Before You Go Global: Questions to Ask Yourself and Mistakes to Avoid

Your business means a lot to you. You’ve watched it grow from your garage to your first office building. The business is growing like a wildfire in July, but now it seems as though it’s slowing down.

That doesn’t necessarily spell disaster, but you want to keep the momentum going. You want to continue growing your business.

The best way to see more growth? Take your business international. Before you do, you should consider if your business, and you, are prepared.

Ask Yourself Some Questions First
Just because you’ve seen success in the states doesn’t guarantee a similar outcome overseas. Before you jump in headfirst, you need to get a few things straight.

• • Will my product do well in the new target culture? — You need to do your research. Are you sure there’s high enough demand overseas? Maybe there’s already a monopoly on the product or services you provide in your target country. Find out as much as you can about the demographics before launching.

• • Do they know about the product you sell? — If you’re going to market with a brand new product that the target market hasn’t heard of, then you will need to do some education campaigning first. However, being the first company with this product means your brand name becomes synonymous with the product.

• How do you feel about the place? — You should be comfortable traveling to your new market for long periods of time. If you won’t be comfortable there, you’ll find that working remotely may not promote the growth you were hoping for.

If you feel good about your answers to these questions, you can start thinking about going international.

There are a few areas where you can fail, and hard. In order to see success, be wary of these mistakes.

• • No Strategy: You decided you want to go global, but you didn’t consider the logistics. You didn’t consider types of cargo shipping, freight forwarders, purchasing agents, or many of the other aspects of international shipping.

• • Being Too Eager: A hungry appetite in the world of business is a good thing, but biting off more than you can chew is not. If your product shows promise in more than one country, don’t think you have to market it in each one.

• Misguided Beliefs: “If it works here, it will work there.” This can be your greatest mistake. You will need to shape your product to fit into the new cultural market. Barreling through with an America-rocks attitude won’t get you any results.

If you believe that after all this you’re ready to go global, then you might actually be ready.

There are far more concerns when it comes to global business and international cargo shipping. Looking to ship internationally? Call us today to talk about cargo logistics.