When I am talking to export executives about cultural awareness I will often ask 'How many contracts have you lost through lack of skill in another language?' The answer may be difficult to quantify for them even if they know that they have lost some. I then go on to ask 'How many contracts have you lost through lack of cultural awareness?' Now this question poses a bit of a conundrum. If you are not aware of subtle cultural differences, how can you possibly know if you have lost business because of it? It would be easy to blame the lost contract on market conditions, price or not quite meeting the specification when in fact the underlying cause may have been a cultural blunder.

Most sales people in the healthcare industry in the UK are not dealing with export, but we do have an increasing number of people working in primary and secondary healthcare who are of overseas origin. Yes, they may be second generation and have been to school in this country, but for many their cultural traditions and ties to their country of origin still influence their behaviours in various ways. Many of us of UK origin are not sensitised to these influences and may be making false assumptions that can affect our business. We may easily fall into the trap of assuming that just because a doctor, for example, speaks English without an accent and was educated in this country, he or she has accepted all our values and way of thinking, and that culture difference doesn't enter the equation.

I was lucky enough to spend nearly four years living and working in Singapore. It is a modern metropolis with more MacDonalds per head of population than anywhere else in the world. English is one of the official languages and is the one most used for government and commerce. Western influences are everywhere, and it was easy to be lulled into a false sense of security that to do business, all you had to do was assume our normal Western values. The longer I was there however, the more I realised that their value system was very much less Western than outward appearances would suggest, and for the Chinese population at least, their Chinese value system ran much deeper than anything Western that they had taken on at a superficial level. In this country too, we are on dangerous ground if we ignore ethnic origin, since outward appearances may be deceiving.

It may even be that the person him or herself does not realise what makes them accept or not accept the sales person in front of them. Someone of Arab origin may have been brought up with the belief that the left hand is only used for cleansing, and whilst long years in the Western world will have taught them that no such difference exists in the Western culture, they may still feel uneasy at being handed something from a salesman's left hand. If it doesn't register in their conscious mind, deep down the sub-conscious mind might be saying 'This salesman has just insulted me, there's something about him that I don't like and therefore if I have a choice, I will use another company's products.'

A good salesperson aims to overcome objections and lead the client logically to a sale, whether that sale is to try the product in the first instance or buy a large quantity. A pharmaceutical representative does not normally have the facility to walk out of the door with a signed order in the hand, which gives the doctor far more scope to choose to use an equivalent product from a competitor if they feel more at ease with the competitor's representative.

In the next issue, I shall explore in greater detail how we can sensitise ourselves more easily to our client's culture, but in the meantime I shall leave you with a definition of the word ASSUME, in case you don't know it. Splitting it into its component parts, making assumptions can make an ASS of U and ME.

Sally Fagan

For more information, please contact Sally Fagan of JS Training.