Fresh from the HuffPO: Have Skype. Will do International Business…

Posted on 14 February, 2012 by

Here is my latest column in the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/valerie-bersetprice/have-skype-will-do-intern_b_1274855.html#es_share_ended

Virtual interactions have gained a lot of traction in the past five years, and nowadays companies heavily rely on them to communicate internally with employees scattered all around the world. Some even use virtual communication in an attempt to forge international relationships when venturing into a new region. Virtual interactions are also gaining ground due to growing concerns about the carbon footprint international travels causes. Going virtual saves money and the planet; it’s a win-win!

When I inquire with employees who communicate internationally using programs such as Skype, U.S. nationals seem quite satisfied with the level of interaction produced virtually. Many praise how it has released them from international travels and the burden such used to create on their families.

On the other side of the camera, foreign interlocutors seldom share that same level of satisfaction. To them, interacting virtually remains a flat medium that will never replace the face-to-face approach. It’s a temporary fix or something that functions well between visits.

That difference in perspective is rooted in our cultural differences: North American culture focuses on the transaction, while the rest of the world focuses more on the relationship. As a result of that difference, relying purely on virtual interaction when engaging across cultures seems to prevent the relationship from evolving to the level it could.

The question then becomes: Is this due to the fact that homo sapiens must get used to replacing the face-to-face meeting by its virtual counterpart, or is it truly against the nature of homo sapiens to interact purely virtually?

Many studies have shown that our animalistic fight or flight instinct — the one that goes back all the way to our lizard brain — must engage all our senses to establish if the person in front of us is safe or dangerous. The lizard in us needs to see, hear, touch, smell, and taste to reach a certain level of comfort and security with another person.

In the virtual world, the lizard brain gets only to see and hear. That’s two out of five. As a result, it seems that our brains never fully engage with the other side, especially if the other side benefits from some face-to-face visits from another vendor or client. The bonding that takes place during those face-to-face visits is so powerful that it makes the virtual interaction bleak in contrast.

The next question then becomes an evolutionary one: Is it because for centuries we relied on our five senses to establish trust and bond with others that we can’t fully engage virtually? Will the coming generations bypass that problem and dismiss their own set of senses to fully engage with others?

To find out, I talked my seven-year-old daughter into a virtual exercise. Since her best friend moved to Chile, she often engages in virtual play with her. They both borrow the iPads and play Barbie together for hours on Skype. They have an established relationship and seem to have zero problems engaging virtually, even if their last face-to-face visit was six months ago.

Wondering if bonding virtually instead of maintaining a deep relationship would be feasible for her, I suggested she start playing virtually with the daughter of a friend who lives across town. It didn’t work. Both girls had little to say to one another, and playing together virtually never crossed their minds. I insisted, playing up all the benefits of having a virtual friend in the same time zone and not having to travel in traffic to go on playdates-to no avail.

My daughter said she would rather “play on her own than to play virtually.” I was puzzled. “What about your Chilean friend?” I asked. “That’s different,” she responded. She couldn’t explain why, but with her established friend, the virtual relationship seems too real to be considered virtual. The virtual seems irrelevant, as it allows her to feed a wonderful existing friendship. To create a new relationship and talk virtually with someone she had never met physically made her shy and uncomfortable to the point that without a word both girls left the room without even ending the call.

My conclusion is that unless homo sapiens mutate and our senses become muted, the face-to-face interaction will remain our favorite and most-needed way of building trust with one another. And trust, as we know, is the key ingredient of any long-lasting relationship.

For those who manage international teams virtually, a face-to-face meeting a few months into the project will go a long way. For companies operating on a shoestring or that are committed to entirely eradicate airplane travel, my advice is to develop a candid relationship via email and Skype as much as possible. This is done by always inserting a personal note or inquiry in your email, or by speaking of something else than business. In Northern Europe, for example, people don’t share their private lives easily; but they love talking about world news and politics. Make sure to engage with them on those lines to build common interest through the virtual experience.

Do you have a question related to international business or cultural intelligence that you would like to see answered? Please write to me at info@professional-passport.com


Posted in Cross-Cultural Communication, Foreign manager, International Business Practices, International business travel, International Sales, Managing People | Leave a comment

“A Pervasive Lack of Knowledge and Foreign Languages is Threatening Us at Our Core”

Posted on 10 February, 2012 by

A white paper published by the National Education Association in 2004 states “A pervasive lack of knowledge about foreign cultures and foreign languages threatens the security of the United States as well as its ability to compete in the global marketplace and produce an informed citizenry.”

