My guest for today is giving us invaluable information about these. A police officer (of 20 years) turned entrepreneur, Mohammed Murad is passionate about leadership development. He is also a trainer, a coach, and a consultant.
Mohammed is also the current President of Toastmasters International and is well versed with communicating across a wide based of cultures. He’s very well a people’s person and builds relationships easily.
Mohammed owns a couple of companies where he also serves as the Managing Director of them. He has a fashion label company, a management and training consulting firm, and an event management company that specializes in very high-end wedding events. He also runs a couple of his father’s companies – some restaurants, an industrial workshop, laundry for hotels, etc.
I brought him on the show because he has a vast amount of knowledge with international markets and working within different countries. Mohammed will share with us his expert advice on entering into international markets and achieving success with it.
Here are the highlights of my conversation with Mohammed:
Mohammed’s coolest sales experience being the customer
Been in Toastmaster for 18 years
His advice to those who want to sell to the international market:
- Sales is all about numbers
- Making sales with very successful after-sale service
- Increasing the market shares
- Having a range of products catering to a variety of tastes
Challenges a company might face when going to a larger market:
- Inaccurate interpretation of customer needs
- Need to streamline the production cost and process
The value of in-house production:
- Control of the product’s quality
- Faster increase in production
Understanding cultures when entering a market:
- Maintaining the brand identity
Hiring sales representatives in new markets:
- Need to understand and feel the brand
- Meeting customers without doing sales
- Selling in a sense that they’re sensitive to their brand identity
- Learning about the current customer base
- Speaking the language of the new customer base that fits the brand identity
If you’re looking into going to the Dubai (UAE) market:
- Understand the culture identity before starting any business
- Superimpose the cultural identity of the country/city on your brand identity and corporate identity
- See the overlapping factors that need to be modified
- Visit Dubai for a couple of times and talk to people and feel the atmosphere
Mohammed’s tactics in growing business and expanding the market:
- Going completely social
- Doing marketing in a fun and nontraditional way
- Encouraging his salespeople to be socially savvy and represent the company
- Salespeople making sure they’re not harming the product
- Representing the product in a personal way rather than “corporate”
The importance of partnerships
Win-win strategies in having great partnerships:
- COMMUNICATION
- RELATIONSHIP
- Look for companies within the same industry
- Meet the person responsible for the company
- Go for a company similar to your company size (including production-wise, capacity-wise, employee number-wise)
Current projects Mohammed is working on:
- Expansion plan for his chain of laundry business
- Working on a Royal Wedding in March
Connect with Mohammed on www.mohammedmurad.com and on Twitter @mohammedmurad and Instagram @thoughtprovokers.
Find out more about his business projects:
Wedding events – TanseeQ
Fashion – Zareena
Mohammed’s Major Takeaway:
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