With the problem of a twenty four month sales cycle and a need for significant vendor input during this time, RHS's country management service offers a cost effective solution.
One of the problems facing technology businesses that have a leading edge product is that it can be necessary to educate the market and/or wait for the market to mature. When coupled with a long sales cycle for the product this significantly increases the risk of new market entry. The client’s specialized digitization software had both these characteristics.
One way of mitigating the cost of a long sales cycle is to use in-country partners to act as a vendor substitute. Our initial brief was to identify and introduce the client to a number of partners who met pre-defined capability criteria.
This assignment was duly completed. While the partners were enthusiastic about the technology, they were reluctant to take on the task of educating and developing the market.
To solve the problem of needing to be active in the market without, initially, having the revenue to support a full time sales employee, the client chose our country management service.
This gave the client a UK based business development capability that was available to the client on an ‘as required’ basis. This meant that the client could stay in touch with the level of market maturity, identify the early adopters and move quickly when the opportunities presented themselves. At the same time, it also enabled the client to match the sales activity to the point of the sales cycle where they were required and not carry the costs for sales resource during those periods when there was little value to be added by additional sales activity. This was particularly valuable to the client when the inevitable ‘chasm’ opened up after the early adopters had accepted the technology and before the mainstream adoption.
By continuing to monitor the market, the client was well informed for when the mainstream adoption of the technology started. At this point it was appropriate to return to the partner based model and we sourced a partner who could now take on the role of vendor substitute.