Announce to the world that your company's products exist and are available for purchase. At ELF we took two approaches -- one we call the rifle-shot, and the other the shotgun, approach to letting the world know about our products. The rifle-shot approach was to enter a specific target country (the United Kingdom) and treat it in essence as another U.S. state. We were dealing with a relatively wealthy country with a small geographic area -- and ev-eryone there speaks English. So we did what we'd do here: created a 5,000-name mailing list, did a mailing, signed up for three industry trade shows, and placed small ads in the leading trade journals. And we started demonstrating our equipment to potential customers. Seven months later we had booked more than $1 million in sales. The disadvantage of the rifle-shot approach, for ELF at least, is that it allowed us to open only one new English-speaking country a year. But we felt that the rest of the world was also a huge untapped market for U.S. products, and the company that got there first and planted the seed would be the winner.
So in 1990 we moved to the shotgun approach, in which I traveled from country to country, staying a week or two in each, signing up as many reps and agents as possible, and visiting potential customers. In Korea, for example, I met with 10 potential agents in a week and got them started, with the understanding that based on performance one would eventually earn the right to become ELF's exclusive agent in Korea. After my six-nation, 11-week trip in Asia, close to 50 reps were selling ELF products. Within a year they had generated $2 million in orders. The advantage of that approach is that you can get into several countries quickly, limiting your costs to your travel expenses. The disadvantage is lack of control -- agents may not give your line the full attention you'd like it to receive. To this day we're very careful about handing out territorial exclusivity. Only a few of the very best and most aggressive agents have earned it.
Get yourself over there and sell. I can't emphasize that enough. You can do all the research in the world, but nothing can take the place of the old-fashioned sales trip. You'll quickly get a feel for where you'll succeed by the response, reactions, and orders you get. Despite all the reading I had done, there was no way I could have figured out ahead of time that Korea, China, Mexico, Hungary, and Trinidad would end up being hot markets for ELF. Or that back then we weren't ready to tackle the rich, technically sophisticated, and demanding markets of Japan and Germany. You make sales trips to Des Moines, Sacramento, and Pittsburgh, right? Get yourself to Bangkok, Taipei, and Santiago. It's really the only way, especially for a small company.
The power of the personal sales call by an American salesperson in a foreign country is incredible. You'll have a much higher closing rate there than at home. One week of travel in the Far East or Mexico is worth three months in our own flat domestic market. Plan your trips via the fax machine before you go. Get your leads from U.S. consulates and embassies, trade magazines, and the yellow pages for each country. The sources are endless.
Stick to what you know works. Don't change your product, sales pitch, marketing strategy, or corporate strategy just because you're now selling in a foreign country. Instead, just take the approach you've found successful at home and repeat it over there -- with, as I said, cultural nuances. In the United States, for instance, we might do as many as four or five equipment demonstrations a day. It's get in and get out. But in the United Kingdom, each demonstration takes more time. Potential customers there want more detailed demonstrations given to many more levels of company personnel, with long chats over coffee and lunch. Cultural nuances. We adjusted.
Imagine your current selling method as a sort of McDonald's that just needs to be transplanted to a different locale, with minor adjustments along the way. You'll run into naysayers who'll tell you it can't be done, but ignore them. Don't make things harder than they are. Make your standard proposal to your potential overseas customers, see what they say, and change your approach in whatever ways are appropriate. The old-fashioned American way of direct selling, promotion, and marketing works. Just sell and adapt.
The chances are good that you are sitting on a product or business method that looks ho-hum here at home in the face of your domestic competitors and customers but that will be considered miraculous and in tremendous demand by an overseas customer. At ELF, for example, we found that customers from Malaysia to Chile to Hungary were willing to pay big money for our speedy delivery and our customization capabilities -- things we provide every day in the United States as a matter of course. They thought we were NASA or IBM -- and we didn't spend much time persuading them otherwise.
Strongly consider raising your prices. If you do raise them, when you get an order it'll be so profitable you'll feel a charge of excitement running up and down your spine. You'll find that even after routine markups to account for the extra costs of going international, your prices will often be lower than those of your other worldwide competitors from Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom -- at least for manufactured products. I remember how shocked I was when a Japanese agent I was courting expressed concern that I might scare off some potential purchasers who might doubt our quality because our prices were so low. Availability of product, speed of delivery, need for new technology, and government money often override price considerations in booming overseas markets.
