Is your communication working for non-native English speaking customers?

Hello,

Today's topic could be important to anyone doing business in the UK with non native speakers, or with clients abroad. If clients don't understand you, they will of course never buy from you. However, that does not stop some companies from:

• Using lots of abbreviations and jargon in their sales material, web site etc.
• Only providing information in English
• Only providing success stories of clients in English speaking countries
• Using very complicated and long sentences

 

First of all you need to understand if your potential client base speaks FLUENT English. I have put that in capital letters as it is key. It will not help your sales efforts if clients who only speak some English have to struggle their way through information they can only half make out. Their proficiency is usually based on two factors, nationality and need to use foreign languages.

 

Some countries like Sweden and Holland are renowned for their language skills, so usually it will not be an issue to approach those in English. This is of course talking about business to business, if you are advertising toys to an eight year old, you will have to go in with the local language. Secondly there is the need to use English for work. A qualified European Patent Attorney should be pretty fluent, as would a shop keeper in a tourist resort in Spain. Do not assume that just because someone has a high ranking job or a good job that they can speak anything other than Spanish or Finnish. I know plenty of business owners in Spain who are barely understood outside of their own province as they can only speak their local dialect.

 

So what should you do? If you have the budget, get your marketing materials translated in all the languages of your target markets, provided it is going to cost you less of course than it would gain in additional sales.
Start with the countries where you absolutely must have local language brochures and manuals such as Germany and France (assuming you want to do business there) and expand further into other countries. Where possible also make sure you take into account regional difference - US vs UK English, Dutch vs Flemish.

Get customer facing staff (sales, client service etc) who speak the local language. If this is not an option, make sure that all your communication is in the plainest English. This does not make your company look silly or less sophisticated, it makes it easier to do business with you. When speaking to your customers, ask them regularly if they understand and get them to recap what you said, at least until you know for sure that they are following you. This is generally good practise in any sales process any way.

As always keep well and keep forwarding this blog to anyone who could be interested. Please let me know if you have questions you would like to have answered or topics posted on.

Marrakech - lesson number two

Hello,

Today I wanted to write about another topic that came to mind when visiting Marrakech, which is about honesty in business. This is a fluid notion in many parts of the world and in quite a sharp contrast to someone like me, being Dutch. We hold the truth to be very rigid, inflexible and paramount to our integrity. Not that we don't all tell the odd white to stop us from looking rude (yes, you look hideous in that outfit....), but that is usually as far as it goes.

Depending on the sort of role you are in, the type of industry and company you are in and where you live the truth can have a very different meaning. I used to work in a manufacturing environment with a great number of engineers. A fork lift truck will either be able to lift a certain amount of weight, or it will topple over and kill lots of people. So if you are designing or manufacturing one, being precise and forthcoming with the truth is very important.

In my recent dealings with shop keepers, tour guides and other people trying to make a living out of tourists in Marrakech, of course the truth was less important than the amount of money that could be made. We were told stories that were blatantly untrue. The amount of times we were told a street was closed because it did not lead past the shop they wanted us to visit! 

So what can you do? First of all never accept anything that is important to you at face value. And do not assume anything!!! Just because you would do things in a certain way, or would be more or less truthful than someone else doesn't mean that they will. Ask detailed questions and get the answers in writing. If you are dealing with a foreign agent or supplier for example who tells you everything is fine, get them to detail how many leads they have, how much stock, what their cash flow is, when they can deliver by etc. Do not be afraid that these request will offend people, as long as you are tactful about it and explain why exactly you need this information.

At least if you have this information in writing and things still went wrong, you have evidence of it. Ideally put down as much as possible in legally binding contracts. And if people want you to just trust them on their word? Then weigh up how catastrophic it would be if things did not go as promised.

Hope you enjoyed this posting or found it useful, if so please spread the word on my blog!