Eight years later, the Board of Alumni of a prestigious university is asking me for my thoughts on how to improve the international education and offerings of their institution. It’s a good question, but it should come from elementary teachers, not college alumni.   To internationalize our college students and teach them the ropes to successfully engage and compete in the global marketplace, there are some basic requirements that should have been taught throughout our students’ mandatory education, such as:

-                  World geography

-                  At least one foreign language taught to near proficiency

-                  Awareness of cross-cultural differences and similarities.

Ideally, starting in middle-school, students would have spent time studying abroad, experiencing first hand the subtleties brought by cross-cultural differences and the magical advantage of being able to express oneself in a foreign language. Equipped with such knowledge and experience, we could then teach college students how to analyze current world trends with fresh eyes. Collaboratively, they could bring new perspectives to the international equation and work on adapting our management styles to make it efficient when operating abroad. They could contribute to the localization of our brands. Unfortunately, as of today, many college students do not have that solid international base.

So where do we start? We need an international workforce. We need masses of multilingual, multicultural professionals. We have a handful. Those are graduates from magnet, charter and private international schools. Additionally, a few of those globally prepared students come from devoted families of emigrants who kept the tradition of speaking their native language and maintaining their cultural values at home while becoming exemplary U.S. citizens.

It’s sad to say, but international education under all forms is optional in our country: a true luxury instead of the commodity it should be. You might, however, read this and wonder why developing those traits at an early age might be as important as I present it to be. After all, what we want is to sell our product or buy some from a foreign country; we don’t need to become best friends, and most people speak English today throughout the world anyway. Well, if that’s how you feel, it’s time to shift your paradigms and learn about cultural dimensions and how they directly impact our success abroad.

You see, in the categorization of culture the United States is catalogued as “transactionalist,” while the vast majority of the world is considered “relationist.” This means that in the United States, people are trained to focus on the transaction instead of the relationship between parties. To most North American business people, the most important component of international business is solvency. Can they pay? Yes? Then, let’s do it! Seen from a Brazilian or Turkish eye, solvency is just one component of the equation and not the most important one.

When working with my clients, I often feel their irritation with regard to the slowness of the transaction and the endless cups of tea that are required to move forward. They often consider those requests empty and irrational. It defies their logic, and they have no patience for it. Those same clients often have no formal international upbringing beyond international banking knowledge or International Commercial Terms. They are in international business by default and seldom have a good sense of world history and geography. They don’t speak a foreign language and have never lived abroad.  As a result, they are seldom successful.

Internationalization is an art that is slowly taught, like Tai Chi. It penetrates every cell of our beings. It is an art that must be started in kindergarten and diligently cultivated throughout our lives.  Let’s get started!

Posted in Cross-Cultural Communication, Cultural Intelligence, International Business Practices, International Education, International Sales | Leave a comment

Fresh from the HuffPo! Going International? Read on…

Posted on 1 February, 2012 by

Here is the link to my newest article, published a few minutes ago by the Huffington Post and also posted below:

President Obama said it again last week in his State of the Union Address: the Export Initiative is still high on the Administration’s agenda. While this is great news, I wish more would be done to equip new exporters toward best international business practices. In the international arena, everything differs from what they know. Having access to a guiding hand that will point out the invisible traps that are often hidden beneath cultural beliefs and principles would shave years off the lengthy and often costly process new exporters encounter.

One of the mistakes U.S. exporters make is using their domestic structure, including the sales and marketing forces, to go international. Going international requires a deep understanding of the region the company wishes to penetrate. Sales people must be hired in function of the client’s needs rather than the ones of the company that employs them. This means the HR director and C-level executives must be knowledgeable of that region’s cultural preferences, language and mores. Asking your best sales person to take his Midwestern sales techniques to Abu Dhabi is bound to fail.

To put to good use the government’s monetary assistance, please take into consideration the following steps when expanding to a new region:

1)   Do some soul searching within your company. Is everybody on board with regard to international business? Is everybody committed to and excited about the idea of pursuing an international strategy for the next 10 years in a certain region?

2)   Draft an export strategy. Hire an expert and listen to what she has to say. Whatever your company did to be successful domestically will have to be entirely rethought to fit the international curriculum.

3)   Identify if there is a need for your product throughout the world. While market research may seem expensive, it will save you in folds if you know exactly why your product/service might be embraced (or not) by a different culture.

