Expanding its export presence in the tech industry
The amount of high growth French tech companies reaches new peaks every year. In this context, the Startup Nation, as France is often referred to, is seeing its number of champions multiply and reach significant valuations. While we can rejoice over this observation, it is necessary all the same to state that most of these businesses’ sales volume is generated on a national scale, or eventually on a European one. It is therefore important for French tech players to transform themselves and increase their influence on a global scale, to become essential benchmarks and disseminate their innovations more widely.
Trading internationally is not the same as selling in France
Before getting into enticing international ventures, it is wise to prepare thoroughly in order to successfully achieve your project and avoid setbacks of any kind.
It is essential for businesses to acknowledge that is it not possible to apply the French sales model to the commercialization of your offer in other countries. Even if the solution fulfills universal expectations, there are many points to consider, specific to the customs of each country where you wish to establish lasting business relations.
Businesses also ought to make changes and adjustments to adapt their offer to the targeted market’s needs. Even if the overall need is universal, detailed implementation may reveal functional differences that need to be addressed. These adaptations enable us to meet specific market expectations and can also be growth opportunities for service offers built around these developments.
Choose the right partner
Working with the right local partner to accelerate the sales cycle of your offer is essential, and enables you to take the right first steps. This partner, who is already well established locally, will be able to adopt the right codes, reassure and convince the first customers to subscribe to the offer. Obtaining these quick wins is a formidable gas pedal, enabling you to quickly gain a foothold in an unfamiliar territory and to obtain references that will reassure future customers of the value of the proposed offer.
The notion of local partnership is therefore central. If a distributor can make sense, an even stronger point of acceleration will be for structures that are able to do so to acquire a stake in or acquire local structures. The latter’s teams will then be even more mobilized to market and deploy the proposed offers. This approach, which admittedly requires the mobilization of many resources, is particularly virtuous if we are to position ourselves sustainably as a benchmark local player. However, this resource-intensive approach only makes sense as far as the company’s presence in the target country will generate significant potential over the long term. The market must therefore be carefully analyzed.
Exporting French technology is therefore an exciting project, but one that requires constant investment if it is to bear fruit. In this context, players who know how to make the right choices will be able to access real growth drivers and position themselves as the true ambassadors of French tech on the international stage.
By Christian COR, Saaswedo’s CEO