Sooner or later, the team of any IT company asks itself the question - to be a global company or to become the leader of its local market. Reasoning about this question is based on many components, what product the company is developing, the niche in which the company operates, the desire of the founders to change something. If you decide to go global, then the book will help you formulate your goals, set goals for your team, and show you the sequence of actions that are worth spending efforts on the path of global growth.
The author himself says that his book is like a recipe for mayonnaise: all its ingredients are simple and well-known, but it is they, taken in the right proportions and mixed in the right order, that will help you build a successful international business and avoid mistakes that can lead to serious financial losses.
Personality, company, market and customers
The book examines global development issues from several angles - from the point of view, personality, company, market and customers. It is in these three planes that it is necessary to work, manage, act and through this directly or indirectly influence changes and the achievement of goals. I will not list everything that is written in the book about personality types, power, corporate policy, internal communications or motivation, but I note that this author's approach showed me that achieving goals can and should be influenced at all, without exception, levels - you, the company, the clients.
#Example
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#Inside
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Sales is a manufacture. Instead of partnering with celebrity salespeople, it is more profitable to approach corporate sales with multiple employees with the skills to work through the stages of the sales funnel. The weak point in such a sales organization is communication through the stages of the funnel, and it is very important not to lose valuable information in the chain.
Go global
Actually, the key idea of the book is how to build international development and sell globally. The book offers 7 important steps that you can take to potentially become a global company.
# 1 Become successful in the local market
The first customers and the first sales made in the local market are the first things to do. The belief in global scaling after success in the local market is confirmed by the theses that entering the global market requires budgets, and the first local customers will be their source. The availability of a shareware plan, the launch of an affiliate program, investments in low-budget advertising activities - training webinars, for example, will help to reduce the exit risks, and to increase the output of a completely new product that competitors do not have.
# 2 Image and product positioning
At the beginning of the global journey, it is important to build product positioning and image. How? Working with opinion leaders and analysts, getting into the Gartner magic quadrant, use the media with bold statements through them. The above is unlikely to attract leads, but it will create trust in the potential user in the brand at the stage of making a purchase decision.
#Example
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#Inside
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#3
For myself personally, I got acquainted with the most capacious definition of partnership, which I will give below. In addition, the chapter tells about the design of affiliate programs, what a partner needs to build a channel for your product, how to correctly formulate a vendor's expectations from a partner, and the disadvantages of an affiliate channel. Special thanks to the author for the proposed comprehensive methodology for auditing an affiliate network and did it on the first day after reading. And here is the definition, which is not in the eyebrow, but in the eye.
#Inside
Partnerships are equal relationships. Neither party pays for the work performed; both partners agree on a joint business and profit sharing. Accordingly, in such a relationship there can be no raised voices or condescending attitude, the parties must respect each other's rights.
#Inside
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#4
The main leitmotif of the chapter is the close connection of international marketing with building an affiliate channel. One cannot exist without the other, and marketing is exactly the cement that holds your relationship with the affiliate network together and develops it. As a result, you will receive 20% of sales from your own marketing activities, and the remaining 80 will be brought to you by partners.
# 5 Local presence and direct corporate sales
Selling is a harsh reality filled with stress, pressure, frustration and addiction. How to ride corporate sales, what kind of salespeople do you need and do you need at all, what should be the sales funnel, how to evaluate the quality of work at each stage of the funnel, when to open an office on site, all these questions are answered in this chapter and it contains the most examples.
#Example
This story actually happened. I had an expensive $ 300 Mont Blanc pen. I accidentally forgot it on the desk of a high-ranking buyer in charge of the project. After that, our relations improved markedly, the processes began to flow smoothly and without conflicts. So my mistake and forgetfulness became a successful trick that worked perfectly in the conditions of the Middle East - take note.
# 6 After-sales service, service provision, updates
The next important step towards a global presence is learning how to provide quality services and a positive customer experience. Whether the services are provided directly or through a partner channel, the result should always be the same: a satisfied customer who received everything he expected and wants to renew the contract for the next year. How to hear the right customers, assess their requirements, decide on the necessary changes, what investments in customer service need to be made and what promises for customer service to make? The author answered all these questions very broadly and systematically.
#Example
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#7
How long does it take to achieve leadership in the postindustrial era? How to maintain leadership? How to raise the bar when you seem to have reached the top? What are the parameters to understand that you are already a leader? How to create a unique competitive advantage? The reader will find answers to all these questions in this chapter of the book, which made the book for me my desk immediately after reading.
#Inside
Number 1 can be decomposed into different parameters and applied to different divisions and product qualities. For example, you can be the highest quality antivirus, the fastest support, or the most mentioned brand in the press. This goal resonated with the employees, was easily integrated into any presentation and suited any conversation, so the prisails engineer could be told that his pilot in a virtual machine should be the fastest and most efficient and, if competitors installed a pilot within two weeks, we should do it in one week, and so on.
Bonus
National characteristics - regional markets, peculiarities of the mentality of the participants.
#Inside
Arabs, Spaniards, Americans.
Conclusion>
What did I like about the book?
- Clear structure of the book presentation logic with tags problem, tools, solutions and examples.
- Approach to global development through the prism of ourselves, the company and the market.
- Inside the Kaspersky Lab with numbers, actions, policies and relationships within the company.
- How to build and develop an affiliate channel and when to start doing it.
- A harmonious combination of theory and practice, with an obvious preponderance towards the latter.
- A story about an abandoned pen, company politics and a bonus about mentality.