It’s not easy to go into a foreign market with a value prop and acquire customers. Be it SaaS or ai. Different customer categories exist in a market within different concentric circles. So does your competition in that market. To break into a circle, it takes years of effort and support from the ecosystem. So how do you acquire customers in a foreign land…. ?
The easiest way to kick-start the engine is to fire up a few hyper personalized email campaigns. This is a very good way to test waters and vibrancy within the customer segment. You get a sense of who is your customer and what are the basic prerequisites of the product that you are trying to sell.
For instance, is language translation a must or will left to right alignments need to be made in the product. How much of the meta needs to change? Who are your reference-able customers in the region who will add that trust factor for new customers to explore further.
A big part of winning the first 3 to 5 customers requires transformation. What we term as masking, while winning the first 25 customers requires committing to the market. You commit to the market and the market yields a return for you.
Series of steps are involved in this journey. You must walk the talk, the language, the cultural factors, build relationships and generate substantial value for customers to take the risk with you. To take the plunge you must plug yourself in a network or enter a concentric circle & have someone local enough to help navigate the network. Remember – what you are trying to do is not just sell your product, but to build trust and relationships in the real world which brings wealth / value for your network in some way or the other.
A simple example could be a close door dinner party with family for some of your closest allies. This will surely get you to listen to how your prospects think about you and what they envision your product will deliver for them. Great way to earn trust via commitment and deliveries. One leads to another; such exercises will generate the reference targeted account list. Consider this as a list of enterprises that have a potential to become your customer. Now it’s not an email campaign for low hanging fruits, it's an old-world relationship and good old sales. Go meet Jim, a friend of mine at Acme Inc.
I will write about these more during my next post… Till then, stay well.
Sunny Ghosh
Founder & CEO, Brewra Ventures
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