The epic path from a small business to a medium-sized business is something you will never forget. You’ll know that you have attained a large size when you have multiple locations from which you do business. Slowly you will begin to concentrate on linking these separate businesses so that you can have a fluid and strong machine. Expansion doesn’t have to be regional or national, because it can be international. Breaking into a new market requires willpower, logistical and financial strength that can only be amassed with growth and or solid backing. Creating a strong enterprise requires dedicated and brilliant minds. People with new and innovative ways of thinking must be mixed with veterans that know how to protect your company also. In the midst of your rise to recognition around the world, valuing profits that come in the short term, over the key factors of a bolstered structure will be your sudden boom and bust cycle. The thing is though, that if you don’t have fantastic communication, and bridge the oceans and skies to keep your business moving in one fluid caterpillar-like movement, each new location will be fighting alone.
A followed doctrine
The word doctrine can put some people off. It sounds very much like conforming to one way of thinking. In a sense, yes that’s purely true however it’s more so about being in tune with the modus operandi of the central lifeblood. Innovation surrounds a set of principles, and these are things like company culture, your distinct aims, cherishing uniqueness in design, making standalone products and services that cannot hoped to be emulated accurately around the world. It’s basically, what you believe in and the fundamentals that make up the heart and soul of your business.
It would be foolish to expect to hire the best talent around and expect them all to think as you do. However, since they do work for you, making an effort to include them in and win them over to your way of thinking is absolutely crucial. They say it’s lonely at the top, and that’s because it is. Surrounded by great minds, that have superb skills but none of them think like you. Molding a company to your mind means continually upholding the standards that mean so much to you. This is why you need to communicate to all members of your business, whether they are at your location or abroad, to follow company culture guidelines at all times. A bit like a manifesto, the company culture you give birth to and then preside over, will filter out through memos, research and development briefs, and verbally communicated in meetings.
Confidence to negotiate
It’s common to think that it’s a bit rich to give your confidence to staff members that are yet to prove themselves. Yet, you do need to give them your confidence to some degree, even though it may come in the form of a leap of faith. This comes to the fore with an accelerated danger when you need employees to negotiate a deal on your behalf. If you are unable to fly in to your locations abroad, then you will have to rely on the middle management and of course your senior boardroom members to get the best outcome for your business. Giving them a list of proposals they should make with a potential partner, a regulatory and or political entity is not enough. Your negotiating team must be filled with people who you trust in the most sincere way possible when it comes to their professional competence.
Booking your chosen team into a seminar in international meeting skills, will arm them with the tools they require to meet a superior standard of understanding, negotiating, problem resolving, and solution finding. The communication skills they will learn, particularly useful for multilateral meetings that require some level of consensus building, can bolster them for intense locking of horns. For example, you are concerned about a particular tariff or regulation that is hindering your ability to thrive as much as you have in other places, in one of your locations. Other businesses are happy with the current state of regulations because it benefits them and they seem as if they will block any attempt you wish to make to change them. You are dealing with the regulator, various governments, various politicians, economists, international relations experts and of course your rivals in business. Your team must have the charm and suave attitude of not openly treating your opposers as enemies. Approaching a disagreement in a diplomatic fashion while also championing a dogmatic undertone that gets you what you want, is a balancing act that your negotiating team must become natural in doing.
Internally unilateral
Thriving in multiple locations around the world is the definition of success in business, for you have become international. In doing so however, now you’re dealing with customs, different needs and cultures. They say the color of money never changes but how you earn it does. When you are making a product, always consider, the voice of your other locations besides your main location. Don’t just throw a new product at your teams abroad and demand them to start figuring out a marketing and sales strategy to meet expectations.
Fly the boardroom teams in, and see if you can come up with a unilateral agreement that means, your product will be universally loved for a specific reason. Different hardware specs and software are always used in international products, but the basis remains the same such as vehicles with different engines and driving positions but the size stays the same. Don’t force anything through that you know won’t work in the various markets you sell in. remember, trying to please everyone too much, will end up with no one being satisfied. The fundamentals of the product need to be agreed with all your teams communicating their perspectives.
Separated by oceans, the various international locations you open for your business, need to communicate together all the time. When new products and services are being designed, include every team from around the world and value their input. Most of all, train your negotiating teams to be incredibly skilled in achieving a resolution that favors you, wherever their location is.
