Understanding The American Market And Making The First Sales
Do you know how many international companies attempt to enter the US market but fail every year?
The U.S. Labor Department keeps track of how many new jobs come from businesses that are less than a year old, about 3 million came from startups in 2016, and more than a $3.5 trillion annual direct investment. Many businesses arrive with ambitious plans to penetrate the new market. However, a good majority will have to leave in a year or two after failing to succeed and produce meaningful results.
As an immigrant and a marketing consultant for startups working mostly with founders from outside the US, I can say that the main problem here is the inability to read and adapt to the needs and features of the American market. But it could be 100% avoidable, should businesses have the right tools to monitor the market and develop proper strategies.
No market is identical to another
First thing everyone needs to understand before even bringing their product to a new country is that no market is identical to another. Many companies believe they can enter new markets by following the same playbook that made their business profitable domestically. Truth is, there is no guarantee the target audience will even remain the same in the US, let alone the tactics. In my experience, it often happens with startups entering the US market that they start as a B2B or an enterprise solution back home but turn into a small check cloud service for SMB or even a B2C solution.
Make your life easier — join an accelerator
To not be taken aback by your business possible transformations in the US, join an accelerator. At the moment, there are over 400 of them in the United States — all willing to help your business grow. Participating in the accelerator will familiarize one with the local market, business culture and traditions. It will walk a startup through the unknown and make sure it is ready to set sail independently with a range of useful tools from networking with partners and investors to pitching to consumers. Still getting into the US accelerators is not easy, they get around 500 to 5000 applications for each batch.
All in all, it is a perfect solution for startups who know little to nothing about the American market as well as for those who learn best within short periods of time (the average duration of the acceleration program is three months).
Ask yourself who exactly your clients are and what is your clientele size
Once essentials are under the belt, ask yourself who exactly your clients are and what is your clientele size. Failure to focus on the right audience will result in unclear tactics, lost outreach, imperfect messaging and other marketing missteps that cost money and put your future sales under scrutiny.
In order to avoid what I call marketing illusions — an erroneous understanding of one’s target market and competitors, there are three steps you can take to be prepared for your first sale: 1- define your market, 2- identify your competitors and 3- tune your sales strategy based on your market and competitors features. Let’s go in more detail from here:
Define your Target Market
Over the years, I have been specializing in marketing consulting for numerous IT-startups and realized that the US market is highly transparent. There are indeed plenty of websites as obvious as census.gov that possess an enormous amount of data on any market niche. Sometimes, you just need time and a skillful programmer with experience in analytics who will be able to organize huge inflows of data to make sense of what kind of market and target audience you are dealing with.
As an alternative, use Lead411 or ZoomInfo. These two are great B2B products where you can manually search companies with your own criteria, by market niches and categories. For a fee, you can extract data too.
And as I already mentioned, the US market will most likely be different from the one at home. That is why I also recommend creating customer development questionnaires/interviews and talk to potential clients via Linkedin or at trade shows. These activities will aid in developing your product’s market fit and ensure your product is surely solving the clients’ problems. However, do not expect that people will be participating in these “focus groups” for free: like for any marketing project, you will have to put off some budget. Gift card compensation will do its job too.
Another tip, use Upwork to find people that fit your target audience. It is a website for freelancers who you can hire to complete customer development sessions.
Define Your Competitors
A rule of thumb when looking for competitors — they do not always exist as a solution similar to yours. For example, many taxi companies could not perhaps see Uber or Gett as a threat because these startups came up with a different medium rather than traditional calling. And if you are working in IT industry, you must check competitors in an “offline” zone too just to avoid unpleasant surprises.
Crunchbase.com
Crunchbase is a valuable startup database and startup analysis tool to look for competitors. In other words it is like a barometer of the tech industry and its major players that also allows you to track investors, companies, and people.
Builtwith.com and Datanyze.com
These two companies scan websites and gather software usage data. They analyze CMS, marketing automation software, Web security, Web analytics and more to then display graphs and tables to support your marketing and sales decisions and help you better understand your competitors’ tactics.
HGData
If your startup works with backened software, HGData might come in handy too. It is similar to Builtwith and Datanyze but for server solutions.
Complete Your First Sale
After you defined your target market and competitors, there is only one thing to do: go and sell. Frankly, selling itself is not that tricky unlike finding the right medium and message for the sale to occur. In general, the US market loves intros and more importantly double opt-in intros. That means that a potential customer who you want to approach needs to say YES for the intro to happen either through replying to you on the street or putting their email for subscription.
However, if it is not the case, do cold approaching in person or online (Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook), just remember to have your sales kit at hand. The sales pitch, a product presentation, a list of product’s benefits that translate into client’s measurable results — all this, even if presented cold, might interest and convince the client to make a deal with you.
Another good habit to develop when you start selling in the US for the first time is regular follow ups. They show that you truly care about your product and your customer; and even if they are not buying, negative or neutral feedback is always a way to fix your market message.
Crave for more? Here are 9 steps to successfully bring you startup to the US! If you have any questions ping me on Twitter @marysam.
