Culture Always Wins: Closing the Cross-Cultural Sale

Posted by Dan Armstrong on Feb 26, 2013 7:33:00 AM

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Today's guest blogger is Dan Armstrong, Director of Research and Thought Leadership at ITSMA.

Your leads may be perfect. They may have the budget and the authority to buy. They may need what you’ve got. They may be ready to purchase. But there’s one problem: They’re on the other side of the world. And for all the talk of globalization, the potential for misunderstandings and mistrust is exponentially higher when salespeople are forced to reach across the cultural chasm.

ITSMA’s member companies see this every day. Our members execute big-ticket cross-border IT services projects. A common cross-cultural misunderstanding in these projects occurs when the service provider gives the customer only good news. “Can you do this?” asks the U.S. customer. “Of course,” answers the Indian systems integrator. The American expects pushback or at least a discussion of tradeoffs. The Indian’s assumption is that good customer service requires an unqualified yes. Unless both parties approach the interaction with greater awareness—and a willingness to surface their underlying assumptions—the relationship is bound to suffer.

Selling depends on relationships, too. The days of Glengarry Glen Ross may be over. But Americans in particular and Westerners in general, still tend to be individualistic, impatient, and competitive. They like to get a lot done in a short amount of time. They try to unearth disagreements quickly in order to resolve them and move on. They value consistency—one rule for all—over flexibility.

That’s not the case in much of the world. The kind of trusting relationship necessary to close big-ticket IT solutions sales, the kinds that ITSMA’s members seek, require a deeper connection. That kind of connection requires that salespeople stand in the shoes of their foreign prospects.

How to do this? A few suggestions:

Dig deep into cultural differences to learn. Nothing is written down. The things on the surface—clothing, food, language—are far less meaningful than the things that are hidden. Negotiating the differences requires an investment of time and a genuine interest in the other person. The more salespeople ask, the deeper they will get with the customer. Unfortunately, leads from other cultures probably won’t close as quickly as those in the same country.

Focus on commonalities. When we don’t know a culture, we adopt the shorthand of stereotypes, such as the idea that all Americans are in a hurry or all Germans are punctual. But it may be more useful to look at what the two parties have in common. At the same time, remember that there’s a person beneath the stereotype. Salespeople should be encouraged to turn discomfort into an opportunity to learn and connect in order to build a sustainable relationship.

Err on the side of flexibility. One of the biggest differences between Western and Asian cultures is the consistency-flexibility spectrum, with the United States and Korea representing the two extremes of total consistency and total flexibility. Prospects from countries like India or China are less likely to accept standard, non-customized services than those from, say, Germany or the UK.

Remember the group. Even the most senior people in many companies can’t make a decision without several rounds of consensus building, even among subordinates. This doesn’t just depend on national cultural characteristics—say, Japanese group awareness versus Australian cowboy culture—but also on corporate norms.

Make them see you. In a virtual world it’s easy to lose the sense of connection. Salespeople and customers exchange emails. They talk on the phone. They even connect on LinkedIn and follow each other’s Twitter feeds. But unless they can see the face of the other person, it’s hard to make a human connection. Although webcams and smartphone apps that show your face to the caller may seem clunky and embarrassing, they do bring us a step closer to face-to-face communication. At the very least, salespeople can write that extra sentence—the personal one—in their emails. And marketers can incorporate suggestions for those personal touches in their email templates.

Cross-cultural leads are harder to close. There’s no way around it. But self-aware salespeople, with an education in potential cross-cultural pitfalls, are better equipped to avoid misunderstandings, win trust, and make the sale.

Hat tip to Anja Langbein Park, who spoke at ITSMA’s Annual Conference in 2011 on Marketing Across Cultures: Building Relationships and Improving Performance." Click here to see a clip of her presentation.


Dan ArmstrongAs the Director of Research and Thought Leadership, Dan is responsible for ITSMA’s thought leadership development and research programs and will research the latest industry trends, develop new insights, and share best practices with ITSMA members via written reports, data visualization, presentations, and interactive discussions.

Dan brings a diverse and well-rounded skillset to this role. Before coming to ITMSA, Dan moderated conferences for Information Week on behalf of sponsors including IBM, Dell, HP, and Silanis. He developed thought leadership content based on surveys and qualitative research for Deloitte Growth Enterprises Services, Forbes Insights, and Ernst & Young, and did research projects on behalf of the Gates Foundation and the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Dan also spent seven years as a senior editor in the thought leadership practice of The Economist, where he executed surveys and research projects for major financial services, consulting, and technology companies, as well as all of the Big Four accounting firms.

Dan is a certified Financial Risk Manager™, the author of Tools of Risk Analysis, and the editor and co-author of three books published by McGraw-Hill: Derivatives Engineering, The Derivatives Engineering Workbook, and Active Bank Risk Management. He holds an MBA in finance and research methods from Columbia Business School, with additional graduate work in statistics, data mining, and geographic information systems.


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Topics: Lead Generation, Sales Leads, Guest Blogs


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