Revenue Journal®

Let's say you're a vendor in a developing country selling some kind of product or service to customers in more developed countries. You know you can provide what the customers there need, but you're not sure how get the attention of the right kinds of buyers, and when you do get a lead, you find it too difficult to close the sale. Something is standing in your way. That something is the negative reputation that your country or industry has in the mind of the buyer.

This article will address both of these challenges while looking at the process from the buyer's perspective. The advice in this article will help anyone selling any type of high-risk product or service - even in well-established markets - as the dynamics are similar.

Getting leads

It's easiest to cover this subject by using a fictitious but true-to-life example. Let's say Rashid has a group of programmers who specialize in building marine satellite systems for yacht owners. If he follows the path taken by many others like him, he will either take a shotgun approach aimed at the end consumer, or pursue a "please sell this for me" approach with a distributor in the business.

The shotgun approach - trying to reach the end consumer with ads and other broad marketing vehicles - fails because a high-end customer is not going to hire someone overseas from an ad, and there are many local vendors who already sell the same thing. Only a very highly recommended vendor will succeed in those situations.

Established distributors are seldom interested in repping a developing-country supplier, because they have plenty of local vendors already knocking on their door, and they want to make easy sales, not sales where they have to convince someone that the vendor is trustworthy even though he is 6,000 miles away.

Developing country vendors work in a smaller neighborhood than their developed country counterparts. It is difficult for them to conceive how saturated and competitive the industries are in developed countries. Over the years, when developing country vendors approach me for advice about selling in America, they were always surprised at how ineffective their marketing efforts are projected to be (or have already been). They have this image of millions of Americans just waiting for their solution. Even the Amercan vendors have trouble getting the attention of buyers, much less those whose location (or industry) raises red flags.

The solution is to figure out, through a series of investigative phone calls, who already has an "in" with the desired buyers, and contact those people. Ask them what they look for in a vendor, what they think people will be concerned about, and what could be done to make it easy for the person to recommend the foreign company.

For example, custom yacht designers cater to wealthy clients who want to stay in touch with their businesses while at sea. They need communication systems. Yacht designers, and the builders who build their yachts, need subcontractors who can design and install the right system for the customer's requirements. These designers and builders are the right kinds of people to contact and interview. They have an appropriate existing client base and a personal need for a reliable vendor.

During the interview, the yacht designer will ask questions about what you sell, how you provide your services, and how much you charge. The designer, without being pressured to do so, will consider you as a vendor for his own clients as he is being interviewed. At the end of the call, he will ask you to send him some information (or will ask for your website address).

Keep in touch with these contacts over time, and leads will start coming in from these sources. Best of all, they will be "hot" leads, not "cold" or even "warm" leads. You will have been recommended. Make sure the client is happy, and you will get more leads from client referrals and that designer, who will be happy that he has found a vendor he can trust.

Closing sales

When a buyer is spending a lot of hard-earned money on something that could easily turn out badly, he will have a specific set of concerns that must be addressed before the sale can proceed.

Sellers seldom address these concerns head-on. Instead, they sell as if these concerns don't exist - either because they don't recognize that these concerns are "show stoppers," or because they incorrectly assume that foreign buyers will have the same concerns as local buyers. If you've ever been the international buyer in one of these situations, you know how far this perception is from the reality.

Before the buyer starts doing business with someone in a developing country, he does some research. He Googles phrases such as "outsourcing China problems" or "India call centers lawsuits." He starts asking around until he finds people who have purchased similar products and services in the same countries. He calls them. He hears all their horror stories. If they are negative, they will be emphatically negative, because they want to do what they can to help others avoid the problems they had. They are glad to tell their tale to a concerned caller. And, it always feels good to be an expert on a call.

The really sad situations, where someone has lost a lot of money and had their dreams shattered, tend to have a long life cycle. These stories become a country's "brand" - the promises that the country keeps, in the minds of prospective buyers.

By the time the buyer meets with the seller, this brand has been firmly established by credible sources. Any seller who thinks he can waltz in and sell a buyer, without first addressing this suspicion and expectation of disaster, is living in a fantasy world.

As I have discussed in previous articles, these concerns are not "objections that must be countered." It's insulting to the buyer to treat buyer concerns this way. The buyer has a valid concern, which must be proactively and courteously addressed.

Rather than ignore the issue, or try to talk the buyer out of carefully gathered perceptions from credible sources, the seller should make it his business to know what the concerns are, and to prove that he is not like all those other vendors in the horror stories.

Fortunately for sellers, buyers are always hoping that they will find an exception to the rule - after all, buyers are buyers because they are hoping to buy. Americans, in particular, are eager to believe that a vendor has seen the error of his countrymens' ways, and is offering an alternative that will protect the buyer from experiences he will regret.

Does the country or industry have a reputation for dishonesty? The vendor should go out of his way to be totally transparent about all of the finances and reporting systems, including quality of work and progress of work. The vendor should have systems already created that the buyer can examine at any time, and should be able to show the buyer those systems early in the buying process.

Does the country have political, cultural or societal differences that will make things difficult for the buyer? For example, maybe the people drive on "the 'wrong' side of the road," and all the street signs are in a different language. In these cases, a visiting buyer should be met at the airport. Either a driver should be assigned to the customer, the customer should be driven around by the seller, or the customer should be given another easy way to get around during his or her stay.

Does the country have a reputation for endless bureaucracy? The seller should offer the buyer a "kit" that includes all the forms needed to do business in the country, and contacts at local organizations such as banks and insurance companies.

A certain amount of trust must be established before the buyer will even consider the actual product or service being sold by a developing country vendor or by a vendor in an industry that has a negative reputation. The only way to establish this trust is to provide the buyer with his own personal, positive experience. Only positive personal experience can overcome the negative reputation. If you proactively prove that you are trustworthy, that you have anticipated the buyer's needs and are successfully meeting them, you will be considered a vendor who is "a cut above," and separate yourself from your competition - and that negative reputation.

Then the buyer will choose you as a vendor, and think to himself, "Well, all those other buyers had problems, but this is going really well. Perhaps they weren't as careful or smart as I have been." You will be associated with a personal victory in the buyer's mind - even before you start selling your product or service.

As the selling/buying process progresses, make sure you answer all of the other questions the buyer has, honestly and thoroughly. Chances will be very, very good that you will make the sale.