International Sales Best Practice – Take A Different Perspective

International Sales Best Practices

Today is the last day we look at how awareness can improve clarity in cross-cultural communication. And this last tip is good to remember when you feel like you are not making progress.

CCCC Tip #15 - Look at your communication from a different angle.

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.

Sometimes looking at your communication from a different perspective is the best way to:

• Begin to understand cultural differences
• Discover what the communication barrier actually is
• Find the next step you need to take to move the sales process forward

Looking at things from a different angle is not a miracle solution, but it is often part of the process in finding the solution to cross-cultural difficulties.

Cross-Cultural Communication Skills & Sales Best Practices

Let’s look at another quote from Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Red Book Of Sales Answers to find another use for using a different perspective.

The closing of a sale can be a delicate affair in cross-cultural sales. You may think:

• The sale is closed, and the sales process has only just started
• You will never get the sale, when the clients are almost ready to buy
• You almost ready to close the sale, when the client is not even interested

There two things you need to improve your ability to judge the readiness to close a cross-cultural sale:

• Experience
• The ability to put yourself in the other cultures shoes

Good international salespeople know how to look at things from different angles, different perspectives. They do not use their own personal scales to evaluate what is happening in their international sales. Instead they try to understand the other person’s perspective. This ability to look at different angles often becomes an automatic reflex.

Of course, seeing things from different angles does not involve personal points of view. It is simply the ability to see things differently, as other people see things and not to adopt them on a personal level. This naturally makes it easier to evaluate when to ask for the sale.

What Is Your Experience Of This In International Sales?

• How do you know when your international clients are ready to buy?
• What signals do you pick up from your international clients that tell you whether they are willing to buy or not?
• How difficult is it to tell whether your international clients want to buy from you or not?

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: awareness, best practice, best practices, clarity, cross-cultural sales, cross-cultural selling, global sales, international competence, international negotiation, International Sales, international sales skills, international selling, international skills