Team Partners Telecommunications

The Gentle Art of Persuasion

Posted on May 19, 2020

Video platforms have come of age. Last month’s blog highlighted the ways that different cultures use and understand their languages and how important it is to appreciate and accommodate this when doing business with them. You can read it here. This month we’re looking at the gentle art of persuasion and how, like language itself, this has to be adopted to suit the culture you’re working in.

There are, in essence, two ways to postulate an argument, or to put it another way, two ways to pitch a sale. One is to begin with stating the facts and then back those up with an explanation. The other is to first develop the background and thinking and then present a conclusion. Which resonates with you?

You may be surprised to read that whether you’re one or the other isn’t purely a matter of individual habit or choice. It’s all in the culture! More to the point it’s much to do with our various educational systems. Think back to your Maths class and struggling to learn equations. Were you taught the how equations worked and then asked to apply your learning, with the background theory being explained once you’d got the hang of it, or was it theory first? In Anglo-Saxon countries it’s always invariably been application first, theory after. In Latin Europe, the Germanic countries and Latin America it’s theory first.

Now apply this to persuasion, and, for arguments sake the epitome of persuasion, the sales pitch. You’re a British business pitching to win a sizeable project in Germany. You prepare meticulously, go in to the meeting and get straight to the point. Bang! These are the benefits, these are the outcomes. The room is quiet. The client remonstrates. How did you arrive at these conclusions? Where are your workings? Suddenly your preparation is in shreds. You’ve missed the culture.

The opposite is also true. You are a UK Company being pitched to by a German manufacturer. They arrive for their meeting with you and start by telling you the history of their company, their corporate and divisional structure, their testimonial experience in this field. You, meanwhile, have glazed over because all you wanted was for your guest to cut to the chase.

What’s potentially worse than the fact that both these “pitchers” have probably lost their sale is the latent damage caused. Our German buyers will feel insulted that the Brits didn’t do their homework and failed to give background and context. The British buyers might well feel that the German manufacturer was trying to hide something behind flannel. Neither would be true.

On an international scale the UK sits surprisingly central, although veering, as we’ve seen, towards the applications first end of things. The USA is at the extreme. What’s the lesson here? Know your client certainly, but know their culture too!