Issues Involved in Your Export Decision
Once you have decided to sell your products/services abroad, you will need to develop and export plan.
Without a written and a precise plan, you have a short-term strategy based on opportunistic one-off sales.
The main issues to address in your plan are:
Objectives
Experience
Management
Production
Financial
Objectives:
What are your main objectives for pursuing export markets? ( e.g. increasing sales volume, becoming an international player,..or having a fix for slumping domestic sales,.;)
How committed are you to an export effort?
Will export customers be neglected if domestic sales pick up?
What are your export expectations?
What level of return on investment is expected?
Experience:
Which countries do you have experience in dealing with? What lessons have been learned from past experiences?
From which countries have inquiries already been received?
Which product lines are the most sought?
Do your local customers or distributors export your products to overseas? If so, to which countries?
Who are your main foreign competitors?
Management:
Who will be responsible for the export department’s organization and staff?
What international expertise do you/your staff have? Market, technical, regulatory, cultural?
How much time you should allocate?
Production Capacity:
What will be the cost of additional production?
Will export orders hurt your domestic sales?
What minimum-order quantity is required?
Financial Capacity:
Where you will get financing? Commercial sources, banks, government,
What amount of capital you could commit to export marketing?
What are your ROI expectations? By what date do you think your export effort must pay for itself?
TBMedex SAS provides product distribution, market research, distributor qualification and local sales management services for the MEA region.
