DEV Community: Maria Lukina

How to find a new international market for a product

Maria Lukina — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 05:10:18 +0000

If you’re reading this, the chances are that you already have an established brand with a stable commercial stream and you are looking for a way to grow and expand your business. Breaking into a new market might be exactly what you’re looking for. Launching a product in a new market is a highly ambitious, but equally risky and expensive goal which requires thorough preparation and analysis.

Firstly, you have to look at some key statistics of the potential market. General economic factors include things such as population of the country and GDP per capita. Together, they can give a rough idea about the market size. From open sources (like Statista) you can find the market volume of your appropriate industry and the rate of growth of this industry. Collect information about the volume of online payments, main industry leaders and their market share. Key stats like CPI (cost of install) of a mobile application might be crucial to your product launch and give a baseline for the marketing costs.

When you’ve recorded the population of the country, consider the main city population. Especially if your business model includes both online and offline approaches. It’s easier to break through to the big city (1 million + population) as there are many advertising mechanisms which can be employed. Most of them are KPI trackable.

If you aren’t selling first need products, don’t count countries with low GDP out, because they might have a high Gini index. This means that the income is not evenly distributed and the big cities are likely to have a lot of high-income individuals which might be a perfect market for your product. Especially if you have a niche high-priced product.

Don’t forget the most basic factor - language. The popularly spoken language in a country can heavily influence your final decision. When a business enters a new international market, we’re not only talking about localising interfaces and the product itself, but also all the marketing and branding materials that go with it. This is a high-cost process which is not optimal for every business. For example, if your business is based in Chile, it would make sense for you to expand to the Spanish speaking countries first to save up some money during the transition. Conversely, integrating your product in Israel will be a much more difficult process as even the way the language is written is different: Arabic is written right-to-left as opposed to left-to-right English.

Consider more specific stats, which are applicable to your business. For example, the average pricing of services of your main competitors (easily checked online). If you have a physical product, consider the cost and availability of inventory in the new country. For an offline business, don’t forget the office rent and spendings on personnel.

Collect all of the above information into a table. Organise countries on one side and the above metrics and factors on the other. Choose 3-4 most critical factors for your business and highlight countries with the best performance in these categories. You should end up with 2-3 countries for more detailed research which I’m going to discuss below.

Before the in-depth research, I also recommend investigating the short-listed countries using a culture map. This tool allows you to click on whichever countries you’ve chosen and receive a cultural mapping of the selected countries/cultures. You can compare how two (or more) cultures build trust, give negative feedback, and make decisions - so use it to compare the target new market country with your country. This will help on the next steps of research.

Now it’s time for more focused research. Perform a competitive analysis which will include things like market share, product pricing and features, differentiation, positioning, value proposition of your competitors. I highly recommend asking a local friend from the target country to help you with this or hiring a native speaking specialist from the target country, because many of the companies might not have a good English representation on the web and they will help you navigate your research correctly. Perform in-depth interviews with your potential clients in the new country. Ask the locals how they are solving the need for products/services which your industry and your company provide.

Based on the research, formulate a set of hypotheses which detail the main advantages of your company and product which will make them competitive in the market. Now, test your hypotheses with quantitative research. Different models can be used, but a popular choice is the Kano model. It’s one of many prioritisation frameworks designed to help product teams prioritise initiatives and optimise their resources during product development. Respondents can be found in a million different ways. You can try finding them at conferences, panels, festivals, etc.

My advice for finding respondents is, if your budget allows it, hire an agency in the target country to conduct the research. For example, User Interviews has over 350,000 participants globally and can leverage their network of participants to quickly source participants for your research. You can source participants from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States and apply specific demographic requirements. This is especially useful if you don't have previous experience in international market research.
Y
ou should have 2-3 confirmed hypotheses which can now be tested via advertising campaigns. Social media, contextual advertising. Try driving traffic to a landing page with a particular offer and record the conversions. This will give a good baseline of the customer acquisition cost. Alter the offers during the testing. Maybe one of the original hypotheses won’t hit bingo, but testing will showcase the general direction of the customer needs and you can come up with a new, successful offer.

