In house, my client’s sales team won’t use their own website. It’s too slow, cumbersome and lacks basic functionality.

But the company’s advertising and brochures all talk about how great the site is. It is a cornerstone of their sales effort. Every client automatically gets an account and login instructions – and are encouraged to use the site as a primary access point for the company’s customer service.

When I asked the sales team about the contradiction, I got a long explanation that laid the blame squarely at the feet of the HK head office. It reminded me of the classic Chinese customer non-service line from the old days: “mei you ban fa– nothing can be done”.

Are you burning prospects and helping the competition because your HQ doesn’t know or care about your China issues?

5 tips for handling a non-cooperative HQ

1) Know what the competition and market is providing. Have examples. Find out how clients feel about your offering vs. the other guys. HQ may not care about YOU, but they care about the sales and profits you produce. Client comments will carry weight – but make sure that they can be supported and backed up.

2) Look at the big numbers on your calendar. That’s the year. The 2 at the front tells you that this is the 21st century. If you site takes forever to load or lacks basic functionality then it is going to make you look bad to clients. Don’t try to soft-pedal or minimize the problems with your site or technology. If you say, “no one else has complained” you will alienate your prospects. If you say, “yes, I’m sorry about the problem but they are taking care of it. I just wish it wasn’t taking so long. In the meantime, here’s a disk with all the information, product descriptions and prices”, then you can get the conversation back on track quickly.

3) If you site isn’t accessible, doesn’t work, or is unstable then it is YOUR problem, not your clients. I’ve taken sites offline and paid lots of money to have sites fixed. A bad site is like having the wrong phone number on your business card – it tells the prospect a little more about your organization than you might have planned. Just because aren’t calling to complain doesn’t mean they are happy. They may be too busy calling your competitors to open an account.

4) Don’t highlight your own weaknesses. Yes, it stinks to have to tell a prospect that your site has problems, doesn’t include useful China info, or is too slow to be used effectively. But it’s much, much worse to tell a prospect that your company has a great technology when you know it doesn’t. The first thing they’ll do to check you out is to visit the site, and when it doesn’t work properly the only three choices are: 1) that you were mistaken about your own company, 2) your judgment is really poor or 3) you are dishonest. None are great. If you tell them your site doesn’t work well in China – but you have a simple and effective work-around, then you are moving the conversation quickly past the potholes and towards smoother territory.

5) Everyone hates a whiner, but they love a winner. If you have been living with a problem for a while and your HQ doesn’t seem to have the time or resources to fix it – do a little legwork and come up with an effective solution. Is it your job? Maybe not. But negotiating with your own senior management is trickier than negotiating with clients. You are going to have to work harder, be more creative — and keep your mouth shut when your boss’ boss takes credit for your solution.

If your company can’t run a website, print a document or keep an email system afloat, then you have a big problem. But letting that drag your business down is even worse. Find solutions and don’t dwell on your company’s problems. A bad website isn’t the end of your career – but allowing it to poison your attitude could be.

My big Shanghai client’s Big Boss ordered all 7 of his senior salesmen to develop & present an internal business plan for 2008. The idea was to force everyone to think like owners and take responsibility for their own results.

Fantastic idea, though the outcome was mixed. Some people shot too low – just recounting last year’s action and slapping an extra 15% on sales targets for ’08. Others were wildly ambitious, involving restructuring the company from the Chairman’s office down to the receptionist.

What kind of guidelines could you offer your team performing the same type of exercise?

Keys to developing an ‘internal’ business plan.

1) Goal-Setting. This is the beginning and the end – the alpha and omega. If your plan isn’t centered on specific goals then you are driving fast with no destination in mind. Good salesmen develop good targets. Sales managers need to beware of potential ‘sand-baggers’ – guys who set their own projections too low so that they can avoid pressure and still finish with dramatic target-busting performance.

2) New approaches & methods. Innovation is good. When you hire salesmen, you are really empowering them to represent your business. If they are not bringing their own ideas, experience and intellect to the mix, then you are getting cheated. Encourage your team to come up with new ideas that push the envelop and try new ways to attack your market.

3) Feedback & measurement. Make sure that your guys aren’t spinning ‘blue-sky’ tales that won’t work in the real world. The biggest problem? Lack of feedback and measurement procedures that demonstrate what is working – and what isn’t. Most salesmen use final sales as their CSF – Critical Success Factor. That’s great – but booked revenue is a backwards-looking metric. If you want to monitor and maybe even anticipate future results, you’ll need to identify metrics that lead your market.

