Leading the Effective Sales Force: The Asian Sales Force ... - Insead

- The combination of diverse languages, dissimilar cultural heritages and remote
geographic locations can create strong barriers to building and maintaining effective
buyer-seller relationships.
- Non-verbal cues, product origin biases, sales force nationality issues and differences in
inter-cultural negotiation styles add even more complexity to the international sales
environment.
- When a firm sells its products in international markets by using third-party marketing
intermediaries instead of developing a company-owned international sales force,
relatively impersonal business-to-business relationships, common in the USA, are often
far less effective in other countries where personal participative types of relationships are
expected (see Table 1.1), for building relationships with third-party marketing
intermediaries.
• As we can see from Table 1.1, relationship plays a much more important role in buyerseller
interactions in Japan and China than in almost all the non-Asian markets tabulated,
with Latin American being the only exception.
• Human relationships tend to be stronger in Asian countries than in the West, and Asian
cultures place high value on strong relationships in business.
Table 1.1: Selected differences in buyer-seller relationship styles
Relationship Nature of interaction
International Climate Importance Pace Process Decision
market
Asian
making
Japan Formal, polite Great
Very slow First all A total group
climate with importance. with a lot of general items process with
many
Long-term initial time are agreed all levels
idiosyncratic relationships are spent on upon, then involved in
nuances what matter most relationship details are the final
building discussed decision
China Bureaucratic Very important. Very slow Discussions Usually a
climate with an Traditional, with a lot of are long and group process
abundance of cultural
initial time repetitive. headed by a
“red tape” courtesies are spent on Agreements senior
expected relationship must be in negotiator
building writing
Non-Asian
USA Sometimes
viewed as an
aggressive or
confrontational
climate
Canada Positive, polite
climate. Hard
sell will not
work here
Of less
importance.
Focus is on
achieving desired
results
Of less
importance.
Focus is on
achieving desired
results
7
“Time is
money”.
Effort will be
made to
expedite the
negotiations
A little
slower than
in the USA
Ordered
process where
each point is
discussed in
sequence
Ordered
process where
each point is
discussed in
sequence
Can be either
an individual
or group
decision
process
Can be either
an individual
or group
decision
process