Business

Stay Away From The Bogeyman!

21/09/2021 By Fennobiz

Five Steps to Successful International Sales Channel Creation

You want to enter a new foreign market? Let’s assume you have a reasonably mature B2B product or service and an existing customer base in your home market that keeps your cashflow in good shape while you are looking for growth in new markets.

You might as well take this in already now: a good product or a lower price alone are not going to be enough to cut it in entering new markets. “A good product will sell itself” is one of those ideas that will sooner or later lead your new business venture into trouble – in the hands of the bogeyman!

1. Back to Basics: Understanding Your Target Market

Find out how business decisions are made and based on which criteria, what the local cost structure is and also what the local price level is in comparison to other potential markets. You might very well also note that in one country price plays a more important role in decision making than quality (and other factors) and in another one, it is the other way around. And we are talking about Europe here.

2. Set Your Expectations Right

Overestimated expectations are common, both in terms of time and results. Locals will be able to tell you about the management decision making process in the country – it may differ considerably from that at home. Is it teamwork or is it definitely the customer boss, who makes all the decisions? In other words, in B2B sell to the right people. The less you have the bases covered – existing meaningful references and a mature product and support strategy and offering to name a few – the longer it will take to get results. It is healthy to expect that it will take longer to get results than you think.

3. If You Are New to the Channel Business Model

Put your best people into the new market entry process. All too often we see people put into this role that have no previous international sales experience nor an understanding of what success in the market entry requires. It takes full commitment and consistent follow-up from the company management of the implementation to get the results you want.

Accept the idea that someone will be making money while selling your product. Channel partners are an extension of your sales force and must be an integral part of your sales strategy. While at it, ensure that your employees have the right and respectful attitude towards your channel partners. This is not automatically the case.

Killing a carefully built sales channel is just a phone call away. The easy way to do this is by selling direct to your reseller’s customer. We have yet to see a well-built and functioning hybrid sales model. The motivation to sell your products disappears in the channel the moment the sales people suspect that you will take their customers from them after they have done the hard part of the sales process.

Get professional support to create a clear and straightforward contract document. None of that single-page nonsense, it will do nothing to build confidence in your business partner about your professionalism and long-term focus into the business relationship. Think of different and possible scenarios in running the business and use examples in your contract on how you will handle them, if necessary. Use the contract negotiation process to build the confidence towards your company as a business partner.

4. Support Your Business Partners

Talking about the sales process – supporting your channel partners is one of your most important tasks. Proper training on your products and strengths up front, support in localising your sales material, common media releases and whatever marketing activities you can afford are the basic thing. Don’t leave your channel alone after signing the contract – it is a common mistake that leads to disappointing results. Instead: feed the channel with as many quality leads as you can.

Keep the channel sales teams motivated, repeat the training at reasonable intervals, create channel programs and organise sales meetings to let them feel they are part of a well-working and professional business. A bit of fun will not hurt!

5. Grow Your Business Together with Your Channel Partners

Keep your channel management well informed of your upcoming new developments and if at all possible, plan your new product launches and marketing activities together. Use the full force of getting the launch messages through to the field using your own and your channel’s resources by training the teams in advance of the events. Self-evident you say? Unfortunately not – just a short while ago we were looking at a large multinational company missing this opportunity.

Consider this: you may think it is expensive to use professionals. Put amateurs on the job and you will see, how expensive it can really get. Follow these first simple tips and it will help you keep the bogeyman at bay – from ruining your precious new business.

Getting 2021 going

17/01/2021 By Fennobiz

Welcome to the new year! While you are sipping your coffee or tea, here some updates for you on what is going on in the Swiss ICT business. We are now already at the beginning of the 3rd week in the new year… how did that happen?

As Covid-19 is a key topic everywhere, let’s start with that: the infection numbers in Switzerland have been very high for several months and the good news is that slowly but surely they are improving now. At the peak level in November there were well over 10.000 new infections in a day (!) and the latest day figure announced by the health authorities on Friday, January 15th was 2.396, the seven-day average having come down by 21% from the previous week.

The impact of the pandemic on the Swiss ICT business has not really differed much from that elsewhere. A recent study from August to October 2020 by the market and social research institute gfs-zürich showed that in two thirds of the surveyed 503 companies with 4 to 49 employees work could be moved to home offices without major issues.

The Swiss federal government has just announced significant new measures to protect the people against the upcoming third wave, which is expected to be accelerating the infection rates due to the new virus variant. From Monday the 18th of January the restaurants, museums, zoos and shops that do not sell only products for the daily use will be closed until the end of February. Sports events cannot be organised with spectators. It is now also required for people to work from home, if at all possible.

