Hi everyone, before I go in-depth about my reason to post here, I would first like to briefly thank this community. As a lurker I have already found extremely helpful stuff here and most of all learned that you do not mess with tacos in Norway.
TLDR: New to doing business in Norway, want to learn about business ethics, especially about the core difference south / north.
# Brief introduction
I’m Dutch and I have been living in the Netherlands since forever! I’ve been dating a Norwegian since a bit before the pandemic.
During the pandemic both of realized that long distance is extremely hard to sustain (especially when borders are closed) and this year we decided that I am going to take steps to prepare moving to Norway in 2022, hopefully finalizing it at the end of the year.
In this sub (and of course on official government pages) I educated myself about my options and due to some medical issues it is hard for me to find a full-time job. This, however is no problem!
I am intending to move to Nordland and live there for a while!
# Running a business
I’ve been doing digital marketing for about 12 years now and while I am still working on improving my language skills, I have been able to set up and get some work done in Norway. Additionally I have international clients that help me sustain my initial living costs, but I need to grow my business in Norway if I want to succeed and be able to live comfortably (and allowed to stay).
I have already set up a [website relating to webdesign](https://webdesign-nordland.no/) (Feel free to let me know what you think) and marketing and done some basic advertising campaigns (online in the local newspaper) and I have set up a few local landing pages which have yielded some requests. I am trying to differentiate in the following ways:
* Sharp price (I do not want to undercut Norwegian wages, but I am also not used to them, so I feel I could give a sharp price)
* Proper quality websites that work well on mobile phones (A lot of sites in northorn Norway are absolutely unusable or outdated on mobile)
* Integration of SEO. (I notice that this is not unique, but I do realize many entrepeneurs in the north do not know what it is, so it’s hard to explain this when not fully knowing the language)
Out of our 3 requests, so far we have landed one, which is not bad, but not great either! My girlfriend is able to answer these requests in Norwegian and I feel it’s been a good start.
Running a business so far has proven difficult for me, because I feel that my ‘marketing brain’ is not in touch with the way things work in Norway, especially the north of Norway and this is my main reason for making this post.
# Understanding the Norwegian way of Business:
Without writing too much text (oops, too late) I’d like to ask all of you if you could give me some insight! I understand some things are general and some are highly personal, so please give me some insight from both.
1. What is the most common and reliable way to establish business relations in B2B? (Is this trust based, should I be in the næringsforening, do I just offer the best price? )
2. Do you focus on a personal relationship first and then build business or is it common to talk straight business?
3. Are meetings generally formal or informal?
4. Do I require to set up an office soon or will most be fine with digital meetings and phonecalls?
5. What is more important, knowing eachother or a sharp price?
6. What is the main difference between the south and the north regarding business culture and collaboration?
In The Netherlands, our meetings very formal and usually if you have a very good price you get priority over even existing business partners. Additionally it is perfectly fine to not have an office and to just meet in a nearby cafe for a cup of coffee.
On top of many other life changes this will be one of the main ones I’ll need to live and support myself properly in Norway so I’m hoping to adapt to it soon. Thanks if you have made it this far and if you have just skipped from the TLDR, I don’t blame you 😉
3 comments
Someone told me a year or so ago that there’s already a lot of webdesigners and graphic designers in Norway. You’ll have to compete with a lot. Not sure if it’s true now. Good luck.
You will be competing with companies that have small production departments and huge sales departments. A lot of small and medium sized companies are contacted (at least) weekly by these guys.
I have worked in one of these companies and we used to have really bad services and obscene prices. Despite all this, there was plenty of money to be made.
We would contact people over the phone to schedule physical meetings. 95% of the time we would meet at the clients workplace.
It is hard to give you any good answers, since all potential clients are different. Some will be looking for a reasonably priced local provider that they can meet physically. Some will be searching for the stability and professionalism that bigger companies can offer. Being able to portray yourself differently depending on the client is therefore really important.
I’m not going to tell you what to do, but if I were to start a similar business I would stay away from small companies with websites that haven’t been touched in 15 years. I would contact companies that appear to care about digital marketing. These companies generally rely digital marketing and they tend to be much more open to new ideas.
As a native English speaker I’ve never heard the expression “sharp price”…I’m presuming this is a direct translation of a Dutch expression that means “a good price/deal” or “a cheap price”? Don’t know anything about Dutch so I’m just curious