GLOBAL READY? HELP IS HERE!

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ou are Global Ready NOW! Find that In-Country Sales Agent or Distributor, part 2

This is part 2 of the last blog. You have decided to move forward with exporting sales. Questions my clients have asked will be addressed here.

1 How to determine if there is a market in this country for my product?

2. What specific companies have a need for my product?

3. How do I find out if this is a viable market before signing with an in-country agent?

4. What do I do about the language barrier?

What market should you focus on? Is the best market in Chile, Peru, China, Korea or elsewhere? There are government resources to help you with the basic marketing research. Check with your local SBDC (Small Business Development Center), your state department of trade.  Working with these advisers, you will determine what are possible targets and who might be buying what you are selling.

Once you establish a possible regional target, you may want to use a service to make some preliminary calls into the companies you are targeting to see if there is a match. Hiring a consultant that knows the region and is bi-lingual will enable you to understand better the potentiality of that market. We provide such consultants for Latin America, South America, France, Morocco and Turkey. The next step, use that bi-lingual consultant to make contact with in-country reps that can represent your company.Understanding is key, so be sure to translate your information and use an interpreter or bi-lingual consultant to speak for you.

By proactively searching and researching your new markets you will reduce the costs and time it may take to establish a market in new countries. Take advantage of state and federal trade missions offered through your state and the US Commercial Service. Your trade association may offer trade missions as well. They know your industry and can offer valuable connections internationally. Participation in a trade mission helps ease the burden of travel, setting appointments, language barriers and more.

Patience is key to developing a new market. It will not happen overnight and doing your due diligence up front will help you create a good plan of entry. If you are looking for help on establishing a new market, our consultants can help you sail the export seas to new lands and new sales. Please contact Linda at linda@allcleartranslations.com to discuss your specific needs. Together let's determine if we can help.

Resources Directory

https://www.sba.gov/tools/local-assistance/sbdc listed by state

http://www.newpa.com/business/exporting/trade-research State of PA Export Centers

http://development.ohio.gov/bs/bs_globalohio.htm

http://www.districtexportcouncil.org/locator/West%20Virginia

https://www.wtca.org/ World Trade Centers

http://www.export.gov/   US Commercial Service   

International Markets can be reached with Multilingual Websites

If They Can’t Read It, They Won’t Buy It

This is a short overview to help start your thinking process about new international markets.

Your company is looking for new opportunities to grow and build revenues, retain clients and increase exposure. Here are some statistics to help you determine if you should have a global strategy.

What new markets should you consider? Generally speaking of course, here are some areas to explore.

Canada and Mexico – ease of entry, close proximity, our 2 largest trade partners

China – even with their reduced growth, their GDP is still outperforming most countries. They are our 3^rd largest trade partner and have half a billion middle class consumers!

Africa and India – These regions are emerging markets that are building; hospitals, airports, highways and more. Their spend on infrastructure will be increasing and they welcome outside resources with better systems and technology. From 2000- 2014 Africans internet use grew +6000% and Asia’s grew +1000%!  World internet use from: www.internetworldstats.com  

 

Should you translate your website?

More than 70% of users speak languages other than English. Other languages are resourced more than English and growing presences on the web.

Over 95% of consumers are outside of the U.S. By eliminating the language barrier, you have created a multitude of opportunities.

75% of web users state they buy from sites in their native language.

This is the age of the internet, many business people (>50%) engage, shop and purchase on the internet. If you are not telling your story in the consumer’s language, you will lose that sale, connection and future sales.

Most clients state once they start translating their export sales increase comparatively to their U.S. sales each year.

Adding as little as 8 languages will increase your viewers to 80% of the world’s population.

 About the Author:

Linda Richardson is the President and owner of All Clear Translations, LLC.  Since 2010 the team of All Clear Translations had helped companies grow into areas like Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, France, Switzerland, Germany, Greece, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, Russia and more. Their translations and localization transform websites, software, technical manuals and marketing materials into all languages helping to increase sales. Their unique process can include Plain English to help companies increase understanding and comprehension while reducing translation and production costs of manuals. Their audio voice-over technologies  and video translations enable spoken and written communication in many languages. Email Linda at linda@allcleartranslations and visit their website http://www.allcleartranslations.com

Why American companies should be focusing on the 

Chinese Market.

While in Detroit last week at the Discover Global Markets Forum, I came to understand the importance of eCommerce for international sales. The U.S. Commercial Service put together a great event filled with international representatives and much information to help companies build global sales. While in a break out session I learned some great facts about our third largest export market – China.

If you total the most 171 populous cities, they host 1 Billion people.  China now has one million millionaires (USD)!  Within these cities and smaller cities there is very little modernized retail. No large malls or department stores are in most of these cities. Ecommerce is utilized by many wealthy and middle income Chinese. In 2015 internet users in China should be around 800 million. These consumers love foreign brands especially American made products. They cited safe, quality, integrity and convenience as reasons why they love our brands.

