Closing The 3 Global Sales Gaps
In foreign markets, sales teams face the presence of three distinct gaps in the sales process leading to missed opportunities: the Culture Gap, the Personality Gap, and the Communication Gap. With our data-driven program, your teams bridge these gaps and close their deals in any market.
Are your sales teams missing their targets in foreign markets?
Do they generate opportunities but no deals?
As a business owner or sales director, you know how challenging it is to close deals in foreign markets. The Culture Gap, Personality Gap, and Communication Gap can be major obstacles and lead to missed opportunities. But what if we told you that there’s a solution to bridge these gaps and close deals in any market?
Introducing our assessment-based 3GSG program that is designed to help sales teams overcome the barriers they face when selling in foreign markets. Our program is instantly actionable, and seamlessly integrates with your existing sales systems. It provides your teams with the knowledge and skills they need to effectively sell value-based and close deals consistently in any market.
After the implementation, your team leaders can continue the program self-directed for up to 50 target markets. Rest assured that your sales teams will have the confidence to drive your business forward globally.
Don’t let the Culture Gap, Personality Gap, and Communication Gap hinder your success in foreign markets. Close the gaps, close the deals.
Learn more about our program and how we can help your sales teams succeed in any foreign market.
A Concept Alone Does Not Make A Deal
Whether MEDDICC, Spin Selling or Sandler – all successful sales concepts are based on establishing good customer relations. And quite rightly so.
The truth is: Without operational implementation, the best concept is of no use. In order to really interact with foreign customers and sell effectively, the crucial sales gaps must be identified and proactively closed in every phase of the sales process. This is the only way to successfully complete the sales process.
Here are 3 Global Sales Gaps that successful sales teams have overcome in foreign markets:
Gap 1: Culture
Recognise cultural cues – both the obvious and the more subtle – at every stage of the sales process, interpret them correctly through data-driven, practical culture-specific knowledge and navigate the sales process with confidence.
When sales teams that are successful at home enter foreign markets, they must be aware that there may be serious intercultural differences regarding conducting sales conversations and behaviour. It is a matter of realising that familiar strategies simply do not work as well abroad as they do in the domestic market. Only those who are aware of the differences between the home and foreign markets and consciously recognise them can act appropriately and really control every level of the sales process.
Of course, this is especially true for customer qualification (discovery), which ultimately runs through the entire sales process. In order to develop a customer’s pain points into a tangible need and then to work out the decision criteria and processes really clearly, a high level of trust must be built up in sales talks.
Trust, understanding, selling – the old rule that “a customer buys trust and security” actually applies anywhere in the world. However, how a basis of trust is established in another country in order to be able to qualify the customer in such a way that a deal does indeed come out of it in the end is often very different from what a salesperson knows from their home market.
And even in the late phases of the sales process, unprepared sales managers are caught off guard by unexpected decision-making criteria, stakeholders keeping a low profile, sudden demands or additional process steps and then lose control. Simply because they didn’t know what to look out for, what warning signals there might have been and what misunderstandings still exist.
When awareness of these challenges is firmly embedded in a sales team, individual members will prepare themselves for exactly what their foreign customers expect in terms of communication and behaviour, what is “normal” for them and what is not. Closing the Culture Gap means being able to recognise cultural cues – both the obvious and the more subtle – at every stage of the sales process, interpret them correctly through data-driven, practical culture-specific knowledge, and adapt to them in a way that does not compromise the effectiveness of the sales process.
Gap 2: Personality
Scientifically based personality-country comparison: What personal challenges does a sales employee have with regard to the realities in a specific foreign market? Which countries or regions suit an employee, which ones do not?
Every sales employee (and customer) adds their own personality to the sales process. And this naturally influences how they act, think, plan and ultimately communicate. In their home market, a reflective salesperson knows how to deal with their customers and what challenges they face with the respective personality types, also with regard to their own “operating system”.
In foreign markets, on the other hand, it is often much more difficult to differentiate personality traits and reconcile them with behavioural norms common in the country. Depending on the country profile of a foreign market, the personality traits of the salesperson themselves can either be played to strengths or must be bridged as weaknesses. We then speak of a so-called Personality Gap between a salesperson and their potential foreign customers or the entire foreign market with regard to the generally applicable norms and values.
