International Market Insight Pro

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You enter China fully equipped, at least you thought so. You are armed with well defined growth strategies, localization processes, topnotch expats, and elite local talent. At the end of the day, if you do not achieve sales goals in this hot market, you ask yourselves: “what did I do wrong and where should I start to rethink my growth strategy?

Let’s ask ourselves the following questions:

1. Is the growth strategy by, from, for this market?

2. Are we failing to address any key components in the local value chain, such as government entities?

3. Have we built a winning team united behind the management and is this team performing its A game?

4. Have we done enough internal communication to put everyone on the same page of the objectives, goals, strategies, and performance measures?

If you are not confident enough to give all positive answers, you need to rethink the strategy.

Our recommendations:

"Think local, act local" or "think global, act local" are becoming cliches in global business. Pasting country names into business plan does not mean localizing your strategy. How many of us are truly willing to change the fundamental way of thinking and the process with which we are so comfortable?

To understand what locals think is not that difficult if you are willing to try a few things after you check in your five star hotel.

1. Go visit your customers/consumers. If you have done it before with your local team, you probably saw the side they arranged you to see. The advice is to go with a third party.

2. Get involved in-person, not just dial onto global conference calls. It is especially critical that you are there on the ground during the initial assessment stage of any projects, learning first hand, building relations with your customers and consumers.

3. Build up a team that includes long-term expats, expand expats’ responsibilities to perform as corporate ambassadors. They know your global operation and corporate culture. They not only work with your local team and bridge local and corporate, but also lead as role models to guide and train locals. They can influence the local company culture to ensure growth in a fiercely competitive market.

Share with us your thoughts and send your comments to:iProTeam@imi-pro.com
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The Chinese government has strong impact on industry trends. When business to business multinationals miss government marketing from their business plan when entering China market, the growth process will most likely constrained. The future of some industries is in the hand of the Chinese government.

The ties between China major OEMs and the government are invisible to many western businesses, especially after most of the major state-owned companies became “corporations”. But they are not the same corporations as you think they are. When doing business with them, you will soon realize that it is not Kansas anymore and there is always a man behind the curtain.

“Okay, got it, tell me what to do with it”, if you ask, our experience is to build up the relations with the government:

1. Understand what aspects of your business are influenced by government policies and regulations, and how to develop a strategy to address these impacts

2. Build internal capabilities to penetrate the government system. Please do not mix government PR with government marketing, they are different concepts. Government marketing is a strategy under business growth strategy, it is a well structured government system and industry penetration roadmap and execution plan, government PR serves as an execution tool of the government strategy

3. Build long term relations with the government, execute effective government PR under the guidance of the government marketing strategies. That will help you to stay ahead of the industry trend, and expedite the speed to entry market. But government relations cannot be built overnight, it takes efforts and strategies and you need to do the right thing at the right time

4. Work with a consulting agency that has extensive experience with government relations in your industry. This will make it easier for you to reach the right people. Guanxi (connections) is crucial.

imiPro worked with a multinational company client that wanted to seek new product development opportunities with a major China commercial transportation vehicle manufacturer, but several visits only led them to middle management who could not make any decisions. They later engaged imiPro, we helped client project team leader reached the central government unite that is in charge of the industry sector, reached C-level executives of the potential OEM partner, and the results were almost instant.

Just remember, the government rules. We have experience working with Global Fortune 500 clients on government marketing cases and introduced the Government Value Chain as part of the business/industry value chain. If you have a business case, please contact us for more details.
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