In this video, Zach Selch explains that while Latin American business cultures are often treated as a single block, there are notable differences, especially in the "masculinity" dimension used by anthropologists. He describes how the masculinity index varies between countries—for example, Venezuelan culture is three times more masculine than Chilean culture—and suggests that these differences stem from historical factors such as immigrant origins or indigenous influences. Selch argues that masculine cultures tend to prioritize status and luxury in purchasing decisions, influencing how salespeople should approach customers and how sales managers should structure compensation and time allocation. He warns that assigning a single manager to oversee diverse Latin American teams can create conflict when cultural masculinity expectations clash, urging firms to recognize these nuances when expanding international sales.
Chapters
We very often lump together South American or Latin American business culture and Latin American culture in general. It's easier for us to do this. Very often when we put together a team, we'll have one manager managing our entire Latin American team. And there are differences. There are a lot of things that are similar between the different cultures, but there are also some differences. I'm going to talk about one of those things today. But there's a big difference that we see differences in different parts of Latin America, and that's the masculinity of the culture. And I don't necessarily like that term, but that's the term that anthropologists and sociologists use. So it's the easy one to— it's the one that I end up using, even if I don't necessarily like it. But there are aspects of different cultures that are considered more masculine or more feminine, and they impact how we're going to sell and how we're going to manage salespeople. And here's the interesting thing. There are differences in masculinity, or the masculinity index, across Latin America for a variety of different reasons. There are a variety of different theories as to why this is the case. It could be related to where the immigrants came from. It could be related to the Aboriginal people, so that the Incas apparently had a less masculine-like culture than, say, the Mayans or the Aztecs did, as an example. Whatever the case, however it got there, What we find is, for instance, Venezuelans are 3 times as masculine in their culture as Chileans are. Even though they're both from the western part of Latin America, they're on the Andean spine, as it were. How can this impact you? Well, when you think about a masculine culture, how does that— what drives the customer? what drives his purchasing decisions can be impacted by specific things, as opposed to more looking at how they want to spend their time with their family or with their friends. Very often it's more status-driven. It's more luxury-driven. If you have a sales manager from Venezuela, he will probably be a lot closer to what you might find in Italy or in Japan, as opposed to somebody from Chile who's going to be a lot more like what you're going to find in Sweden. And there may be conflict there. And we very often say, well, we have a sales manager who's going to run Latin America, and that person is going to lump everybody together and treat everybody the same way, etc. So if you have a Chilean sales manager managing a Venezuelan, or vice versa, the masculinity issue might come up. And in sales management, that could influence what we see about how we should be spending our time, how we should want our compensation to be structured, those type of things. And this can cause conflict, so it's something to keep in mind. 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.
