One of the keys to successful global selling is to adapt your sales approach to different regional and local business practices. You have to translate your selling for culture as well as for language. So is it possible to have one sales training approach for all your different sales teams around the world?
The sales objectives will always be similar in different countries:
- to open new accounts, to retain existing customers and to maximise profitable sales revenue. There may be special local short term tactics (e.g. to smash competition by cutting prices) but you will always be aiming to create and maintain good customer relationships and to win new and repeat business.
If the objectives are the same does it mean you should use the same sales process everywhere? Fundamentally yes - but you apply the component parts of that process differently, with different emphases, at different speeds and sometimes in a different order.
Every modern sales process must contain:
- Building relationships and confidence
- Identifying customer needs
- Presenting your proposal to meet those needs
- Concluding an agreement
- Follow up and implementation.
Most international companies have their own ‘pet sales process’ (or they favour one of the generic sales processes available from consultancies) and aim to teach it worldwide. This is fine as long as you allow for local culture in the five main areas above.
Some clutural considerations:
Building relationships and confidence
- How long does this take? How many meetings will a customer expect to have with you before you talk real business? How important are introductions, references and family connections? Are you using the best personality salespeople for the company culture? How formal/informal should you be? Should you use entertaining or hospitality?
Identifying customer needs:
- How direct can your questions be?
- Is it acceptable to probe needs when the customer already believes he/she knows them all?
- Can you discuss ‘problems’ or is this deemed to be rude?
- How many different people are you able to meet?
- Can you use a checklist of questions or is this seen as too impersonal?
Presenting your proposal:
- Written, verbal or both? Short or long?
- Is a quick solution expected or is it expected that you will take time to go away and consult with others at length?
- How much detail do you have to give?
- How blatant can you be in selling your special benefits?
- Are you expected to include final costings and are they going to be negotiated?
Concluding an agreement:
- Will customers expect to negotiate or do they see your first offer as your final offer?
- How long will they take to make a decision?
- What is the customer’s decision making process? How many people and who?
- What sort of methods are acceptable to close and win commitment?
- How soon do they expect you to follow up and try to close?
Follow up and implementation:
- What is the customer’s contract process?
- How quickly does it happen and is it acceptable to try and push it along faster?
- Is it expected that the salesperson will remain in close contact once implementation happens?
- Do customers expect/reject any form of corporate hospitality, entertainment, factory visits etc?
- Do customers expect senior management contact?
So when you’re training your sales teams across the world it’s important that your common sales process is taught in each country by people who understand how business is done there. And most global companies use distributors, agents or licensees in some of their markets so you must ensure that their salespeople are similarly trained.
Your common message may only need to be adapted by 10%, but that 10% can make 100% difference to the value of your training !
If you’re responsible for the development of your people cross border or for global business development please get in touch – we’d love to hear from you.
