Andrew Seipp - Principal consultant, SellClarity
In my consulting practice, I often recommend that Canadian companies consider making the U.S. their primary market. Considering the current economy, there has never been a better time than the present.
Beyond the weak state of our loonie, the draw of the U.S. is pretty simple – its sheer size is massive. With 10 times the population of Canada, it has a lot more potential customers in a larger variety of businesses.
In the past it was a major struggle to market into the U.S. without setting up shop stateside; however, there are many Canadian companies that market exclusively to the U.S., despite having most operations here in Vancouver.
While businesses of the past relied on local word of mouth, the face of sales and marketing is changing. If you share your story, and tell it well, people can discover you from anywhere.
Using inside sales, one local team can generate business across the continent (or world) using email, phone calls and sales automation technologies.
But inside sales alone isn’t enough to gain trust abroad. That’s where the content behind your brand can shine. Flesh out why you’re the best at what you do, clients you’ve had and success stories, make video campaigns and a blog – make your business exciting, relatable and clear. Otherwise known as inbound marketing, its goal isn’t to generate leads; it’s to show who you are. Content like this is the fastest way of putting customers at ease with your brand.
U.S. expansion has its challenges, but the rewards are worth it: the time to expand south is now.
Derek Major - Chief relationship manager, Eligeo
In our line of business, we resell a lot of software from vendors in the U.S. to our Canadian customers. The challenge we face most is working with our foreign currency exchange providers to ensure that we are getting the best rates. It is not all doom and gloom, however, as there are plenty of opportunities to take advantage of the strength that the U.S. dollar is providing right now.
We have an advantage over our competitors in the United States simply because we can offer lower-priced services with the same level of expertise and quality. In Canada, our service rates have not changed at all over the last few years. In the United States, every time the Canadian dollar is weakened, our U.S. customers are truly getting a discount.
It is more cost-effective to work with a Canadian company than with a U.S. company because of the cost saving; this is why our company has really dialled into exporting services. We’ve added more resources to our sales team, and its mandate is to focus on the U.S. economy to generate our business. This strategy started last year, and we’ve continued with this approach starting from the beginning of 2016.
Our strategy is working, and we’re already set for record revenues and profits this year, with most of the revenue coming from the U.S.
Whether we as Canadians like it or not, we are all affected by our weakening currency. The good news is that there are a lot of ways to take advantage of the export opportunities, including co-funding arrangements to help ease the cost of promoting and acquiring customers abroad.
Fiona Ho - Human resources manager, Fortinet
While the weak dollar may be an attractive reason for many companies in Canada to rapidly expand their operations, Fortinet’s presence in Burnaby has consistently grown, at an average rate of 20% year-over-year in the last five years.
Our Burnaby location is our largest R&D office with 600 engineers at the forefront of the network security space.
Our headquarters are in Silicon Valley, so the competition for talent is intense. The declining loonie continues to justify the expansion of our Canadian offices, given that Fortinet is a U.S.-based company. However, the calibre of talent available in B.C. plays a more prominent role in our decision to hire locally.
We work very closely with post-secondary institutions across Canada and each year allocate a number of R&D positions for our new grad program. Last year, we brought on 160 new hires to our Canadian offices. In 2016, we have reserved 35 new full-time permanent roles for new graduates.
Adding this to our intermediate and senior opportunities, we are looking at filling 90 positions, and we are only one month into the new year.
We have to be strategic in our recruitment plans and stay aligned with the business. From an HR perspective, we are not going to base our recruitment strategy on the fluctuating dollar.
Our recruitment strategy aligns with the company’s strategy, which is to provide the best cybersecurity products and services that address increasingly complex threats, and we will do what it takes to get there.
