Business 101
Excerpt from Chapter 3 of “Pond Business: How to Succeed Across the Atlantic” by Mark Sutherland, available from Dunrobin Publishing on Amazon and Amazon UK and in bookstores in the UK and the US.
There’s a great organization spread across the globe, run by the British Government, called the Department of International Trade or DIT for short. Many of the experts in that group work with British and American companies on a daily basis as these companies invest in and trade with the other country.
US businesses may, at times, have a tendency to think a bit bigger from the word go. “US companies are aiming for a certain scale and rate of growth, whereas British businesses can be a bit more measured in their approach,” a senior member of Her Majesty’s Government told me recently. “There are pros and cons to both approaches, of course.”
I can certainly concur with him. In my experience, UK companies also seem to have less appetite for risk as well as underestimating how much planning is needed to make a good entry into the US market. There is also a lack of understanding, many times, about the US federal system and how doing business in Missouri for example is far different from doing business in New York. In fact, British companies should look at each US state as a separate territory and approach each one with a specific plan to operate within that state’s cultural and business environment.