My job at the international department of a POS software manufacturer taught me one thing: we find a completely different situation in every country we start working.
We have a broad range of products, and we always suggest our foreign partners to start with only one product. Usually we advise starting with software for restaurants and bars, since these are easier to implement. And once our partner is familiar with that software, they can easily add our retail software to their catalogue, since the basis is the same.
Penetrating a market this way has the easiest learning curve, but sometimes the reality of a specific market prefers another approach. I’ve found some markets in the north of Europe with a restaurant Point of Sale manufacturer in every town. The quality of these products does not always reach ours, but the sheer number of competitors increases the effort we’ll have to do drastically. In those cases we look at the market and pick another business type as our target, such as fashion stores.
New dealers always ask us how to begin, but they know their market better then we, and if they don’t know the market, it is a lot easier for them to get to know it. All we can do is give advise, but we’ll always have to trust on the insight of our local partner. They are our hands, eyes and ears.