Fakes or knock-offs are a big problem in China. Although the government is trying to crack down on fakes and fake retail fronts, there continues to be new illegal storefronts opening every month. Companies like Apple, Disney, Nike and Ikea have been duplicated as knock-off stores in China. I am sure you have heard about the fake Apple stores! http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/06/chinas-copycat-phenomenon-fake-apple-stores-booming-in-southern-china/

The knock-off products have made eCommerce more attractive to consumers because they can do some due diligence to be sure to get the product they want. Many consumers must travel to get to a department store or mall. Storefronts are not seen as reliable or true brands and therefore make ecommerce even more attractive to savvy Chinese consumers. The feeling is they are getting a “real” item from the internet not a fake. Ecommerce sales are expected to continue to fuel the need for luxury and brand items from abroad.

Alibaba has been a catalyst of change for the Chinese consumer. Many have not shopped in department stores and rely on shopping with Alibaba online shopping sites like TMall. Disposable income has grown and the Chinese consumers in 3^rd and 4^th tiered cities are spending more of their disposable income on American products. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-11/alibaba-sites-drive-chinas-e-commerce-growth

How to grab your share of a multi-billion dollar market?

1.       Consult with your local U.S. Commercial Officer. They can help you with market analysis, connections to build, translators, feet on the street and more.

2.       Consult with your State’s Department of Economic Development. They also have resources to help you build your brand in other regions.

3.       Consult with your local Small Business Development Center. Their counselors will also help you understand your new market and help with sales growth.

4.       Cites like Alibaba, Amazon and EBAY offer assistance in getting online internationally. They do expect you to translate your information for the regions you are marketing to. But uploading translated information is easily accomplished.

These resources also offer training seminars to help educate you on commerce, compliance, and regional markets. Go online to www.trade.gov , http://www.sba.gov/offices/headquarters/osbdc , or your State’s Economic Development Center.

$$ Funding Available! $$

Have you been negatively impacted by imports? There is a matching grant to help you build your exports. Up to $150,000 matching grants are available to help you build an exporting process and plan. Contact us to find out more. We can help you determine if you qualify and help with the eligibility process.

About the Author

Linda Richardson founded All Clear Translations in 2010. Her focus is to enable American companies to grow and build their international markets.  Richardson is certified in Localization and Project Management for Localization, she has spoken on translation and localization to build sales at international and national conferences as well as regionally. In January, 2013, Richardson opened an office in Hermitage, PA at the eCenter at LindenPointe- a technology incubator. Please email her at Linda@allcleartranslations.com, visit her website, www.allcleartranslations.com, her blog – blog.allcleartranslations.com, twitter feed @allclearlinda or call her at 866-489-9109 for information on how translations can help you grow.

Interoperability Pledges and Translations

The Interoperability Pledge was made by CEOs of 9 major device manufacturers. This pledge is a great statement of patient and healthcare worker support by these companies. You can read more about their pledge at AAMI's website 

Cercacor, Cerner, Dräger, GE Healthcare Systems, Masimo, Smiths Medical, Sonosite, Surgicount, and Zoll all pledged at the Inaugural Patient Safety Science & Technology Summit. The goal of this pledge is to help lower the number of patient deaths - estimated at more than 200,000 yearly.  

Interoperability is the ability of devices to share data. The information of these devices are shared and utilized among hospital worker and patients alike. In other words, if several devices are used in a hospital operating room, the user would be able to access all the information with one step. It should also include the language of the native speaker for better clarity. The sharing of data  should impact and reduce patient risk through better education and information sharing. 

 We can help you make this a reality! All Clear Translations will take your current instructional videos and add other languages to the voice-over. Your goal for improved communication is our goal. Working together we can reduce misunderstanding and increase learning potential with your current videos. Our cost effective tools create enhanced computerized human sounding voices in many languages.

 Make your goal of interoperability of increased communication a reality with our:

Text to Speech Technology - your instructional videos will educate in many languages.

                                Reduce training costs utilizing current videos.

                                Training for staff in different languages  and backgrounds.

       14% of the workforce is Latino and growing

       Asians are the biggest gainers in workforce demographics

Instructions and Document Translation –

In testing, readers of the original manuals searched for an average of 5 minutes to find information and found the correct answer only 53% of the time. Adding the right language will drop the average search time to 3.6 minutes, and the success rate improved to 80%.

Your product is valued by people around the world, help them better understand and use your product. Reading in their native tongue will improve understanding, retention and decrease accidents and decrease training costs.

Multilingual Websites – your information is just a click away in any language. Over 75% of people searching the web are looking in their own language.

Software Translation – your software user interface can be understood by healthcare workers     everywhere. Translation of the User Interface will increase comprehension and understanding.

Click Text to Speech to visit our YouTube Channel to watch an example of our text to speech in action.  Decrease injuries and risk to all patients and healthcare professionals worldwide.

Call 866-489-9109 to talk with us!

Get Ready - Set - Grow with Translations!

All the Best,
Linda Richardson

President