Explainer: How to start exporting. The international business expansion roadmap.

In this episode you will hear what steps should be made by exporters in order to expand their sales to new markets.

Your host Dmytro Shvets, the international expansion consultant, shares his vision of international expansion roadmap based on more than 15 years experience of creating export strategies.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hi, I'm Dmytro Shvets.

(00:06):
Your host at the Start Global Insights, where I interview local experts in different countries
about local insights and international expansion experience.
The last seven months of the Russian invasion to Ukraine, I talk a lot to Ukrainian small
and medium enterprises that didn't have any experience in international expansion.

(00:28):
And I hear from them the most common question, how shall I start or what will be the international
expansion roadmap and what steps should I take to succeed in international markets.
So I decided to record this episode with the answer to this most common question.
And analyzing the answer, I saw that there are a lot of similarities of going abroad

(00:53):
and starting a new business or startup, because in fact, if you are going abroad, then you
will meet the new market and new clients in this market.
And these clients will have new pains and gains and also new expectations and new needs.
So you should definitely adapt your value proposition, your product to this new market

(01:14):
and develop maybe in most cases, a new business model to enter a new country.
And so the first step that you should make is to ask yourself the most difficult question,
which sounds like why.
So why should I export?
Why should I go internationally?
What are my expectations from this activity?

(01:35):
Because this activity will require a lot of your resources, financial, mental and material.
So in terms of people that you will attract to this activity, etc.
Therefore, the next step that you should do is assess or make kind of a diagnostic of
your business and assess how much resources do you have and understand how you are ready

(01:57):
for this international expansion.
And that will allow you to understand the scale of expansion and what are the potential
outcome of your activities.
And of course, it will influence all roadmap afterwards.
You should analyze all muscles of your business like sales, marketing, finance, also the production,

(02:20):
how much capacity do you have, how quick you can increase your production and your offer,
how well you are able to change your product according to the new market and new clients.
When you have done it, then of course, the next step is to focus because there are a
lot of opportunities in the world.

(02:40):
There are almost 200 countries in the world that you can enter and you should definitely
focus because your resources are always limited and this is the biggest obstacle on your way.
So even the big corporations usually do not enter multiple countries at once.
You should understand what will be your order or the list of the most interesting, most

(03:06):
potential countries or markets for your business and to select among this variety, those countries
or those markets that are the best match for your resources and your activities.
When you have done it, and I recommend you to limit that maximum to two countries, like

(03:27):
one is the focus one, the first one to enter and then the second is like your backup.
So if the first country will look like not very good for your business, then you can
switch to the second one.
When you have done it, so the next step is to understand this market, to understand the

(03:47):
games rules, to understand what are the stakeholders at the market, what are the channels that
you can use to sell or to deliver your value proposition to your customers, what are the
customer segments in the market, who are the most appropriate for your business, for your
product, what are the communication channels and how do stakeholders interact with each

(04:11):
other, what are the prices, what are the requirements, et cetera, et cetera.
When you understood that and you already know who are the stakeholders, the best way to
understand the insights and the peculiarities that are existing in this market is to interview
the stakeholders and you should interview different stakeholders, your clients and not

(04:32):
your clients, but those entities or people that are interacting in this market and will
influence your business as well, like I do actually in my podcast.
So you can listen to other episodes and understand what are the approaches of getting these insights
from local players and understanding the local situation in the market.

(04:58):
When you have done that, the next step is to focus on your clients or your stakeholders
that you will work with the most because there are a lot of them usually and again, you have
limited resources and of course you need to prioritize and understand who are the stakeholders
that you should work the most.

(05:19):
When you did that, you already have all information to go to the next step.
So you have understood your resources, you understood where to focus in terms of markets,
you understood the game's rules of these markets, understood who are the stakeholders in these
markets and what they're doing, what are the local relationships and all the insights from

(05:42):
the market.
So you have got all information to start planning your journey and to start planning your journey
you should start with setting your goals.
So you should understand what you would like to achieve, what are your expectations from
this journey.
And then backwards, you can plan the exact steps and of course split them into your company's

(06:06):
muscles.
So you will have a flow to plan in production, you have a flow to plan in marketing, in sales,
in finance, how much money you need to invest in each step and of course how the management
should be prepared to manage all this picture and to help the company to expand internationally

(06:29):
in the most successful way.
So you can now start your sales and start your expansion in the full scale, but I would
still recommend to use the approach that is used by startup and conduct first real-time
tests so you can choose a proper customer segment, understand their needs and pains

(06:51):
and then create an MVP or minimum viable product that could test exactly one value proposition
per one client.
And in this way you will not invest in full scale expansion, but you can in more or less
safe way with less investments test real-time entering this new market and understand how

(07:15):
it works.
And of course you should always after conducting this test, you should analyze what went well,
what went not well, how you should improve, whether your value proposition is okay and
appropriate for this new clients or not.
And if not, then iterate again with another MVP and to test another client and their pains.

(07:42):
And this will give you in safe mode big picture of how the market really works, because you
got that information from market research, you got this information from interviews with
your potential clients and local players, but then in real world you have tested these
approaches with few investment.

(08:05):
So now you have the whole picture to go full scale and expand internationally and do it
in the most efficient way.
So I'm wishing you good luck in this interesting and challenging journey.
And I also urge you to subscribe to our podcast on all major podcast platforms and also on
YouTube not to miss new episodes about new markets with new local experts.