It’s that time of year again. The office coffee machine has been replaced by a samovar filled with Glühwein, your inbox is full of “season’s greetings” emails from people you barely remember meeting, and you can feel this year’s KPIs breathing down your neck.
For international business development managers, the end of the year isn’t just about surviving the company Christmas party and avoiding that one colleague who gets too festive. It’s about gearing up for the year ahead, setting yourself up for success, and (hopefully) finding time to enjoy the odd mince pie along the way.
So, let’s break it down. Here’s where to start making 2025 a cracker of a year, without descending into corporate clichés.
Table of Contents
Wrap up any loose ends tighter than a Christmas present from that one aunt we all have
You know those projects you’ve been “meaning to get to” all year? Yeah, it’s time. Whether it’s chasing that distributor who’s been promising a report “tomorrow” since October or updating your market analysis for Southeast Asia, now’s your chance to tie it all up in a neat bow.
We’re not talking about a need for perfection here—just make sure that nothing critical is left hanging. Think of it as the difference between gift-wrapping with ribbon versus a frantic scramble with a full roll of packing tape. Both work, but one feels much more polished.
Hopefully by now the budgets are all completed for the coming year, and signed off by the board (or at least your contribution is finished)? Believe me, you don’t want to have to get back into the thought flow after the holidays so make sure everything is thoroughly documented and rubber stamped as far as possible by the powers that be.
Are all your shipments out of the door so they don’t get caught at any borders or ports over the holiday period? (If not, then it’s probably too late now to save your sanity this year, but make a note for next year to send out clear notices to all your partners that all containers for overseas have to be collected and loaded by around December 17th at the latest).
I trust the business trips and distributor end of year audits have been completed, and next year’s targets agreed with your partners? Last minute business trips in December are a recipe for getting stuck somewhere due to bad weather, cancelled flights or reindeer disturbance, so next year work backwards from the holidays to decide when your last scheduled trip should be. (Of course, emergencies happen, but don’t plan a trip in the last week before the holidays unless it’s a mega round of Christmas parties!)
How can you set yourself up though for a calmer 2025?
Revisit Your KPIs – and Add a Dash of Realism
Ah, KPIs: the carrot, the stick, and occasionally the mystery meat of your role. December is obviously the perfect time to look back at your targets. Celebrate the wins, sure, but also give yourself a reality check. Were your KPIs even relevant this year?
For 2025, work with your boss to ensure your goals are ambitious yet achievable. No one wants another year of vague benchmarks like “grow market share” with zero specifics. Think targeted & use the SMART acronym to get things dialed in really tight if they aren’t already. “Increase distributor orders in Korea by 15%” or “Launch X product in 2 new Southeast Asian markets by Q3.”
Also, if you hit your 2024 KPIs but you’re still drowning in stress, that’s your signal to advocate for a more balanced plan during this year end countdown.
Switching off for a few days to set yourself up for making 2025 a cracker
Time for a bit of a well-earnt breather.
We all need time to rest and recuperate, and if you’ve spent the year ping-ponging between timezones then some down time will be seriously overdue by now…
I’d say it’s down to you whether you completely switch off or keep an eye on things during the next few days. It depends on how you relax, your type of business and the clients you’re working with.
Some people like to switch off completely for a few days, especially in Europe, and that’s completely fine, as long as there’s somewhere for clients to call in emergencies.
I like to have an eye on my messages (WhatsApp, WeChat, LINE) and my clients know that if there’s something urgently life threatening, they can contact me there. I won’t be checking emails though unless I get a message telling me that something is really urgent…
However you want to play this, it’s important to communicate it clearly to your partners in advance of the holiday season. After all, if you’re working with countries who don’t celebrate Christmas or whatever other holiday it happens to be, then they may not realise that even if they get hold of you with their urgent message, it may not be possible for you to get hold of someone to do anything about their problem over the holidays.
I realise that this is written from my European perspective that it’s ok to completely switch off (& sleep!). I think that it’s important here though to manage the expectations of your partners: it’s perfectly ok to make it clear you won’t be handling any routine work whilst still being available for if a container explodes due to an electrical fault. (Although I’m not convinced you could help in that situation other than to listen and work out whose insurance is affected…)
Take a couple of days in between for quiet work & tidying (yes, as an international business development manager!)
What do I mean by this?
Clear out your desk.
Tidy all the papers & shred the rubbish.
Archive whatever needs to be officially stored.
Clean your office.
This creates mental space for the year ahead and helps you to process subconsciously anything that might not have been “finished” for you until now in this year end countdown.
