How to Win In China and Greater Asia in the New Millennium

Name a market that has a growing base of sophisticated and disposable income oriented consumers that is larger than the Pan Asian market. Europe is expensive, tired and broke. Africa and Latin America are years behind. Asia powered by China still looks like the next and closest continually promising market.

Author with GE associate Robin Ma touring the Great Wall near Beijing

With that said would you like to know, and have advantages in building a successful attack plan to grow and sustain business in China. Tremendous lessons are covered on this topic by, Stephen Turner, founder of Bing Fa Consulting , a group dedicated to building and driving business growth in Asia with a special emphasis on China. The book “How to Win In China”, a recent publication I just reviewed is a very incisive look at skills you will need to hone and utilize if your quest is to be a success.  Mr. Turner addresses the subject as if it were a sequel in the “Indiana Jones” series where clues are given, CULTURAL TANSLATORS, are introduced and a history lesson serve as the backdrop. It’s unfortunate that more works on this type of topic don’t take that approach.

This effort gives the reader a game plan to follow for conducting new missions or sustaining old ones in China. For example if I were a multinational executive looking after China and I read this book I’d want to quickly scrub my currant and ongoing plans against themes of understanding cultural motives , the importance of ,Keqi,Renqing,Guanxi,and Mianzi.

I viewed the book through my perspective of having sold in Asia with several multinational companies including a role as Product Leader in High Speed Computing, Imaging and Graphics for General Electric’s Embedded Computing Group. In my role I supported sales teams in Asia & India. My preference was to support my sales teams in China because of many points made in “How to Win in China”. My sales team in China respected knowledge and experience in selling high technology products vs. inexperience and an MBA in an irrelevant area. They appreciated an understanding of their customs and approaches to eating and building trust. Topics such as these are well defined and reviewed using examples by Mr. Turner.

During my time that GE I collaborated with my team to generate multiple design wins in China. The wins were combinations of working through reseller channels to selling directly or selling directly to the Chinese government. Each sales situation I was involved in had themes that surfaced in “How to Win in China”. Several memorable ones revolved around two scenarios.  I had made presentations to a government lab and in my opening discussions introduced myself using my Chinese name as given to me by my GE associates, Jimu, James or Jim. In addition to the name reference I showed a slide of the Chinese leader Qin Shihuang, one of my favorite military men. Both these efforts allowed me to gain extreme face and thus respect and a foundation for trust with this group. Additional conversation followed after the business meeting and I later learned that my clever sales person having noticed the dynamics of the meeting had arranged a weekend event where he would take me and our two government customers to the Summer Palace for a day of sightseeing. He explained to me the reason he had done this was to have the customers determine I was not the normal western business guy sent by a multinational company. He further explained that the usual western person would not want to take their weekend time up with a sightseeing trip they didn’t think up and let alone with customers to boot. He knew that I would be different and by passing the various tests which would include eating nontraditional” western “oriented Chinese food and discussing Chinese history and tradition allow him to gain great face with his customers. Our approach went well and with my sales person acting as cultural translator we  achieved our goal of him creating great Mianzi and by default transferring some to the two government employees who were able to tell their supervisors how they had spent the weekend with a GE executive viewing culture at the summer palace. My second scenario deals with ceremony and testing; which are touch point themes in Mr. Turner’s book.  China during the Cold War period mentioned in the books timeline was extremely close to the Soviet Union. What never appeared in our U.S. history books is what this meant in cultural terms to China. All you need to do is attend a convention in Beijing at the old auditorium and trade fair center close to the zoo that was constructed by the Soviets to support cultural events and business expos during the “friendly” era between the two superpowers. Next to the convention center you will find a fantastic restaurant serving only Russian food and staffed by Russian speaking wait people. The building décor is of course right out of the Stalin Era and makes you think you are in Prague or Sofia not Beijing. It was in this environment I participated in my first Chinese Trade Show. In addition to participating with the trade show booth duty my GE Team had also made arrangements for me to conduct several seminars where they had invited attendees from numerous government labs, research groups within key companies , reseller partners as well as the Chinese PLA apparatus as the event was an Aerospace & Military tradeshow. I prepared a technical presentation and delivered it several times the first day. Also arranged was for a delegation of the senior PLA leadership to stop by the GE booth for a private discussion and demonstration. Upon the conclusion of the first day the exhibition company invited all the “favored” exhibitors to attend the welcome ceremony dinner which was intended to allow companies to meet each other and more key ---make contacts with government players. Of course the “favored” exhibitors got that way through process explained in Mr. Turner’s book. I also learned that seated at each table would be government officials mixed in with the various exhibitors. The venue for the gathering was an original Chinese Tea House, itself symbolic of the old China and the process of colonial development. What transpired at the dinner could have become a case study in “How to Win in China “from the perspective of “tests”, ceremonial positioning, and the creation of Guanxi, and Mianzi. Needless to say it was a target rich environment for the cultural translators.

