International expansion is often sold as the natural next step for a growing business. But for many companies, the gap between ambition and execution is wider than they expect, and more expensive to get wrong.
Eric Sambaluk knows that gap well. As owner and Business Strategy Consultant at Sambaluk Consulting, he has spent his career on both sides of the table – as a product owner at major corporations and as the consultant helping organisations navigate the complexity of entering new markets. That dual perspective shapes everything about how he works.
Fluent in languages including Portuguese, conversational in Japanese, and experienced in experienced across manufacturing, fintech, and technology sectors, Eric brings a rare combination of cultural intelligence, operational depth, and commercial rigour to his engagements. He holds multiple professional certifications, including the Export/Import Certificate (EIC).
His approach to market entry is grounded in a simple but often overlooked principle: before you study the market, understand the client. What are they actually trying to build? Does expansion serve their strategy – or have they confused one for the other?
In this interview, Eric shares what it really takes to enter a new market successfully, why so many companies get it wrong, and what the next generation of international business professionals should be doing right now to get ahead.
Shaping a career in international business strategy
What defines success when helping organisations navigate global markets?
As the owner and Business Strategy Consultant at Sambaluk Consulting, what des a typical day look like when working with clients on market entry and expansion strategies?
discover quickly is that regardless of the vertical, most companies are dealing with the same core challenges – they just wear different clothes.
When I’m working with a company trying to enter a new market, a big part of the early work is simply understanding how their product fits into that market and what they’re trying to achieve there. So, there’s a lot of listening upfront.
The investigation phase always takes precedence – you want to learn as much as you can about both the company and the market they’re looking to enter before you start making any recommendations.
From there, you help them forge their own path. In consulting, you’re really leading the horse to the water. Your job is to show them how to best position their product and give them the clarity to move forward with confidence. And, if they keep you on past that initiative phase, you can support them through the full product lifecycle in the new market as well.
So, it’s exciting, always different. There are a lot of commonalities across the board.
What are some of these commonalities?
In most cases, you’re working with companies that have a solid product or service – that’s rarely the issue. The challenges tend to be the same ones that come up again and again: they don’t fully understand how to price or position what they’re selling in the new market.
And this gets especially tricky when a product has been successful at home, and they want to take it somewhere with a very different cultural or economic profile. You can’t just do business as usual.
A simple example – if you’re selling a product successfully in Japan, that doesn’t mean you can market it the same way in the United States. It may still be successful, but you must challenge your assumptions and think differently about how you show up in that new market.
Your career spans product ownership at major corporations like Kubota and Populus Financial Group, to running your own consulting firm. What pivotal moments led you to specialise in helping organisations enter and expand in international markets?
There are a few moments that really stand out. The first came from working with multinational and international companies early in my career.
I’ve always been drawn to working with people from different cultures and backgrounds and not just communicating with them in terms of language, but in terms of value. When you’re working cross-culturally, you have to be genuinely sensitive to what people care about, understand where your values align and where they diverge. I always found that fascinating.
The other pivotal moment came from the inside – from my time at both manufacturing and fintech companies, watching how organisations engaged with consulting firms.
What I kept seeing was that consultants would come in with good ideas, but they weren’t necessarily value-add ideas. And even when the advice was sound, companies would either not follow through on it or implement it in a way that drifted from what was actually recommended. Either way, they were leaving a lot of money on the table.
That’s when I saw the gap. There was a real need for consulting that didn’t just hand over a report and walk away but stayed involved to help see it through. Because without that oversight, you might as well not have hired a consultant at all.
From strategy to execution
How do market entry plans become successful realities?
Can you walk us through a particularly challenging market entry project where initial assumptions had to be revised? How did you pivot the strategy?
A lot of companies come in with fairly established, pre-conceived notions – and that’s completely understandable. Whenever you’re stepping into a new context, you naturally carry assumptions from the one you came from. That’s just human nature.
But it’s important to stay open-minded, especially when it comes to messaging, marketing, and communications, because you’re dealing with people who have a different frame of reference entirely.
