With health care budgetary cuts impacting on domestic sales many company chief executives and their boards are looking overseas to increase their sales and bottom line earnings. The big question facing them is how to actually start to develop our medical device international sales. Hire an individual international sales director, perhaps but look at the downsides of that decision.
Result at least 6 months before you find someone and another 3 to 6 months before they become effective. Meanwhile many $$$ have been invested to try and improve the downturn you are experiencing in sales.
What is the alternative? Doing it yourself, good idea but seriously fraught with risk. Attending International congresses such as Medica or Arab Health you will be inundated with distributors promising you the earth. Each potential distributor is probably like a vulture seeking a weakness and homing in on it. Yes they will promise to buy lots of product, establish you as the market leader but...when the time comes for an actual order they prevaricate and 9 times out of 10 an order does not appear.
You may have even signed a contract, sadly in a lot of countries it is very difficult to get out of a signed contract it will take time and money. Not all dealers are bad there are some excellent ones but the only way of finding them is to actually go into the market place and ask the end users who they would recommend and cross reference. Again this is not the perfect answer as some of the end users have their financial preferences!
So what do you do? Very simply look for an International Business Development company (IBDC), one that specializes in Medical Device International Sales, talk to them and ask how they will help you.
One of the greatest challenges facing companies planning to go international is regulatory; you will need assistance with your international regulatory requirements. Should your products be of a very technical nature then if the IBDC has a Clinical Specialist division, they can assist as they normally have very precise clinical and product knowledge required to develop your KOLs and Centers of Excellence or in fact just supporting the efforts of the distributor.
The key to any international sales efforts particularly in the medical device field is to know that your products are being presented to the end user in a very precise and knowledgeable manner. This is where your IBDC comes into its own. If they carry your Company business card, the executive will work closely alongside the distributor sales force on a very regular quarterly basis. This means seeing the end users and showing them the face of your company, professional, knowledgeable and at the end of the day closing the sale and importantly pulling the product through the distributor to the end user creating repeat orders and on or above plan performance
