Three ways to break into new markets with your industrial products (without hiring more salespeople)
Scaling the growth of your industrial products into new markets is high-risk, expensive and takes time. Establishing a local sales force might seem like the obvious route. But what if this traditional strategy is actually slowing your growth and limiting your potential?
Even in the best of worlds, growing through local sales is a strategy that is only as fast as establishing your next local presence. Fortunately, there are better ways. Here are three ways to break into new markets without hiring a single local sales rep.
1. Simplify your sales funnel
Make your complex products easy to find and understand!
If your product system is complex, chances are you have found yourself with an even more complex sales funnel. Many people are involved, and there are even more steps to complete. Your sales take time, are resource-heavy, and are limited by geographic closeness to customers, or at least by time zone proximity. Customers tend to back out before they even get a chance to fully understand the value your products can provide to their business.
It doesn’t have to be this way! Many companies are stuck in a false belief that their product system is uniquely complex and that only human experience can make it understandable. The sooner you part ways with this belief and start digitalizing and simplifying, the sooner your sales will increase and cross borders to new markets.
2. Develop a custom digital design tool
Empower customers to configure their own solutions!
Your customers want the solution that they genuinely believe will solve their problems. And seeing is believing! If they can see your product solve their problems on the screen before them, while your competitors ask them to trust complicated documents, it doesn’t matter that your products must be shipped a few extra miles.
A digital design tool allows your customers to tailor the solution to their problems and place an order. But even if they choose not to, it will educate them and help them make more informed queries when they contact your sales rep. This greatly increases the chance for a solution that solves the problem well, makes the customer happy, and paves the way for a long and profitable relationship!
What is the best thing about your digital design tool? Geographic borders do not limit it, and it can be found by anyone, anywhere and at any time!
3. Establish local channel partnerships
Leverage local market expertise!
Being close to customers matters; your customers want to feel they can reach out to someone who understands their problems. But it doesn’t have to be one of your sales reps, it can just as easily be a local partner! Someone who knows their way around the local market and has the ability to connect the dots between the customer's problems and a solution that includes your products and services.
But why should the local partner choose to recommend your products to their customers, and not your competitors? Again, because seeing is believing. A simple sales funnel and a custom digital design tool make your products easy to understand and buy, and they can see the solution to their problems on the screen before them! They will recommend your products because, although they’re impactful, they’re still easy to understand, design into a larger solution, and buy.
Start opening up new markets today
A digitalized and simplified sales funnel, powered by a digital design tool, is the investment you need to break into new markets, increase sales, and shorten sales cycles. Besides boosting your sales in new markets, it will also provide you with the market insight you need to know where to focus your efforts to establish local market partnerships.
Even if your company excels in developing, manufacturing, and selling physical products, we find there’s often a significant and untapped opportunity for growth in the digital space. factor10 has helped several manufacturing companies digitalise and simplify their sales funnel, usually driven by developing a custom digital design tool for a complex product system. Contact us today to learn more!
/Per Rovegård, CTO & Consultant
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