French Business Culture - Global Sales Mentor | Zach Selch

7 May 2020 · 2 min

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2:24

In this brief video, Zach Selch, standing outside the Paris Opera, explains a key cultural difference between French and American business practices that impacts sales: uncertainty avoidance. He clarifies that this is not about risk aversion but a preference for concrete documentation and academic backing when making decisions. Selch, drawing on roughly 30 years of experience selling to French clients, notes that French buyers expect extensive paperwork, studies, and credentials (e.g., PhD‑cited research) to validate claims, unlike their American counterparts. He advises using robust sales‑enablement materials—such as whitepapers, research studies, and expert citations—to reduce uncertainty and facilitate purchases in France. The video ends with a call‑to‑action encouraging viewers to contact his firm for help growing international sales.

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I'm in Paris, right outside the Opera. And let's talk about another element that's different culturally between the French and Americans that might impact your selling. And like I've said before, there's a lot of similarities between Americans and French, a lot more so than, for instance, between Americans and Japanese or Chinese or Nigerians. But that said, there are still about 5 different cultural indicators that have a gap of 40 to 70 points between Americans and French. And these are things you should take into consideration when you're dealing with selling to the French. I've been selling to the French for about 30 years. They're great people to work with, good rich economy, but there are some differences. And the one I'm going to talk about today is uncertainty avoidance. And I think that's probably the most difficult cultural indicator for people to understand. I'm not talking about risk avoidance. I'm talking about uncertainty avoidance, which essentially means people would like to see some type of documentation backing things up. They don't want to make an independent choice based on the facts that they hear, their opinions. They would like to be able to say this isn't an opinion; this is backed up by paperwork. And what that means for you in France is that typically you're going to want to have more paperwork to back up what you're saying, and maybe more academic credentials. Backing up what you're saying. So what you want are probably the type of sales enablement tools that can say, yes, this PhD has reported a study that backs up what I'm telling you. Whereas in America that might not be needed anywhere near as much, and in a lot of countries that might not be needed. In France, the difference between America and France on this particular instance is about 40 points. So you really want to make sure that you can help these people feel more comfortable with uncertainty so that they can buy from you. 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.