4) Costs, limits and realities. Big Boss from HK could barely suppress a smile when the newest sales guy proposed that HQ increase both commission payouts and expense spending. A business plan that doesn’t differentiate between normal expenses and extraordinary business restructuring isn’t really a plan. Yes, innovation and new ideas are great. But every organization has limits – and if your plan run counter to company rules or practices then you had better plan on explaining exactly how and why your approach is superior.

5) Ambitious – but realistic. The best plans push the system without breaking it. Big Boss told me that he uses these annual biz plan presentations to spot those with management potential. Usually that refers to guys who can produce more with less. Young salesmen tend to propose sweeping – but unrealistic- changes that could bankrupt the company and alienate existing clients. Successful salesmen tend to propose exactly the same methods and tactics that worked for them before. Your real stars will come up with new ideas that take into consideration shifts in the marketplace, competition and new technology.

I left the meeting feeling like the company was nearing bankruptcy. We were all miserable, lazy, incompetent and stupid.

Well, not really. The guy sitting across from me was earning US$70,000 this quarter. The guy next to him was doing almost as well. The company was setting sales records and desperately looking around for more office space in Shanghai and new markets in other parts of China.

So why did everything seem so bleak?

Senior management was very sensitive to what was happening on the front lines of the company. A recent spate of organizational restructuring and promotion and had seen 2 of the 15 salesmen move up in the ranks quite suddenly — and now we had the beginnings of a morale problem in the sales department.

To their credit, the top guys in the company were very proactive about attacking this problem. Unfortunately they were so focused on this specific situation that they threatened to undermine the morale of their biggest (and happiest) earners.

When you get wind of a morale problem you should have a plan for dealing with it quickly and effectively. Here are a few ideas that may help:

1) Who is saying what? Some people tend to see any unpleasant new development as a management blunder. Are your front-line staff feeling exploited and mistreated – or is your product simply becoming less competitive in the marketplace? Assess actual damage and potential problems in terms of both depth and breadth. Find out who is unhappy, what the root causes of the problem are, and how the affected individuals view the situation. Don’t steer your company based on hearsay and second-hand complaints.

2) Limit disucssion to real problems and real solutions. If you want to open up a company issue for discussion among top managers then be sure to scope the situation and impose parameters. Limit the conversation to specific problems and answers. Don’t let a compensation or training issue morph into a full-on ‘bitch-session’ about everything the company is involved in. Keep all conversations grounded in reality. Don’t tolerate vague or stream-of-consciousness speculation like, ‘maybe they are angry about…’ Make conversations with the affected individuals part of your action plan. If there is a huge disconnect between the front lines and management, you probably need to pay attention to how you are getting your data. Go to the horse’s mouth before making big changes.

3) Keep solutions simple and practical. One of the worst things you can do is to redesign your compensation plan or organizational structure on an impulse. If the current problem reveals deep cracks in the foundation of your operation, then by all means commence with the big fix – and don’t waste time. But don’t pull down the ceiling to change a light bulb. Make your solutions practical, highly targeted and flexible. Consider starting with temporary or limited solutions that can serve as the basis for a more permanent change. (I.e.: If compensation is the issue, try a temporary sales contest or test a new commission schedule with only a few people.) If your big, sweeping changes to SOP (standard operating procedure) cause new problems or fail to fix the old ones then you are in much worse shape than you were in the first place.

4) Know your options. Maybe your morale problem needs to be fired. Maybe they’re pissed off or upset about something completely different. Maybe the team is too large and there isn’t enough commission to go around. Maybe a simple pay-raise will do the job, or maybe you have to restructure your entire compensation plan. Make sure your middle managers are giving you the widest possible range of choices and potential solutions.

5) Don’t get played. When putting out HR fires make sure your front-line people don’t see this as their moment in the spotlight. If the only time you pay attention to your sales floor is when there is a crisis, then you should schedule time for LOTS more crises in the future.

China Issue: When you have a morale problem or your sales team is unhappy and demotivated – your goal is to find ways to lift the weakest players to the level of the highest. Beware of solutions that create a more equitable situation by making everyone equally miserable.

‘Will there or won’t there be?’ The small clump of young European & Asian salesmen breaks from their huddle and puts the question to me. They try to look relaxed, but clearly they’re concerned. The entire sales department has been watching the economies of the US and Europe losing momentum and asking themselves the same question:

Will there be an influx of talent from the North America and Europe into China? Will Shanghai become the new post-grad landing-pad for casual resume builders and hard-playing English teachers? Or will serious, experienced business-people decide that this is the perfect time to establish their China-presence?

