How to Take Your Business Global

Most businesses begin by focusing on a local market. Whether that’s your hometown or your entire country, you will establish processes, marketing and pretty much every facet of your business to suit where you are. However, if all goes well and you decide to take what you’ve got to the international stage, you’ll need to make some changes. Expanding internationally offers incredible opportunities from extending the sales life of existing products and services by finding new markets to sell them in and protecting your business from irregular demand cycles seasonal changes. However, you need to explore all your options and do your research before you make the potentially life-changing decision to go global.

1. Research Your Chosen Markets

The first stage is to do your homework and to ascertain if there is a demand for your service or product overseas. If there is, what does the competition look like and can you bring anything different to the market. Moving into an already saturated market is likely to be a difficult task.

2. Learn the Language

You will really struggle to do business in another country if you can’t communicate. This doesn’t mean you need to be fluent (although this is obviously an advantage), but you should be able to cover the basics. Studying the language is the ideal tactic to take, but you can also use interpreters in some situations.

3. Get the Right Technology

The best way to sell products and services globally with the same flexibility and efficiency as you do at home is with an international ecommerce platform like Shopify. This will enable you to you keep track of shipments, manage paperwork and stay on top of other important tasks with a multi-channel ecommerce experience for different languages, currencies and seasonal trends.

4. Establish International Business Relationships

Another benefit of learning the language is that you can build better relationships with new clients or distributors. You should travel to the country you’ll be selling in and try to attend some relevant trade show so you can network and improve your knowledge of the market.

5. Understand International Business Principles

Running a business outside of Australia is very different to running your business at home. You’ll need to research and fully grasp the legal rules and expectations of the new country to ensure you’re abiding by their regulations. You should also take time to understand the culture and business customs of the place you will be trading in. For example, in China it is customary to bring a gift to a business meeting, but the gift will be refused numerous times before being eventually accepted.

Some business people take the time to study for a degree in international business in order to avoid costly errors and get a better understanding of the processes involved. There will also be a substantial amount of paperwork involved in trading overseas so it makes sense to get organised as soon as possible so you can manage all the forms, correspondence and contracts. You may even want to consider hiring a lawyer or international business consultant to help you navigate the process.