In the sectors that come quickly to mind — machinery, metalworking, foundry, software — identifying a few customers correctly can open the door to a million dollars in exports. Looked at the other way, getting it wrong can throw a million dollars of export potential away.
01Where do we find new customers?
Industrial companies find new customers mostly,
- At trade fairs
- Through referrals
- On country visits
These we can call the traditional methods.
In recent years, new methods have been added to these:
- Digital marketing
- Business development consultants
- International trade platforms
It is impossible to say that any one of these is great, or the best. What matters is using these methods together, within a plan and a strategy.
02The problems that unplanned customer-finding creates
If no such plan and strategy is in place, we observe two serious problems.
First, a company's limited resources get spent on the wrong things. Serious money can go to a trade fair or overseas trip that does not matter much — sometimes so much that a company burns its entire annual export marketing budget on that single trip or fair.
Worse, sometimes a company's goals for a trade fair or international visit are not clear. Trips made on the logic of "everyone in the sector attends" or "there are great customers in that country" produce no meaningful result. And in these cases the worst part is that the export unit is then expected to work miracles for the rest of the year.
The second serious problem that working without a plan and strategy creates is that companies cannot build a sustainable export system and cannot generate ongoing international sales. Working this way, an export manager sometimes does move a company to a certain point. They achieve good results.
Unfortunately, this leads to complacency in company management. In such companies you hear sentences like "our export manager is already successful — we have handed the job to them." But because nothing has been built into the company's corporate culture, when that manager leaves, the export unit goes back to square one. Nobody in the company knows how to find new customers and bring in new export sales.
In short, there are basically five main methods for finding new export customers. When companies use them within a plan and strategy, acquiring new export customers is not hard. But when the methods are used wrong, nothing is easier than everything going wrong. I would encourage you to ask your company the million-dollar question in the title.
This article was originally published in ODS Consulting Group's Espresso magazine on 2 September 2022.
Manufacturers mostly find new customers at trade fairs, through referrals, and on country visits. Today there are five main methods — the key is to use them all within a plan and strategy.