Cindy King's International Business Blog » tele-sales

Up-Sell Expectations Across Cultures

Cindy King — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 23:00:15 +0000

My phone rang last night. It was just as one of my favorite TV shows was starting. Now the show was on a DVD, as I answered the phone, I heard the introductory music start…

….the caller spoke to me in English.

Now this might not be significant to you.

But I live in France. And my family lives in various parts of North American.

So phone calls in English at night are usually not good news.

The caller got my attention immediately. Because he was speaking to me in English.

The introductory music ended on my TV show. I hesitated about going over to stop the recording.

…I could always re-start it again later

The caller was not anyone in my family.

…what did he want?

…If this call is going to take too long I will not be able to finish the show tonight…or it’s another late night again!

A Sales Pitch Late At Night

What?

The second sentence from my caller is “now you are interested in earning an extra $50,000 a year, aren’t you?”

A sales call? From an American? On my home phone in France?

– “Where did you get this number?”

– “Well you must have bought one my Mr. Get Rich Quick Internet Marketer’s products at one time or another”

No Relationship With The Company Intruding On My Privacy

Hmm, this Mr. Get Rich Quick Internet Marketer did have a $1 offer with a semi-hidden membership plan a while ago.

– “Do you know what time it is where I am?”

– “Uhhhh. No”

It’s not that a semi-hidden offer gets under my skin. But I definitely prefer very clear up-front information when it concerns my credit card.

Besides, Mr. Get Rich Quick Internet Marketer’s follow up emails talked so much about how his Mom thought he was great that I never stayed around on his membership plan. I am sure he is a good guy. It’s just that I was too busy to get beyond his mother.

…So after a $1 offer good enough to spark my interest, but with a semi-hidden membership pulling you in, I now get a call late at night.

This is an up-sell?

– “Do you know that it is late at night my end?”

– “No, can I call you back in a couple of hours?”

– “No, I’ll be asleep by then”

…You know what, I don’t want to go to bed late because of someone like this.

– “Look, if you do not know how to check time zones for international calls, just take my name off your list.”

Bad Timing For An Up-Sell

Apart from the bad choice of time to call me, there was also one other major flaw with this call.

It was also a very bad time to call me with an up-sell.

First, I never hooked up with this particular Get Rich Quick Internet Marketer:

The shady membership sign up was a turn off
The “my mother loves me” series of emails bored me

Second, even if I had been hooked, the timing for the up-sell was all wrong:

Jumping from $1 to several hundred dollars creates barriers in me
Jumping from a massive launch campaign to the privacy of my home is too much, too soon

Different Personal Expectations

Let’s look at the personal point of view…

Depending where you live, and your own cultural background, you might have responded just like I did. And you might not have. You might have immediately bought into the “you are interested in earning an extra $50,000 a year, aren’t you?” pitch. And you might take phone calls later than I do.

Different Marketing Expectations

Now, let’s look at the marketing…

The “my mother loves me” series of emails were obviously trying to stimulate a positive reaction. As I said, it is fairly credible that this guy is indeed a great person. So this first series of emails may have been enough to prepare for a direct home call for an up-sell for some people. But it would certainly not work in all cultures.

I have often noticed how the big Get Rich Quick Internet Marketers assume they have international businesses and that they do not need international marketing.

After all, they are popular enough to get large quantities of international orders. Their products and their sales and marketing appear to be working just fine.

Just A Little Thought Is All It Takes

Now what if…

…this Mr. Get Rich Quick Internet Marketer had…

Targeted his original “my mother loves me” email series to markets culturally open to this sort of approach, and then used another set of emails with a more appropriate approach for other cultures.
Given more thought to the timing and appropriateness of his up-sell strategy.

It would have been a different story my end.

But, right now he comes across to me as:

A little bit of a simplistic jerk
Definitely a person who wants to both waste my time and take my money before proving to me that he has any value to give me.

You need to give a little thought to how you go about marketing to your international clients.

It is not rocket science.

It is simply stepping down a moment to try to see things like they do.

And remember, selling products and services over the internet does not mean you have an international business.

In order…

To develop,

To up-sell,

To use sales funnel, or sales pipeline strategies,

…to your international markets…You need sound international marketing practices.

