Indian Business Culture - Global Sales Mentor | Zach Selch

4 Apr 2020 · 3 min

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2:36

In this brief talk, Zach Selch draws on three years of living in India and his experience leading a South‑Asian sales unit that generated roughly $100 million in revenue from Indian corporations and the government. He highlights three distinctive aspects of Indian business culture that affect sales: (1) the high status and career trajectory of purchasing professionals—many rise from purchasing manager to CFO and CEO; (2) a pervasive narrative that values cost‑down and low pricing as a patriotic, customer‑centric mission, exemplified by Reliance’s emphasis on making products affordable; and (3) an especially tough, confrontational negotiation style where Indian buyers aggressively push prices down, using any tactic they can. Selch warns sellers to anticipate these dynamics and to prepare for hard‑ball bargaining, positioning the price‑squeezing effort as a heroic, nation‑building endeavor. He concludes with a call‑to‑action, inviting companies to engage his firm for help expanding international sales into India.

Chapters

Let's talk a little bit about cross-cultural selling to Indians. And this is something I know a little bit about. I lived in India for 3 years. I ran the South Asian sales unit of a multinational and sold about $100 million into India over a period of time. I've sold to basically every major Indian corporation as well as the Indian government. So I know a little bit about selling to Indians. India. And one of the things that is striking about Indian business culture is the value they put on purchasing. And it's, it's really interesting because you, you can't think of that many Western CEOs who started out in purchasing, but it's very common in India. A pathway of going from purchasing manager to CFO to CEO is very common. And you take a look at some of the big corporations like Reliance. I think Reliance is a fantastic example. Reliance talks about how they kept their costs down and were able to serve their customers by making product available to a wider range of people. So whereas some American or Korean or Japanese or German companies might say, well, we gave better service or we made a quality product, a lot of the story, the narrative in India is, well, we were able to squeeze the pricing down so that we were able to make product available for more people. And that's an important thing to remember. Very often they're looking at negotiations confrontationally, not necessarily win-win. It's all about getting your prices down as well as possible, and they'll very often use any possible trick they can because they're seeing this, you know, almost like patriotism, almost like a heroic effort to make product available to larger groups of people who might not be able to buy it otherwise. Okay, so this whole issue of squeezing you until you You're dry has a lot behind it in Indian business culture, and you got to be prepared for that. Nobody is— nobody I've ever encountered, and I've dealt with more than 100 countries around the world, nobody I've dealt with is anywhere near as tough on negotiations as the Indian business culture. 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.