The Personality Gap is therefore about the very personal challenges that a sales employee has to overcome with regard to the conditions in a specific foreign market in order to be able to manage the sales process there in a reflective manner and ultimately sell successfully. Knowing what is difficult for you personally when interacting in a foreign market and what suits you is undoubtedly a great advantage and can be recognised on the basis of a scientifically founded personality-country comparison.
By the way, when setting up an international sales team it is usually possible to find out which countries or regions suit an employee and which ones do not.
Gap 3: Communication
Know your own communication style in sales conversations. Understand what the customer needs regarding their communication and in the sales process as such to avoid misunderstandings and to identify the real requirements.
Not surprisingly, the Culture Gap and the Personality Gap are closely linked to the way a salesperson communicates with their customers, i.e. how they operationally implement the sales process in each individual phase and fill it with life, so to speak. And this brings us to the third Global Sales Gap, the Communication Gap. Every sales employee will have such a Communication Gap in their communication with foreign customers, which needs to be closed. And this is true in all areas of communication: verbally and in writing, virtually and in presence, on social media and on the phone, in follow-ups, in the preparation of quotations and in negotiations.
For example, while in one market a direct and confident language can be successful, in other countries such a style of communication is perceived as aggressive and can quickly lead to conversations being terminated. The way of asking questions or communicating information can be just as different. The larger the Communication Gap, the higher the probability that sales talks will not be successful.
In every foreign market, it is therefore necessary to re-establish which questions should better not be asked in a sales talk, which should definitely be asked and how they should be asked. It is also important to learn what part of an answer is contained in the customer’s spoken words and what part must be read between the lines. How much personal interest does the customer want, and where do they draw the line between pleasant small talk and pushiness?
How do I know if there is a real interest and need? Which communication channel suits the customer? And how do I have to act and communicate in order to actually build a relationship of trust?
In order to close the Communication Gap with a foreign customer, sales representatives must on the one hand know their own communication style in sales talks and on the other hand understand exactly how “differently” the foreign customer communicates. And what they need to make them feel understood. This applies to both verbal and written communication.
Once a salesperson has identified their communication gap in relation to a particular country or region, for example through a data-driven and visualised report, they can work specifically to close it and will have many times more successful conversations with their customers.
Quick Check
- Is the sales methodology in your company country-specific?
- Are the respective phases in the sales process implemented country-specifically?
- Do your employees know their own personal challenges with regard to their customers and interlocutors in the respective foreign market?
- Do your sales managers have a process in place to support their teams effectively, on a person-to-person basis and without time-consuming consulting so that they communicate successfully with their foreign customers ?
You answered "No" to one or more questions?
Instant Added Value Instead Of Opportunity Costs
Sales methods and processes are the indispensable and necessary basis for successful sales across teams and companies. However, they only bring top results, especially in foreign markets, when they are implemented operationally, person-related and country-specific. In other words, when they are brought to life in a goal-oriented way.
In our experience, the most successful companies are those that implement data-driven, self-directed and instantly actionable learning in their sales teams.
Our 3GSG program integrates seamlessly with existing sales systems and ensures that your sales teams have the knowledge and skills to drive your business forward.
Consistently Closing Deals
Sales teams that already sell successfully in foreign markets build TRUST country-specifically and UNDERSTAND what their customers need at any given time.
Closing the 3 Global Sales Gaps – Culture Gap, Personality Gap, Communication Gap – enables them to effectively and purposefully drive the entire sales process in a foreign market. They competently go through the individual sales phases because they know what they are doing.
And they give accurate forecasts because they consistently close deals – with almost every foreign customer.
The 3GSG program is designed to help sales teams overcome the barriers they face when selling in foreign markets. It shows them how to bridge the Culture Gap, the Personality Gap, and the Communication Gap that cause missed opportunities and lost deals.
Sales teams benefit from the 3GSG program by learning how to
- Recognise cultural cues and interpret them correctly through data-driven, practical culture-specific knowledge
- Compare their own personality with the realities of a specific foreign market and identify their personal challenges and strengths based on assessment data
- Know their own communication style and adapt it to the customer's needs and preferences with the help of software-supported call-shadowing
- Tailor their sales strategy to customers in foreign markets
- Sell value-based and close deals consistently in any market
The 3GSG program is instantly actionable, and seamlessly integrates with existing sales systems. It also provides team leaders with the ability to continue the program self-directed for up to 50 foreign markets.