6 Mistakes Sales People Make when Selling in China

While selling in China has evolved a lot over the last 20 years, there are still certain quirks in this market that sales people will need to be aware of. In fact, some sales people are selling in this market as if they were selling 20 years ago here.

So here are the 6 common mistakes that sales people tend to make when selling in China:

1.    Misconception about Building Relationships or Guanxi

 When someone mentions “guanxi”, the things that spring to mind will be entertaining customers at the KTV, and or providing certain “services” to clients that may not be compliant.

What most sales people don’t understand is that at the core of any relationship is trust. As such the entire premise of relationship building is about how to increase mutual trust between buyer and seller.

Customers make buying decisions because they care, which makes every buying decision to have an emotional aspect to it. What sales people need to do is to make an emotional connection with the customer through the trust that they have established with the customer. 

2.    Chasing Leads hat Lead Nowhere

Generally, sales people are excited when customers make contact to make a sales enquiry. Sometimes, this takes the form of a prospective customer that the sales people had been trying to do business, contacted the sales person out of the blue to invite the sales person for a last-minute bidding on a very substantial deal.

I believe many of us have experienced such scenarios in the past, and there are clear signs that the invitation was for a second or third bidder. Unfortunately, some sales people can be so pressurized to follow every single lead, even though such leads actually lead them nowhere. This could be in the form of being the second or third bidder, or chasing after customers that are a poor fit for the seller’s products, services and prices.

3.    Price

The general perception is that the Chinese market is very price driven, and that many sales were lost due to price reasons. While there certainly are some truths in this verdict, the details are much more complex.

While price tends to be a key consideration in many purchases, it is hardly the only determining factor in most purchases. What sales people need to do is to make the customer understand the different between the price they pay, and the actual costs of the purchase.

4.    Managing the Buying Process 

Sometimes, sales people tend to contact the people they are familiar with, e.g. the purchasing manager or the technical people, rather than the people they need to reach out to. These could be the senior management and key buying influencers of the customer’s organisations.

Other times, sales people tend to enter into the sales process way too late, and find themselves unable to influence customers.

5.    Not Asking Questions to Gain Insights

By now, many sales people in China have gone through many sales training programmes, and most of these programmes would have asked sales people to ask questions.

However, the purpose of asking questions is to gain insights about how customers think or feel about certain issues. Many sales people either end up being interrogated by customers, or that the questions raised by sales people tend to be very superficial that do not gain any insights.

6.    High Costs of Lead Generation

Many sales people in China rely on trade shows as the primary means for generating leads. While trade shows are good ways to meet up with prospective customers, the cost of participating in trade shows can be prohibitive. 

In a market where customers and competitors are growing at exponential rates, sales people in China would have to alternative seek ways to generate more qualified leads to grow their business.

c.j. Ng / 黄常捷

c.j. is a certified scrum master, a certified coach and works with management and sales teams to get better results through people. c.j. can be reached at his LinkedIn page here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/cydj001/

c.j.是一名认证的Scrum Master，也是一名认证的教练，他与管理和销售团队合作，通过人员获得更好的结果。你可以在LinkedIn上找到他：https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/cydj001/