How to build a successful Export Plan

Internationalization certainly accounts for a complex challenge in the process of growing a business.

In fact, specific knowledge is required to establish a successful presence abroad to reach the best strategic decisions.

Without a systematic approach to internationalisation you could make some mistakes that can damage your global expansion, not to mention the resulting waste of resources and time.

That's why you need a framework that can act as a guide for the company's foreign growth: this is the Export Plan. 

In order to be able to draw up a successful export plan for your company, it is necessary to define the elements that cannot be missing from this particular document, let's look at them together.

How an Export Plan is structured

Every successful Export Plan has the following elements:

• Why export: the reasons for this choice can go beyond the objective of increasing company revenues, expanding with the aim of diversifying them, or dealing with demanding markets, high standards or competitors on the technological-commercial frontier.
• The business model and proposal valueand: what are the elements that create competitive advantage and what are the practices that make us different from everyone else. Tackling a challenging project such as entering a foreign market also represents a useful opportunity to focus on the company's strengths and weaknesses. Only through an in-depth knowledge of the company (history, values, organisation, skills, successes, failures, etc.) is it possible to implement actions to consolidate the strengths and correct the weaknesses.
• The target foreign market: what are the needs, the barriers to entry, the size of the demand, the analysis of the competition, the possible distribution channels and potential distributors;
• The economic and financial goals: the description of the financial objectives must be aimed at verifying the consistency between the sales and expenditure forecast and the availability of financial resources capable of compensating for any deficits between revenues and costs, also taking into account any overestimates of the former and underestimates of the latter .
• The operational plan: finally, this chapter contains the Action Plan of the project, which aims to give concreteness and credibility to the strategic intentions. The contents include for example: the human resources involved, their organization in the project and the assigned responsibilities; the assignment to each manager of objectives and activities; the definition of milestone and their distribution over time, including the moments of verification and revision.

The Export Plan is therefore a key tool for directing and coordinating actions of subjects inside and outside the company, and in this way guarantee the success of an expansion abroad for the company.

In other words, it is the compass of Italian companies that want to approach international markets: to sell abroad you need to define WHERE to go and HOW to face the market.

It is not possible to devote time and resources to unsuitable or unprofitable destinations. Through the study of the variables that we have reported just above, the Export Plan will in fact provide a clear hierarchy of the elements to be evaluated and prioritized for a successful export.

Are you interested in learning more about the Export Plan according to the Octagona method? At that time all you have to do is rely on our team of experts.

If you really want to develop your business abroad, and build a Quality Export Project, This is the opportunity you can't miss: don't hesitate to contact us.