Get International Clients Newsletter

Your International Business Development Idea Publisher
“Life does not cease to be funny when people die anymore than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.” – G. B. Shaw

In This Issue:

Regular Weekly Columns:

• Recent Get International Clients Blog Topics
• Foreign Trivia
• Example Of Websites With Global Business
• Q & A
• Are You Missing International Business Opportunities?

This Weeks Feature Article:

Get International Visitors To Listen To You
By Building Trust
Through These Tiny Changes In Your Communication

Recent Get International Clients Blog Topics

• How An Information Product Strategy Develops Lead Generation Beyond Your Current Borders
• Start Your International Negotiations With Identifying The Right Person

Read more on www.getinternationalclients.com

Foreign Trivia

What do the hot air balloon, the parachute, the submarine and photography have in common?

Send your answers to cindy@cindyking.biz with “Foreign Trivia” in the subject line.

Answer to last week’s trivia question: Which country can boast to have invented the telescope, the microscope and the mercury thermometer? – Netherlands

Feature Article

Get International Visitors To Listen To You
By Building Trust
Through These Tiny Changes In Your Communication

 

It is often said that international business is burdened with the minefields of cross cultural communication. But they are not really minefields online, it’s more like quicksand. Your international prospects or clients just disappear without a trace.

There is one major stumbling block in cross cultural communication and this has always been:

• Trust

Trust is something businesses strive to create with their domestic clients and prospects. It is very important within domestic markets.

It is critical in international markets

• Trust
• Lack of trust
• Fluctuating trust

This is the number one difficulty you will have in doing business internationally. You must continuously strive to build trust in cross cultural communication.

Most cross cultural communications begin without trust, or a very superficial level of trust, or a trust totally dependent on some unidentifiable criteria.

It is hard to build trust on quicksand.

Trust can disappear from any cross cultural communication within the batting of an eye.

This is why all of your communication should be targeted primarily at creating the best environment for trust possible.

This is not always easy. Building trust can be boiled down into two words: clarity and consistency.

Consistency

Today we are going to look at one way you can create consistency into your international communication online.

These little changes may seem small or insignificant to you. And yet these are probably the little things that will kill trust in your foreign visitors without you ever realizing what you are doing wrong.

Consistency In The Words You Use

International readers are ruthless. They may also not be as proficient in English as you would like. Or maybe in their part of the world they use a slightly different English vocabulary.

First, use one word per meaning.

Do not become creative and use two different words to refer to one thing.

If your international readers pick up two words for anything on your website and this leads to confusion, they will not take the time to figure out what it means.

Or they might understand something totally different.

Example: report, guide, study – use only one word to refer to one document.

Second, check to see if everything on the website consistent.

This can be difficult to do by yourself. You might need to have a friend or someone outside of your business to help you look over your website.

The major problem here is a bad choice in photos.

If the photos you use do not clearly represent what you do, they may well be misleading.

Example: A company selling software for dispatch management had photos of vans on their front page, without anything about software on the front page. Very misleading.

Third, show you want international business.

This is something people often forget.

Yes, you can put something like “we appreciate requests from outside the United States” or “We only speak English, but please email us your questions and we will get back to you as soon as we can”.

But if this is all you do and then continue to cater solely for your domestic markets, your international readers will notice.

• Remember to make all the necessary adjustments on your order form.
• Remember to provide a non-800 number so people abroad can call you.

Do you need to provide a glossary to help your international readers? A simple, clear explanation in English of industry terms is all you need.

Unless you are in one of the major cities, why not put up a little portion of your country map, highlighting where you are located? Not on such a small scale that only your neighbours will know where you are, and not the whole country with a tiny impersonal dot.

Follow up your online presence by greeting your international visitors appropriately and consistently throughout your website.

Ongoing Review

Sometimes we are just so close to our own product, our own company and so familiar with our own language, that we are not able to see anything lacking in consistency in our own communication.

Listen to any feedback you have. Pay special attention to ANY difficulties your foreign readers have with your website.

Are you actually saying what you want to say?

Creating consistency is a mindset. It is like building a relationship with your international visitors in your own mind and transposing that into your communication.

As you get to know your international markets more, you will want to review your communication again. You will be able to position your communication more consistently with what you want to say.

Your international readers will notice the difference much more than your domestic readers. And you will not feel as if you are navigating on quicksand, but rather building relationships on more solid ground.

Next week we will look at another tool to create consistency and look at how you can implement this in your international marketing strategy.

Example Of Websites With Global Business

It can be daunting when starting out. How do you go about creating a good global website and then culturally customized websites?There are many steps a company takes to become totally international.To give you an idea of what is recognized as a global website, have a look at another company website:

www.xing.com
Xing is rated 20th as a global website in 2008 by John Yunker. This is the first website we have looked at in the top 20 that does not have a list of countries, or a map.There is only a drop down list of languages. The languages are in their native spelling.This is a social website. It’s not surprising that it is very easy to navigate. There is also a lot less information on the home page than on several of the other websites we have looked at.John Yunker researches and publishes a list of the best globalized websites.

Q And A

Question: What is the most important factor to international business success?

Answer: Without any hesitation, it is your own mindset.

All cross cultural communication needs personal adjustments.

If you are not prepared to make these adjustments you will either jeopardize your international success, or spend more money than necessary, or take longer than necessary.

If this is your first real exposure to international markets, you have to really want to go into a specific foreign country. This internal drive will get you to give a little more than you are used to and will get you through.

And if you have already travelled extensively and know what to expect, the next important factor is persistence in taking small steps one after the other.

Roadblocks will come up a bit more frequently than you are used to in domestic business.

You will need to have time to adjust, sometimes both on a personal and a business level, and then to deal with the roadblock.
Small steps, one after the other.

Read more on Get International Clients.

If you have a question on how to get more international clients, leave your question at cindy@cindyking.biz .

Are You Missing International Business Opportunities?

King Business Tools makes International Communication Affordable even for Small Businesses

Stop missing opportunities! King Business Tools’ Monthly International Content Creation Packages integrates Internet and Traditional Marketing Strategies for international lead generation. We provide companies like yours with an affordable way to create a business presence in foreign markets fast. Or are you unsure of the opportunities you are missing?
Do you need ideas? If you need help in defining how to focus your international business expansion, sign up for a 39 point international analysis of your current internet presence and get an hours live phone session with the King Business Tools Idea Factory.The International Business Idea Factory run by King Business Tools covers expertise in North American and European business expansion. Get started today — contact me by email or give me a call at
cindy@cindyking.biz or +33 6 98 91 86 11 Contact me now to learn more about how I can help you Generate More International Leads For You Today.Cindy King is based just south of Paris, she runs King Business Tools, a French Company, to provide European and North American companies.

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