Unorthodox sales strategy: cross-cultural partnerships
This work by Marcelo Bernardes ( @marcelobern ) was originally posted on LinkedIn . Over the years, I have seen sales teams come up with various strategies to enter a global account, or expand portfolio presence within an existing global account. A commonly used strategy is to secure "preferred vendor" status, by working with decision makers at headquarters: certifying the solution components, negotiating global prices and discount levels, etc. I am sure you are familiar with this approach. Some years back, when I was invited to an international assignment in Russia, I stumbled on an unique strategy, carved more by chance than by design. This unique strategy was proven repeatable and allowed us to strengthen our position within key global accounts, where headquarters based efforts had previously failed. Here are the highlights of this unorthodox strategy: Trojan horse : start by identifying the target account and the portfolio components you would li...