Based on the foundational work of this topic I look forward to a deeper dive into these topics and perhaps hearing from the community.

Morph Plays?

With the sophistication of the Chinese community both in and out of China one has to begin thinking that many of the traditional and long time plays will be slightly morphing based on familiarity with the west. It’s hard to believe that the era of the internet, DVD’s, the blackberry and I pad and I pod won’t greatly alter how Chinese companies will interact. This means an even great challenge for the cultural translator and identifies an even greater need for assistance from a group such as Bing Fa Consulting.

Caring For Elders?

A topic touched upon in “How to Win in China” was the great premium the Chinese place on eldercare responsibility. This is something that has no traction in the U.S. and actually as time progresses may become either a great or weak negotiation position. Here is a scenario to ponder. Let’s say the Chinese company in probing learns that many of the people with whom they are dealing with at the U.S. or western company have elder parents. It stands to reason that they are being looked at very differently than the Chinese would view things. That said might the Chinese company wonder how they could trust people who would not care for their elders. The flip side of this would be for the U.S. Company to understand this dynamic and prepare against it. Or for it whatever the situation dictates.

Fast Food Ideas?

Yogurt

Tex –Mex ( Taco Bueno)

Italian

Sports Apparel

All of the above ideas could be great potentials to open the Chinese market to. As Mr. Turner pointed out in his book “How to Win in China” Food and ceremony play a pivotal role in business negotiations. Western and especially U.S. based companies have little feeling for this. This is driven in general by the American attitude on eating fast and not understanding the art of conversation at meal time. I can recall numerous times in China when attention deficient disorder managers simply wanted to eat quickly with our Chinese counterparts or customers so they could go check e mail. Of course during the meal they were always playing with their phones. It was amusing to watch the reactions of my Chinese customers and associates as they must have wondered how serious these guys were to detail when they could not even focus on the conversation at hand. Ceremony too is a big aspect of understanding how to deal with the Chinese culture. Again as a country and within our business leadership we are challenged. Mr. Turner gives sage guidance in the book and reminds me of countless stories around this topic.  The below picture is one example. My GE Sales team in China was impressed with my grasp of Chinese history and not only the fact that I knew about their culture but was able to map it into sales strategies they could use. One of the richer areas to take lessons from was the campaign waged by Mao both against the Nationalists as well as the Japanese. Knowing that I appreciated all this my team made arrangements to take me to Mao and Madame Mao’s favorite restaurant, the Red Capital Club, http://www.redcapitalclub.com.cn/ . It’s of course the Chinese version of a theme restaurant along the lines of 94^th Aero Squadron or TGIF with the emphasis on the early years of China’s rule by Mao. The wait staff is all in appropriate costume and the music reflects a martial theme. During our team meeting there I was able to outline the upcoming campaign patterning it around Mao’s Long March. The group loved it and we were there for seven hours. When is the last time you had a seven hour business dinner in the U.S.?

And Now The Other Shoe

In early 1997 I was looking to ride the explosive dot com & computer telephony wave and left the world of high speed computing for Intel/Dialogic. After several years of selling Texas Instruments based RTOS SW packages, tools and telephony boards I joined Maxwell Technologies I-Bus Industrial Computer group. My task was to leverage my signal processing and telephony experience into packaging schemes I-Bus could sell. It is in my capacity as Business Development & Channel Manager I began collaborations with Mr. Matt Brandt who directed Asian Sales. I was impressed with Mr. Brandt’s grasp of the Asian marketplace and for the first time started thinking of Asia in terms of the applications I understood and liked to pursue. Now Mr. Brandt who is located in China and has participated first hand in a variety of financial transactions and market building there has an exciting blog and relevant blog that focuses on aspects of the Asian market. The interesting thing is it is keyed on the exact opposite theme of “How to Win in China” in that the players are Chinese groups wanting to do business in the West vs. Western groups wanting to do business in Asia. Please hit this link and make it one of your favorites as it looks like many rich factoids will be regularly appearing :

http://globalchinacapital.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/chinese-firms-are-their-own-worst-enemies/