International Export Interview

Gilles Lemonnyer:State Agent – Xerox

Claire Champenois, Robin Guetta, Victor Vatus, Dichen Liu

Gilles Lemonnyer CORPORATE EXPERIENCE:

October 1974 - May 1976 : Gilles Lemonnyer began his career as a Commercial Attaché in Aden French Embassy (South Yemen -). 

He worked for Rank Xerox for more than 13 years. He held several positions within the company in France (Product Manager, Marketing Director, National Key Accounts Director…) and abroad (Operational Sales Director for Central and Western Africa).

  Radius France, the European branch of a Californian high-tech company,

manufacturing and distributing Mac and PC graphic interface, as a General Manager for 4 years.

In 1994, he co-founded his own company, After Paris, independent company for training and coaching unemployed people, managers and sales forces.

In 1997, he founded and run Info Finance, a provider of fiscal and real estate services

. Since November 2002, he is totally dedicated to consulting, training and coaching

to sales forces and managers in various fields of industry and services international companies.

Introduction of Xerox

Founded in 1906 Fortune 500 global document

management company  Operation: manufacture and sell Products: color / black-and-

white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, related consulting services and supplies.

Revenue: US$17.6 billion (2008)

Employees: 130,000 (2010)

Website: http://www.xerox.com

Missions: french ambassy

contact nationalized companies that centralized foreign trade

select exporting companies in France Create link between french

companies and yemenese buyers Take care about the local activity

Missions: Xerox Head office in Abidjan, Ivory Coast Machines manufactured in France, UK and

Holland and exported to Ivory Coast, then reexported to all of the 21 countries.

Open an indirect distribution network in 21 countries in western and central Africa.

Margins are mainly made in Europe Tax when importing is 100% in all Africa.

Xerox (next)

Transportation by boat and 20% by plane, when emergency.

In charge of the bill of lading and of the customs clearance

Insurance: CIF paid and then rebilled to the purchasor (insurance price included in the final bill) SCAC, Kuhne and Nagel

How to find distributors?

US aid Ask for a list of potential distributor

Going to the main cities and visit the distributors of motocycles and printing companies Similar sales network + skills in technical

after sales to repair them

Follow Up

2 to 3 months: to open the distribution point train the team to sell it a stock help start selling

“Always be careful”

Interesting story about un-payment issues He sold 150 printers to another agent He has never been paid The man went out with the money his company

gave him This deal would have represented 60% of his

yearly objectives

Morality: your trust in someone increases with the good deal you have with him, but you never know how the counter part is going to behave

Avoid payment issues

No money, no delivery Payment has to be done before

shipping Use Letter of Credit When different currencies, ask for

$US

Transport issues Nowadays, the COFAS is very strict It avoids lot of problems

He reexported unchecked materials to Cameroun

Lot of faultly machines arrived to his customers, whom yeld at him

In the airport, to check the transfer process, he saw that the loeads were droped from the plane to tractor’s tires

The insurance handled the problem

Corruption…

Very frequent, not only in Africa Helps to get good deals An important part of the whole

process, even for customs Companies are aware of this “under-

table” business

Economic crisis Was selling steal in Poland Orders decrease by 30% Needed to renegotiate the terms of the

contract Increase presence in less implicated

countries such as Sweden, Italy and new Less implicated countries: Sweden, Italy... New open countries: Estonia, Ukraine…

Cultural aspects

Saoudians, palestinians, lybians… use to work in airport

In African and Arabic countries, negotiating time is multiplied by 5 Time has not the same meaning Take precautions when time is never

respected Put in place replacement process

Questions?