5 Tips When Expanding Your Business Internationally
As a small business owner, you know how difficult to be to keep the momentum going. When this peak is reached, it may seem nearly impossible to overcome and even the best small business owners can feel like they want to throw in the towel. However, it’s important to note that you’re not alone in this! In fact, this stage of business is very common for business owners to experience.
For most businesses, taking the time to develop a growth plan is worthwhile. One avenue of business expansion is to take your organization overseas. Not only does this option expose your business to a new clientele, but it also creates new revenue streams to capitalize on.
Expanding Your Business
Whether you plan on opening a location abroad or simply offering your online services worldwide, it’s best to put a plan in place. The following are steps to help you and your business harness the power to expand your business globally.
1. Establish Your Business’ Presence
Figure out a gameplan for how you’d like to establish your presence where you want your business or products sold. Although this sounds easy, it can take some time, and having a good plan in place will help. If you are just planning on selling your product overseas, a cheaper solution might be to find a distributor or exporter that you trust.
If you are planning on having a business headquartered overseas, then you will want to invest time in finding the perfect location. You will want to do your research and be sure to hire the right management team with the expert skills needed. Once you have the right location and team, there is nothing stopping your business from being up and running.
2. Follow Local Labor Rules and Laws
Knowing the local business and labor laws in the country of the new business headquarters is paramount to business success. Is your organization labeled as a high risk business? If so, you’ll need to ensure you’re able to legally conduct business in that location.
This is very important because your business will be having an international team on payroll. If your business is headquartered in the US, you will have to fill out additional paperwork.
3. Adjust Sales Projections
It’s important to adjust your sales projections for your foreign location, especially in the beginning. This is true even if your second location will be supported by the local headquarters, in the beginning, or longer.
Preparing your foreign projections from the local headquarters should be done separately. This is very important because you want the new headquarters to stand on its own in time. Don’t worry if this takes longer than expected, there are a lot of factors at play that can impede on initial sales.
4. Distribution Logistics
How will you handle the distribution of your products to the overseas location? This is a question that will have to be handled relatively early in the business planning stage. Finding a distributor of your products in closer proximity to your new location will save time and money.
If your online business is simply expanding to accommodate international sales, how will you be shipping out goods?
5. Pre-Existing Merchant Account
Does your business have a pre-existing merchant account to accept payments? If not, you’ll need one for international transactions. When a business that will be selling products and/or located overseas approaches a traditional bank for a merchant account, they are often declined. The reasons for being declined are mainly due to fraud and chargebacks.
It is important to contact a high risk merchant account provider that deals with your type of business and understands what your business is trying to accomplish. Unfortunately, there are business who are shut down after the underwriting department realizes they are selling overseas. This is damaging to a business and can result in funds being frozen or delayed.
Final Thoughts
Growing your business and locating into the foreign and global market is intimidating for any business owner. Fortunately, with the right amount of determination and diligence, your business will expand and be profitable.
About the Author: Shawn Silver
CEO of PaymentCloud, Shawn Silver’s vision and determination to create a cohesive payments business. Today, we are a full-service payment processing solution that specializes in securing hard-to-place merchant accounts for businesses seeking credit card processing. With customer service at the forefront of everything we do, finding solutions for each merchant’s needs is paramount. To date, we have successfully supported tens of thousands of businesses in securing payment processing. From Fortune 100 companies to startups, we have the scale and size to board any merchant.
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