Growing your business beyond borders

Going overseas will not always be part of your grand, strategic plan. Sometimes the opportunity will arise through existing clients and you need to be prepared to grasp it when it does.

“We partnered with Google to roll out one of their largest digital skills programmes in the UK. Then someone said ‘would you be able to run a training programme in Ghana’,” explains Gori. “I had no local staff, no localised content, no trainers there but as an entrepreneur you’re not going to say no!

“I went out to Ghana, hired people on the ground and personally interviewed everyone we engaged with. We expanded the programme, and we now run digital skills programmes across Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, and Kenya and 40% of our business comes from Africa.

“It wasn't a strategic move, but when I got there and I got to know the market, I started making real life opportunities on the ground.”

When opportunities do arise, you need to be in the best position to take them, and for Chris that means building a strong base and proving the concept in your home market, where you are most comfortable.

“First and foremost, understand the product, understand the space, understand the market, and perfect the pitch before you go international.”

Building a relationship with a global business can be an excellent route into expanding overseas but how do you land that first piece of work? For Gori it was all about ‘audacious pitching’.

“Getting to the pitching stage takes a lot of groundwork, leveraging your network and LinkedIn. But when you’re in there you have to be brave,” he says. “They’re a business with a mission and if you can align your goals with theirs and solve a problem they’re facing that will put you in a great position. You then have to deliver.”

While the route into some markets may not be part of the strategic plan, it’s important to do your research and identify the markets that offer most potential and best fit your product or service. For 3TOP Aviation, enquiries from the US led the business into what is a huge aviation market but from there Chris and the team have followed the data to identify their next targets.

“The key thing we look at is the growth rate of a country,” says Chris. “If a country’s doing well, it means a lot of people are travelling for business and leisure. There’s also a population angle, imagine the number of people travelling in markets like China and India.

“Beyond GDP, we have a range of data points at a macro and micro level that help us make those vital decisions.”

As you’re growing overseas there’s a temptation to enter every market that shows an interest in your service but it’s important to have a clear understanding of the potential for scaling in that market, as Gori explains.

“Initially I got pulled in too many directions, travelling too much and taking a bit of a scatter-gun approach. So I took a step back to really understand buying behaviours and approaches to training in different markets.

“Dubai, for example, is a big market for corporate training but the approach is more suited to pure elearning providers rather than our human-led hands-on style of experiential learning. On the surface, it looked like a great opportunity for us, but you have to understand the nuances.”

Whether it’s tweaking your product or aligning with different ways of doing business, you have to be willing to adapt as you move into markets around the world.

“Aviation is a global business, wherever you’re working the needs are similar. It’s also predominantly an English-speaking and US dollar-denominated industry,” says Chris.

“All these things make life easier for us but you have to be conscious that you’re dealing with different people around the world, with different cultures and ways of doing business. We have offices in six different countries and agents all over the world that help us tap into and understand those cultural differences.”

As big as the opportunities are, going global is not straightforward, so it’s vital to access the right support; whether that’s your bank, government agencies or your peers.

“The people that taught me what to do in new markets, were actually fellow entrepreneurs,” says Gori. “You’d be surprised who amongst your network has already been into a market you’re targeting, made the mistakes and learned the lessons. So speak to your peers, find out where they’ve done business and glean as much information as you can from them.”