Cross Cultural Sales Management Egypt - Global Sales Mentor | Zach Selch

8 May 2020 · 3 min

Watch on YouTube

2:30

In this brief presentation, Zach Selch, a global sales mentor, discusses two major cross‑cultural differences that American companies should understand when hiring Egyptian sales managers. He explains that Egyptians place far less importance on punctuality and view time more flexibly than Americans (or Germans), and that Egyptian Arabic is a high‑context language where much meaning is conveyed implicitly, whereas American English is low‑context and highly explicit. These differences can cause friction: scheduling expectations clash, and communication styles can lead to misunderstandings—Americans may feel Egyptians are not providing enough detail, while Egyptians may feel insulted by overly direct speech. Selch warns that these cultural gaps are common sources of conflict and advises managers to be aware of them when building international sales teams. He ends with a call‑to‑action, inviting viewers to contact his firm for help growing international sales.

Chapters

Hi, I'm in Cairo. It's about dawn in the foggy season, which is really the nicest time of the year because it's actually pretty comfortable to be out. I want to talk a little bit about cross-cultural issues between Americans and Egyptians. And if you're an American company that's employing a Middle Eastern sales manager, I'd say there's a 50% chance they're Egyptian. So understanding the cross-cultural issues are really important. And let's talk about one first of all. I'm going to talk about 2 cultural markers because there are about 6 that are really— have a big difference, a big gap between Americans and Egyptians. So let's look at the issue of time and context in language. Egypt is a very— they value— the culture of Egypt values time much less than Americans or say Germans do. And their language is very, very high in context as opposed to low context. Now Americans are the opposite. Americans are very high importance to time, but even more so, we have the absolute lowest context of anybody. We like to talk— we like to talk very straightforward. So if you have an employee, a sales manager from Egypt, one of the potential conflicts is that you're going to look at scheduling very differently. Okay. And also in conversations, he's going to assume that you're picking up a lot of subtext from your conversations that he doesn't need to tell you. Okay, and he's just going to assume because you're an intelligent person, you pick up all this stuff, which is going to go completely over your head for the most part. Likewise, when you talk to him very directly, he might feel insulted as though you're talking to a little child because he feels he understood it and there's no need to say this aloud. So these are 2 things you're going to encounter when you're managing an Egyptian sales manager, most probably. These are 2 of the main cultural markers that have a huge gap between Americans and Egyptians. Remember, when you're ready to grow your international sales, reach out to us. We can help. When you decide it's time to grow your international sales, call us.