It’s a great question for senior managers with HR responsibility.

Let’s assume that the US is heading for a significant economic slowdown while China continues to grow in the 8 – 11% range. Unemployment in the West spikes, while China continues to pay higher and higher wages for experienced managers.

3 Kinds of Talent

New branches or offices. If China is still firing on all cylinders while the US is stalled on the side of the road, we may very well see SMEs (small & medium sized enterprises) accelerate their plans to set up shop in China. Large MNCs probably won’t change their roll-out plans unless things get significantly worse.

HR upshot: A few senior people and specialists from Stateside – but these people will be BIG net hirers. Admin and technical-minded locals will be first on their wish-list, followed quickly by department heads, sales management and finally the front-line staff.

Probably will not have huge impact on the HR situation.

Top and middle managers looking for jobs. Victims of bankruptcies, lay-offs and downsizing may very well end go on a mysterious Chinese treasure hunt. Distance, language and general weirdness will keep the numbers low at first – and a high crash & burn rate will probably keep a lid on this trend. What about overseas Chinese managers? If John Q Chen gets laid off from Citicorp he may very decide to look up his Mom’s distant relations in China and come home to lao-jia. But for the most part, this demographic has already had a good look at the China option and the overseas Chinese who wanted to roll the dice here have probably already done so.

HR Impact? Those with 7+ years of western experience will probably not drive a noticeable influx into the Chinese job market, but those that do make the trip and survive the first year could have an out-sized impact on business in the big cities.

Recent grads. Yes. This is the group that is going to start swarming to the Middle Kingdom – and there are signs that is already happening. The tricky bit here is that there are probably not enough English-teaching/acting/modeling/hostessing jobs around to support a large population of relatively unskilled 20-somethings. But China’s relatively low rents & expenses and cultural attractions (pretty mountains, cheap beer, sex) will keep them hanging around – and possible incubating some interesting new business ideas. A few will stay for the long term, but most will drift back home after a year or two.

Impact on HR – Very high if are an English teacher or a Maoming Lu bar girl. Sharp sales managers will keep an eye out for nice kids with lots of potential to do special projects or develop specific markets, but these are the goldfish of the working world- they’ll go belly-up if you look at them funny. The better their skills, the harder it will be to hold on.

So will a downturn in the US have any impact on hiring in China? Well, if you have an international team it gives you extra Bluster & Threat bonus points as you reinforce the myth that you have a stack of Ivy League resumes in your office. But if you think that your middle management gaps can be patched with refugees from the bear market, you may want to reconsider. Unless the US goes into a loooong recession that somehow misses China completely, the probably won’t be a significant influx of new senior managers.

People have started sending me emails with those frantic little red exclamation points in the heading – business-ese for “Hey dummy – respond already!” I’m still playing catch-up from the last set of holidays, and there’s another big one coming up. I used to check email 5 times a day and was on top of every message, to-do list and meeting proposal. Now I’m that guy in the restaurant trying to rearrange 3 meetings before my lunch appointment shows up.

I’ve talked to other successful China entrepreneurs about the problem – expecting sympathy and sage advice. They just laugh their bitter little laugh. They’ve been down this road already and have learned the hard lessons on their own.

We’ve found a few minutes to offer a little constructive advice for successful international entrepreneurs and managers in China. Read fast.

Tips for the overscheduled China expat:

Stop biting off more than you can chew. Don’t look for business you can’t service properly and maintain. You are getting more leads and referrals now that you’ve built up a name for yourself, but that doesn’t mean you have to chase every one. If a real ‘lay-up’ comes along, go for it. Otherwise pass.

Identify your core business and 2-3 business areas that you can reasonably expand into. Growth is still vital to your business, but while a new start-up can afford to let the market direct its growth, more established firms have to make sure that everything they do fits into a long term strategy.

Go with what works. Get a system that is effective for you and stick with it. Don’t always be trading up or starting over. Sometimes marketing or management strategies take months to kick in. If you keep starting new policies, strategies and methodologies, both your internal team and outside clients are going to lose faith in a hurry.

Know the value of time. When you were starting your business from scratch or setting up your company’s operation, steep learning curves made even failures and setbacks were valuable experiences. Now your time is simply too valuable. That 2 hour flight to HK is going to eat up close to 6 hours by the time you figure door-to-door travel time. Is it worth it?

Delegate smart. Sometimes you are better off doing it yourself or paying a lot to get jobs done. A three-thousand rmb/month receptionist can be expected to know where the nearest subway station is - not how to translate a real estate contract.

