Exporting Your Services

What’s Different About Exporting Services?

As a service firm, you are trying to sell something invisible to the buyer; in fact, you are trying to sell a promise. It is much easier to sell products because they can be inspected and tried out. Services, in contrast, are usually not delivered on the spot and the buyer does not see an immediate benefit. Since you are trying to convince someone to buy something that does not exist until they agree to the purchase, it is critical that you are as credible as possible so the buyer will take the chance you will deliver what you promise.

Often, part or all of a service must be paid for before the service commences. For example, you purchase a ticket on an airline without knowing whether or not the flight will depart or arrive on time and whether or not your luggage will arrive at your destination. This uncertainty introduces a strong element of risk for the potential purchaser, and customers manage this risk either by using known suppliers or by seeking information on the likely performance of the potential new service supplier. So a critical component of your services export strategy needs to be building credibility and familiarity so foreigners are willing to take a risk on your service.

Many potential customers use referrals (“who do you know that...”) to select new service suppliers. This means your service firm needs to become known by organizations being asked for referrals. It also means, from a skills perspective, you need to be good at relationship marketing to build referral networks.

Another way potential customers choose service providers is by meeting them personally and seeing their firms in action. This usually means you need to market your service yourself instead of hiring an agent. To do a good job of marketing services to foreigners, you will need to be aware of the cultural factors that affect interpersonal relationships.

Since service exporters need to assure potential customers they will deliver quality service, they require different assistance for export development than firms exporting goods.

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