Agents in Brief

• Know before you appoint an agent exactly what you are looking for, so you don’t try to force a square peg into a round hole. Do you need him to hold stock? To be really proficient in promotion? To prepare and issue tenders on your behalf?
• Be choosy in your choice of agent. Insist on seeing their own business profiles before you appoint anyone and make sure you select the best fit. A good agent will not resent you being very careful in your selection.
• Make sure you insert a fair performance clause in your contract with your agent, giving you the option to terminate without prejudice in the event of poor performance without ending up in the local courts.
• Work as closely as possible with your in-market distribution people – get to know them really well and share their experience of handling your products or services. I used to take an occasional ride in their vans to see at first hand how their distribution was getting on!
• Set up long-range contact systems. You can’t have a physical presence in your overseas markets all the time, so how do you ensure your distribution staff are wearing your company hat (and they probably have a range of other hats to put on!) in your absence. I set up long-range motivation systems with tailored training and the incentive of trips back to Scotland. It’s important to do something over and above the normal.
• Network, network and network again! Export is so much a people-based business that you have to put yourself about. Try to exchange business cards on every conceivable occasion – we once awarded a major Russian distribution contract because I had kept a single business card from a brief meeting on a plane.
• Never rely on head office lawyers! Use local legal professionals who know their way around their own system.
• Keep your payments on a letter of credit basis for as long as possible, since this guarantees payment – even if your local agent doesn’t like it!
• Be highly strategic on keeping your focus on the really prime opportunities in the best markets. Use services like BGIT for due diligence so you can keep a clear focus on a manageable number of markets, and be in a position to prioritise any tenders for these markets.
• This approach also frees you up to keep a few opportunistic markets on the back-burner, where you can respond to an attractive opportunity when it presents itself, assuming that this does not interfere with your core business. No exporter can respond to every invitation to tender he receives, and this simple discipline helps you to prioritise your responses.