China still offers more opportunities than a single business can take advantage of – but human resources and infrastructure make US-style delegation very difficult. As you get more successful and well-known, you are going to have to let your ‘B’ opportunities slide. Otherwise you’ll alienate your staff, disappoint clients and find yourself back in the bad-old-days when you had too much time on your hands.

Ed. Note: Our sister side, www.ChinaFinancialPlanning.com has started a new series for time-challenged China expats called “The No Time To Plan Financial Planner”. 10 short, sharp posts that will help China-based households understand the mechanics and goals of personal financial planning. It’s still a work in progress, but check out the first few installments at www.ChinaExpatFinance.com.

ChinaSolved.com recently had the good fortune to work with 2 interns from New York University who spent a semester living, studying and working in Shanghai. Anna Tse of New York, NY shares her thoughts and impressions about the HR situation in China-based international companies.

Keeping Your Troops -Anna Tse

If you have qualified, well-educated local Chinese working for you, be prepare because they will leave. There will be no two weeks notice and no warning - they will simply quit and walk away. If you want to keep your employees around you must create an inclusive corporate environment that fosters loyalty, commitment, and open communication. You want your employees to stick around not only because of the pay but also because of where they work and who they work with.

Loyalty: Create team building activities or company outings. Have company spirit and company pride.

Commitment: Outline clear and straightforward incentives for longtime consistent excellent performance. It can be an increase in end of year bonuses or added benefits. Delegate responsibilities that make employees feel that they have a stake in the general well-being of the establishment.

Open Communication: Conduct weekly staff meetings and encourage your employees to voice their opinions and concerns and more importantly actually address them.

Finally, this should go without saying: Respect your employees. They have feelings too.

China expat bosses and sales people: Are you making appointments with other overseas managers for the spring holiday? I’ll be here and working – and so will a lot of other folks I know who are fed up with the tyrannical oppression of the leisure police. Yeah, I know – they say they’re gonna fix the calendar and have fewer big holidays this year, but I’m betting that it’s going to a slow & sloppy transition. Smart expat managers are finding work-arounds and ad-hoc solutions to keep operations afloat during the upcoming holiday seasons.

Shanghai is shaping up to be a dual-calendar economy – Chinese holidays for the locals, western holidays for the overseas bosses, and lots ‘o leisure for front line workers of all nations. Plenty of pissed off managers and ambitious young climbers are willing to buck the trend and turn up for work, but this requires a little executive decision-making. You can’t force locals to work on official holidays, but you can allow them to show up if they want. Often this requires you to trust your young go-getters with a little more responsibility than you had anticipated. We’re talking keys, passwords and access. Unfortunately it’s the kids whose judgment may be kind of questionable that you’ll be trusting with your business while the bosses are away enjoying family hotpots/turkeys.

Safety tip—there are varying degrees of security measures you can put in place to manage tiered access. Develop a security policy and circulate it regularly. As for passwords and access codes - its a good idea to change them often and systematically. Have a policy for long distance calls – and consider which phones will have unrestricted access. Databases have differing levels of protection, and you should make sure your IT people and relevant department heads are on the same page. Same for off site access and internet log-ins.

Most important, discourage account swapping and spread the notion of data security. If you don’t want to splash out for a bunch of licenses, set up department-logins. Get your people out of the habit of sharing passwords.

Develop a policy for safeguarding your internal intellectual property – particularly databases and product designs. Half the battle in internal IP protection is letting your people know where the line in the sand is. What can you share internally, what can you share with outsiders, and what is too sensitive to share at all. If you can systematize and publicize your policy then you have accomplished a lot. But continue to monitor the situation and strike the perfect balance between security and delegation.

I just found a great potential hire – in my assistant’s trash file. It’s not completely her fault, however. Someone applied for a sales position though a “send me information about your product” advertising button on one of my websites. Ironically, this is just the kind of person we always say we are looking for – an aggressive, self-motivated, out-of-the-box thinker. He found a creative way of reaching potential decision-makers, but only an equally creative, flexible, heads-up organization would be able to react.

I asked the receptionist and sales assistant how many emails like this one we receive in an average week. Though I never did get a straight answer, I get the feeling it is a significant number. My staff now knows what to do with unsolicited hiring inquiries. Does yours?

Business leaders have to be careful to make sure that the priorities of their team dovetail with senior managements’ priorities. Since most expat managers are constantly on the look-out for new staff, they sometimes assume that everyone else in the company is doing the same.

