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OUTSOURCING EXPORT SALES
A better-than-ever response to the competitive pressures facing today’s top executives
As the leaders of corporate
America react to the constant pressure for
greater profits and faster buildup of shareholder equity, an old solution has quietly been taking on new relevance. To better focus on their core competencies, more companies are recognizing outsourcing as a more effective and economical way to perform many functions-not just security, plant maintenance, payroll, and human resources, but even such complex activities as purchasing and export sales. The trend is visible today in multi-million companies like privately held companies with more limited resources. Professional export salespeople who are not on the company payroll, and who don't get paid until they actually sell something, are now more than ever the choice of companies that had not previously chosen the independent manufacturers' export representative route.
Companies with adequate resources to fund captive sales organizations are newly stimulated to recruit manufacturers' export representatives as a practical approach to downsizing. Diversification into multiple markets
and specialized distribution channels leads others to outsource their export sales. They thus explore new opportunities without the major financial commitment involved in
building, training, and maintaining their own niche market sales forces. The opportunity to lower overhead and to standardize sales costs has convinced many manufacturers to utilize export representatives even when sales volume would cover the expense of a dedicated sales force. With outsourcing, a company can cost-effectively deploy a multifaceted team instead of a single individual, and gain greater results for fewer dollars.
Today's sophisticated manufacturers' export sales representative is professional, multifaceted, technologically adept, and everywhere. Today he may be traveling around the territory to call on customers,
tomorrow, around the world to meet with principals. And as the export rep will be quick to remind the sales managers he reports to (and their CFOs), he buys his own tickets and pays his own expenses.
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