There's no single route to export success, and it's often best to stop and ask for directions

The Globe & Mail

Two lucky hits on a company website--that's all it took for Tyler Gompf and his partners at Tell Us About Us, a Winnipeg-based consumer research firm, to crack the U.S. market. The company turned those fleeting visits into contracts with a Montana casino and a Minneapolis company that operates 60 Arby's restaurants. Now, seven years later, Tell Us About Us has a roster of 50 American and Central American clients, and it earns 90% of its revenues outside the country. 'We had no client base in Winnipeg when we started, so it forced us to look for export opportunities,' says Gompf, who launched the company with brother Kirby and friends Scott Griffith and Brent Stevenson, all of them youthful University of Manitoba graduates. 'We've had such success down south that it's a very appealing market to us,' says Gompf.

Tell Us About Us uses customer feedback to provide clients with strategic advice for improving their businesses. The company gathers information from several sources, including consumer surveys, 1-800 numbers that customers can call with complaints or inquiries, and secret shoppers. The company then prepares reports on the quality of service and products.

Griffith, who is vice-president of business development, says the partners began prospecting for clients in nearby Minneapolis and Chicago by posting advertisements for their website on electronic bulletin boards. But the partners have gathered most of their clientele the old-fashioned way--by hitting the road. In 2001, they raised $500,000 from a venture-capital company and used it to pay for trade shows. (The partners still attend about half a dozen large restaurant and food-services trade shows each year.) 'We pursued the venture capital so we could afford to travel and market our services,' says Griffith. 'We spend about two weeks each month in hotels and airplanes.”

For aspiring exporters who don't have that kind of money or stamina, one proven alternative is to team up with locals in foreign markets. Toronto-based Diversinet Corp., which sells software that ensures the secure transmission of wireless data via telephone networks, has relied on acquisitions and strategic partnerships to develop export markets in the United States, Hong Kong and mainland China. The company plans to use the same approach in Europe. Diversinet's annual revenues total about $12 million, and about 90% of that comes from foreign sales. 'It can be very costly for a small company to go it alone in foreign markets,' says president and CEO Nagy Moustafa, who launched the publicly traded company in 1997.

Last September, Diversinet bought Caradas Inc., a Boston company with a similar product. Diversinet followed up by taking over DSS Software, a California company, to ensure that it could install and service the software. In Asia, Diversinet has relied on Nortel Networks, one of its Canadian clients, to provide introductions to telephone companies in Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China. As Moustafa explains, Nortel was using Diversinet software internally, and Nortel sales executives were ready to recommend it to others.

Governments can also help. John Slauenwhite, vice-president of international sales with Ontario Exports, says most provinces have agencies to help companies sell abroad. Ontario Exports recruits companies to attend trade shows in the U.S. and other countries. Its services also include seminars and individualized advice. 'We'll look at the nature of their goods and services, hone in on what the company needs, and apply our knowledge of the marketplace to help them,' says Slauenwhite. 'There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach.'

By D'Arcy Jenish