For me, it helps to store anything that sparks ideas (a scan of the scrap of paper that sparked the idea complete with tags so I can find it again) & add the idea to a google doc list.
Don’t just do a tidy of your physical space though – tidy up your electronic spaces too. Archive emails (make sure you take into account any legal requirements in place in your country about how long they need to be kept) and get your data in order.
Think of your CRM as the fairy lights of your export operation—when it’s glowing, everything looks great. When it’s tangled and half the bulbs are out? A nightmare that will only induce repeated cursing if you don’t deal with it now.
Use this quieter time of year to tidy up your customer and distributor data. Update contacts, review sales reports, and ensure your dashboards are set up for a sparkling start to January.
Pro tip: If you’ve got a distributor who didn’t make the grade this year, and is proving “resistant” to all your advice about how he could improve his results, make sure you added “review relationship” to the list after your end of year distributor performance review. Sometimes, dead bulbs just need replacing.
Reflect on the past year (This is a core part of your year end countdown)
If you didn’t already, reflect on your past year. This doesn’t have to be in a form that you’ll share with anyone else so you can be brutally honest with yourself around what worked and what you could have managed better.
What things do you want to focus on more for the future? Are there things that you want to change, improve or learn? Perhaps there are things that you could cut out of your working processes?
Be kind to yourself though. Realistically speaking, there often isn’t too much time for reflection during the year as we get caught up in airport stress and the “partner dramas” of export life, so don’t be too harsh with yourself, but consider realistically what you could do better next time such a situation arises.
Celebrate your achievements – it’s not an easy job!
Don’t forget to take stock of your achievements. International business development managers are often so busy juggling projects, travel schedules, and product portfolios that they forget to celebrate their wins. So grab a glass of something bubbly, toast your successes, and remind yourself why you love this crazy, chaotic job.
Do some concrete planning for the year ahead
You might have agreed budgets and marketing plans with distributors, but chances are you have all kinds of other projects that you also need to accomplish in the coming year.
Do you have a concrete travel plan, taking into account national holidays everywhere you go, trade fairs, internal events you need to attend?
Have you sketched out your own holiday (vacation) planning? The sooner you get dates locked in, the better…
What about all those adhoc projects on your KPI list that need doing in the year? Make a plan around the milestones and what needs delegating. Revising all your processes, or preparing a new playbook for the sales team take time and mental bandwidth so you need to consider how you can fit those pieces into the jigsaw of your year.
Getting full clarity on how you plan to approach your goals and breaking those down into manageable steps (document this or you’ll forget in the stress of day to day business!) is a key part of your success for the next year. Making 2025 a cracker isn’t something that will happen without a bit of forethought and planning so make sure you leverage your year end countdown to ensure you do.
Plan Projects Like a Festive Feast
Honestly, a successful 2025 starts with a solid plan—and no, that doesn’t mean dumping 100 ideas onto a spreadsheet and calling it strategy. Treat your projects like Christmas dinner: pick the essentials (turkey, stuffing, sprouts), add a few exciting extras (hello, roasties cooked in goose fat), and make sure you’ve got enough resources and space to pull it all off without burning the kitchen down.
Think about what’s your signature dish going to be for the year? A product launch? Expanding into a new region? Whatever it is, prioritise, delegate, and set clear timelines. Remember, a great feast doesn’t happen without prep—neither does an export strategy.
Once the “new year” starts, you’re going to be back to the madness of everyday international sales life, so make sure you’re intentional now about planning your big projects rather than pushing them to the last minute realm (again).
Hit the ground running
It’s worth making sure you can cascade any project discussions down to your team as soon as they start back in the new year. That’s why taking a day or two between Christmas and the main start back to clear clutter, reflect and do some serious planning can really help you to hit the ground running & go a long way to making 2025 a cracker!
It’s all too easy to coast through January because it’s only just after the holidays and it feels like you have so much time to hit the year’s goals. Then it’s Spring Festival in Asia so most of February disappears and suddenly it’s March and Q1 is almost over…!
Make sure you start out into the new year with clear priorities, knowing HOW you want to achieve the goals you’ve set and not purely focusing on the numbers. Geopolitically and economically things are tough and probably will be all year, so we need to focus on the things that we can control and be really intentional about getting those projects implemented.
That means doing the right things at the right time with the right people.
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Kathryn firmly believes that business is done between people, and therefore places her focus on building strong relationships that form a solid foundation for doing business.
When she's not travelling around the world, Kathryn enjoys playing clarinet in her town's wind orchestra or sharing her love of the outdoors with her Scout group.