European media commented earlier that Switzerland is not closing its ski resorts, although some neighbouring countries requested that. Actually the decisions are made in the cantons, not on federal level and not all the ski resorts in Switzerland are open now. Well, skiing now seems to be possible in Austria, too.

Not that there would not be enough snow! A LOT of snow has covered the country – in canton Zurich we got some 30 – 40 cm of new snow and in the Alps the figure was closer to two metres in the last few days. This came down basically in two days of snowing and of course caused some major problems for traffic. In canton Zurich about 2.500 calls for help were made to the local authorities, often concerning fallen trees blocking roads.

e-ID vote coming up

There is going to be a very interesting national vote taking place on March the 7th: the Swiss will be deciding whether they want to accept the e-ID law proposed by the Swiss federal government or not. The idea is to make it simpler and more safe to identify oneself on the internet.

It is very common that there is resistance in Switzerland for such proposals and then a referendum is organised, often also with an alternative proposal to be voted on. This time this is not the case and if the Swiss folk vote no, it will take again several years to get a new proposal on the table without any solution to be used in the meantime.

What exactly the e-ID will look like, is not defined in the law. It will be used for identification in public and private online services. Obtaining the e-ID is voluntary for individuals and therefore online service providers will have to allow identification with other methods, too.

The creation of an e-ID has been in the works for some twenty years in Switzerland and it will be very interesting to see, what will happen in March – it is not completely sure that the law will be approved.

Swiss EPD (Elektronische Patientendossier): first implementation in canton Aargau

At least this is the way it was announced in December. We have read about other pioneering implementations of electronic patient (or “health”) records in at least Basel and in Geneva that have been in use for some time and are being developed further. Nevertheless, this is an important event and the rest of the EPD systems should be implemented during this year in Switzerland. The creation of the EPD systems is the main eHealth initiative and obviously a topic generating much discussion in the Swiss healthcare sector and among the public.

The EPD is a regional or national level database that will contain health information concerning the individuals living in Switzerland – that is, those persons that have decided to register for this system that is entirely voluntary for individual persons. For the hospitals and other healthcare providing organisations it is mandatory. The model has been under development for a long time and now the current version of the Swiss eHealth strategy is pushing the actual implementation in the field – the cantons being in the driver seats.

What does this mean for companies with eHealth-related solutions? You will have to ensure that your solution has an interface to those EPD systems.

In the starting phase the EPD will contain mostly documents – typically in PDF form and it will take some time, before structured patient data from tests will be recorded, according to some comments. How the documents are going to be recorded into the EPD remains open and particularly the private family doctors – of which there are still thousands – are not too keen to start doing that.

As a matter of fact – if you understand German and are interested in this topic, go to the Swiss national TV website www.srf.ch and search for EPD. You will get 4.036 search results, some of the newest ones on the above-mentioned EPD implementation in Aargau. It will give you an idea on how much discussion this matter is generating in Switzerland!

Onnistuuko vientimyynti etänä?

28/05/2020 By Fennobiz

Media on täynnä artikkeleita ja ohjeistusta siihen, miten “uudessa normaalissa” palavereita pidetään käyttäen jotain niistä lukuisista nettipalaverisysteemeistä, jotka nyt ovat kovasti pinnalla.

Yrityksissä näitä järjestelmiä on käytetty jo pitkän aikaa etupäässä sisäiseen palaverointiin ja siten on säästetty aikaa ja matkakuluja. Mutta onnistuuko myyntityö – ja varsinkin kansainvälinen myynti yhtä hyvin kuin tapaamalla ihmisiä paikan päällä? Nyt sitä on yhä useamman pakko yrittää.

Tekniikka tarjoaa tähän kyllä kohtuullisen hyvät mahdollisuudet ja silloin, kun on tarvittu erityisosaamista jostain kauempaa mukaan palaveriin, ohjelmistodemoja on ihan hyvällä menestyksellä järjestetty jo kauan aikaa netin yli. Haasteena on lähinnä ollut se, että kaikki asiakkaat eivät voi käyttää sellaisia työkaluja, jotka edellyttävät ohjelmiston asentamista heidän tietokoneilleen. Tai sitten yhtiön IT-osaston politiikka on ollut esteenä.

Paljon vähemmän on näkynyt kirjoituksia siitä, miten se huomattavasti haasteellisempi asia – netin yli käytävä myyntikeskustelu saadaan toimimaan halutulla tavalla ja tuottamaan tuloksia.

