When you say your company is “international or global”, are you selling internationally or are you an international company?

Selling internationally is very different to having an international presence. If you are selling internationally, you could take on agents, distributors and resellers as synonyms.

Agents are people or companies that have expressed (oral or written) or implied authority to act for their principal and bring them into contractual relationships with other parties. They are like the company’s employees or ambassadors.

Distributors are entities that buy non-competing products or product lines and then resell them to retailers or direct to end users. They can make some changes to the product but they act more like your customers.

Resellers simply buy goods from a manufacturer and resell them to customers unchanged.

The common denominator of all these roles? They all help your company to sell. To do that efficiently on an international level, you need to work together with local businesspeople who have a better knowledge both of the market and of the culture. You also need to have your website and your marketing material both translated and localised: ask SanTranslate, your translation service provider.