Knowing where customers are coming from is a senior management responsibility – and it is strategic to your business. Many China-based international managers are delegating too much client contact to front-line staffers who tend to be paid little, trained less and leave quickly.

Do you have a thorough demographic profile of your own target market?

Analyze & Profile
Analyze your end users. Knowing who they are and being able to build a reasonably accurate profile is basic. Profiling works best after you have analyzed your existing client base – at least for ongoing businesses. In other words – don’t decide you want the high end professional international market and ignore the fact that your main market is actually local middle-aged housewives. Look at your existing or recent client list and see what patterns emerge. Are all of your clients from a similar background or work in related industries? Once you know who your real market is, then you can be more proactive about going after different target demographics.

Clients & End Users
Don’t confuse clients with end-users. When I do consulting & sales training, my client is the HR manager or MD, and my end-users are usually either Chinese managers or European salesmen. The decision-maker is the one I have to convince – but I can’t ignore the End Users. End users tend to have stronger negative, or veto power but very little positive or selection power.

DIY or Designate
Do it yourself or designate a senior account manager who can represent you at a high level. The key here is language and culture. If you don’t speak good Mandarin or the local business language, your big client relations strategy is probably closing your eyes and hoping for the best. Designate someone of weight and substance to handle client relationships – even if they aren’t officially in sales & marketing. Debrief regularly and systematically.

Use the Tools
Tool-use is what separates us from the lower animals. The tools you care about are cookie-cutter processes backed up by software (i.e.: Automated Sales Processes, Customer Resource Management) and standardized, regular measurement tests (i.e.: psychometric assessment). The more tools that you use well, the better your results. The right IT can help when you have high turnover or inconsistent skill levels.