International Sales Best Practice – Choose To Connect

Monthly Series – International Sales Best Practices

This is the last post in this month’s series on clarity in cross-cultural communication and how this impacts international sales best practices. Today we look at the essence of cross-cultural communication as we end with one of the most important tips to get extreme clarity in your communication.

This tip alone will help you improve your cross-cultural communication skills and international sales.

CCCC Tip #30 - Try to see your communication from the other person’s viewpoint.

This month’s series takes last month’s tips to get extreme clarity in cross-cultural communication and brings them into an international sales perspective. Remember to download the free calender for an easy reference to all of the 30 Cross-Cultural Communication Challenge Tips on clarity. Get the complete International Sales Best Practices series here.

The ability to see your communication from the other person’s viewpoint is a big part of what cultural and international skills is about. And it is often one of the hardest things for people to accomplish. We may think we understand the other person’s:

• Point of view
• Way of thinking
• Motivations
• Likes and dislikes

When we know how others perceive what we say, it is easier to adjust our communication and re-evaluate what we say until we get the message right.  This ability can help us get more international sales. But the reality is that we will probably never have the exact understanding as the person from another culture.

This is why we must always make an effort to see things with the perspective of our  international client.  And to get as close of an understanding as possible.

Cross-Cultural Communication Skills & Sales Best Practices

Here is the last quote we will look at from Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Red Book Of Sales Answers… and it is a big one.

I find this quote very appropriate as the last one in this series.  To become good at selling to international clients you have a few personal choices to make.  You need to choose to:

• Put your own cultural filters and prejudices aside, at least long enough to do business, and keep them to the side
• Adopt curiosity and empathy as a way of life
• Open your mindset
• Put in the personal effort it takes to meet different cultures somewhere along the path that separates you

Your international sales success depends on the personal choices you make in how you connect with your international clients

What Is Your Experience Of This In International Sales?

• How flexible are you at changing your viewpoint to see how your international clients see things?
• What personal changes have you noticed in yourself when selling to international clients?
• What do you do when you choose to connect with your international clients?

Please share your comments below. I’d love to hear your stories!

Want To Get The Cross-Cultural Communication Tips?

Two Cross-Cultural Communication Challenges are currently available:

• Expand Your Mindset
• Get Extreme With Clarity

Get all of the tips from these 30 & 31 day challenges, and learn more about the other planned later this year:

• 2009 Cross-Cultural Communication Challenges

All International Sales Best Practices

You can find the complete list of International Sales Best Practices published to date here:

• International Sales Best Practices

Tagged as: best practices, clarity, global vision, International Sales