Involving an international expert accelerates entry into new markets

Last year Enterprise Estonia launched a new service offering the involvement of an international expert at the company. As expected, the service proved to be popular and during the first year nearly 50 companies used an international expert in seven different markets.

Experts can help you find potential clients, kick-start sales, modify products according to the market requirements or make rearrangements at the company. Among other things experts will bring their knowledge on markets and trends and help you adapt the product according to the needs of the market.

Companies can use the service in two ways – by bringing in their own expert or asking Enterprise Estonia to help them find one. The service can be used to find experts in five target markets: Sweden, Norway, Germany, China, United Arab Emirates. There are no restrictions on the countries if the company has its own expert. Enterprise Estonia compensate 50% of the cost of the expert to the company but not more than 10,000 euros per expert.

Encouraging experiences

In the opening round of the service the jewellery designer Tanel Veenre, Creatomus Solutions in the field of marketing and sales technology of modular buildings and Insta Globe Engineering, which provides automated and electrical installations on ships, oil platforms and in the general energetics industry, used this service. Although all the listed companies operate in their own specific niches and on different markets, everyone was very satisfied with the service.

Why should an experienced entrepreneur involve an international expert?

The General Manager of Insta Globe Engineering Ivo Pukk said that the need to make a longer plan arose during the Covid-19 crisis. “Before the crisis, we had a lot of work in the marine and offshore industries but due to the crisis the building of ships was stunted for a while,” explains Pukk. “Thus, we understood we would need a longer plan to help us expand into other fields in the next 2-5 years. Thanks to a recommendation we found an engineer with a background in energetics who had done export-related work with many different companies and who we got along with very well – we so-to-say spoke the same language and shared the same values.”

Tanel Veenre was moving towards entering the Chinese market with his jewellery and heard about Enterprise Estonia at the right moment. “Life brought me an expert; I just happened to meet the right person at the right time who knew my specific field very well and was full of the enthusiasm of a young person,” he recalls. His cooperation with the Chinese national living in Estonia has continued after the exhaustion of Enterprise Estonia’s aid and today they lead Tanel Veenre Jewellery’s business with China.

Creatomus Solutions Director Karin Kiviste heard about the service in Enterprise Estonia’s mentor programme where she participated as a mentor. “The fact that it’s a service that helps to accelerate entry into new markets stood out to me,” Kiviste says. “We had already had contact with an expert earlier, when we were planning to develop a new business concept. It is good to involve a specialist from the field if you’re working with a very specific topic but consultants with wider range can also be very useful when it comes to sales contacts, for example.”

The benefit of an expert

Using an expert was inevitable for starting business in China for Tanel Veenre. “Our expert helped us register our new company in China, open our WeChat account and build our Taobao online store,” he says. “They have also helped us find partners there. You absolutely need a Chinese fiduciary at the negotiation table.” He is certain that without an expert they would have never made it that far in China.

Karin Kiviste is planning to present her company’s modular houses and Estonian architecture on the Irish market, so the main contribution of the expert was figuring out the requirements of the Irish market and helping them find useful contacts. “We quickly got an overview of both the technical requirements and potential partners with the help of the expert.”

Insta Globe Engineering is also very satisfied with the expert service. “Our active cooperation lasted four to five months but today we can already see the first successes and specific projects to come out of it,” Pukk said. “Our consultants helped us reach negotiations with key figures of large corporations, especially on the German market.” He adds that the Covid-19 crisis required them to pay more attention to the local business practices and better understand regulations. “We are used to video calls and virtual communication in Estonia but in other places we encountered some differences in the culture and norms, and without understanding them it would have been hard to find success,” he explains.

Prepare for things to take time

Both Tanel Veenre and Ivo Pukk consider the main lesson from expanding to international markets to be understanding that every process will take longer than expected on international markets. Veenre says that there is nothing you can do to change behavioural patterns on the Chinese market – you just have to learn everything from scratch and build up from there. Pukk says that besides time, you have to be ready for different approaches when it comes to large companies. “We were very eager to sell our services but sometimes we can seem too aggressive in our sales techniques which scares large companies away,” he said. “Thus, we needed a more relaxed approach, and this can mean things take more time – sometimes up to half a year.”

Creatomus’ experience shows that the initial plans always change when the real work begins. “Fortunately, our expert was very flexible,” Kiviste expresses her gratitude. “Enterprise Estonia’s support was also a lot of help because we had very little bureaucracy to deal with compared to what we had experienced before. The investment would have been over our heads without the help of Estonian Enterprise.”