As I am being grounded in Australia for almost three months now, while running my export business- Exportia, I feel it’s a great time to share what my team and I have learnt in the last few months. As we have continued to successfully push for sales in Europe for our Australian technology customers, we are very positive about this period. During our last team meeting, I was just asking what I should write about this week. We came to the consensus that we should share with you the reasons why we think it is a great time to export to Europe.
Reason 1: Deconfinement is slowly starting in Europe. European members start to plan a gradual deconfinement pushed by socio-economic pressures. There is an urgent need to get the economies back on track. At the same time, European citizens have had to adapt to confinement and it has created some challenges due to isolation, such as support to elderly in isolation, home and schooling. France has started deconfinement as of the 11th of May. Germany has only observed partial confinement all the way through. Italy, Austria, which set-up very early lock-downs are now starting to ease measures of confinement. The UK has extended confinement for now.
Reason 2: Exportia European sales team keeps signing deals.Our European lead generation team based in Europe find that they are now able to reach businesses while they do cold calling campaigns. This is the case in all our major markets, notably in France, Italy, Spain and Germany. Our sales team based in Europe has managed to maintain contacts with key customers and distributors. We found that the German market has remained fairly active throughout the period. Our team remains fairly positive and we managed to close a number of significant sales in the start of the lockdown period in almost every major European markets including in utilities, pharma, chemical. Of course, due to COVID-19 we have been extremely busy selling Australian technology in the healthcare and laboratory sectors in almost every single European country.
Reason 3: COVID-19 has opened new horizons and new possibilities, we did not think were achievable before. I know it seems strange, but we have found as sales people that COVID-19 has broken a number of barriers in terms of communication. We have been surprised how much and how well we can communicate with a large number of contacts without face to face. I have personally secured, trained and successfully signed deals with distributors in countries that have never physically been in different parts of Europe as well as the world.
We have also been able in a very short amount of time, to sign new customers to buy new Australian technologies, to ship to them, and train them for the use of this new technology without a single face to face contact. It has opened a whole new way of selling. And some very traditional industries have been embracing these new approaches in a very pragmatic way.
Reason 4: 2021 here we come! Major trade shows and conferences have rescheduled their dates to 2021. And as I am a big fan of shows as lead generators, I feel this is a great opportunity for Australian small business. Most European businesses have already booked their booth for 2021. I find that in many instances some of these shows are already fully booked. European businesses are eager to get back to business. The show must go on. From the perspective of a new comer to the European market, it gives you a really good opportunity to prepare for these shows, by creating a database of European leads in preparation to reap the benefits of your preparation work in 2021. For some of our industrial customers, in machinery or that are producing large pieces of equipment, we are already working on building their pipeline of opportunities, with the view to close towards end 2020 early 2021.
Reason 5: With the European lockdowns, consumers have increased their time online. Year-on-year growth in weekly online orders in retail industry during the Coronavirus pandemic in Europe in 2020 shows incredible growth according to Statista. With more time online there has not been better time to push companies to promote themselves online via videos, webinars and articles. That is a great opportunity for small businesses to refine their online communication strategies and to make the most of it. COVID-19 has been a very insightful time to show how to make the most of online marketing campaigns, using social media and pushing content. That has unlocked a lot of opportunities for small businesses to augment their international exposure.
For these reasons, we encourage you to get started now if you are not already working on growing your sales in Europe. Best wishes from the team at Exportia, and stay well.
If you want to set-up a time with one of us to discuss about ramping up your sales in Europe now, send me an email on christelle.damiens@exportia.com.au. You can also make the most of our Online free Export Readiness Diagnostic Tool, and get your tailored report in your inbox within a few minutes.