Carry Your Own Torch
The hard truth and what really works: channels, partners, direct sales and advisory boards.
In making the choice of the mix of partners, channels and direct sales for entering the U.S. market, I have seen a number of times Australian, Canadian and UK companies make expensive mistakes based on unrealistic expectations of new partners and channels. What I saw at play by the founders of these companies, was a case of wishful thinking. They wanted to believe that some American company (channel or partner) would embrace their product and service and go and win the initial and ongoing deals. This, in spite of having no brand presence or U.S. references.
I observed a great deal of wasted effort poured down the drain in pursuing that dream. The upside of this was it presented me an opportunity to help them find an alternative approach,
Why was this the case?
These potential partners and channels have their current business and commitments. Because of that their priorities lie with their current business. To get on their radar and make it worthwhile for them to do the pioneer selling of your products is a very heavy lift. Experience has shown that it is faster, easier and successful to “carry your own torch” for the early sales. You know your products and services better than anyone else, so that is one learning curve you do not need to deal with. You are committed and focused on your success. They are not.
What you do not have is the network of contacts to leverage in order to find and win the beachhead accounts for each target segment. This effort is not trivial and needs to be funded with enough funds to see it through a 24 month “on-ramp”. B2B selling into greenfield accounts, in a greenfield market like the US, is not easily predicted in terms of timetables. There is an element of luck involved. You are looking for a “needle in a haystack” because only a small percent of any market wants to be the first to buy. There is an old saying in technology B2B selling, “Nobody wants to be first or last to buy.”
How to overcome that deficit is vital to effectively establishing your U.S. beachhead.
Possible solutions:
Form an advisory board composed of people from your target segments. They can help with introductions as well as help with shaping messaging and product/service capabilities.
Hire or contract a person in the U.S. who is well networked in the target segments and make sure that they have a person from your Australian operation assigned to them, living in proximity in the U.S. for the first couple of years of operation. That knowledge transfer is vital to success. Trying to get this done with just episodic visits is a formula for dragging out the time and ending up with a more expensive slower time-to-market. It has been tried before and while the airlines do well from it, the company does not.
Hire a salesperson from an organization that will be your direct competitor in the U.S. and who has a well-established deal pipeline that you can verify, before hiring them.
These early sales need to be gained via intelligent, diligent networking. Why, because the early sales depend a lot on trust and on your own you are a stranger in a new country. There is no foundation for trust. That is why leveraging people who are already trusted as advisors is mission critical. But you must budget to buy their focus and time.
