- Finding out whether a foreign market is worth entering usually costs real money (a bilingual hire, a local registration, a bid manager) before you know if there is anything to chase.
- Foreign-bidder statistics undercount what is possible: a European Commission study found most cross-border participation happens through local subsidiaries, not direct bids.
- Before you register, hire or open an office, look at the award board: who wins, how often, at what value, against how many bidders.
You already sell to your own government. Maybe you have won contracts at home, and someone in a meeting asks the obvious question: could we do this abroad? Then the conversation stalls, because nobody can say which country to start with, or whether any of them is worth the effort.
Why do most companies never look abroad?
Not because the opportunity is missing. Because looking is expensive.
To find out whether a country is worth entering, you need someone who reads the language. You often need a local registration just to reach the procurement portal. Then you need a bid manager who can read a tender and respond to it in the local language. That is salary, legal fees and months of time, and all of it is spent before you know whether there is anything worth chasing.
So most companies do the rational thing and stay home. International was off the table less because it was a bad idea and more because the cost of finding out was paid up front, in capital and manpower, with no guarantee of a return.
Why does that matter for competition?
Anyone in business development knows the instinct: hunt where competition is thinner. At home, the same dozen competitors bid on the same dozen contracts. Abroad, the picture can look very different, but you cannot tell until you look at who actually bid and who actually won. The same cost that keeps you from looking keeps your competitors from looking too. That is exactly why it is worth checking rather than assuming.
Why do foreign-bidder statistics undercount what is possible?
Here is the part most teams miss. A European Commission study, Measurement of impact of cross-border penetration in public procurement (2017), found that between 2009 and 2015, direct cross-border awards never rose above about 3.5% of EU contract value. Indirect cross-border awards, won through locally established subsidiaries of foreign firms, grew from about 19% to about 21% of value over the same years.
Read that twice. If you only count foreign companies bidding directly, you see a few percent. Count the contracts won by local subsidiaries of foreign firms and the real participation is several times larger. The "foreign win rate" hides most of what is happening. The companies winning had built a local presence first.
That is not an argument to open offices everywhere. It is an argument to choose the places deliberately, with evidence, before you commit.
What should you look at before you register, hire or open an office?
Before you place the bet, look at the board. The award history for a country tells you most of what you need. A practical checklist:
- Who has won similar contracts there? Name the winners, not just the category.
- How often? One large award three years ago is an anecdote. A steady run of awards is a market.
- At what value? Check that typical award sizes justify the cost of entry.
- Does a local subsidiary of a foreign firm show up as the winner? If so, that is the route others have taken, and a signal about what the buyer expects.
- How many bidders do the tenders draw? Few bidders can mean thinner competition, or a closed market. You want to know which.
- How regular is the buying? Predictable, recurring purchases are easier to plan around than one-off projects.
- What language and registration requirements apply? This tells you the true cost of the first bid.
Notice that every item is a question about history, and history is already public. It is just scattered across portals in different languages, behind different registrations.
How much does it cost to find out?
Done the traditional way, a lot: the hire, the registration, the translation, the months. That is the barrier. GlobalGov is built for the company whose market is the world, not one home country. It covers government tenders and contract awards from 193 countries, searchable whatever language they were published in, with award and incumbent history alongside. The point is to move the looking step from a capital decision to a research task, and to do it month to month rather than as a commitment.
No market will be easy. But you should be able to rule markets in or out before you spend the money to find out.
What does a good first market look like?
It will not be the same for every company, but the pattern is consistent. Look for a country where:
- Similar products have been bought repeatedly, not once.
- Award values are large enough to cover the cost of entry.
- The tenders draw few enough bidders that a new entrant has a real chance.
- A foreign firm, or its local subsidiary, has already won, which shows the buyer is open to outside suppliers.
- The language and registration requirements are manageable with one hire or one partner.
If you find two or three countries that fit, you have a shortlist worth a real conversation about presence. If you find none, you have saved yourself a year.
To see how this looks for your product category, book 30 minutes: book a walkthrough