Cindy King's International Business Blog » sales process

12 Reasons Why International Selling Is Harder

Cindy King — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:00:39 +0000

Before I started my own consulting business I worked for a variety of industries, mainly related to communication and new technologies. I had daily contact with clients in a sales capacity, sometimes with more marketing responsibilities than others. But I always dealt with international clients. Clients from different cultures to the company I represented. I negotiated sales, facilitated sales and over the years I worked in all of the functions within the international sales process.

International Selling Was The Only World I Knew

International selling was easy for me because I developed cross-cultural skills very early on. And I always try to find the right way to connect with people, even across cultures. Besides, living in a foreign country and being fully integrated inside this foreign country, adapting to different cultures comes naturally to me.

Dealing with international clients was the only thing I knew.

The Differences In International Selling

I’ve had my business for almost 2 years now, and I now see how big the differences are between selling to international clients and selling to people from your own country.

Here are 12 reasons why international selling is harder:

When you’re selling to international clients you have to focus on trust all the time. Losing trust is one of the biggest reasons why you lose international sales. Cross-cultural differences create a minefield of possible trust breakers. All salespeople know they need to build trust and actively do this. But in an international environment the cultural differences increase the difficulty in nurturing, building and maintaining trust on many different levels.
When you’re selling to international clients you might not notice when you lose trust. This is the hardest one to deal with. Just as cultural differences create trust breaking situations, they also make it difficult to see when you lose trust. And when you lose an element of trust without realizing it and continue selling, this creates complex situations which are not good for sales.
When you’re selling to international clients you also have to deal with your own personal reactions to different cultural situations. Learning how to deal with our own personal cultural baggage and not let it interfere with international business takes work. And it can also raise difficult questions to answer concerning personal integrity and personal ethics. Learning how to separate reactions to these and how to act appropriately is hard work.
When you’re selling to international clients you have to identify any differences in doing business, often beyond the scope of sales. Different countries do things differently, we all know that. And yet it is surprising how many of these differences can pop up and effect your business and your selling.
When you’re selling to international clients you have to look for wrong assumptions which can pop up in unusual places. Many cross-cultural blunders happen because of wrong assumptions. In sales wrong assumptions can be disastrous.
When you’re selling to international clients you have to monitor what is said and the different understandings of what is said. People can take away different understandings for a variety of reasons: wrong assumptions, cultural differences in communication, and different levels in language skills. You simply cannot do business when both parties have different understanding of what is said. So you have to keep your ears open continually and summarize understandings at regular intervals.
When you’re selling to international clients you need to become skilled at multitask monitoring. There are many different things to monitor in international sales. Trust, mutual understanding, wrong assumptions are just a few related to the communication. You also need to monitor how cultural differences impact certain aspects of the business deal itself. There are also risk elements to monitor. International selling requires excellent multitasking skills just to monitor the different levels of what’s going on.
When you’re selling to international clients you have to be flexible and maintain your business focus at the same time. Different cultures have different styles of doing business. So you need to be flexible and adapt to these differences. When you are not used to certain situations it is easy to lose your business focus. Being both flexible and business focused can be challenging at times. It takes practice and skill to master this.
When you’re selling to international clients you must always be ready to adapt to unexpected situations. Both the ability to adapt and the readiness to adapt are important. Unexpected situations are common in international business. Dealing with this change demands personal energy.
When you’re selling to international clients you have different risk factors to take into consideration. There is always a more elevated risk factor in international business. Successful international salespeople know how to be the lookout post for any relevant risk factors for his business. International selling is a more varied occupation.
When you’re selling to international clients you need to adopt a marketing hat as well. The role of lookout post also involves marketing feedback. Most sales professionals understand the valuable role they play to their companies marketing functions. In an international environment this marketing role is critical. The international salesperson is usually the only person with constant direct insights into his company’s market.
When you’re selling to international clients you must have a very clear vision of your business goals and the framework you work in. Without an accurate and clear vision and understanding of your company’s goals you will not be able to find the best way to do all of the above. In international sales negotiations this alone is a very powerful tool.

The Multiplying Effect

Skilled sales professionals will probably nod their head and say they do all of the above already. But there is a multiplying effect which makes these tasks harder in international sales.

What’s your experience?

Have you sold to both international clients and clients from your own country?
What differences do you see between selling to international client and clients in your own country?
What do you think, how is international selling harder?

Please leave your comments below.

Get International Clients – Business Guides On Sales

Sales Strategy From The Inside Out By Duane Sparks

Cindy King — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 12:00:07 +0000

Book & Product Reviews

Several weeks ago, I received a request to review a sales skills training book on Action Selling. And by some miracle the book arrived about 3 days later by regular mail. Unfortunately I have not had a chance to sit down to read it until now… and I regret that I did not read it earlier. Reading this book has helped me to improve my sales skills.

After reading Marketing With Meaning yesterday, I have to say that this was one of the nicest requests for a book review I have received. The request was natural, not pushy. It gave me clear insights into why this review would interest my readers. In addition, the book looked interesting. It was easy to say “yes”.

There were actually 2 books in the mail… I’ll explain later. But what I want to share with you is that I devoured the first book in a short afternoon last weekend. And did not have a chance to read the second book all week. It has been a long wait. The funny thing is that I have not looked forward to reading a book since the last Harry Potter came out… and this is a sales book!

