How To Sell More To International Customers

When selling to international customers you need great sales skills, but you also need to pay closer attention to a variety of things than you would normally.

One of the particularities with international sales is that the international salespeople need to become skilled in multitasking.  They need to monitor a variety of different information sources on different communication levels and learn how to do business in unfamiliar environments.

These multitasking skills are vital to improve your international sales expertise.

Different Levels Of Cross-Cultural Communication

Let’s first have a look at the different levels of cross-cultural communication.

#1: Verbal Communication

Verbal messages are transmitted in a variety of ways:

• What is said
• What is not said
• How it is communicated
• When it is communicated
• The tone of voice
• The speed at which you speak

All of these can be interpreted differently in other cultures.

#2: Non-Verbal Communication

In cross-cultural communication this includes everything else.

• Body language
• Anything that happens before, during and after the sales process in any shape or form

Non-verbal communication can become quite complex in international sales.

International Sales Skills Multitasking

As you can see from the above, there’s a lot to pay attention to simply to understand your communication.

Now let’s have a look at how to improve your multitasking skills so you can get more international sales. Most international salespeople use a few tricks to help them process all of this information.

#1: Understand What’s Going On

First you need to have a solid understanding of what you want and what the other person wants.  You should be able to understand things from your end, but you’ll probably only have your own understanding of what the other person really wants.

So you have to continually be on the lookout to improve your understanding of what your customer really wants throughout the entire sales process. With cultural differences you can’t afford to let up on this.

#2: Keep It Simple

Different cultures go about business in different ways and you’ll need to adapt your sales tactics to fit in with their buying habits.  It’s much easier to adapt your tactics when they are simple.

It’s not always easy to keep things simple and it’s even more difficult to make things appear simple when communicating with people from different cultures.  This is why it’s so important to first start by developing a deep understanding of the situation.

#3: Do The Personal Work

Keeping things simple can take a lot of energy in cross-cultural sales and you can only really get this right after you’ve done your homework.  This is where most people jump into studying the other cultures.  But international sales blunders also happen because people lack a deep understanding of their own business. You need to always question yourself first.

You’ll need to spend time and find the humility to do the personal development work before you can develop strong international sales skills.

Improve Your International Sales Skills

Good sales professionals usually have good communication skills and good people skills.  To get more international sales, you need to take these skills to the next level and then work on improving your multitasking skills in:

• Assimilating this information
• Listening to know when you need to question yourself first
• Using this information to adapt your own communication

The first place to start to learn how to sell more to international clients lies within yourself. The next step is to implement the business of selling and make sure your offer fits in well with your international clients.

What other things are important to selling more to international customers?

Please leave your comments below or on Twitter.

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