4)   Be proactive. If you’re lucky enough to have foreign customers knocking on your door, assist them by organizing the shipping of your products and analyzing if they should become your distributor/agent in that region. Don’t sell EXW!

5)   Hire sales representatives for that region. Look for people in your area who are from the culture you’re trying to penetrate. They may not have the technical skills you need, but those can be taught–while the cultural subtleties required to succeed in that region and the language may escape your company forever.

6)   If it’s truly impossible to train that sales representative on the technical side of the product, team up that person with a technical person and have them travel together.

7)   If it is ABSOLUTELY impossible to find a person who comes from the region in which you’re interested, hire and groom someone who is multicultural and multilingual for the job. Give that person access to language classes and cross-cultural training so she can say at least 20 sentences in the local language and is well aware of the cultural mores.

8)   Consult with an international intellectual property attorney. Put protection in place to disincentive counterfeiting operations or intellectual property theft.

9)   Put procedures in place. Train your entire company, including third-party agents, on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

10)  Try to not replace people often, and don’t move people around. International business is all about relationships and established trust. Each move forces your potential client to start from scratch with the new comer.

My last piece of advice is not to get discouraged. Realize that it may take up to five years of intense travel and relationship building for the business to take off in the host country. Once you have the right people in place and your product/service has been tweaked to fit the culture, it’s all about commitment, perseverance and patience.

 

 

 

Posted in Cross-Cultural Communication, Cultural Intelligence, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, International Business Practices, International business travel, International Marketing, International Sales | Leave a comment

The Success of Ethnic Minorities in International Business

Posted on 26 January, 2012 by

Last December an article in The Economist discussing advertising to ethnic minorities caught my attention. The article discusses at one point how “ethnic origin is the key to people’s identity, much more than education, income, religion, sex and sexual orientation.”

This is of high interest to someone like me as it echoes what I see and hear when talking about internationalization with small business owners who come from a U.S. ethnic minority. For example, many African Americans voice an interest in promoting their products in Sub-Saharan African nations. Most of my interlocutors have never been to Ghana or Zaire, but they feel a deep connection to those places and seem to instinctively know that Ghanaians or Zairians would be interested in their products or services. This gives them the audacity to get out of their comfort zone and start their expansion efforts.

My Hispanic clients often still have connections in their home country and already tested their products by taking it to aunts and cousins who remain in the home country. They also often already identified a possible distributor or agent through the large social network of their family. Chinese and Koreans are even often more involved with their homeland community and will invest their money in their home country by building a commercial outlet that will give economic viability to their family back home while building an international presence for their brand. The Greeks are not too shabby at internationalization either. Look at Arianna Huffington: in less than two years, she expanded her on-line newspaper to Canada, England, and France. The world is her oyster.

The multicultural and multilingual approach these ethnic groups bring to the commercial equation make them think internationally from day one. They don’t feel that they have to learn to walk before they run or that they may take on a bigger risk by opening a commercial entity in Seoul rather than Los Angeles.

Reading those lines, you may feel that of course people who are connected to their  family back home have a leg up on you. The truth is, if you ask, they might be more than willing to share their network and multicultural approach to business in their home country–but you will have to learn to LISTEN to them and FOLLOW their advices and recommendations.

Too often clients of mine realize they need someone in house to make that connection with the country they wish to penetrate. What they don’t realize is that they seldom empower the Vietnamese or Nigerian employee to lead the business the way it should be led in Hanoi or Abuja. Executives want access to the language mainly, while wanting to remain in control of the management and negotiation styles. Seldom do they realize there is a business know-how in each culture that differs from theirs and that must be engaged in order to connect with potential buyers.

High-caliber multinationals have noticed, and many are now working on decentralizing their management, empowering each country to lead the way it sees fit culture by culture.

You, however, don’t need to be a multinational to take advantage of the infinite power of international sales. What you need, big or small, is the capacity to admit that there is more than one way to skin a cat. And you must trust people from different cultural backgrounds to teach you how to do it in their own country so your business can be recognized as a business that belongs and feels natural to the locals.

Posted in Cross-Cultural Communication, Cultural Intelligence, Cultural Wisdom, International Business Practices, International Marketing, International Sales, Managing People | Leave a comment

HuffPo Post: Building the Case for Business Class Travels

Posted on 18 January, 2012 by

Here is the link to another article of mine, published today in the Huffington Post or… keep on reading:

It’s very common in the United States for companies to entrust management of their international department to someone who knows how to manage money. More often than not, that person has no international business experience and as such does not understand what type of expenses are necessary for international sales to take place.