Two Sales Books…

Here are the two sales training books I read. Both are by Duane Sparks:

Action Selling: How To Sell Like A Professional, Even If You Think You Are One

This is the first one. It explains:

The Action Selling Process
The 9 acts to the sales process
The 5 buying decisions

Here’s the second book I read:

Sales Strategy from the Inside Out: How Complex Selling Really Works

This is the most recent book and it shows you how the Action Selling process works in a complex B2B sales process.

These are both small books, about 70 pages or so and are quick reads.

There Are Five Books In The Series

These two books are actually part of a sales skills training series. These are the three other books I did not read.

Selling Your Price: How to Escape the Race To The Bargain Basement
Questions: The Answers to Sales
Masters of Loyalty: How To Turn Your Sales Force Into A Loyalty Force

They come between the two books I read.

Why I Like These Books

OK, now let me tell you why I devoured the first one, just could not wait to read the second one, and why I really like both of them.

Easy To Read

These books are stories. They are not heavy “how to” reading with long explanations. You learn about the sales process, and understand it because it is told in a real sales story. The stories are short, they are only about the sales process. There is no long novel with lengthy character development. There are only enough details for you to pick up the Action Selling process quickly and easily.

The first book, Action Selling, explains the process in a simple story. The second book, Sales Strategy, shows you how Action Selling works in a B2B environment when times are difficult.

Simple Process

I like simple sales strategies. As I read the two books, I saw parts of the Action Selling Process that I had already used in my own international sales process. But I felt that reviewing the Action Selling Process could strengthen what I am already doing.

This Action Selling Process is easy to pick up . It gives you a good framework to prepare a sales strategy for your clients. It’s not a complicated system. It only takes a couple of hours at most to read the book. Then you can immediately use the laminated card at the back of the book, and research and plan for your next client call. The story shows you what to do.

I still have to try this out in cross-cultural selling, but the Action Selling Process appears to be easy to adapt for international sales too.

Solid Sales Best Practices

The Action Selling Process did not come out of Duane Sparks’ imagination. He based it on proven strategies that have been around since the early 1900′s… and improved ever since.

I don’t know what kind of sales environment you work in, but the mistakes outlined in these books are common ones in international sales:

Selling before establishing and agreeing on the client’s needs
Selling the product before selling the salesperson

These two mistakes undermine all of efforts to build trust and credibility, which is crucial in cross-cultural selling.

Get A Strong Basic Sales Strategy

In cross-cultural selling you have to adapt to the culture of your client. This is can be overwhelming. I have often seen colleagues around me get bogged down dealing with cross-cultural differences… and in the process they:

Forget their sales strategy
Find that their sales strategy is not suitable for this culture, or do not know how to adapt it
Fall back to easy networking tactics that lack the sharp sales focus needed in today’s economy

I like starting with a simple, solid sales strategy based on universal business practices… and then adapt tactics to this strategy as needed.

Action Selling has inspired me to review this with my own cross-cultural sales skills… I will read the 3 other books too.

What Are You Doing To Improve Your Sales Strategies?

Today businesses need to regularly review their sales strategies. The economy is different. Competition changes. There is almost always room for improvement.

Do you have a few hours to read a good story? It might be all you need to start strengthening your sales strategy.

Action Selling provides sales skills training for a simple process for a good sales strategy. It gives you a framework to stay focused on the work you need to do to be competitive in sales.

There is nothing I would change. Nothing I find missing.

This book reminded me of my resolution when I first started writing book reviews: to only write reviews about things I really like and highly recommend to close friends.

Why?

For things I don’t like – why spend my time giving publicity to things I do not like, even if it’s negative.

For mediocre things – there are more enjoyable ways to spend my time.

Thank you for an inspiring book!

Communication For International Sales

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with communication for international sales:

A Writer’s Guide To Powerful Paragraphs By Victor C. Pellegrino
Content Rich By Jon Wuebben
Get Content Get Customers by Joe Pulizzi & Newt Barrett
Letting Go Of The Words – Writing Web Content That Works By Janice Redish
Stories That Sell By Casey Hibbard
The Culturally Customized Web Site By Nitish Singh And Arun Pereira
The Magic Of Pre-Writing By Steven Osborne
The Secret To Writing A Successful And Outstanding Blog By Liz Strauss

International Sales

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with international sales:

All of the Little Sales Books by Jeffrey Gitomer
Asinine Advertising By Herschell Gordon Lewis
Influencer: The Power To Change Anything by Kerry Patterson – Joseph Grenny – David Maxfield – Ron McMillian & Al Switzler
Sales Strategy From The Inside Out By Duane Sparks

International Web Marketing

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with international web marketing:

Bit Literacy Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload By Mark Hurst
Dotcomology The Science Of Making Money Online By Stone Evans
How The Internet Works By Preston Gralla
How to Win Sales & Influence Spiders By Catherine Seda
Landing Page Optimization By Tim Ash
Mastering Online Marketing By Mitch Meyerson
Multichannel Marketing By Akin Arikan
Online Competitive Intelligence By Helen P. Burwell
ProBlogger by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett
Stats Faceslap By Ed Rivis
The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy By Ed Rivis
Website Optimization by Andrew B. King

Here are some Product Reviews:

All of the book and product reviews here are totally unsolicited… spontaneous …and without affiliate links. These are books I have read recently and only the ones that I share with friends. So all of the reviews you find here are on books and products that I highly recommend.

Also, as these are books and products that I have recently read since, this is not a list of my all-time favorite books. Hopefully I will get around to reviewing my favorite culture and international business books sometime soon.