Step 2: Market Validation

In the Exportia methodology, once we have assessed that your business is ready to export to Europe with our online Export Readiness Diagnostic, we then validate that there is potential in the European market for your business. This is the Market Validation, the second step in the Exportia 4-step Process.

In the Market Validation, we help you select the top two European countries you should focus on. It is often tricky for non-European businesses to know where to start in Europe. The choice of the best European country for your business is critical; it will accelerate your success to make the right choice.

Once the top two countries are selected, we map out a long list of potential channel partners or distributors in both countries. We also identify, in some cases, key potential end-users in both countries.

The objective of the market validation is not to sell. What we do instead is gain feedback about the potential of your product or service in the European market. It is very important to understand this very clearly. At the initial stages, you need feedback. If you start to sell straight away, your European contacts will shut the door to any conversation and will ask you to go away. You need their feedback, If you just ask for their opinion it’s much easier to obtain, and it is less threatening.

You will get a lot of value and learnings out of this Market Validation stage.

The Key actions of the Market Validation project are to :

• Select your top two Countries in Europe
• Test the interest of 10-20 European Sales Channels in Europe
• Test the interest of Key European Target Customers

The outcome will be :

• To know which top two European countries to start with
• To validate the interest of the European market for your company
• To validate the strategy forward by focusing on the right partners

By conducting a Market Validation, you will avoid many pitfalls. The typical mistakes that businesses make when they don’t conduct a Market Validation: they go to the wrong country in Europe, where their product has no potential, so they waste many many years trying to break into the wrong country. Some businesses engage the first European distributor that comes to them. Without knowing if this is the right partner profile, and without having mapped out the local European country distributors landscape, they end up signing up the wrong partner. It drags their time, resources and energy on the wrong area.

These are all the reasons why you need to conduct a Market Validation before you enter the European market.Contact us to review your needs to scope your Market Validation. Book a Market Validation 30-min discovery session here.