Top 10 Tips For Small Businesses Looking to Expand Internationally
Looking to Expand?
Drawing from over two decades of experience, Mikel Consulting is sharing 10 ways we’ve seen—and helped, via custom-tailored plans, financials, and pitch decks—clients make the leap from local to global.
10 Tips For Small Business Success in International Expansion
Conduct Thorough Market Research
Before entering a new market, understanding the local landscape is crucial. Market research helps you identify demand, understand customer behavior, and analyze your competition. However, access research can be challenging and is often time-consuming or expensive, with custom-tailored reports typically starting at several thousand dollars.
How Mikel Consulting Can Help: We pull from industry-standard sources to provide comprehensive market research through custom-tailored business plans and other services—tailored to your specific sector and target markets. Our detailed plans offer insights that enable you and those you present to exercise informed decision-making, thus helping all stakeholders identify the best opportunities for your business expansion.
Understand Legal & Regulatory Requirements
Each country has its own set of legal and regulatory requirements for businesses. Failing to comply can result in costly fines and legal issues—especially for immigration-oriented entrepreneurs and owners seeking to participate in the ICT, SUV, or other government programs. Specialized knowledge is essential to compliance and success.
How Mikel Consulting Can Help: Our team of experts is well-versed in Canadian and global immigration plans, along with other international-oriented plans—producing work for thousands of global clients. Our plans help present a clear picture of how you will navigate the complexities of foreign regulations, ensuring that your business is compliant from day one. Furthermore, our immigration business plans are carefully tailored to help demonstrate your alignment with specific immigration programs.
Develop a Clear Entry Strategy
An effective market entry strategy is critical for international success. Whether you choose to export, franchise, or establish a local subsidiary, your strategy should align with your business goals. This can be challenging for many entrepreneurs, due to the many steps involved in global entry.
How Mikel Consulting Can Help: We work closely with you to develop a customized go-to-market or entry strategy that maximizes your chances of success in your new market region. Our strategies are data-driven—taking into account market conditions, competitor analysis, and your business’s unique strengths—and build on years of experience in strategic planning for domestic and international businesses.
Adapt Your Product or Service Offering
Cultural differences can significantly impact the success of your product or service in a new market. It’s essential to adapt to local preferences and standards, which can otherwise present substantial barriers to success.
How Mikel Consulting Can Help: Our consulting team’s experience and research help you demonstrate how you will modify your product or service offerings (as necessary) to meet all local market needs. From conveying product design to marketing strategies, our plans help you how you will modify your offerings to resonate with your new international audiences, with region-tailored research and demographic information to support this.
Build a Strong Local Network
Establishing relationships with local partners, suppliers, and distributors is key to gaining a foothold in a new market. However, this is easier said than done—especially without a clear business plan, partnership strategy, and other key resources to facilitate connections with investors and others to support this process.
How Mikel Consulting Can Help: With our plans, it is easier to establish a network of international contacts, allowing you to build and strengthen relationships with key local stakeholders. This network provides you with clear, shareable resources necessary to help build your network and ultimately succeed in unfamiliar markets.
Secure Financing for Expansion
No matter how your business approaches it, international expansion requires significant investment. Securing the right financing is essential to support your growth and ensure liquidity and viability in the long term.
How Mikel Consulting Can Help: Our expert team specializes in preparing investor-ready business plans and financial models that make a compelling case for financing via investments, loans, grants, and more. Our core services have helped clients secure over $1.6 billion in investment, enabling successful expansions worldwide.
Develop a Cross-Cultural Management Strategy
Managing a diverse team across different cultures requires a thoughtful approach—ideally conveyed to investors, lenders, and other stakeholders through clear biographies, organizational charts, and more. Understanding (and effectively showing) each team member’s differences in communication, skills, and management styles is critical.
How Mikel Consulting Can Help: We provide clear business plan sections on your management and organizational assets, helping you not only build but showcase your cohesive, effective team. Our business plans ensure that your management practices are aligned—no matter where in the world you operate.
Leverage Technology for Global Operations
Technology plays a crucial role in managing international operations. From communication tools to supply chain management (SCM) software, leveraging the right technology is key to efficiency. However, finding the right systems, software, and technology can be challenging, and demonstrating its tangible impact on your business is even harder.
How Mikel Consulting Can Help: Our plans clearly show the links between your business technologies and implementation—highlighting how the right technological solutions impact your global operations for readers. Technology-specific content, tailored to your business’s specific needs, enhances your plan at every level.
Protect Your Intellectual Property (IP)
Your IP is one of your most valuable assets, and protecting it in a foreign market is crucial to maintaining your competitive edge. Moreover, it is important to attract investments and showcase how your business will build and sustain your competitive moat, both domestically and in your new international markets.
How Mikel Consulting Can Help: We build your IP information and other competitive advantages (as applicable) into every facet of your plan, helping your readers navigate the complexities of your IP and how your patents, trademarks, copyrights, and more will protect and empower you in every market you enter.
Plan for the Long Term
International expansion is not a short-term project. It requires a long-term commitment and ongoing adaptation to changing market conditions—factors which are significantly enhanced through a professional business plan.
How Mikel Consulting Can Help: Our strategic planning services ensure that your international expansion is shown in all its strengths, with supporting feasibility studies, financials, pitch decks, research, and more. We work with you to develop five-year plans that include deep evaluations, go-to-market strategies, and more.
Why Choose Mikel Consulting for Your Expansion?
At Mikel Consulting, we understand the unique challenges that small businesses face when expanding internationally. With over 4,000 customized business plans created and a 97% success rate, we have the expertise to guide you through every step of the business plan creation process. From market research to financial planning to pitch deck creation, our bespoke consulting services are designed to maximize your success in new markets.
If you’re considering expanding your business internationally or immigrating, don’t go it alone. Contact Mikel Consulting today to learn how we can help you achieve your global ambitions. Our team is here to provide the strategic insight, practical advice, and expert support you need to succeed in any market through our custom-tailored business plans.
Unlock Your Business Potential with Mikel Consulting
