Want to Take Your Business Global? 5 Ways to Expand

The idea of free trade isn’t modern as ancient people sailed across the world trading various commodities. It has grown tremendously over the years, owing to its capability to spur economic growth.

In line with this, most businesses go global once they have a strong foothold in their country of origin, while others instantly go global if their products are for the export market. Regardless of the reason you need to go global, below are some tips on how to do it.

1. Choose your locations wisely

The location you choose to expand to depends on what kind of business you’re operating. Are there any opportunities for your business in the proposed location? What are the policies and regulations on foreign establishments in that proposed location?

If you have to set up a remote office space in the new location, there are some considerations too. You need to gauge if you need to rent out a working space and for how long. Nowadays, there’s even the option of a co-working space.

The decisions you make will depend on business size, cash at hand, policies, and other relevant factors.

2. Take advantage of outsourcing

Outsourcing helps your enterprise reduce costs while allowing your team to focus on more crucial or fundamental tasks, while leaving a specialized team to take care of others, under agreed standards and goals.

For example, many businesses have to deal with a lot of customer calls. If you deal with this inhouse, you’ll need to get the equipment, the support staff as well as the agents on the phone, and take care of infrastructure maintenance. If you look to outsource this to a contact center, you’ll save all that effort and a lot of money.

Other common processes that you can outsource are:

• HR management
• Manufacturing
• Accounting and bookkeeping
• IT Support
• Point-of-sale providers
• Web development
• SEO

3. Study culture and trends

It’s important that you understand business culture before thinking of expanding into new territories. A country might have a friendly business environment but if what you’re offering doesn’t resonate with consumers in that region, you’re bound to fail.

Take your time to study the culture and trends of the target market. This will inform whether you might need to tweak your product or service accordingly.

Luckily, there are local companies that can provide relevant data for your study purposes. Such data could also provide insight into your competitors. This would give you an advantage as you can come up with a better entry strategy to grab a bigger market share.

4. Engage locals and cultivate leadership

To better understand a new location, you need the locals. Engage them and research as much information as you can from them. They should form the majority of your hires and cultivate leadership as you train them per your standards.

Such engagements help break communication barriers. Remember, new locations mean new languages and culture. Thus, you want people who understand what you’re offering.

5. Be on the ground

No matter how much you trust your new location’s team, it will take time before they fully understand your company's vision and its values. Thus, your presence is key as your expansion consolidates. You will need to take the time to check-in on each team.

In other words, visit each country, build significant relationships with your staff, your admin team, local customers, vendors and partners. Attend relevant seminars, workshops and media-covered events to showcase what you’re offering and further build your business reputation.