Export Mentoring for Newfoundland
and Labrador's Companies.

Whether you're new to exporting or already established, we can help make the most of your marketing and sales programs.

Selling to a new market is never easy, but it is particularly challenging when that market is in another province, country, or continent. Your competitors will often be bigger, with reputations and relationships already established. If consumers in your new market have never heard of you, why would they buy from you instead of those other companies? How do you win their trust and business while spending as little time and money as possible? How do you even know which markets you should enter first?

We give clear answers to those and other key questions —and can even help you then turn your plans into realities — through our export-mentoring services:

  • Export Strategy
  • Product Readiness
  • Optimizing Materials
  • Sales
  • Funding

1. Developing Your Export Strategy

Getting even a great product to sell well in an export market requires a strategically sound marketing plan. Our export strategy will help you get there by pinpointing:

  • your product's strengths and weaknesses;
  • your available marketing resources;
  • your competitors' products and marketing positions;
  • the markets where you will have the greatest likelihood of success at the lowest cost;
  • the branding, marketing and sales processes that will best get you there.

The key to any successful export or marketing effort is an accurate understanding of the above factors, and a solid response to your particular opportunities and challenges in each market. We give you that understanding in an easy-to-understand, highly actionable document.

2. Ensuring Your Product is Market Ready

Many companies miss the fact that there is a huge difference between having a great product, and having a great product that is market ready. The marketplace is littered with failed product launches that could have had a much happier ending... if only their developers had understood this vital truth.

We work with you to match your product's performance to the needs and styles of your target markets. Numerous research studies have shown that even a minor change can often generate very significant increases in sales. We help you spot and implement the changes that will give your export efforts a happy — and profitable — ending.

3. Optimizing Your Materials and Website

It is truly amazing to see how many companies spend thousands or even millions of dollars to develop a product and manfacturing process, but then lose that investment because their marketing materials failed to grasp the interests of their target markets. Sure, the brochures or Website may look good, but do they draw prospects through a strategic path toward a purchase decision? Does each page on the site or each word in the brochure increase the likelihood of a sale being made? Our focus is on creating high-quality materials that create high-quality clients.

4. Creating Your Sales Process and Channels

Sadly, this may be the one single point where most export efforts run into serious trouble. They may have a great product and enticing support materials, but will often fail to appreciate the importance of a professional sales presence, whether through an in-house sales team, distributor, value-added reseller (VAR), or some other sales channel. Trying to save money by handling sales themselves through various trade missions or trade shows, they spend lots of money on sales efforts that lack consistency, fail to grow relationships, and often jump from market to market rather than building a solid base in a small number of strategic centers.

Unfortunately, all too many companies stretch their key technology or management talent to take on sales as well. Limited budgets get spent learning the ropes, while back home, the companies miss out on what could have been valuable product development time or key business leadership.

Fact is, sales is itself a skill set that can take years to develop. There are methodologies and processes that are proven to work well, yet many business owners head into highly competitive waters without ever having studied solution selling, complex sales, negotiating tactics, or any of the other processes that their competitors will be using. The results are seldom pretty. We help you avoid this trap, by identifying alternatives more likely to generate a high return on your investment.

5. Identifying and Accessing Funding Sources

Few companies — anywhere in the world — have access to as many high-quality programs as you do, right here in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) and the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador both offer programs to help you develop a targeted export marketing strategy, secure the right team, and put together effective marketing products.

If you don't need funding support, that's great. But if you do, it's important to understand what programs are available, and which are right for you. Lorne Pike & Associates can give you that understanding, and can also help you through the application process.

 

Why Lorne Pike & Associates?

With Lorne Pike & Associates on your side, you will suddenly have the full advantage of our 20 years of consulting experience, and our extensive expertise in marketing and exporting.

  • We wrote the market assessment of the South East United States (SEUS) region for the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador;
  • We wrote the export strategy priorities document for Atlantic Canada's ICT industries;
  • We have written market strategies and/or provided direction for successful companies developing their first forays into export markets; and
  • We have traveled to markets across North America more than 30 times, representing our clients and building valuable relationships that we still nurture and offer as a head start... for you.

We have sold in boardrooms high above New York City, strategized with technology companies deep in Silicon Valley, presented in high-security technology development centers outside Washington DC, gone head-to-head against competitors at Boston, Chicago and Orlando trade shows, negotiated regulatory concerns on a Miami dockside, and built a network that extends as far as Australia, South Africa, Sweden, and China.

We focus your resources where they will give you the best returns. Let your technology talent make your products even more irresistible. Pinpoint your management team on growing the company and making the day-to-day decisions to build a great company. And let your best marketing and sales talent open new markets, build and grow stable relationships, and bring home contracts.

In short, we give you export expertise... when you give us the call.