How Much Does SME Exporting Really Cost?

After wrapping up my time as a UK branch manager and coming back to Korea, I’ve met many companies for coffee chats and consulting.

Along the way, I’ve learned that the point where companies hesitate is, as always, “How much budget do we need to put in?”

Actually, if you think of the most common export routes, that worry is reasonable at first glance. In my experience, a single overseas trade fair easily burns through tens of millions of won, and even before that, hiring staff for overseas business is a fixed cost you can’t ignore.

Of course, exporting is treated as very important at the national level in Korea, so exporters are supported through various policy funds. But these government support programs cannot be a fundamental solution.

Do you really have to spend big to export?

I run paid consulting for exporters myself, but there’s something I often say to companies I meet for the first time.

“In your situation, you really don’t need to spend a lot of money to work with me.”

“So are you telling us to give up on exporting?”

“No, just do what I tell you.”

Exporting is basically a B2B commercial activity that crosses two borders.

There are language and cultural barriers, and those two border crossings can cause problems you never expected. Even so, the basic B2B structure doesn’t change.

Opening an overseas market through exports is a negotiation that creates a new deal between two companies. So once you’ve found a counterpart to negotiate with, the next step is to read their needs, separate what you can give from what you can get, hold those as cards, and work through them one by one in negotiation.

So where on earth do you find that counterpart? Through market research, as I’ve said countless times.

What about Amazon and Shopee launch agencies?

A small question may come up here.

“Then what about the U.S. Amazon and Southeast Asia Shopee launch agencies that are so popular these days?”

I’ve already covered this in another post, so to put it very briefly: “If you’re confident you can handle CS and logistics, do it yourself.” Of course, a company with that kind of money, staff, and time wouldn’t have been agonizing over overseas trade fairs and business trips in the first place.

See the post below for details.

Exporting Fast Through Shopee and Amazon? The CS and Logistics That Launch Agencies Don’t Mention

So why use an agency?

Then couldn’t you just run outbound sales nonstop, with no need for help from an agency like mine?

That’s half right and half wrong.

First, running outbound sales nonstop forces a considerable mental toll. In my experience, the reply rate for outbound sales emails is under 10%. And half of those won’t even take a sample.

So it’s common to spend a whole day sorting companies, send 100 offers, and get fewer than 10 replies, and many of the replies that do come are rejections.

This process eats away at you in itself, demands a matching amount of work capacity, and above all, you may miss the timing that really matters. That’s why companies pay good money to hand the work to an agency like mine: to cut down this process and to design and execute a more efficient strategy.

And the most important role of an agency is not breaking into export markets for you.

The real value of an agency lies in offering ideas to quickly pivot, transform, or improve products that have no potential, and in finding the market with the highest chance of entry.

Put differently, if an agency says it can export any product at all, you need to double-check its capabilities before hiring it.

So how much does it cost?

The answer: if you open the market yourself, invest as much people and time as you can.

There’s no problem at all if the CEO does it personally without building a new team. After all, we live in a world where even one-person companies export.

So how much does it cost if you hire me?

Didn’t I say? I need to look at the product and the company’s situation.

Put the other way around, I suppose you could say I provide information and strategy that fit the company’s budget.