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It is often said that every market is different. Of course, every market has its own specificities, but in most cases, all entrepreneurs – be they small, medium or large – battle similar challenges concerning business management and sales.
Our rich experience in working in most countries of the Mediterranean and leading Europe-wide projects confirmed this. When aiming to summarize and analyze it, several key problems become obvious, characteristic of the highly developed market, such as the Italian one for instance, as well as the developing market such as the Croatian one.
Medium-sized, largely family businesses often have trouble setting up a professional business structure, and a lack of management and leadership skills is especially obvious when facing more complex business operations. How can this lack of management skills and knowledge be compensated, if needed, even separating the ownership from the management role?
Regardless of the choice of direct, indirect or combined sales, without well-organized sales
processes, without an experienced sales leader, and without quality sales personnel, the planned sales growth rate nor desired degree of buyer satisfaction cannot be achieved.
Businesses must continually refine their route to market, adapting it to the situation and competition and searching for optimal solutions (such as direct sales, indirect sales through distributors, or a combination of the two). An optimization of the route to market raises sales and cuts costs, but it is at the same time a challenge which requires specialized knowledge and skills.
At a certain stage of their development, more successful medium-sized businesses aim to expand to neighbouring, for example regional markets, but face serious difficulties in doing so. Local bureaucracy, a foreign language and a lack of business contacts often pose insurmountable problems.

A quadrant is a fourth part of something. In the typical graphical representation using a coordinate system, everything best is usually placed in the fourth, upper right-hand quadrant.
The fifth quadrant, naturally, does not exist, it represents an imagined situation, "better than the best", but it can serve as a strong challenge to those aiming for excellency. Because only excellency in every business aspect leads towards the "fifth quadrant".