The impact of the spread of the new coronavirus, which began in the winter of 2020, has significantly changed the situation in our lives and businesses. While many industries are being hit by the minimum necessary outings, almost everything including overseas travel, such as overseas travel and business trips, is prohibited.
This time, we would like to introduce the initiatives that can be taken in Japan from now on to all the companies whose overseas business has stopped.
What you can do to expand overseas sales channels even if you cannot travel overseas
Given the current situation where overseas travel is prohibited, it is not known when overseas travel will be lifted, so it is necessary to take some action as soon as possible in consideration of the continuation of such a situation.
This time, we will introduce the initiatives that can be done from Japan, roughly divided into two.
Multilingual website, distribution of multilingual content
Multilingualization of our website and product introduction page is the most basic initiative when we cannot travel overseas and introduce our products and services locally.
Originally, I was able to go to the site and introduce products and services in front of my business partners, but now that I can not do that, I will introduce products and services using the website.
The target language for multilingualization is not only the local language of our business partners and prospective expansion destinations, but also multilingualization in English, which has more speakers. If you can make your site multilingual, you will be able to use your site like a product catalog when conducting online business negotiations.
In addition to translating your own website, it is also an effective measure to disseminate customer issues that your products solve on your website from the consumer’s perspective.
With restricted access, many consumers obtain and scrutinize product and service information on the Internet rather than in stores, so they need to provide the information in a way that is visible to them.
Above all, it is important to disseminate information to consumers who search with Internet search engines. If you can post reliable information on your site from the consumer’s point of view, it will be displayed as search results of search engines, and as a result, it will lead to providing information to more consumers. ..
Advertising online
In addition to the above-mentioned multilingualization of our own website, we should also consider placing online advertisements.
Online advertising gives you more control over your target exposure than providing information on your site.
Unlike mass-oriented advertisements such as TV and billboard advertisements, online advertisements allow you to more accurately specify the target to be placed, so you should place advertisements by specifying the region, gender, age group, and in some cases occupation and income. I can. In addition, since the engagement (reaction) at the time of posting can be quantified, the effect of each target and each advertisement can be measured in a short period of time, which is useful for improving the content of the advertisement.
Most of the online advertising services provided by major IT companies such as Google and Facebook can place advertisements from within Japan, so by preparing advertisement texts and, if necessary, images, etc., products and products directly aimed at overseas local consumers You can expose the service.
Inside sales to attract prospects
In addition to online initiatives such as websites and online advertising, you can also carry out real sales.
It is possible to carry out initiatives such as email delivery, email inquiries, and telephone sales while in Japan.
Email inquiries and telephone sales are generally called inside sales, and are effective measures for acquiring prospects (leads).
As a method of conducting inside sales, first prepare staff who are familiar with the local language. If there is a person in your company who can speak the local language, that person will be responsible for part of the work. If you don’t have such staff in your company, it’s a good idea to utilize an online worker who works online. Online workers who can understand Japanese and also the local language exist in most regions and languages, so we ask such personnel to do the work.
By deciding the text of the email and sales talk in the same format as general email inquiries and telephone sales in Japan, and sharing it with overseas clients, sales activities according to the manual can be carried out. It is possible to do it.
If there is a reaction or opinion from a customer, sharing it will enable smoother sales activities in the future.
Also, if you do not have an email inquiry or a list of telephone business partners in-house, you can request from the business partner list by asking a person who can handle the local language and is familiar with the local area. Is also possible.
If you can acquire potential customers by e-mail inquiry or telephone sales, the next business negotiation will be with the head office employees. Now that overseas travel is prohibited, most of the business negotiations will be conducted online, so it will be a business negotiation with an interpreter.