One example that sticks with me is a technology company out of the UK that was looking to enter the US and Canadian markets. Their pricing model was actually well-suited to the UK – not just in terms of the price points, but the way the service was structured and packaged. The problem was they weren’t yet at a place where they were willing to revisit or adjust that model for a new market.
And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean they were wrong or had bad practices, it just meant that the timing wasn’t right. So, part of my recommendation was to tell them exactly that: this may not be the right moment to pull the trigger on this expansion, and it may not be the right time to bring in a market entry specialist either. But let’s keep the conversation going, and when you get to that point, we’ll be ready.
I think that’s an underrated part of consulting, knowing when to say “not yet” rather than pushing forward for the sake of it. At the end of the day, you have to be willing to be open-minded about how you structure and position your offering.
Export/Import Certificate (EIC)
What are some of the common misconceptions businesses have when they enter new markets?
The most common one is assuming the target customer in the new market is basically the same as the one back home, not just in terms of what they’ll buy, but in terms of their lifestyle, their concerns, what makes them tick. It might sound a bit grandiose, but all of those things genuinely come into play when you’re trying to sell or market effectively to a new audience.
And here’s what catches a lot of companies off guard: sometimes a product that does well in one country can absolutely do well in another but for a completely different market segment. A good example is appliances. Certain product lines perform very well in the US with a particular target demographic, and those same appliances also sold well in Europe – but to a different segment entirely.
So, it’s not just about understanding your customer – it’s about being open to the possibility that your customer in the new market might not be who you expect.
You’ve worked across tech, manufacturing, financial services, and fintech. What patterns have you noticed in how successful companies approach international expansion, regardless of their industry?
One of the broadest commonalities I’ve seen among companies that expand successfully is a willingness to hire and work with people who genuinely know the market they’re entering. \
I’ve come across a lot of companies with great products that fall into the trap of thinking – this has been killing it in the US, we can do the same thing in Germany, no problem. But between the cultural differences, the language, the legal landscape, and just the day-to-day lifestyle differences, there’s a lot that can quietly complicate the process.
If you bring in someone with local knowledge – of the laws, the customs, the culture – you can sidestep a lot of the pitfalls that might otherwise sink that part of the venture entirely. It doesn’t guarantee success, but it puts you on a much more solid footing.
And they don’t need to be an expert in import law or have a marketing degree from that region. But having someone with genuine business acumen and real familiarity with that market? That goes a long way.
Navigating complexity in global commerce
How do consultants help organisations manage cross-border business challenges?
With your bilingual expertise in Japanese and experience across continents, can you share a specific example of how cultural intelligence made the difference between success and failure in a market entry project?
There’s one that really stands out and this was before I was a consultant, when I was working with a Japanese company. They manufactured brush cutters, chainsaws, that kind of outdoor power equipment, and they had distributors across South America. In Colombia specifically, they partnered with a local distributor who had deep roots in the market – real knowledge of the terrain, the people, and the professionals who would be using the equipment.
What made it work was how closely the Japanese company collaborated with that distributor on marketing materials, site visits, demonstrations, promotions across the country. And Colombia, which isn’t the largest market in South America, ended up being one of their most successful. That’s what genuine local partnership can do.
It also changed the way I think about market entry more broadly.
A lot of companies assume that expanding into a new country means immediately setting up an office, hiring staff, sending someone over. But often the smartest first move is to partner with an established local entity and work through them.
You can structure that arrangement in all kinds of ways, and it doesn’t have to be permanent. Maybe for the first year or two you work with a distributor, build traction, and then decide whether the interest is there to open your own office.
The most successful expansions I’ve seen didn’t involve a swan dive into the deep end. They were gradual, easing into the water with someone who already knows how to swim there.
When a client asks you to evaluate a new market opportunity, what are the first three things you look at to determine whether it’s worth pursuing?
The first three things I look at have nothing to do with the market. They’re all about the client. I work a lot with OEMs and manufacturers, but this applies across verticals – fintech, services, you name it.
