International Sales Best Practice – Just Do It

International Sales Best Practices

Some people may not like the hard truth behind Jeffrey Gitomer’s 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness. They are straight to the point.  We are going to see how these sales principles fit in with our cross-cultural communication tips to get more international sales.

International Sales Success

In some ways it is natural to blame a lack of success on anything except ourselves. It is easy to find an excuse for just about anything. Blame and excuses do not get you anywhere, do they?

In international sales it is easy to only see the differences in the other person and not look any further. When you lose the sale, these differences are easy excuses for failure. You can be more proactive in your success though and get beyond the blame and excuses.

Quote From Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Red Book Of Selling

1st Principle of Sales Greatness Just do it

Last Month’s Cross-Cultural Communication Tip 18

Put your own cultural baggage aside during cross-cultural communication

Seeing Your Cultural Baggage

In order to get past blaming cultural differences for a lack of international sales, you need to get rid of your own personal baggage.  You first need to recognize your own personal barriers for not making the international connection.

We all have our own cultural hangups.  We all react to different cultures in ways that are directly influenced by our own environment.  We need to put our own cultural baggage to the side during our cross-cultural encounter.  This makes it much easier to make a real connection.

When working in international sales, I remember one particular very difficult time I had.  It was with an Italian client.  He was very handsome and charming and used to commanding attention whenever he walked into a room.  One day he came into my office directly after a long flight.  He came up to me smiling the biggest smile possible.

…Unfortunately my response was not what you would expect.  I had the hardest time to stop myself from gagging. Literally.   He urgently needed to brush his teeth and I found this disgusting.

I am North American.  North American’s have their teeth whitened using methods my dentists refuse to use over here.  When you watch North American television everyone has unnaturally white teeth.  Ever seen the people on French television?  Many of them would never make it on an American television show without major dental work beforehand. No one in North America ever walks around with teeth in such need of a brushing.

Here in France and in Europe, this Italian’s teeth were not very nice… but it was much more “acceptable” here than to a North American.  My colleagues did not even pay attention to him.

To say anything would not have helped in anyway.  This was an important client. I had to deal with my own cultural baggage and concentrate on pushing this aside to continue our sales discussions.

Look At Yourself First

Successful salespeople do not waste their time blaming something else.  They take responsibility for their own success. Instead of looking for a way to blame their lack of success on something else, they know how to adopt an attitude to motivate themselves to get the results they want.

So…

Kick you own ass! – Jeffrey Gitomer

Want To Get The Cross-Cultural Communication Tips?

Get all of the Cross-Cultural Communication Challenge Tips here:

• 2009 Cross-Cultural Communication Challenges

Want All Of The International Sales Best Practices?

• International Sales Best Practices

Tagged as: best practice, ccc, Cross-Cultural Communication, cross-cultural sales, cross-cultural selling, global sales, international competence, international negotiation, International Sales, international sales best practices, international sales skills, international selling, international skills, jeffrey gitomer, march challenge