Judging from the emails that I get, a lot of people in other countries read my blog. Today’s blog is for my readers in Europe, Asia, South America, Africa and within that the UK, Turkey, Russia, Japan, Norway and anywhere else I have missed.
I get emails with questions about how to get more international sales whether it is actually selling something, offering services or even getting somebody from another country to click through to their website. The bottom line is are you selling a good product at a good price.
If people can order your product or service, get it in a timely manner, find that you did what you said you would or that the product works, that is it. As I am fond of saying, there isn’t anything magical or supernatural about it.
When people order my books on tax preparation or money management (which deals with how to get jobs and what to do if you are laid off), they can see samples of my writing style and they generally know what they are getting into. The problem with dealing with people in international sales is sometimes you don’t know what is on the other side of the ocean, or shipping costs are prohibitive, or there is sometimes problem in the delivery method.
It is up to you as the seller to insure that the supply and distribution chain that you are using is a sound one so that you can get your product to your customer or client. Anything else than that will result in a bad deal for both you and your customer. Sure, you might make a sale but if you lose repeat business or word-of-mouth is that you aren’t a good place to get things from could kill your business.
Another problem is that if you have failed to do adequate localization, you might not be understood. Localization is a fancy word for tailoring your sales, your business to what the people in your target audience in their part of the world expect to see in their advertising and you need to insure that you don’t use any slang that might be considered offensive, cultural references from another country that don’t make sense, etc. Have you ever watched a television show from another country and even if you understand the language, get some slang that doesn’t make sense? Even watching some tv from the BBC here in the US I have to think about what was said, jot down some notes and research what some of the slang is to get some jokes. A lot of video games go through localization because some nations don’t like the level of violence in a game so the game producers have to tone down or remove or redo certain aspects of games. Same holds true with movies that are R rated and need to be edited with PG scenes.
Well, either that or stop watching BBC.
Test marketing is a good idea as well and if you know any people that speak the language or know the country you are selling to, it doesn’t hurt to ask them for help. People all over the world will forgive you if you don’t get their language straight in speech or print if you are trying to communicate with them.
In the meantime, hello to all my readers and friends from around the world and thanks for reading!
Kim Greenblatt
You are reading the profitable blog about international sales.