Globalization provides chances for a fast track business expansion. Admittedly chances often come along with risks. Increasing mobility and the era of digitalization misleads to the belief that the world became transparent and markets are easy to access. The true meaning of “no land is like homeland” is still valid. It is one story to succeed in a well-known and therefore predictable environment. It is totally another story to repeat the success in an environment of a different culture and a limited network. Clearly companies face challenges when they operate in regions where few touchpoints existed prior to the era of globalization.
Challenges in marketing & sales Asia are manifold and instead of describing all possible cases we would like to share the most common ones.
| • | How to define the total sales capacity of the market and how play a significant role once we enter it. |
| • | How to define the amount of resources needed to develop the market. |
| • | How to balance the tasks of gaining market share and being profitable. |
| • | How to balance the long term goal of brand building and short term goal of generating profits. |
| • | How to design the right product for the market. |
| • | How to design the most effective marketing mix for emerging regions. |
| • | How to understand the decision making process of local buyers. |
| • | How to decide whether to sell direct or go via distributors and agents. |
| • | How to secure internal rules for compliance when working with agents. |
| • | How to coach the sales team to sell added value and services to justify higher product prices. |
| • | How to change the habit of selling by network to selling with structure. |
| • | How to convince customers to appreciate and pay for service. |
| • | How to avoid losing the lucrative after-sales service or spare part business. |
| • | How to decide if the timing is right to educate clients or better to wait. |
| • | How to know competitors and their strategies. |
| • | How to deal with copycats and the increasing risk of losing intellectual property. |
| • | How to stay ahead of the local competition. |
| • | How to grow – organically or by acquiring companies with a solid footprint in the market. |
| • | Etc. |
The main difference of optimizing marketing & sales in Asia compared to the same task in the homeland of our clients is the market. In traditional markets valid data is available and the core focus in consulting is the analysis of information, followed by creation and implementation of the right strategy. Transferring the task to Asia it becomes even more complex as many companies struggle to identify and to translate fundamental information about the market. The second major difference is the availability of proven resources for the execution part. The best strategy fails with mediocre execution.
Bottom line, we aim to increase the market share and profits of our clients and we target to enhance the brand value in the specific market.
Therefore we divide our approach into four major steps:
| • | Identifying – NxtAsia utilizes itsinternal data analytics team to provide all necessary information for a specific case. These market data including the respective industry, customers and competitors are complementary to the common practice of interviewing local industry experts. At this stage projects are run by our market data leaders. |
| • | Understanding – “Scientia potential est” is a Latin aphorism often translated as “Knowledge is power”. Having access to the right data is identifying the right entrance - translating available data is having the right key to unlock the door. At this stage our industry leaders are joining the team to apply the data to the original task given by the client. |
| • | Creating – the external factors set the playground for the game but still do not define how to play the game. That heavily depends on internal factors like availability of resources, risk acceptance, past experiences, nature of business etc. At this stage task forces will be formed including NxtAsia’s functional leader (marketing & sales), market data leaders (e.g. market China leader), industry leader (e.g. automotive) and our client’s expert team. Together, several options to approach the task will be created which finally represent the basis of decision-making for the client. |
| • | Executing – the main difficulty for implementation is the identification of suitable resources. NxtAsia leads any needed change process of the client’s current organization. We coach internal resources, support with new recruits or temporarily fill in vacancies with our team. |
Notes:
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