Telesales, MultiChannel Marketing And International Business

Cindy King — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 23:00:14 +0000

Multichannel Marketing

My recent post on Cultural Blunders In Telesales inspired a few people to email me directly about this. Before I give further thoughts on this subject, I want to tell you where I stand.

Personal Opinion

Yes, as a person at home most of the time, with a phone number in the public phone book, I do experience all the down sides of Telesales.

My personal complaint is not to do with the bad timing and inappropriate sales pitches, which all of them are in my case. When my children have all left home I will probably get an unlisted number. This is my personal choice.

Cultural Blunders In Outsourced Business To Consumer Telesales

My personal complaint is the current trend I am experiencing with cultural differences leading to rudeness because of cultural miscommunication. There are days and weeks when it seems like all the companies actively practicing Telesales here in France have outsourced this interruption marketing practice to foreign countries unfamiliar with the basic culture here.

You can read more about this in my previous article on cultural blunders to find out why I think companies should think twice before buying this service, simply because of the cultural blunders it creates in Business to Consumer markets.

I will leave the discussion about all domestic market telesales and Business to Consumer interruption marketing practices to the experts. It just does not interest me.

An interruption marketing tactic alone will probably fail if you are in an Export Marketing phase. If your international business is only in export marketing you will probably not have enough cultural understanding of your foreign markets.

Read the Get International Client Business Guide 1 – Beginners Discover Your International Business.

You need to adapt telesales and integrate this interruption marketing tactic into a multichannel marketing strategy for it to be worthwhile in international sales.

TeleSales In A MultiChannel Marketing Strategy

What interests me is the international aspect of tele-sales.

In my business directory Get International Clients I help small businesses as they expand into foreign markets. Small businesses often ask about the use of telesales. This is why I want to address the question of international telesales.

First I have to say, I think small businesses need to spend much more time on the phone. Not to do telesales. Phone conversations are great for international market research. Most businesses rely very heavily on online research. There is so much more to gain if you do your international research through phone calls. So I actively push small businesses to pick up the phone.

If a small business has carried out most of its international market research through phone calls, then I think this business has a good chance of getting results using telesales. You pick up cross-cultural skills through practice. These cross-cultural skills will help you with your international telesales.

But, and this is a big but, most companies are still using outdated telesales practices.

I highly recommend Akin Arikan’s book Multichannel Marketing. Akin Arikan describes the problem of today’s telesales practices very clearly. Most consumer markets today make their buying decisions differently than 10 years ago. This is true throughout the world.

Consumer-Driven Marketing

Product-driven marketing needs to evolve in order to get sales results in a market demanding consumer-driven marketing.

Akin Arikan tells a story of the day he moved into a new house. The telesales marketers had done a good job at identifying his new telephone number and flooded his telephone line with calls as soon as it was hooked up. Imagine the situation. You are just moving in, trying to sort out boxes and where things should go. Your new is ringing constantly. You have to keep trying to find the phone in all the boxes. Interruption marketing rapidly becomes unwanted.

What did the Arikan family do? Just like anyone today. They sorted out their important boxes first. And as soon as they got their computer up and running they did comparison shopping online. Then went to the stores down the road to buy what they needed. Of course, they did not feel obliged to buy from the same company online where they found the most useful information. They simply went to the most convenient place for them.

Evolution In The World Of TeleSales

Here are 3 thoughts on how to improve telesales marketing:

The telesales scripts need to change to fit into today’s consumer habits. The telephone marketers would probably have gained more if they linked their telesales pitch to their online marketing.
Online marketing also needs to change to get consumers to buy from them. Imagine if the website that provided the most useful information also provided directions to the local store with a housewarming special for new people in the area.
Successful telesales marketing needs effective multichannel marketing today.

The bad news: Small businesses that rely heavily on international web marketing need to create good multichannel marketing if they want international success.

The good news: It is easier to get it right when starting from scratch.

Of course you can include telesales as part of your multichannel mix. Do your own telesales in-house. Even if this method is not culturally well adapted to your specific foreign market, you will gain valuable insights into your international markets. Telesales is a great international market research tool if you take the time to use it.

