Who is the Temporary Export Manager and what does he or she do?
Within SMEs, the figure of the Temporary Export Manager is increasingly in demand, an expert who offers his knowledge and skills to allow companies to explore international contexts in order to find new opportunities and new markets within which to expand. As you can understand from the name, the Temporary Export Manager is usually a freelancer with a temporary assignment, for a period ranging from six to twelve months, renewable, in special cases, up to two to three years.
During these periods, the Temporary Export Manager will be able to put into practice all those internationalization strategies necessary for the company for which he or she works and which lack the skills to be able to proceed autonomously. Not always, in fact, the will to expand in a foreign market coincides with the real possibility to give life to such expansion: often the skills are lacking and in these cases the role of the Temporary Export Manager becomes fundamental, whose aim will be to evaluate all the variables and characteristics of the company and analyze what is its real possibility of investment and insertion in foreign markets.
In order to be able to carry out in the best possible way the role of Temporary Export Manager, it is necessary to be in possession of a series of requirements and competences, among which:
- skills in international marketing;
- previous similar experiences (concreteness and professionalism);
- communication and sales skills;
- language skills.
International marketing skills: a fundamental element of Temporary Export Manager training.
The role of the Temporary Export Manager is to internationalize the company. For this reason, his skills in the field of international marketing represent not an advantage, but a fundamental necessity, a sine qua non condition for carrying out the work in a correct, professional and, above all, successful way. The Temporary Export Manager must know how to study in depth the market towards which the company is aiming, understand its general and specific aspects, the points of insertion and the peculiarities that allow a safe approach.
Previous similar experiences: because they are fundamental for a Temporary Export Manager.
The Temporary Export Manager must carry out his research, market studies and analyses in a short time, providing the company that hired him with concrete information on the possible success of the entry into certain international markets as soon as possible. All this, often starting from completely new information, i.e. not knowing the company reality in which you are working. The Temporary Export Manager must be able to carry out his work in the period defined by his work assignment and with the utmost precision and must also know how to manage a large amount of information and problems closely related to foreign markets. Precisely for this reason, in order to maintain the respect of deadlines, commitments, to ensure the correct evaluation of data and information, a highly professional and qualified person is needed, who knows his work and all the necessary methodologies to carry it out at best.
The success of the Temporary Export Manager’s work also depends on the company’s openness towards the methodologies applied by this professional figure and, precisely for this reason, the sharing of working methods, the continuous interface and trust become fundamental to obtain rapid and significant results. It should always be remembered, in fact, that the work of the Temporary Export Manager must be carried out together with the company staff, with whom the most suitable strategies, policies and lines of action are selected for the company, the tools at its disposal and its economic and human resources.
Communication and sales skills
Among the main professional needs of a Temporary Export Manager there is certainly that of knowing how to manage communication in the best possible way, both towards the entrepreneur and all the company staff with whom he interfaces, and towards the outside, i.e. towards the markets to which he addresses himself. If on the one hand, in fact, the role of the Temporary Export Manager is to know how to carry out market analysis in order to recognize the possibilities of insertion and to carry out an in-depth study of competitors and potential customers, on the other hand, important communication skills are necessary to guarantee the correct flow of information to and from the company. When we talk about communication, of course, we do not only mean verbal communication, i.e. the correct property of language, both general and technical, but also all those aspects that allow us to get in tune with the company and its customers. Correct communication, supported by precise and up-to-date analytical studies, becomes in fact the key to increasing sales opportunities.
Language skills
Closely related to communication skills are language skills. A Temporary Export Manager, in fact, cannot base his skills exclusively on the economic and marketing sector, but must also have high language skills and this for two reasons. The first is that he operates in foreign markets and therefore it is unthinkable that he can work and interface without knowing the language of the market in which he wants to enter. Certainly the knowledge of English is fundamental, being able in many cases to be considered a universal language; however, having mastered other languages, especially those spoken in the markets in which you want to enter, can ensure greater chances of success in sales, allowing a more correct communication. It should also be pointed out that most of the information relating to study and updating in the economic sector and, above all, in foreign markets, is written in English, so that knowledge of the language becomes not only an important tool for communication, but also for continuous study and updating.
We hope that this article has been to your liking and for further clarification you can always write to us: in**@ea********.it .
