Growing a business to serve international markets is never an easy task – whether you’re in the security business, or any other industry for that matter. It requires hard work, dedication and a lot of patience to develop and execute an effective exporting strategy that appeals to potential clients overseas, writes Gavin Hepburn, sales and marketing director at ATG Access, the manufacturer of road blockers, bollards and vehicle barriers. Pictured: ATG products in front of the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge, a hotel in central London.
In 2006, we decided to embark on a journey that would take our British made security products to a global audience, and we haven’t looked back since. We have now been exporting innovative security bollards and barriers across the world for ten years and have recently celebrated our successes over the decade at our yearly distributors’ conference.
This conference is extremely important to us at ATG as it is an integral part of our strategy. Having all of our international partners under one roof at the event allows us to nurture new and existing relationships across various countries – near and far. The event is a great way to bring everyone together and foster a better working relationship with people who are based thousands of miles away, and we believe it is what sets us apart from our competitors. It also presents the perfect opportunity to celebrate all that we have achieved over the past year – successes that would not be possible without our hard-working teams.
During the ten years we have been exporting, we have managed to build international partnerships across every single continent and within 42 different countries, including Singapore and Malaysia.
In fact, some of our first projects began in Singapore and Malaysia, where we were employed to implement security measures at both the new parliament building in Kuala Lumpar and also at Singapore Airport. Since then, we have gone on to work on a variety of different size projects, growing export sales from £100,000 up to £7,000,000 per annum and with a target to break £10M of export by 2020.
In 2011, we secured our biggest exporting job to date. This saw us venturing out to help implement security measures at the new Doha International Airport. The contract was revolutionary for both our exporting strategy and reputation overseas, as the project was valued at a staggering $10,000,000. It was also one of the first export projects where we used our innovative shallow mount bollards, which require a considerably reduced foundation depth. These bollards offer PAS 68 level protection and provide customers with a quickly installed, greener solution to meet their perimeter security needs.
The combination of using both quality and innovative products during our projects has furthered our international reputation, meaning we are now working on more overseas projects than ever before.
We have just completed a project at The Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam and have also won the security contract for the new Louvre building in Abu Dhabi. All these new contract wins have been secured while we have been undertaking huge projects in both Japan and China and at any one time the company has between 20 and 30 live export projects.
The ability to work on numerous ongoing projects at any one time would not be possible without our fantastic international partners, and we are constantly looking to develop more through our dedicated exporting managers who are based in Geneva, Dubai and Singapore.
So far, exporting has been a great success for ATG Access and it now accounts for about half of our overall turnover. And as we continue to grow and secure additional projects, we hope that this success will maintain its momentum.
However, our road to success hasn’t been a smooth or an easy one, and the journey certainly hasn’t been quick. It has been a long process that has seen us regularly develop our approach as we learn more about our customers and their needs.
So, how can other security businesses follow suit?
For UK businesses looking to expand overseas, it’s important to recognise that a lot of time and dedication will be needed in order to be successful.
So, where do you start? Well, the first step is to create a clear exporting strategy – you need to have a very good idea of what you are aiming to achieve and how you plan to get there.
The strategy needs to be driven by a manager whose sole responsibility will be to oversee ‘all things export’. They must be given the time to focus on the company’s exporting goals, otherwise less time will be dedicated to building relationships with international markets and the strategy will be more likely to fail.
Once there is a strong strategy in place, it’s important to think about how you’re selling yourself and your offering to potential international clients. Why should they deal with your business, and not a company that is based closer to home?
The key is to make sure that your products and services are documented clearly to highlight their quality and your wealth of expertise.
When purchasing from a company based overseas, international clients will often pay extremely close attention to this information as they will want to make sure they are getting the right product that suits their needs.
This also brings us onto the marketing element of business. How do you get in front of these international clients and get your name out there as a reputable brand?
The first place many clients look is at a company’s website – this represents more than just your online presence, and can actually be a huge source of new business.
So, above all else, you need to ensure that you have a website that is fit for purpose. The website should be accessible to people from all over the world so they can see who you are and what you’re offering with ease. To make your website more user-friendly, you should consider including a translation option to allow non-English speaking clients to navigate around your site.
You should also be shouting about any work you have already done overseas to show you can handle international projects – you could display the successes of previous projects by creating a case study section on the site, so potential clients can see your world-wide competencies. Equally, the use of public relations will help to get your business’ messages out to a global audience. You can either opt to handle your public relations in house, or for many businesses, it may be more viable to outsource this to an agency. If you’re going to go down the agency route, you need to select one that really gets what you’re about and understands your objectives and goals. This way you can ensure your key messages are on brand and are being put in front of the right people.
Tailoring your PR to reach an international audience is a great way to increase both brand awareness and reputation, and should help bring in more website traffic and sales leads. Perhaps one of the biggest pieces of advice I can give to security businesses looking to export is to get out there and actually meet people.
All the previous advice will be void if businesses lock themselves up in an office and depend solely on email and telephone to build relationships overseas. People do business with people, so you need to meet international partners face-to-face and make your presence known, as ultimately this is your point of access into global markets.
This is where many businesses seem to fall down, as they fail to go into the field and support their international partners through the whole exporting process. But, giving just a little bit of your time can in fact go a long way to solidifying partnerships – this will make for greater working relationships with your global partners, and will help break into new markets. So, if you’re looking to grow your business overseas, it is important to remember that success isn’t instantaneous.
At the beginning of the journey, your first or even second project may be hard to come by. It took us almost two years to win our first project with one particular partner but they never gave up and we never gave up on them. We now win 10-20 projects per year with them.
Keep building relationships and connections with global partners and complete projects on time, on budget and to expectation. Ensuring your business is meeting all these targets will enhance your reputation and will lead to more and more international contract wins.
Visit: www.atgaccess.com.
