When you seek help from experts with long experience in the markets you intend to pursue, you can control your costs and avoid many of the missteps that can distract your management group from core activities.

Take the example of Firetrust Ltd., a leading creator of email security products. Proudly 100% New Zealand owned, its highly acclaimed MailWasher and MailWasher Pro anti-spam tools have helped millions of PC users to rid the world of spam.

As the demand for spam filter technology escalated worldwide, Firetrust saw an opportunity to build on the installed base of its client software product to attack the corporate market with a server-based technology. This move would not only create significant revenue streams from a new market segment, but would allow Firetrust to expand its presence to new international markets. The challenge: To prioritize the most promising markets and to develop a market entry strategy which would be successful as well as cost-effective.

"We knew that moving into the enterprise market would require a different business model," said Firetrust CEO Nick Bolton. "Unlike the consumer market, businesses often resist buying large licenses online, and they usually have more sophisticated needs that have to be supported locally. So we were concerned about how to get the product into their hands, as well as providing a high level of support to this critical market segment. We came to the conclusion that the best way forward would be to recruit a network of professional resellers and channel partners who would take on the responsibility for sales and marketing, as well as first-line technical support. However, we had little idea about which markets were the most appropriate for us to target and how to do the whole thing properly, such as recruiting and managing the resellers in order to optimize the distribution side of things."

The York Group filled the knowledge gap perfectly for Firetrust. After an intensive consulting session with The York Group's experts, Mr. Bolton was convinced that they would be the perfect guide for his international growth plans. He asked The York Group to help develop a detailed international channel program for successful global expansion.

"You could talk to lots and lots of people and they would give you some ideas, but no one tells you exactly what you should do and then shows you how to do it," Mr. Bolton explained. "We could have tried to do it without The York Group, and just learn from our mistakes, but an extended learning curve could result in missing our window of opportunity in what is a very competitive market.

"Instead, we feel that we have benefited from The York Group's ten years of experience, and the result of their professional advice has been tremendous. Before bringing them on board we were anticipating as much as $400,000 per annum in additional expenses for personnel, travel and marketing support. But the channel program delivered by The York Group is so comprehensive, self-explanatory and well-documented that we have been able to implement it in less than two months using our existing staff.

The net result for Firetrust is that we have been able to shorten our business development cycle by two years, dramatically increased the likelihood of success, and reduced our anticipated expenditures by hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. And the cost to us was equivalent to less than three months salary for a mid-level sales person."