First, I want to understand whether they’re genuinely thought through their current product or offering. Have they done at least some high-level consideration of what the challenges of the new market might look like?
Second, I want to know what their vision is for themselves in three to five years. And third – and this is where it gets interesting – I want to understand whether market expansion fits into that plan, or whether it’s become the plan itself.
That distinction matters more than people think. I come across a lot of enthusiastic companies, especially those with private equity backing, who are under pressure to expand into seven countries by year-end just to maintain funding.
But what I want to hear is that they have a vision that includes market expansion without ending there. The expansion must serve a longer-term strategy – it can’t be the strategy.
After that, I absolutely dig into the markets they’ve chosen. But I need to first understand what they’re trying to accomplish and why they’ve picked that particular market.
One thing worth adding – sometimes a company comes to me and says, we want to expand, but we don’t know where. And occasionally, the honest answer is don’t expand anywhere yet. Go deeper in the market you’re already in.
Market expansion in search of a strategy is a recipe for wasted resources. The expansion has to fit the vision, not the other way around.
Export/Import Certificate (EIC)
How often do you find that companies see market expansion as something they have to do just to get ahead?
It varies. Through the international trade organisations I’m a part of, many of the companies I work with already had expansion on their radar to some degree. But I also work with a lot of domestic US companies locally, and the picture is quite different.
With those companies, when I feel like international expansion could genuinely make sense for them, I’ll often bring it up. And often, they’ve either never considered it at all, or they have – but they’ve written it off as too expensive, too complicated, or too risky. Which is a shame, because there are a lot of opportunities just sitting there, passed over based on assumptions that may have no real basis.
That’s where membership in organisations like the International Chamber of Commerce or the European American Chamber of Commerce can be genuinely eye-opening.
At minimum, you might discover great opportunities for importing products or materials. At best, you find a real path to exporting and expanding your market presence. Either way, keeping your mind open to what’s out there is always worth it.
Professional learning and strategic expertise
What role does certification play in international business consulting?
You hold multiple certifications including the Export/Import Certificate (EIC). What practical insights from the EIC have you been able to apply immediately in your consulting work?
It’s been helpful in a couple of distinct ways.
On the practical side, the subject matter itself – particularly understanding the Incoterms® rules – is directly applicable when I’m helping clients think through the how and when of importing or exporting. That knowledge comes up constantly.
But there’s also a credibility dimension that I think is just as valuable. When a prospective client sees that you hold the EIC qualification from the International Chamber of Commerce, it carries a certain weight. It helps you get in the door and once you’re in, it reinforces that you know what you’re talking about. Both matter.
Honestly, I wish I’d taken the certification years earlier, back when I was still working inside some of these companies before going independent. A lot of what I learned would have been immediately useful then. But I’m glad to have it now, both the knowledge and the credential.
The future of international business
What role does certification play in international business consulting?
Based on your work with clients across diverse sectors, where do you see the most exciting opportunities for businesses looking to expand internationally in the next 5-10 years?
The timing is actually really interesting right now.
With all the geoeconomic turbulence of the last few years, there’s been a tendency for companies to pull back – to perceive risk and avoid it rather than look for the opportunity sitting right next to it. But that’s exactly where the advantage lies for those who are prepared.
Having a strong gasp of how to navigate import and export in this environment positions you to move forward while others are hesitating. And I think that gap is only going to grow.
What I’m seeing more recently is encouraging – companies are starting to recognise that yes, the economic conditions have shifted, but that doesn’t mean international trade is a worse bet. It just means the landscape looks different than it did five or ten years ago. The opportunity is still there, and in many cases the opportunities are better than they were before all these changes we have been seeing. For my own work, I expect to be engaging with companies across more markets globally, helping them establish and grow their international presence.
Because at the end of the day, international commerce is a genuine life force for local and global economies alike. The more people retreat from it out of fear, the more they end up punishing themselves and everyone else.
There are more opportunities in international trade every day. The question is who’s willing to go after them.