Cultural Blunders In Tele-Sales

Cindy King — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:00:34 +0000

Cross-Cultural Communication Blunders

I have had a few inquiries recently about how cultural differences affect customer service expectations.

I don’t know why there has been such a sudden interest in cultural differences in customer services expectations. Let me be a little cheeky and wonder if companies are feeling the cultural backlash of outsourcing to countries where the culture is just so different.

Let me tell you why this is the first reason that pops into my mind.

I work at home. I have not yet put my telephone number down as unlisted. I have children, I’ve traveled a lot and met many interesting people. I want people to be able to find me easily if they want to. So everyone can find my phone number.

Not a day goes by without getting one sales call or another. They are usually just when I’m preparing lunch, sometimes dinner. So I do get a wide variety of overseas call centers trying to sell me one thing or another.

And I only find about 5% of them polite. About 25% of them are outright rude.

They do not have my definition of politeness, and they don’t have a French person’s definition of politeness. I can’t always identify which country they are calling from. As I said there is a wide variety of countries with call centers calling into France.

Where do I find them lacking in politeness?

They call just at my meal time, why don’t they ask me if it is convenient to call me. I’m busy. I’m often juggling what is on the stove and my daughter’s taxi schedule.
Their new phone systems often leave me waiting with a blank line for over 10 seconds before anyone “answers” the phone their end. They called first. I’m busy. Why am I waiting?
When they do start speaking, they speak very, very slowly obviously trying to read my name for the first time.
They can’t pronounce my name.
After the painfully slow beginning, they immediately jump into a long sales pitch without giving me any space to interact.
Very often they refer to themselves as a partner to the French electricity company or something like that and speed up. Partner? Hold on. My electricity company has my address and already sends me lots of mail. If you are their partner I want to know exactly how you are their partner. Tell me that first.
They will often ask me for some personal information in the third sentence. That is 15 seconds after we have established my name.

This scenario happens to me every week day. Sometimes twice a day. And I’m sure it happens to others in other countries.

What happens afterwards is often an example of customer service expectation clashes. These types of sales just do not work on me. Why? Probably all 7 reasons are above. The clash?

It’s when I tell the customer service person on the other end I’m not at all interested and never will be no matter how good her offer is.

The reactions are so…colorful? Nothing like what I would get anywhere in North America, France, Europe even.

The so called partner to the French electricity company actually told me off. She told me to get my phone number unlisted to save them time. According to her everyone with a listed phone number wants to listen to their sales pitches.

These people have a difficult job to do.

They must learn how to pronounce names from a different country. I know just how difficult it is to do. It is hard. It takes weeks, sometimes months. It’s one of the ways you can tell if someone has had enough of the right foreign exposure.

They have a sales script they need to follow. This is not easy. It’s not easy to make this sound natural.

The vast majority of people they phone are like me: not interested.

After they have done all of this, their own culture and personality shows through in the way how they react to people like me.

Yes, we all have different cultural perceptions of things, concepts…and other people. And we cannot change this over the phone.

We also have very different definitions of politeness. Even when you think you have the same definition of politeness cultural blunders can pop up…due to differences in politeness.

What should the Tele-Sales people work on even more? Probably adjusting their communication to meet the definition of politeness in the country they are calling.

It will be interesting to see if I will still get as many phone calls like this 10 years down the road.

I personally think there are so many other ways of tele-marketing.

Let’s look at one scenario. The web marketing companies that provide you with telephone numbers of qualified leads only an hour old. The person just qualified himself online just minutes before you get his telephone number.

Now who would you want to call that 100% fresh qualified lead?

Wouldn’t you want your best sales person? The one who could communicate best with him?

I have had a handful of calls like this. I’m not sure if there was any real strategy behind the marketing. But I’m English mother tongue living in France. I got a person calling from Ireland. A real sales person. With an interesting dialog. I did not notice her politeness, or rather any difference in politeness. And she did not call me while I was preparing lunch or dinner. She called me 30 minutes after I filled out a form online.

There is more than one point to take out of this example. Let’s just say for now, that I think relevance helps a lot in smoothing over any cultural differences in tele-sales.

Want do you think? Do you think tele-sales will evolve? Do you think cultural differences will always be part of outsourcing issues?