Kaikki tähän asti ihmisten välisestä kanssakäymisestä ja myyntikeskustelujen läpiviemisestä opittu on edelleen tietysti täysin relevanttia. Jotain kuitenkin näistä palavereista puuttuu tai se on vähintäänkin rajallista: kyky saada sitä olennaista, sanatonta palautetta asiakkailta, josta myös elekielenä puhutaan. Asiaa ei tee helpommaksi se, että myyjä joutuu usein puhumaan itselleen vierasta kieltä ja usein niin tekee asiakaskin.

Hyvällä neuvottelijalla ja myyjällä on yksi keskeinen taito kaiken muun osaamisen lisäksi: tilanneherkkyys. Joissakin ammateissa ympäristön ja vallitsevan tilanteen tajuaminen – “situational awareness” – on elintärkeää. Hävittäjälentäjillä on ohjaamo täynnä tekniikkaa, joka palvelee tätä tarkoitusta. Missä se on myyntihenkilöllä? Sen on pakko olla korvien välissä!

Miten sitä voi sitten kehittää? Vain harjoittelemalla ja keskittymällä siihen, mitä on tekemässä. Valmistautumalla myyntipalavereihin ulkomaisten asiakkaiden kanssa erittäin huolellisesti. Tutustumalla asiakkaan edustajien profiileihin LinkedInissä tai Xingissä ja ottamalla sieltä joitain pointtereita keskusteluun. Usein sieltä saa myös hyvän kuvan siitä, mikä heille on tärkeää ja mitä he arvostavat. Ottamalla huomioon kulttuurierot – miten asiakkaat kohdemaassa tekevät päätöksiä ja ostavat.

Olennaista on kuunteleminen. On kuultava ei vain se, mitä ja miten jotain sanotaan, vaan on myös oivallettava se, mitä ei sanota. Suomalainen usein suorasukaisuudessaan sanoo ääneen, mitä ajattelee, mutta näin ei suinkaan ole kaikissa kulttuureissa. Tätä ei opi kirjoista, vaan kokemuksen kautta ja olemalla itse läsnä kohdemaassa.

Tärkeää on myös sopivin välein tarkistaa kysymyksin, että on ymmärtänyt asiakkaan antamat kommentit oikein ja varsinkin, että kaikki ovat “samalla sivulla” ja ymmärtäneet heille kerrotut asiat.

Ja yleensä myös asiantuntevaa ja kielitaitoista apua on saatavissa kohdemaasta.

Näillä eväillä vientimyynti etänä onnistuu ihan hyvin. Oman kokemuksemme mukaan sinnikkyys palkitaan!

Fennobiz Business Podcast – Episode 2: Silverbucket for optimised project resources allocation

11/06/2017 By Fennobiz

Fennobiz Business Podcast: Silverbucket; Copyright 2017 Fennobiz GmbH In this second episode of our Fennobiz Business Podcast our guest is the CEO of Silverbucket, Mr Tuomas Mikkola. The company has developed a must-have tool for allocating project resources in an optimal way. We at Fennobiz represent Silverbucket in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

You can track and plan the resource allocation in your company up to a point with a spreadsheet, but once you have, let’s say a hundred people in the organisation – it starts to be really difficult to have an overview of the resource situation over time. Moreover, it will get hard to share the information while having a single, accurate version of it available at all times to multiple members of the organisation. Interestingly enough, Silverbucket started off from this challenge – what to do, when spreadsheets are no longer good enough?

Listen in to this conversation with Tuomas to find out, why so many customers have taken this SaaS solution into use. You can start saving money in 30 days or less by ensuring the optimal allocation of your project resources.

Interested? Contact us and we will tell you more about this solution and we will be happy to arrange a free, 30-day trial for you with the initial training to get you going.

This interview was recorded in English.

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Neu: Fennobiz Business Podcast – Episode 1: RELEX Solutions

23/05/2017 By Fennobiz

Hallo und willkommen zu unserem Podcast, wo wir die verschiedenen Software-Lösungen von unseren Geschäftspartnern diskutieren. Wir bei Fennobiz GmbH vertreten diese Unternehmen in der Schweiz.

In dieser Reihe von Podcasts werden wir uns auf die Endkunden konzentrieren und insbesondere welche Ergebnisse sie mit diesen Lösungen erzielen können.

In dieser Folge ist unser Gast Dr. Timo Ala-Risku von RELEX Solutions. Er leitet das RELEX-Geschäft auf den deutschsprachigen Märkten.