How to Penetrate India, Russia and Middle East Markets

I would like to share my experience on working with different markets and regions. India is globally approved as the IT Hub or the next Silicon Valley for software and software related services. With its vast experience, India has a very well matured process that cans serve global markets. For its experience most of Europe and US are well covered. With thousands of Software companies registering in India every day, the job becomes really tougher for bigger companies to penetrate existing markets further.

Thus, the Fast Growth Markets gets a key focus agenda for any software company. But it is not as easy as what we speak and think, because the matured processes that we have created may meet global requirements but matured process alone will not help to tap business. It took years to build confidence in US and Europe, similarly we have to repeat the same for Fast Growth Markets

Each Fast Growth Markets are different by itself.

India: has huge accessibility for skills & resources but demands a tagline from American or European market. Domestic products (or) service to meet domestic requirements are very less encouraging. Even, if recognized the pricing become a tough task. By nature Indians would like to negotiate a lot. It doesn’t matter what, even if negotiation wins one rupee, it is considered a great deal. Most likely, doing business with Indians and Americans are quite similar. You can open the discussion with anyone. Like Americans, Indians are most likely to explore, get educated, and to advertise their requirements but the decision will always be in favor of American or European tagline, experience, brand and also a very well negotiated deal.

Key Message: Co-selling of best brand is a good way to start

Russia: This is a closed market. Middle East and Russia are relatively similar. The demand here never meets supply, because of this, there are always opportunity for software and related services. For software and services market, Russia could be another US or Europe story because most huge industries deserves digitalization but the resources who could understand this transition are very minimal. The only problem with Russia is language and conservative market. They do not encourage foreign solutions; they highly encourage and approve local solutions. Most business deals are likely to happen through community, seller and buyer are very well connected. Like negotiation for India, Security becomes the key focus for any business deals in Russia. They always expect a secured deal with the very well know neighbor rather outsourcing to a stranger. They are ready to wait instead to deal with the stranger. You have to be local and get local

Key Message:  Register locally and employ locally, focus on skill development

Middle East: Middle East is half western and half Russian. Most recommending authorities are either outsourced or resourced from India, US or Europe because of which they are ready to explore opportunities but the decision making is conservative. More than security, the trust, relationship and experience play a key role. In simple terms, Middle East is a reference market. Even for a job, you need to be referred. Your colorful presentations and innovative solutions will be heard but to convert them as a deal, a strong local recommendation is must

Key Message: Explore opportunities to work with domestic companies.

Tips to improve the performance of sales team

In the era of innovation, I see a need for maturity in sales team which is more important than anything because in today’s situation most of the potential sales opportunities are facing lot of hurdles and are forcibly pushed to be called as a dead lead without even understanding the size of an opportunity.

1)     Stingy investment in sales team:

It always takes some time to see return on Investment in sales because sales is always connected to decision making which is based on the industry standard sales lifecycle. The anxiety and restlessness makes the stingy investor even stingier. A poor performance starts with poor investment and this will continue to affect each and every part of the sales team. A poor investment is equal to poor confidence at own cost.

2)     Duplication of sales efforts:

The processes become more important when growth becomes evident. No matter what, all organizations will be compelled to invent or follow some process into system. The structure of the process is always dependent on the size and demands of your business. Inability to choose the right processes that business demands is the key concern in today’s business environment. I see most of the prospects were somehow contacted twice from the same organization to achieve same results and this is even worse when they are customers.   

3)     Lack of customer exposure and product knowledge:

The key skill expected out of an inside sales team is to open the customer gates towards opportunity. Imagine a situation, when an inside sales agent got through a CIO of a billion dollar company on a cold call but not able to explain the purpose of the call (or) answer his questions and still trying to fix an appointment with his sales head to meet his weekly targets. If this sounds scary, then this is the reality which most companies face today. Most of the sales calls are being dropped before even understanding the opportunity and sometimes they are weighed small before understanding the actual opportunity size

4)     Lack of communication - inability to position the company services in-front of the customers:

Technology connects the world – Accepted!! But communication always plays a key role in leveraging the technology. In most successful businesses, 2 hours of call opened the gates for billion dollar deals which created lakhs of employment opportunities. The same is the reason for failure. In most companies, the agents were not able to properly communicate the actual potential of their services but still the need pushes the customer for a second level discussion. Here, in this discussion, the opportunity was not understood properly and the same was communicated to sales head. The sales head focusses only on the small opportunity that was already identified and somehow closes the deal. Here only a small portion of the opportunity was achieved and the rest is always open!

You can see the above 4 hurdles are well handled in most successful companies.