awkward silence

Welcome to my blog post; please enter and have a sit at the discussion table. I'm going to tell you that the way we behave during discussions seems to be terribly impolite no matter what we do, and then I'm going to ask you not to say anything for the next thirty seconds. 

Can you handle awkward silence in a business meeting?

shush, we're closed

Altough I'm still working on "how to select a new foreign destination for your international business", I recognize that a hot topic of this years is closing subsidiaries. The statistics on voluntary closures and liquidations are showing values almost equal or bigger than newly registered companies.

There's no doubt that many mistakes can be made during the decision-making process of opening new offices abroad. Insufficient or erroneous information can mislead the top management to believe there is business potential where there isn't actually any.

when the apple does fall far from the tree

Today's story is about apples [b2b kind of apples, to keep my blog topics relevant].

Let's consider that your company sells apples. Say your company was established in a market where the tastiest apples are [almost] exclusively grown in your orchard.

That places your company in a very comfortable position vs. competitors and potential new-comers on the market. Customers have little choice if they are looking for good quality apples - they know you and have to come to you whenever they want their fruit.

Now think that your master-of-apples company expands internationally.

international marketing: cross cultures model

Let me start this pompous post* on cross cultures worldwide by undermining my credibility: my international marketing experience is not at all THAT international. 

Nevertheless, I'm interested in globalization and worldwide business cultures. Particularly, I was looking to learn about what market approach works depending on the targeted regions or countries.

So I did some reading about the Lewis Cross Culture Model, very interesting tool for international marketing specialists, such as myself. This Model was published in the 90s, but the cultural categories couldn't have changed much since, therefore the recommended behaviours, communication manners and channels remain pretty much the same.

The Lewis model offers a blueprint for cultural analysis and simplifies cultures' categorization. Valid, marketing-applicable conclusions can be drawn from understanding the particularities of each category, as well as recommendations regarding the best way to interact with each typology.

new to a new market?

OK, maybe this post's title holds too much newness, but when a company expands internationally, there are two types of market situations it can encounter: either the sector is well established & pretty much everyone in that market knows the product, or the company brings a new-to-market kind of service.

The later is the most interesting marketing challenge: how to market your new b2b service and find early adopters. 

country-of-origin effect in international marketing

Are you aware that, whey your (say Romanian) company's products are judged by a (say German) buyer, your country's reputation plays a role in the decision making process?

Yes, this is another challenging thing about international marketing: you have to be aware of your country's historical or cultural aspects and understand that, although these aspects have nothing to do with your products' quality, they exist in the mind of your foreign client.

Add to that the fact that the clients tend to form a general opinion on the quality and performance of the products originating from a given country based on their previous experiences with other products from that country.

sales battle cards

In my previous post about competition analysis, I was talking about a system to collect and disseminate information about the company's competitors.

Rather than piling up PDF brochures, Powerpoint presentations or scanned articles originated by the competitors, and have your sales people read through them in order to understand what they might be facing during a sales negotiation, you can collect all this intel in a unique, easy-to-update structure, under the name of Battle Cards.