One of the biggest misconceptions of the financial type is that there’s no reason to spring for a business class ticket to travel. Getting from Point A to Point B is the irrelevant part of the international transaction, and flying coach is good enough. Well, I’m here to inform the CPAs and MBAs of our nation that they have it all wrong.

Think about it: flying from Seattle, Wash., to Amsterdam requires almost nine full hours of uninterrupted flying time. Flying is a bit like playing Russian roulette: you never know who will be sitting next to you for those long hours. So why not put the odds on your employees’ side by realizing that the chances of a valuable, captive audience for so many hours might be much more probable in business class than in coach?

Take my story: I used to work for a Brazilian company while stationed in Portland, OR. I had to report to Curitiba every quarter and would fly business class, courtesy of my savvy employer. Flying business class for many years, I made some of the most important international business contacts of my career and even ended up meeting the VP of Purchasing for a very large Fortune 500 company. He ended up buying the products I represented for the next seven years. While it’s true that my business class ticket was expensive ($7200), I made up in folds by maximizing my in-flight networking and transforming my seating companion into my next customer at $500,000 a month in sales.

As an employee, your Russian roulette may leave you with a hole in your pocket at times, feeling you might not be able to connect with your traveling companion. If such is your case, here are a few pointers for you:

-       Dress in a professional manner. Being well dressed when traveling shows success. Success breeds success, and the chances that the person sitting next to you opens up and talks to you while en route increases exponentially if you’re well-groomed.

-       Carry your noise canceller headset and a book/review to show people you’re pre-disposed to go quiet if they give you the non-verbal cues that they’re not interested in talking. (It does happen.)

-       Introduce yourself. Many people are uncomfortable talking to strangers. Taking the first step takes the pressure off many travelers who will then be thrilled to have company.

-       Have something intelligent to say to break the ice: read a newspaper before flying so you know what’s happening in the world.

-       Ask questions and then LISTEN. Remember, this isn’t about you; it’s about turning a stranger into a potential customer or referral. Nothing goes further with people the world over than letting them talk about themselves.

-       When you talk, don’t hard sell your company. Tell stories that illustrate what you do or give away just enough for your interlocutor to ask for details.

-       Don’t push your business card onto people. By the end of the trip, people should be eager to exchange business cards.

-       Watch your drinking. Nothing is worse than being seated next to an obnoxious drunk who is loud and belligerent.

-       Don’t argue. If people have political or religious views that differ from yours, always remain polite and respectful. You have the right to state your opinion; but remember, the goal is to make a professional friend, not to replace the high school buddy you lost by moving West.

-       Find reasons to stay in touch. If your interlocutor loves caribou hunting, take notes. Once you have his email address, send him articles/information to fuel his passion.

Paying for business class travel should be perceived as an investment by the company and understood by the employee as another professional component that has to be meticulously executed.

 

 

Posted in International Business Practices, International business travel, International Marketing, International Sales, Managing People | Leave a comment

The Cross-Cultural Concept of Community

Posted on 11 January, 2012 by

In 13 U.S. states, one can hear the voice of the benevolent Tom Shane on the radio trying to convince listeners that “you now have a friend in the diamond business.” I often wondered if that tag line sells, as most of my U.S. friends make it a point not to do business with friends and family. I suspect they may have spent lots of time watching Judge Judy on TV scowling at petty criminals suing one another over $50 and a heavy heart. According to many, friends are for parties and picnics in the park. They are not there to be relied on when in need of professional help or money to attend to an unexpected bill.

Interestingly, other cultures will only do business with friends and family–and those are the ones who buy from their Diasporas when living abroad. They only buy from friends and family because they are the only ones, they feel, who can be trusted.

As a cross-cultural mediator and consultant, I love paradox and always try my best to understand why certain cultures behave the way they do. So here is what I learned about the reason Americans tend to avoid dealing with friends in the United States: the culture is based on conflict avoidance. We diffuse and do everything we can never to upset the other party. With the convenience of email, we even learned to deliver bad news electronically instead of saying it face to face. It’s easier on everyone. Like this, we can all get upset or hurt in the privacy of our own homes instead of running the risk of losing face in public.

