Evan Carmichael breaks down how he expanded a software business to 30+ countries using five steps: research distributors selling complementary products, build a credibility deck with customer proof, show market momentum before pitching, negotiate clear contract terms with an opt-out clause, and run a three-month trial before committing.
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If you're looking to grow your business around the world by bringing on international distributors, I'm going to share with you my 5-step plan for how to accomplish that. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. I believe in entrepreneurs, and I recently got a question from one of my YouTube viewers— love you guys— Adnan, who wrote in to say, "Hey Evan, I just started watching your videos and I'm amazed. Wonderful work." Thank you, Adnan. "I had a question though. I would like to know, how do you get in contact with international agents? Like, I live in a country where ready-made I know handmade garments are the cheapest to produce. I'm looking for an agent who could help me distribute in developed countries like America. Where can I find such contacts? Love this question, Adnan, and as a quick little background on what I've gone through, my first business was a software company. I was based in Toronto, Canada, and was struggling to get sales. And one of the things that really helped me was negotiating deals with international agents who could represent our product. It helped me go from making $300 to getting my first 5-figure check, and then eventually being able to sell and over over 30 different countries. So here's the 5-step process that I went through that you can use to grow your business. Number 1 is research companies. Research is super easy to do and you should be out there online, look on Google, look on YouTube, look on social media for people who are potential distributors for you. An ideal fit should be somebody who's already selling different types of products to your target market. So when I was out trying to find distributors for my scientific software, I was trying to find people who are already selling to scientists because that was the market I wanted to reach. I didn't want I didn't want to find somebody who lived in the country I wanted to get into but had no experience in the area and try to convince them to try to sell my scientific software. Instead, I looked for the companies who already were selling to them and had complementary products and services but weren't direct competitors. So start by making that list of companies who's already selling complementary products and services to what you have to offer and would see adding your product as a value-add to put through their chain. Number 2 is create a deck. You want to create an overview of your company to show how reputable you are. There's a big fear in dealing with new companies that maybe you're going to fold after a couple months, maybe you're going to take my money and run, that you're not going to stick around. So you want to show that you have credibility and authority. You want to make sure you have a website that looks legitimate and you create a PowerPoint file or PDF that you can send them showing as much credibility as possible. Show how long you've been around for, show how many customers you have, show what media you've been in. Any— anything Is there something that you can share that makes me feel like it's a safe bet going with you instead of just gambling on some new startup? Don't just show them the opportunity that they have working with you. Reduce their risk by showing the credibility that you have. Anytime somebody's evaluating proposal, they're gonna look at risk and they're gonna look at reward. And too many times entrepreneurs focus only on bumping up that reward, but if there's high risk, the person's gonna say no. So you have to increase the reward and reduce the risk as much as possible. So create an amazing deck. Number 3 is reach out with momentum. So you've made your list of all the people you want to get in touch with, you created an amazing website and amazing deck to wow them. Now you want to reach out to them, introduce yourself, but have momentum behind you. You don't want to look desperate. You don't want to make it look like you're, you're struggling and this is your last chance at becoming successful. The way I reached out with momentum to my potential distributors was finding companies who already were interested in our product that lived in their country. So when I approached a potential distributor or agent in Japan, I would show them all the results we already had from Japan. I would show them that people were visiting our website from Japan, that people were downloading the free demo of our product from Japan, that we had some customers from Japan. And I would say, "Hey, we have all this opportunity coming from the Japanese market and we don't know what to do with it. We'd love to partner with a local expert who can really take this and run." So if you don't have customers yet, then show inquiries or show leads. If you don't have leads yet, then show web traffic. If you don't have web traffic from that country, then Go and get some web traffic from that country. You gotta show that you have some momentum there so that you're reaching out from a position of strength and not despair and weakness. Number 4 is discuss terms. Once you get on a call with them and they learn about your business, they're going to want to know what kind of terms are they going to get. How much is it going to cost them? What kind of commissions are they going to get from it? Are you going to be funneling them leads or not? I'm going to share with you 3 of the key terms that I look for in every single agreement that I made. The first was having an opt-out clause, which meant that within 30 days, if I wasn't happy with what they were doing, I could cancel on them and not owe them any more money. The second was the jurisdiction, which means if there's ever a conflict, if there's ever a disagreement, if there's ever an opportunity that you might go to court, you're always governed by your local laws. So it'd always be governed under the laws of Ontario, Canada, where I was from. And if we had to fight them, they would have to come to our courts to fight us. And number 3 is exclusivity, which meant they were the only ones to potentially represent us in their country. If a deal was non-exclusive, then I would give them between 25% and 30% commission for every product they sold for us, but it also let me negotiate with other people in their country. Where if it was exclusive, I would give them 40% of every sale that we made, and they would be the only person that would be allowed to sell in their country. We'd also funnel them leads so that if we got somebody from our website asking us from their market, then I would send them the lead instead of trying to close them myself. And in general, it made a whole lot of sense having people local on the ground because I don't understand the Japanese market, I don't understand the Japanese language, I don't want to wake up in the middle of the night to be able to talk to a Japanese customer. I'd much rather have somebody local take care of that for me. We also required our exclusive distributors to purchase prepaid inventory in advance. So the first deal I made was for $13,500 with a distributor in the UK. It was an exclusive arrangement where they would take 40% commission on everything sold and nobody else represent us in the UK market. And they pre-purchased $13,500 worth of our software that we would deduct as they started making sales. So know what terms you want in advance of going into that meeting with them. Number 5: Start a trial. It takes time for a company to get to know your products and services and be able to represent you really well. It also takes time for you to train them and educate them and work with them on the process so they can really represent you the best that they can in their market. So start with a 3-month trial. Train them, work with them, funnel them leads if that's part of your deal. Make sure that they understand who you are, what you're all about, and are doing their best possible job to represent you. You'll find quickly that some people are really dedicated, really motivated, and are moving a lot of product for you. And others, you'll find, talk a really good game, but then don't actually deliver any results. So keep the ones that are doing well after the trial and fire the ones who aren't. So that's my 5-step process to getting international distributors. It worked for me, I had a lot of success with it, and I hope that it works for you as well. Believe. For those of you watching, you like the video, you want to see more like it, you can subscribe to the channel. And let me know what you think, if you have a question, in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.
Self-improvement books are like fitness books. They never work on their own. What you need is a trainer. That's Evan Carmichael. Get the newsletter.
