Trading with emerging economies: Is your business missing out?
When you’re in business, you need to look out for development and sales opportunities 24/7. As the UK is one of the world’s most successful trading nations over many decades, if not for centuries, it can be difficult for some businesses to grasp the opportunities for trading with emerging nations and how to do it successfully.
Researching the market
The first thing you need to do when running a business is to see what businesses and people want in these emerging markets so that you can work on plans to develop products and services that they want and need. The traditional markets that you have, often lucrative and with a good track record in terms of you selling to them, will still remain, but are you missing those other possibilities to expand and sell into those emerging markets?
When you look at the growth of economies such as those in China, India and Brazil, you can see the potential for getting involved in their development plans. They took some time to emerge on the world stage, but now they are major players in terms of their economic clout. With the business world being more international than it has ever been, largely thanks to the immediate communications and marketing and selling options via the Internet, there is huge potential for businesses not only to tap into the traditional and currently important emerging markets, but to look for other markets that are bringing themselves to the global foreground.
The importance of the global market place
If you’re uncomfortable with stretching your business wings globally, don’t be. As an entrepreneur you want the widest market for your services and products. As well as your more traditional markets, you could look to make contacts with the major Asian, (especially Chinese) and South American economies. Forging links now means you have opportunities for a long term future. Of course, these economies also want to sell to the UK so you need to develop a USP to help them engage with what you have to sell to them.
New markets
It’s easy to forget that there are many new emerging markets coming into international business. Take the Seychelles – an island group of the east coast of Africa – and many African economies too. An entrepreneur such as Mukesh Valabhji, a Seychollois who has built the Intelvision multi service cable operator, has much to offer to potential investors in Africa and the Seychelles. He and his companies have significant investment portfolios that could be of interest to businesses that want to explore investment in new emerging markets. Learning more about Mukesh Valabhji and other successful businessmen around the world will give you inspiration on how you could get involved.
Connections are the key
Contacting, responding and keeping in touch with other businesses that might want to work with you is crucial. It takes time but if you’re patient and build relationships then you could do very well. You do need to have people in your business that understand that other countries do business differently to the UK. If you can do that, be adventurous, then you can tap into the emerging markets.