The problem is that when we engage in a business transaction with people, we run the risk of having to deliver bad news. We may have to voice our discontent and request that the service be improved. That’s uncomfortable, so we involve attorneys to do it for us. Not so good when you have to turn the attorneys loose on your friends! So we avoid doing business with friends at once.

In comparison, several cultures favor dealing with friends because:

1)   A friend shares our values and beliefs;

2)   A friend is part of our social network;

3)   A friend will go the extra mile to please;

4)   A friend is someone we feel comfortable talking to when things don’t go well.

As a result, Chinese, Mexican and Vietnamese Diasporas excel in the United States because those cultures are supportive of one another. Back home for them, opening a business was a great challenge because few banks would loan money to people who just have a business concept. In the U.S. small businesses thrive, and obtaining a loan based on a concept is not as hard. What is hard, time consuming and expensive is advertising and promoting the business so people know it exists. But if you are Chinese, Mexican or Vietnamese, you can forget about advertisement and rely on word of mouth because your friends will buy from you. Not only do those cultures believe in their friends, but they rightly believe that the friend, once wealthy, will reinvest in the community and share her money with them in some ways. It’s part of being a group culture vs. a culture based on individualism. By coming to the United States, those cultures have it made, which can be seen by the large amount of immigrants who are excelling business-wise in the United States.

The truth is, avoiding doing business with friends wasn’t always the case in the United States either. Community and friends were all people had one hundred years ago; and attorneys did not dictate the way people should live their lives. As a result, people had faith in one another and had no choice but to confront problems when a friend let them down. People had the skills to turn conflicts into opportunities without the intervention of the law.

Friendship is at the core of a life worth living. Next time you think about hiring someone to do some work for you, consult your address book and reach out for your friends first. They may surprise you.

Posted in Cross-Cultural Communication, Cross-Cultural Friendship, Diaspora | 3 Comments

The Knee-Jerk Reflex of Internationalization

Posted on 5 January, 2012 by

For those of you of have missed it, here is a copy of my article, published today in the Business Section of the Huffington Post:

For American companies of all sizes, 2012 will be remembered as the year that forced them to enter the international chase for market shares. While this should be perceived as a positive action, I foresee a problem that too many of my clients can’t pinpoint: their lack of international reflex.

Too few Americans have professional international experience, and even fewer have an innate sense of how to lead with cultural intelligence. As such, sending people on international business development assignments to countries they can barely identify on the map will be challenging and not so profitable as intended.

In comparison, many European countries have an ingrained sense of internationalization. No commercial entity (even the smallest shop or café in Brussels or Geneva) can ignore the fact that its market is too small and too multicultural to sustain a business that doesn’t include a name and tag line that easily translate or a sales staff that can’t communicate in three or four languages. Internationalization in Europe is a way of life. In the United States, the concept of internationalization is normally considered as an afterthought–and often due to a foreign customer who’s knocking on the business’s door, begging you to grant her the right to export the product to her market. The economic situation we have experienced for the past four years is, however, forcing many U.S. companies to contemplate a mutation that will allow for a knee-jerk reflex for internationalization. U.S. products are still in demand throughout the world, but we now have to work harder at finding customers than ever before. Competition is fierce, and the knock on the door must come from our own sales person patrolling the world in search of the next customer. Nobody is banging on our door any longer. We must be proactive, and we must think on international terms.

As such, it’s important to pay particular attention to the employees who are selected for international assignments. U.S. C-level executives, especially in mid-size companies, seldom have had international exposure and rarely lead with cultural intelligence. They keep on hiring for technical skills instead of multicultural pedigree. They wrongly assume that everybody throughout the world speaks English (or should) and that being multicultural is the cherry on top of the cake instead of realizing that it’s the steel mold that allows the cake to take shape. The abundance of job postings on LinkedIn for international positions that stipulate “foreign language a plus” and “small amount of travels involved” reflect that not enough cartilage has been grown thus far for internationalization to become a knee-jerk reflex. So when things aren’t instinctive to the C-Executives and the Board of Directors, where does one start?

To transform a company into an international one, an injection of internationally competent people must be brought on board. For this, the HR Director must have an international background and understand the required traits to succeed internationally, department by department, even if the company isn’t international yet. Nowadays, all eyes must be on international expansion; each move must be incorporated into a global strategy. As a bird builds its nest one straw at a time, a company must build its international structure from the ground up—strategically and methodically, and no longer as a simple afterthought.

Posted in Cultural Intelligence, International Business Practices, International Marketing, International Sales, Managing People | Leave a comment