The slow sell nation – good makers, poor marketers

In the meantime it’s grown to be bigger than Andy Haden’s head, so it’ll have to be cut up in bits.

It starts with a fairy story.

Once upon a time there was a NZ manufacturer who was building a factory in a foreign land. (Like in all fairy stories the names have been changed to protect real identities. Anyway the moral of the story is the important thing).

The manufacturer had it sweet with a local buyer for its products, so it kept its nose to the grindstone to get the factory up and running.

However, beyond the factory walls, other frogs were waiting to be kissed, but in the factory no one was on watch, and anyway even if some one was, they could not have recognised the opportunity as all were factory builders.

The frog kissers were back in NZ.

This tale does have a happy ending with the fairy-story arrival of some knights.

This Kiwi manufacturer most probably would have done alright in its blinkered making stuff sort of way, but with the injection of a bit of market awareness it’s horizons for growth were massively expanded.

But in real life you’re usually not so lucky.

My fairy story is a roundabout way of asking the question: Is the ability to sell missing from the Kiwi genetic makeup?

Do the New Zealand tourism posters in Murray Hewitt’s office – “New Zealand – Why not?” and “Don’t expect too much – You’ll love it” – set the standard?

There are of course honourable exceptions including the real NZ tourism poster 100% Pure and 42 Below.

But by sell I don’t just mean shoving your foot in the door, or even advertising. It’s bigger than this – yeah even bigger than marketing.

It’s, I dunno, about our ability (or actually inability) to spot the opportunities for a sale, and then professionally follow through, which is really the moral of the fairy story.

The genes we’re missing are the ones that produces antennae – antennae for a sale.

All this was really based on observation and feedback from people who’d seen Kiwi businesses operating in export markets.

A lot of the latter is pretty damning.

But yeah, it was just observations.

Then Concentrate and PriceWaterhouseCoopers came long with their Market Measures Survey of 144 NZ technology companies.

They identified four typical Kiwi exporter go-to-market approaches:
1. Build it and they will come (not common)
2. Hanging up the shingle (significant minority)
3. Door to door sales people (dominant approach)
4. Moving the herd.

Why do they behave like this – what Concentrate calls a “pioneering spirit” slogging it out direct selling?

In the next post I’ll have a look at the cultural aspect. Has where our immigrants come from had an impact? Would the situation have been a lot different if a bunch of eastern European merchants had arrived in NZ in the 19th century rather than south of England farm workers?

At some stage I’ll also go into more detail about the way our exporters behave in offshore markets.

[Photo credit - James Jackson via Flickr]