Hire a legal consultant and assess the main legal obstacles your business might face in the new market. This might include, but not limited to: taxes, content restriction, additional product certification and approval. Register the costs of all the above. Also, this step is very important, because some countries do not afford non-citizens the same rights to property as citizens. Many of them have confiscated property from international business owners in the past. Choose a country that you are confident you will be able to maintain property rights in. A foreign law attorney or a consultant can help you determine which countries would be best suited to your needs. Basic processes of opening a business vary hugely from country to country. The legislation might be so different that you will have to change your business model in order to comply with the law. This step should be taken lightly.

If applicable, explore what channels of distribution are used by your competitors. Build a database of potential partners. You can start building a network of partner acquaintances remotely. Ask the distribution agents about the main issues they, in general, face in that particular country.

Finally, build a financial plan. With all of the above information, evaluate key values such as the amount of required investments to break even, the stage at which the product becomes profitable. Create a hypothetical profit and loss statement, build your cash flow statement. Don’t forget the liabilities your company will have with a product in a new country.

Consider different strategies for commercialising your product in the new market. You could go with a partnership route where your business will be looked after by a trusted partner from the target country. It goes without saying that it’s crucial to do research on the partner as well. Decide whether you want to attract the investors or raise capital another way. If applicable, franchising might be the best option for you, if you want to do the least amount of work and you have strict franchisee control and quality assurance mechanisms in place.

At this stage, I would recommend visiting the target market country and live there for a week or two. Get a personal feel of the culture and the people. Use the products and services of the competitors and make sure if all of the above research aligns with your personal experience.

Remember, no matter how well prepared you are for the launch in a new market, the chances are everything will not go according to the plan. Be prepared for contingencies, have an adaptable approach and always stay on your toes. The key is to not go full rambo with the cash and bury half of your available money in the new country. If the metrics are not looking good, be ready to close the initiative and redirect your attention to another potential market which might be the dream golden mine for your business. Good luck!

Preparing for a product-manager interview

Maria Lukina — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 17:39:43 +0000

Introduction

Over the last 3-4 years, I have conducted around 100 interviews. Received and reviewed over 500 applications for the product manager position. Finding the right product manager is as difficult as a product manager finding a good job. I hired for different companies: banks, IT giants. The hiring processes differ, but on the whole there is some structure, which in many companies are identical.

The interview process is very similar to a language exam. The results of iELTS or TOEFL don't usually show how well you know the language, but how well you have prepared for the exam itself. The exam has a certain structure. It's important to understand and be familiar with it.
You have to adapt your knowledge to the test - you won't have time to adapt to the exam itself.

What are the main stages of the hiring process for a product manager?

HR Screening
Evaluation of professionals skills
Evaluation of soft-skills

HR screening

The first person you will encounter will probably be the HR manager doing the pre-screening. What is this? He'll explore your work experience and see how relevant you are to the position. The hiring manager will usually give criteria to highlight who the company requires. For example, the candidate can be expected to have at least 3 years of experience in the position with an emphasis on building applications. Or the candidate can be expected to have a good understanding of analytics, so it is important for the recruiter at the HR screening to know how well you understand metrics. Then, if you have worked as an analyst and you might be interested in building your career further with the focus on this particular skill.

If the HR-manager does not say what the requirements are for candidates for the job, be sure to ask him. Why is this important? Because a product-manager is a collective character of a wide range of skills and nobody can be highly professional in all of them of course. Often in large companies there is a well-established system for assessing candidates, the hiring manager is either looking for an all-round person or he wants to supplement the team with some specific skills.

Evaluation of professional skills (hard-skills)

After the HR screening, there is an interview with the hiring active specialist. This interview, more often than not, is aimed at diagnosing hard-skills. What are hard-skills?

A product manager is similar to an orchestra. The wide range of competencies required for each position varies. Let me remind you that you do not have to be an expert in every field. It is important to have basic knowledge in all fields and to be well prepared in two or three areas.

