New Market Penetration: Some Tools For Learning The Lay Of The Land

New market penetration is all about risk-reward balance. You need to fully understand the challenges as well as the opportunities pertinent to your prospective new market so you are properly prepared for success.

Do your research, and evaluate your options thoroughly and honestly. The point is sales growth and sustainability, so you have to make sure you’re on top of your game regarding products, pricing and customer service.

Clearly define your goals

Why do you want to penetrate this new market? For example, it could be to:

• Extend current product sales to new geographical areas
• Extend current product sales to a broader audience
• Introduce new products or services

What benchmarks will you use to measure success?

Research is critical

Don’t assume you can just plug your current sales plan into a new environment. You may need to:

• Treat new market penetration like a start-up
• Identify or try to predict potential barriers, including timing issues
• Evaluate likely financial and intangible benefits as well as specific product or service opportunities
• Assess the prospective target market, including size, competition, market dynamics, buying profile and overall economic climate
• Determine existing market awareness of your company, products or services
• Review your marketing implementation methods in light of new market audience characteristics

What is needed to assure success, soonest?

Create a strategic plan

Implementation tactics must be specific to new market penetration. This includes:

• Priority lead generation and follow-up
• Appropriate media, messages and product presentation, including online approaches and content
• Product testing in the new marketplace
• Pricing strategy
• Forming the most competent and effective sales team
• Projecting initial expense and revenue

Outsourcing can facilitate new market penetration

Talented, experienced sales professionals can help you every step of the way—analyzing prospective markets, creating a well-honed implementation plan and providing high-performance execution—while your existing salespeople remain focused on current work with no loss of momentum.

You'll have the flexibility of scalable costs, ensuring profitability of new markets before you incur the expense of expanding or creating a new in-house sales force. With outsourcing, you can tackle new market penetration nimbly and with confidence.

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