The II Cycle of Seminars 'Innovation and Internationalization for SMEs 2017' continues this coming Friday the 19th with the participation of Pablo Vergel, who will give the session entitled 'Agents vs Distributors: the false dilemma of how to organize your international sales network'.
This seminar is organized by the Enterprise Europe Network and has the technical direction of the Association of Importers and Exporters of Albacete, ADIEX. Liberbank, IPEX and CECAM collaborate.
Pablo Vergel is currently a Strategic Consultant and Trainer at The Morter Company in Alicante and has extensive professional experience. Pablo has held various functions in large companies such as Grupo Mustang, Sáez Merino or Alhambra Internacional in Spain. He has also worked abroad, as Account Manager for Muebles Hurtado USA, in North Carolina (United States), and Foreign Trade Technician for the Spanish Commercial Office in Tunisia.
In the Seminar, which will begin at 10 am, he will offer attendees various tools to evaluate and determine which are the most appropriate sales strategies for the development of their businesses. To better know what Pablo Vergel will tell, we have done a short interview with him.
Question: Roughly speaking, what will your seminar consist of?
Answer: “My seminar tries to evaluate which are the most common formulas that SMEs adopt when they decide to go abroad and try to offer their products and services competitively, see their advantages and disadvantages and understand when these strategies are going to make more or less sense . All this with particular emphasis on commercial agents and distributors, very widespread figures in international expansion”.
Q: The seminar is entitled 'Agents vs distributors: the false dilemma of how to organize your international sales network'. What does this false dilemma refer to?
Answer: “Many times I come across companies that, faced with the different options that exist to organize a distribution network in an international market, start from an approach: black or white. Agents or distributors. And it really is a false dilemma because both strategies are not mutually exclusive either as a commercial policy or even within the same market where they can coexist as long as a coherent and consistent general strategy is proposed”.
Q: What are the main mistakes that companies make when establishing an international sales network?
Answer:“Not understanding how the channel of the country they are going to works or studying it. It is essential to study the competition, understand how related products are distributed, what margins are applied, etc... Then, in general, companies tend to be quite rigid when it comes to understanding that the business model they have in their natural market is not it can be transferred automatically to third countries and that a strategy must be drawn up that when contrasted with the market makes sense in terms of price, product and service. Many times people internationalize by pure intuition and it is true that sometimes with success, but it is important to analyze what value is generated and who captures it. This is something that our industry frankly needs to improve on.".
Q: Once a company enters the international market, what recommendations should it follow to expand that commercial network to other countries?
Answer: “I like to say that all companies are already competing in an international market whether they do so directly or indirectly or consciously or unconsciously. The EU Single Market is a globalized market open to competition, and we hope it will remain so for a long time. I sincerely believe that no one, no matter what sector it is, can pretend that they are outside the globalized economy, so it is no longer deciding if you are going to internationalize or not, it is how you are going to manage a market that already works and competes highly globalized.
Now, and returning to the specific question, I recommend companies to be aware of how their sector works, but not only in Spain or in its natural market, but globally. You have to visit other countries, attend fairs and understand how their market works. Once this is done, in courses like this one we are going to see what different tools can be used to work with distributors, look for commercial agents, make sales online or, why not, set up subsidiaries and even open stores. Of course, we must be aware that if you want to implement strong commercial models, investment is required”.
