This week I’m going to build on the “above the waterline” cultural differences raised in last week’s initial post on this topic before I dig into the deeper drivers of cultural differences. I’ll give some personal examples of some very frustrating, sometimes funny, but always educational differences in cultures that I’ve experienced in over the years in my sales career, the first of which is not from the language services industry, but could well occur in our industry.
Last week I suggested doing research to understand a particular culture in a more general way. This time I strongly recommend attending to some of the details that are likely mentioned in your reading material or other resources. We can’t know everything, but it can enhance our cultural experience, help us fit in and avoid frustration, embarrassment or lost opportunities.
One example from many years ago occurred in Boston during the Tall Ships Festival of 1992. I was responsible for helping a delegation of businesspeople from Portugal get sales meetings with various local businesses, along with meeting important government officials such as Lieutenant Governor Paul Cellucci. The meeting was scheduled at 2:00 PM. The Portuguese folks were having a post-lunch coffee and ordering a second round at around 1:15. I was truly freaking out about being late for the meeting (accounting for traffic and the desire of Americans like me to be on time).
They brushed me off, because in Portugal there is an expectation that there is some schedule flexibility. Ultimately, I got angry and ordered them to get into a taxi. Traffic was bad…we were 35 minutes late. Lots of apologies and explanations were given to Mr. Cellucci’s secretary, who squeezed us in between two later meetings.
We got 5 minutes with the Lieutenant Governor: a quick chat and photo op and that was it. The Portuguese folks were equally frustrated that they weren’t given “sufficient time”, but it led to a productive discussion about their sales meetings and the American definition of being on time and how being late can undermine your credibility and ability to sell.
I’m sure that if I had gone to Portugal at that time I would have been “early,” showing up at the exact time stated…or more likely a few minutes ahead of schedule, which could produce an equally uncomfortable situation.
The title here reflects the cultural comparison I am making in this specific example in which I compare Dutch vs. British communication norms. In this sales situation, I was working on a potential partnership between my LSP and a large technology company based in The Netherlands. After several meetings my Dutch colleague and I arrived at a verbal agreement to move forward with the initiative, but wanted to avoid our respective legal departments until we’d overcome a few hurdles. That said, we wanted less formal confidentiality agreement, but something less formal that would protect our respective interests so we weren’t tempted to take the idea elsewhere.
As a result, my CEO wrote a lengthy paragraph or two that gave us a slight advantage. Shortly after sending this to my Dutch counterpart, I received a phone call with him saying “What is this b….it! Can’t you just write a simple sentence saying we won’t take the business idea to other parties or shall I find another one right now?” Pretty direct!
We of course took out the fluff and condensed the text down to its essence and moved forward with the project. Whew!
Of course it’s not possible to anticipate every possible cultural misstep, but we can avoid many by doing the simple research suggested in my previous post and avoid stress and potential repercussions of getting things culturally wrong as described above. I bet those of you reading this have a few of these stories of your own! We’ll dig deeper next time into more cultural competence for salespeople!
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