Direct sales vs Channels? Two ways to sell abroad

What are the next steps after you have chosen the next target market for your niche product or service?

There are two main approaches to selling products or services: direct sales and channel sales.

SALES CHANNELS for MANUFACTURERS

Whether your company is a manufacturer and has solid products in specific niches – makes sense to consider onboarding sales partners in the new region. Distributors, dealers, resellers, OEMs – all these can be generally called “sales partners”. It brings you several obvious benefits:

+ Comparably cheap entrance costs;

+ Access to the existing customers’ database of the partner;

+ Service and the first line of technical support  through a partner;

+ Product and marketing localization support from partners.

Sounds attractive, right? What are the challenges then…

– how to find a professional and suitable partner?

– will the new partner be active enough to generate the market?

– exclusivity requests – how to avoid or guarantee returns?

– Reaching targets – achievement or excuses?

We will talk about searching, onboarding, and managing sales partners in the next releases. If you want guarantees in finding motivated, experienced, and reliable partners in the new region – let us help you.

DIRECT SALES for PROJECT or SERVICE ORIENTED COMPANIES

In case your company is a supplier of highly customized products, services, or projects – working through partners might be not applicable. Direct sales are the answer then. 

How to sell directly?

OPTION 1. From home office. 

It might work for online sales of non-expensive and region-agnostic services, sometimes… But for niche projects, innovative solutions, and specialized services.  How would you deal with the language barrier? Networking? Face-to-face contact? On-site technical inspections? Even targeting and lead generation would be under question in terms of efficiency. Challenge, isn’t it?

OPTION 2. Local Representative or Local Office.

This choice brings your project into a high-budget + high risks + the highest C-management involvement. The ROI of such investment must be calculated as very attractive, the level of success estimation should be on the highest level and ideally, the customers’ database should already exist to feed the investment. Moreover bureaucracy issues of opening a legal entity, hiring and training of new staff, and business trips back and forth –will take months of time and weeks of C-level resources. 

If not… how to start proactively, but not so risky and costly?

GloBAS suggests Sales As A Service approach, especially for such cases.

Local sales representative – dedicated, well-trained, and integrated into your team. Working under the contract from GloBAS, but acting directly on behalf of your company, with a corporate business card, email domain, local direct phone, and local office facilities provided. Will he or she be competent enough in your niche? Let’s discuss, contact us at contact@globasinternational.com or book a meeting.

Are you still hesitating about which sales approach to use for your company’s global expansion? Let’s discuss it in an online call.