.

    • distributors will stop selling your present products and wait.
    • end users don’t want to buy a product that they thought would be obsolete in a year or so.

  • people are making product change requests all the time

    • document them in case they can be utilized in the development of the future product.

  • all contact with end users, customers, and potential end users, should be discussed clearly with the head of international sales

    • especially when it has to do with potential changes to the product,
    • to make sure that the messaging and communications are aligned.