Our starting point was jointly to look at everything the client was delivering across it’s entire client base and identify what services could be most-readily positioned to sell into other international markets.

The client was doing so many things really well, but we needed to collectively agree what the right service was in order to give a razor focus to this first step on the client’s internationalisation journey.

The client’s most successful service offering was in a highly-regulated area with complex procurement processes so time-to-revenue in new geographies would be considerable. As a new entrant into this market – even one as successful as our client – a significant amount of time and money would be spent simply getting onto the procurement frameworks, rather than pitching for and winning new business.

So, we jointly agreed to disregard this service offering.

Instead, we worked closely with the client’s Leadership Team to examine another area in which the client had considerable experience. This ‘product’ was tested against different geographies – examining disruption, maturity and the relative strength and experience of other market participants.

In the end, we jointly selected the UK market for a number of reasons. This market was relatively mature but was going through a period of significant disruption ,with many new entrants in need of an experienced BPO service provider. The concept of BPO wasn’t new to the market, but the existing players didn’t have a great reputation, or history of success. Thanks to our client’s hard-earned reputation and track-record of delivery, we were able to build a strategy that mapped the client’s significant experience in this market to specific customer pain points. Making our job quite easy!

Luckily for 3SIXTY, the client understood that landing on an agreed strategy is the start of a journey, not the end. Now we needed to go and deliver. We built a lot of rigour into the sales process – because the client was very strong on ensuring the agreed sales approach could, in time, be replicated across other sectors and geographies.

Working hand-in-hand with the client, we mapped out the market landscape. We identified the people and companies we needed to get to know (targets/partners/influencers). Because our client had such a strong track record of delivery in the Irish market, we knew that by getting in front of the right people and having them hear the story, success would follow.

Ultimately, from a position of zero revenue, zero contacts and zero brand awareness in this market, our client was able to build an €11m annual revenue line (Total Contracts Value €65m) and position itself as a recognised expert in this space. Now the client had its “beachhead” for further international growth.