Few years ago on a sunny Friday morning I was scheduled to meet with the International Sales Director for a healing equipment manufacturer. The meeting came at the invite of the enterprise president whom I met at a trade show in Canada. The aim of my meeting with the International Sales Director was to try and pinpoint the imagine behind the inadequate Middle East sales performance. As the enterprise president summed it up by saying "Our products are better than the competition but the competition is doing much better in sales to that market. My Is Director attended trade shows in United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The feedback from many Arabian fellowships was confident but did not materialize into good sales nor what can be determined a good beginning relationship. We can use an exterior opinion".
Before the meeting day I did some preliminary investigate about the healing enterprise and sure enough their products were better in capability than their competitor and the pricing was competitive. The meeting took place in their argument room. Just the International Sales Director, one of his associates and me.
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From the beginning I felt some tension arrival from the Is Director. Why not? The meeting was called for by the enterprise president and the Is Director probably felt that his leadership was in request and he would be answering to an outsider who would description back to his boss. To ease the tension, I opened the argument by mentioning some of the admirable accomplishments he made by successfully building the International department and achieving superior sales in the European market. My source was a newspaper description that I found during my preliminary research. This move proved to be a great ice breaker and then more. The more he talked about this subject, the more his facial features and speech pattern projected victory, achievements, confidence, and of course friendliness and openness. It worked and it should always work. Reminding others of their former victorious achievements will not only empower them and proves that you appreciate and trust them, but also they will be more open to listen to you and hear what you have to say.
He started talking about their Middle East operations and mentioned that his enterprise had participated in two trade shows, one in Saudi Arabia and the other in United Arab Emirates. during these trade shows their products received confident feedback from many Arab businessmen and soon after arrival back to the Us, he started corresponding with these prospective partners. It has been 10 months now and nothing had happened. Their sales to the Middle East did not show any principal growth and the negotiations did not organize into solid relationships. No agents nor distributors. He continued venting his frustrations and he moderately shifted toward explaining what he opinion was the problem. To him, the problem was the Middle East store and its enterprise culture. He continued saying how it was easier to deal with the European store and to setup partners.
After he had ample chance to communicate the situation, it was my turn to ask some questions and to express my opinion. A few points surfaced during our argument indicating that they did not do their homework before plunging in. They did not perform any investigate in regards to the enterprise culture of the Middle East market, so they were not aware of what they should and should not do and they were not aware of the steps needed to organize a good enterprise relationship. In addition, the Is Director, approached his prospective Arab partners with the same distribution deal used for dealing with their European distributors. No endeavor was made to check its adequacy and reality for the new market. In short, there was neither investigate nor a plan.
He should not have used his success with the European store and the relatively short time it took to perform that, as a measuring tool for the Middle East operation. He had successfully dealt with the European store due to the fact that he had worked and lived in Europe for 5 years before joining the Us healing equipment manufacturer. He knew the market, the enterprise culture, enterprise circumstances, and all the vital information needed to effect in doing enterprise in Europe. Throughout the 5 years he spent in Europe he gained the feel and knowledge that made him successful, but he was not able to clearly see the understanding he gained by living there.
How could he miss that fact? It is not all unusual to do that. By the same token, many fellowships when going global forget that their products are being introduced to a new store and it takes time for the sales volume to grow to its thinkable, goal, just like when they started introducing their products to the local market! As a effect of this "lost comparison", sometimes fellowships set unreasonable conditions when dealing with their international agents such as "high" minimum buy requirements and "unrealistic" thinkable, sales volume conditions. An overseas enterprise purchasing goods for the first time would ordinarily prefer to order a small quantity which will be used to test the product's acceptance in the market. fellowships that insist on a set minimum even with the first sale, which is in fact determined a test sample, are end the door on overseas sales let alone encouraging any potential partnership.
Since I knew that the Is Director has his hands full managing victorious sales to the European market, I suggested assigning the Middle East store territory to man else who could devote all of their energy and time on developing marketing plans, acquiring partnerships and addition sales. The Is Director answered back that he had already opinion about that and handed me a copy of an advertisement he had located in a local newspaper. The advertisment read:
Middle East Sales Rep.
Medical equipment constructor seeking energetic professional man to sustain the International Sales Director in his Middle East operations. victorious candidate will deal with correspondences, distributing enterprise literature and development overseas calls mostly at late night hours. feel in telemarketing and bilingual (Arabic and English) a plus.
Clearly the ad echoed what I opinion was wrong with their arrival to the Middle East market. This advertisement was calling for an administrative assistant not a Middle East Sales Representative. In fact I have seen many fellowships deal with their international operations by naturally request man to type a letter or send a fax. To these fellowships the interest in the global store will only grow if they consideration an outcome first. A principal outcome though, will not come from such arrival and hence these companies' correspondences are going somewhere but truly not global.
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