The main areas of expertise for a product manager include:

Basic product management:(frameworks/roadmap/canvas)
Product strategy
Customer Discovery
User Experience/Design
Marketing
Data Analysis
Business strategy: UE, Business Models Canvas
Development methodologies (Agile: Scrum, Kanban, Less, PM)
Technology

How are hard-skills tested during an interview?

Assessing the relevance of your past experience for the particular job.
Testing of professional skills with assignments during the interview.
Homework test assignments between the interviews.

How is the testing carried out?

The first and most obvious thing, of course, you will be asked about your experience. How is the experience relevant to the position? Do you have a successful track record of solving the product challenges?

The hard-skills testing will also test your understanding of the industry. This can consist of a number of things. First, you may have had experience
in this industry. Secondly, even if you have no experience in this industry, you may be the target audience. For example, if you want to get a job at a music streaming service and you are a music fan, follow new releases, labels, albums and are generally an active user of various streaming apps, then this is also your experience and can be viewed by the hiring manager as an advantage.

In addition to understanding the industry and the target audience, it is very important to know the market in that industry: it is important to know the main players in that market (both local and global players). Understand how they divide this market amongst themselves. Be aware of what differences they have in their product. Have a good understanding of the business model using which these particular companies and their competitors work. What they make money from. What they sell. Who the users of their product are and who pays for their product.

It is important to understand that the test tasks during the interview aim to understand how you think, what decision-making frameworks are embedded in you and how you can make quick decisions under stress. The main objective of your interview for you is to stay collected, have ready-made frameworks for different types of problems and not be afraid of them. This is actually quite interesting.

A homework assignment is a good way to find out how interested you really are in working on the product. It often happens that we look at a large company and think "the main thing for me is to secure the job and then I'll figure it out". However, in this big company you may have 50 products and the specific product you are hired for may be of no interest to you at all. Because you are not the target audience. In that case, this is not a good job fit for you, regardless of the company.

Evaluation of cross-sectional skills (soft-skills)

In large companies, this part of assessment is often carried out by managers in related departments, i.e. colleagues at your level. Why? Because large companies have an established corporate culture, it is very important to understand how the new person will fit (or not) into this culture.

There are several aspects that will be tested within the soft-skills section:

Communication. Ability to establish contact with the team, stakeholders, management. How you act in conflict situations. Skills in moderation: moderation and facilitation of working meetings. Presentation skills. The ability to concisely formulate thoughts in a written form.

Leadership. A team has to be constantly propelled forward. You have to be able to engage the stakeholders with your objectives. Be able to sell your idea to management.

Goal setting and critical thinking. Justify your decisions, formulate goals and focus on them. Trust the facts and call your ideas hypotheses.

Entrepreneurial thinking. For me it's about resourcefulness, deleting the word “giving up” from your dictionary, focusing on the results and the energy that drives the team forward.

Creativity. The ability to create from scratch and/or propose new solutions for existing products.

Attention to detail. Be able to quickly change your focus between micro and macro levels. Balance between between the big final goal and the details of a particular solution.

Basic management: team motivation, peer feedback, team development, resource management. Also, emotional intelligence: self-confidence, self-regulation skills, stress management.

Final words

Remember, an interview is not a university graduation exam. You can and should ask clarifying questions and you do not have to know everything. My product management experience was built during more than 8 years and right now I don't know everything for sure. At the interview you will not be judged on memorised theory, but on your ability to to cope with new challenges, openness to new things and systematic thinking.

Finally, after you’ve prepared for the interview using the steps detailed in this guide, it would be a good idea to look into the company you’re applying to. In the job description in the "Responsible for" and "Skills/experience required" blocks, you can see which aspects are most important in this role for the company. These can be emphasised in the preparation. Formulate an understanding of what products the company has. Understand what main problems they solve and how, hypothetically, they can be improved. Research the history of the company, how long it has been on the market, what structure it has, when and what key investments were made.

I am sure that some of your friends or their friends work or have worked there. Invite them for coffee and ask questions about how the recruitment is performed. Ask for advice and guidance. All of the above together will give you a strong foundation to stand on during the interview. Good luck!