Marrakech - a city of commerce

Hello,

After a nice few days in Marrakech I have so many ideas for this blog - so I might stretch this one out for a few weeks! The thing that I noticed most about this area is how it has adapted to making money from tourism. Morocco has kept its own identity with its traditional food that is served in all restaurants, snake charmers in the town square, traditional houses clad in the local pink mud. However, the locals are extremely good at finding ways to monetize this.

In the old centre traditional houses have been converted to riads or bed and breakfasts. Traditional lamps are still hand made and sold in hundreds of shops, spice shops lure you in with the promise that they can cure you of any ailment. Old fortresses or Kasbah's are being used to film in, a long list of pictures including Gladiator, Prince of Persia, Lawrence of Arabia, Babel and more have all been filmed in the area. Even local children will give you directions for a price, often even when you don't need them. Sadly if you don't give them what they want they do swear at you....

So what are the lessons to be learned? First of all look at what your company or you as a person are good and unique at and stick to that. Be proud of being a family owned business, or a giant one stop shop. If you are a gregarious sales person, make that the thing that works for you, or if you sell through your knowledge of your field then make that your USP. Do not let other people tell you you should fit into a mould or your company should do exactly what everyone else does. No one is perfect and we can all learn and grow, but if you have something you are good at it, stick with it and become even better at it.

Secondly, how can you make money out of it? Here is the bit where you do have to look at the competition and ask your customers what they want. What is a reasonable price? The reason I bought in one spice shop over another is that it was beautifully laid out, the owner was a charming man who demonstrated his products very well and entertained us with his story. Half the money making was in his products, the other half was the show he put on for us.

Lastly, if you do find people don't want to pay (enough) for your services or goods, unlike some of those  kids put on a brave face and walk away. There will always be more customers and your reputation is more important than to react badly!
 
If you like this blog or think that anyone else you might know, please make sure you click the follow button to be notified of any new posts. This is a public blog that is open for anyone to follow and I do welcome any feedback. Do you have certain questions on international sales or business that you want answered? Examples you want to give? Let me know!

Have a good week.

International business

Hello!

Want to learn something for free that will help you grow your business? Why restrict yourself to your home country for clients when there is a huge and ever expanding market out there. So read on!


Why could you do with this advice? Surely you know how to run your own company or division...Because a. globalisation is here to stay, b. the recession is forcing companies to either cut costs or increase their customer base and c. going global is not as easy as you may think.

Even large companies like Fiat make big blunders, for example when they created the Croma model of car and launched it in Holland. Unilever had very prominently marketed the exact same brand name for butter for decades, resulting in very poor car sales. If Fiat had used a good trademark attorney and consulted staff in any of their Dutch dealerships this could have easily been avoided.

An American company I worked for could not understand why we could not roll out their marketing campaigns across the whole of Europe, Africa and the Middle East in a matter of weeks. It was often hard to explain that not only did we have to have all the material translated into several languages and products priced in different currencies, we also needed to make sure there was a requirement for these products in the various territories. Having one of the senior managers come over to Europe for several months really helped overcome this issue.

Many companies approach acquiring foreign clients, serving clients with a global footprint, finding foreign agents and distributors or setting up a foreign office the same way they would approach these matters if they were inside their borders. This simply is not the case and can cause you to make very expensive mistakes!
 
Here are a few of the indicators of what to look out for:

• Cultural issues. Is bribery accepted or expected in any of the countries you are targeting? How do people express themselves, what characteristics are appreciated in a manager or sales person? Is there a culture of asking questions or just doing as you are told?
• Language issues. Do you need to publish your marketing materials in every language on the globe? What languages are key? Do you need a native speaker to do this?
• Intellectual property. Do you have it secured for your products, company name, promotional materials etc? Do you know what countries will actively enforce any breach of this and which ones won't? What do you do to stop others from simply copying your work or reputation?
• Legal. Where are you getting your legal advice? Do your lawyers know the local laws of the countries you are working with? Do you have all your work with both suppliers and clients legally secured?
• Go direct or via channels? What is more important to you, having full control and retain all profit or get instant local knowledge and contact? Do you wish to work with third parties?
• Customer and technical support. Do you have staff who can communicate in the customer's own language or be on site the same day?

These are just a few examples, there are many more issues to consider! The main thing to do is keep your customer, employees and competitors in mind with everything that you do when dealing on an international basis. Make sure you are set up so that your competitors can't copy you, customers find it easy to deal with you, employees are happy to work for you and legally you are safe. Of course there are costs involved with taking care of these matters as there always are when you expand your business. However, sitting still is not an option unless you want to lose huge amounts of market share!

This is a first posting on my blog and I welcome anyone who has any questions, funny anecdotes in this area etc. I may be off line for a little while as I am going to Morocco this week - a sunny 23 degrees forecast!