Kettering International is expanding its offering suite to help guide businesses through the complex journey of international growth from Australia into the U.S. market. The Kettering Navigator is, as founder John Crozier-Durham explains, “the summation of all our efforts and what we’ve been doing really well, naturally and organically, as a service business for a long time.”
Being an Australia-based business owner considering U.S. expansion can mean venturing into uncharted waters. The Kettering Navigator is your trusted map and compass, ensuring you sail confidently into international markets.
This is the first article in a six-part series exploring the Kettering Navigator, a powerful framework designed to guide businesses through international market entry and expansion. This article will focus specifically on how corporate strategy and business modeling work together to define aligned objectives that assist a company in refining its vision for growth and expansion.
Why the Kettering Navigator?
The name “Kettering Navigator” embodies the idea of overcoming obstacles and serving as a guide to explore new markets, much like a seasoned captain steers a crew through the challenges of a new course. It reflects Kettering International’s reputation for providing excellent personal support during expansion, building client teams in different cultures, and establishing market connections through their extensive network. Kettering encourages clients to enhance their customer experience and continuously evolve, and it’s this philosophy that gave birth to the Kettering Navigator.
The Kettering Navigator: A Modular Approach
The Kettering Navigator follows a modular approach, much like assembling crew members of a ship to create a cohesive team. It is designed to target the primary needs and goals of each client. In a perfect world, each client would be able to engage in the full Navigator suite immediately. When that is not possible, Kettering utilises a discovery process to understand the client’s current state in relation to their objectives. They take a look at team structure and needs, systems, business processes, and challenges. After assessing and weighing this information in light of the client’s desired targets, Kettering recommends specific modules from the Navigator – Corporate Strategy, Reputation Game Plan, Revenue Engines, Revenue Generators, and Market Outreach – to turn goals into benchmarks.
This modular approach offers clients flexibility in selecting the components that align with their priorities and budgets, making it a versatile and efficient way to address their specific pain points and opportunities for growth. One client, for example, may start with Corporate Strategy, while it makes sense for another to begin with a Revenue Engines module.
Why a Clear Corporate Strategy Matters
Corporate Strategy gets to the root of why and how a company wants to expand its target market. A clear and concrete “why” serves as a North Star for businesses. Without a guiding light, boats and businesses can get lost at sea sailing in circles, wasting time and money. The Kettering Navigator offers the business models necessary for achieving benchmarks, while also helping to identify weaknesses in the strategic framework, such as geopolitical assumptions, untested market messaging, or unexpected challenges that have hindered other companies. In short, benefiting from Kettering’s experience can be invaluable in avoiding these pitfalls.
Kettering International excels at helping companies sift through the levels of abstraction and get really clear on their corporate strategy. Why? Because they have seen countless companies attempt U.S. market expansion without this clarity, leaving them essentially lost and less resourced than when they first launched their market entry.
For example, a prospect in the construction project management software industry wanted to expand into the U.S. market. However, their initial motivation appeared to center on a preference for having a presence in New York. Kettering emphasised the importance of a strategic “why” in their expansion plan, highlighting the need for a well-defined corporate strategy beyond surface motivations, accompanied by a cost analysis of merely being in NYC. Between the time and investment in real estate, permits, and staff costs, the construction company could have lost its way. Instead, the Kettering Navigator helped reestablish the company’s vision and goals. With these markers in place, a company can allocate resources confidently and draw up an actionable plan.
Once a strategy is determined the next step is selecting a worthy sea-bearing vessel, also known as a business model.
Business Model and Growth Ambitions
Corporate strategy is interconnected with business modeling and growth ambitions. When a company decides to boost its profitability through market expansion, it’s time to specifically identify and research the how and where. Next is aligning these objectives with strategy. With the Kettering Navigator, clients can orient and easily pace their growth within the network and acumen that Kettering provides. The Kettering Navigator serves as both a guide and an instructor, demonstrating to clients how to enhance their offerings, refine their corporate strategy, and elevate the client experience as they collectively achieve new milestones.
Growth Takes Time and A Plan
While short-term gains are important, and an uptick in cash flow is often necessary for a market entry, a solid corporate strategy also defines a long-term vision and direction for sustainable growth. A guiding plan helps drive client engagement for maximum, reciprocal results. Long-term goals also help in planning resource allocation for targeted growth, setting up benchmarks for networking outreach, and positioning your company as the best answer to a well-defined need.
The Kettering Navigator is specifically focused on assisting international businesses with both short-term and long-term goals. Kettering recognises the challenges of translating success from one market to another, and can provide earned wisdom and circles of support to a company looking to call the U.S. market a second home.
Contact Kettering Today
Ready to set sail on your global adventure? Reach out to Kettering International to learn more about the Kettering Navigator and how it can help steer your business’s expansion efforts. Schedule your complimentary consultation today, and keep an eye out for our upcoming article on the Navigator’s approach to enhancing your company’s reputation strategy.