CROSS CULTURAL CHALLENGES IN SALES

SUBMITTED BY: POOJA AHLAWAT UMA SHARMA RAKESH YADAV SHUBHAM UPMANYU MEHTA SAMIR RASTOGI MANONEET KOCHAR

CULTURAL CONCERN IN AN ORGANIZATION (pooja)

It is a process in which the management takes into account cultural differences and ability to adapt to the different cultures. Culture of a society helps to develop the mentality of the people in the society. Culture guides the mind and influences the ways people perceive matters, act politically, make and prioritize decisions, manage their lives and basically on ways they think. One should not separate self-awareness and cultural awareness. One has to go beyond the meaning of culture itself in order to have a better awareness of how culture influences our personal lives.

Differences in approaches, values and expectations between customers, suppliers and team members with different cultural backgrounds have lead to many project failures.

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES (shubham)

The impact of cultural differences on management practice from five aspects: cooperative strategies, conflict management, decision-making, work-group characteristics, and motivation systems. It can also be observed that most of the failures faced by cross-national companies are caused by neglect of cultural differences. The globalization of the world economy, on one hand, has created tremendous opportunities for global collaboration among different countries; on the other hand, however, it has also created a unique set of problems and issues relating to the effective management of partnerships with different cultures.

REASONS FOR DIFFERENCES (uma)

Communication : Differences in communication exist in every language. These differences can include: 1. Body Language 2. Connotations; for example take a hike in the US means please leave, whereas, in India it might mean take a vacation. 3. different assumptions made in the same situation. The same event can be interpreted many different ways depending on where one comes from. For example, although the sight of a black cat is considered a lucky event in Britain, it is considered unlucky in many other countries. Dragons are viewed positively in China, but negatively in Europe and North America. Standards : In engineering project it is extremely important to have standardized units, ft, yards, lbs. Different regions follow different measurements. For example, in 1999 a mars probe designed in Europe and the U.S, crashed on Mars due to the navigation system being SI units and the telemetry in English units.

Approaches to problem solving : People from different cultures tend to have different approaches to solving problems. For example, Europeans are regarded as being more theoretical in their approaches whereas Americans are known to be more experimental. These may be generalizations and there may be many exceptions to the rule. way information is shared and distributed : The way information moves within a company varies significantly from country to country. hiring process : Cross-cultural differences are fairly significant in this area. For example, people interviewed for positions in France will be asked personal questions that are considered illegal in Canada, such as their age, marital status and number of children, while German interviewers routinely ask candidates for the profession of their parents.

upmanyu
Cultural Values
Type of logic Expression of agreement & disagreement Communication of information Individualism and Collectivism Uncertainty Avoidance

EAST
Spiral in approach Find it difficult to disagree Meaning is implied. Use of indirect language patterns. More interdependent & Appreciate training Prefer structured environment. Minimal tolerance towards deviation.

WEST
Linear in approach More argumentative Meaning is explicit. Use of direct language Prefer to be independent and selfreliant. More motivated to newness & change.

Relation btw managers & subordinates

Business relationship Hierarchy of departments Information sharing Time sense Conflict resolution

More authoritative
More Important; has to be a sound, long lasting & hard to form Manufacturing drives marketing Compartmentalized Appointments less driven by exact start and end time Mediation through trusted 3rd party

More consultative
Less important; superficial, not long lasting & easy to form. Sales & marketing drives manufacturing Moves freely within & across departments. Start on time and end on time Trial or confrontation

EFFECT OF CULTURAL DIFFERECES IN SALES (rakesh)

It's difficult to imagine life getting any tougher for today's sales professional. Competition has intensified. Sales cycles have expanded. And sales commissions have eroded as customers assert their newfound pricing power. Four dimensions -- segmentation; structure; systems and support -- must be carefully addressed if sales professionals are to "win" in tomorrow's hypercompetitive markets. Due to these differences companies will lose on following basis: 1. level of performance 2. sell differentiated & high-margin offerings, 3. complex decisions about sophisticated products 4. manage the difficult change process that ensues etc. CISCO SYSTEMS is a great example..

AVOIDING CROSS-CULTURAL PITFALLS

Here are a few tips that will help avoid miscommunication:

Clarify: When in doubt, ask; if not, ask anyway. Its important to ensure that your foreign colleagues have understood everything you meant to say and nothing else. Ask them to feed you back what you have told them in their own words. This will help you discover and address any major misunderstandings.
Get into the details: Although its often tempting to agree on general principles and leave details to further discussions for brevitys sake, this can create major problems at later stages. Indeed, an agreement on general principles may turn out to be empty, if it is not tested through negotiation on the finer details.

 Summarize: The time taken to summarize the decisions made during a meeting and to issue minutes to all participants is often a good investment. It helps to prevent future challenges of decisions reached at meetings and to ensure that action items agreed to at meetings are actually implemented.

Simplify: Use simple words that are easily understood and be consistent. Using synonyms can confuse your non-Canadian counterparts unnecessarily, particularly if they are not native English speakers. For similar reasons, technical jargon should be avoided where possible and explained clearly when it must be used.

SOME EXAMPLES (samir)

Cracking an international market is a goal of most growing corporations. It shouldn't be that hard, yet even the big multi-nationals run into trouble because of language and cultural differences. For example...

The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax" depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, "ko-kou-ko-le," which can be loosely translated as "happiness in the mouth." In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" came out as "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead."

When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South America, it was apparently unaware that "no va" means "it won't go." After the company figured out why it wasn't selling any cars, it renamed the car in its Spanish markets to the Caribe. Ford had a problem in Brazil when the Pinto flopped. The company found out that Pinto was Brazilian slang for "tiny male genitals". Ford pried all the nameplates off and substituted Corcel, which means horse. When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to say "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you." However, the company mistakenly thought the Spanish word "embarazar" meant embarrass. Instead the ads said that "It wont leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."

CONCLUSION (manoneet)

One of the greatest challenges for the values-centered culture is to produce top performance and succeed in the market against "win at any cost" competitors. Values are only one part of an organization's culture; the other half is its operating normsthe way in which day-to-day business is conducted. Practicing solid values does not guarantee results unless a passionate commitment to performance standards is incorporated into the organization's norms. Cultural change is never an easy task, and far more cultural change efforts ultimately fail than succeed. Transforming a healthy culture is even more difficult than changing an unhealthy one.

Many people will not understand why change is necessary when the company has been successful. The leader has to be patient, communicative, and diligent in insisting on changes at all levels, or the organization. To link the cultural changes to our mission, It framed them in terms of helping patients and winning in the marketplace. In truth, we had no choice but to make the culture more performance-oriented if we have to fulfill our mission. Otherwise, we would lose out to more aggressive competitors and never earn the right to serve those patients.