Cultures — National & International

In my continuing series of excerpts from Perception is Reality (a book I wrote many years ago), I want to share with you a chapter on culture. As I continue to reread the book, I can’t help but think that this also pertains for sales professionals, especially those that use Illumineto. Yes, I wrote this (at the time) as a marketing person, but, it can just as easily be used for help with sales. Enjoy.

Having worked for many companies that were based overseas and also sold products in many parts of the world, I have consistently encountered companies that think they know the various cultures they sell and market to and what is “best for them”.

One company I worked for wanted to “crack” the Middle East market and sell their goods there. The problem was that the company was Israeli — and since most (well, all) of the nations in the Middle East are Muslim, there was no way that they were going to be able to get their products sold there.

I came up with a simple solution — in fact, it required two solutions:

1) The company had to realize that ego played no part in business and that even though they had much pride in their success as a small Israeli company, they would have to forego that part of their brand (i.e. give up their ego and identity).

2) They would need to “re-brand” and “re-package” their goods from another part of the world. I re-branded the product so the perception was that it came from Australia (we branded it with a Kangaroo — in fact, we were so successful that a Chinese company copied our logo and called their product the Kangaru- but that’s another story; and it cost very little money (compared with the millions of dollars they made from this market)).

But, that is one extreme of cultural influence and how it affects the purchasing intent of customers.

Another example was internal to North America.

A law firm, based on the East Coast of the U.S., dealt with many clients in the Mid-West as well as the North-West; people who were laid-back, relaxed, and totally honest with their questions and issues. North Easterners (particularly those from New York and Boston) are used to being gruff, short, and pointed, but, in a way that is interpreted as rudeness.

Obviously these two “types” of individuals, when interacting, reacted like oil and vinegar — one laid back and relaxed and the other wanting to move on as quickly as possible.

After a one-week training course on the various aspects of the various regions of the U.S. and how to approach each region, the law firm was able to quickly lower the many complaints and issues that were brought up because of the personalities of their lawyers; thus, they were able to quickly get to the law cases that they were called in for and gain the perception that they were compassionate and understanding of the local area and not someone from the “East Coast who didn’t care about what happened on the West Coast”.

When you are approaching a new market, pay particular attention to the various culture and personalities of the people in that market — it cannot be ignored.

If you are already in a market, do an internal check and see if your staff, employee’s, sales people, etc. understand the market (a perfect example is if a sales person on the East Coast calls on an account or customer on the West Coast).

A few rules in dealing with others (what your mom taught you when at a dinner table): never speak about 1) Religion, 2) Politics, and 3) current affairs of the local region. Of course, many times this is brought up by your counterpart — answer the question(s) — neutrally — and move onto the more relevant subject at hand (the selling of your product or service).

And then there is the issue of company culture — how individuals in a company allow a behavior or “belief” to fester and take over how management and company strategy are determined and directed because of the “culture”.

A company I worked for had a cultural problem so severe, there was no leadership whatsoever in its mid-management level, nor in its’ top-level of management.

The mid-managers were “frozen” and never allowed to make a decision without upper management approval. This was accomplished without a higher manager really stepping in and “putting” his managers in place (i.e. not reprimanding them or saying to them that they can’t make a decision.) They did this “management” by indecision ingeniously — for a Purchase Order to be approved, it had to go through no less than three people with a minimum of five documents attached (from reasoning why (even though the department’s budget has been approved) to showing that proper research has been done in finding the cheapest vendor), thus, for it to be approved, for a simple $500 expenditure, would take at least 30 days. If it was over $20,000, it would take at least three months. In other words, there was no need to be strategic because the time it took to make a decision, the “issue” that the managers wanted to address was already in the past.

I have a chapter on “Is your company a speedboat or oil tanker” that addresses the above issue perfectly.