Tips for making your organization more recruitment-friendly:

1) Pay for the behaviors you want. Pay a significant bonus when ANY staffer on your team recruits a new colleague who stays with the company for 3 months. Your best workers make the best recruiters. Just plant the idea in their minds.

2) The HR department isn’t the only one with recruitment responsibility. If you are looking for college grads to fill a management trainee post or for senior managers, then you HR team is the only one who can help you. But if you want front line sales, marketing, artists & designers or engineering types, then your best bet is to get your existing team to recruit your friends. Make sure your HR managers are onboard with the plan.

3) Have a place for applicants to apply on your website, newsletters and other online publications. It costs next to nothing and reaches your widest possible readership.

4) Good, up to date contact information on your site. How would I reach you from your site? If I hit the “contact us” or “send email” button, where does that message go? I bet if you took a look, you’d find plenty of job inquiries along with the spam, advertising and bona-fide marketing inquiries.

5) Spread the word in-house. Make sure that ALL your people know that employment inquiries should be referred up the chain of command – either to you, your HR department or the relevant line manager.

According to Frank Mulligan at Talent Software, your twenty-something office staffers really are less mature and sophisticated than you were when you were their age. Mulligan quotes a Journal of Family Psychology study indicating that 80% of US parents do not consider their 25 year old offspring to be true adults – and the kids agree. Sorry, not kids. ‘Emerging adults’ is the politically correct phrase.

What age would Chinese parents consider their kids to be independent?

25 years old - like in the US? Maybe a little older, like 27 – or 29 – or 32? Now take a look at your front office. The fact is that most of us are operating with front-line teams made up of recent grads who feel somehow less than completely grown-up. What does this mean to you as a China-based manager? According to Mulligan, “…in your office you have professionals who have never gone through many of the normal rights of passage for a child, never mind those for an adolescent or adult. Young staff in China are roughly hewn from stone, and the final sculpture has still to emerge. Your job is to finish off the sculpture.”

Well, yes. But during that brief period between the signing of their new employment contract and the moment they find a new job, these ‘emerging adults’ are still running big chunks of your business.

Tips for managing a team of “emergidults”:

Over orient, over manage. Good orientation programs are key for young staffs that may have zero real experience. You have to explain WHY your firm operates the way it does and why it is in business. Assume nothing.

Follow up – early & often. I favor ‘checklist management’ in China. Systematize your processes so that you can easily identify exactly how much of a task is completed. Young staffers in China tend to view 70% done as good enough, so don’t be satisfied with simple assurances.

Frequent, short meetings. When an American manager is under pressure, internal face time with the staff is the first thing to get cut. Maybe not a great idea. You’re better off with 3 or 4 quick sit-downs with the team. Yes – you have to have a meeting where everyone sits at a table and takes notes. Informal chats over a cubicle divider don’t always register as business conversations.

Train & manage in groups. There are several advantages to this seemingly cumbersome strategy. Young Chinese tend to be much more group-oriented than their western counterparts and can find enforced independence stressful. Groups are also efficient in multi-lingual environments when not everyone has 100% listening comprehension. Finally, group training and assignments make huge amounts of sense when the average length of employment is around 18 months. The more people who know about your project, the easier it is to maintain continuity in the face of high turnover.

Control your expectations. When you were 27 you had the judgment of a sage, the Wisdom of Solomon, the work ethic of an ox. Yes. We know. Kids today can’t compare. You can try scowling and huffing a lot (I have), but you’ll probably find that it doesn’t do much good. So build a better control and feedback loop into your operating procedure. Devote time and energy to training supervisors – and don’t make rules that can’t or won’t be followed.

Young Chinese staffers tend to be more process-oriented than those back home, and you have to make sure that you aren’t confusing them with a flurry of new rules and regs that never get followed up. Keep it simple – and keep it serious.

Meet Bob Chen. Born and raised in Shanghai, Bob graduated from a well known Chinese university with a degree in business 6 years ago. He was recently promoted to the regional sales manager position at a famous multinational with headquarters in Germany. He travels frequently to HK, Singapore, Sidney and Taipei – with the occasional trip to Seoul and Kuala Lumpur. In the office he speaks English to his bosses, Mandarin to his colleagues and Shanghaiese to his friends and assistant.

On paper Bob Chen is a ‘traditional local Chinese’ manager, but his spending patterns tend to approximate those of western ex-pats. Bob and the legion of Mainland managers like him are part of an emerging demographic we refer to as “international Chinese”. Your ability to market effectively to Bob (and those like him) will make or break your China business in 2008.

The bad news is that no one is quite sure what Bob wants – including him.

10 years ago it was pretty simply to identify the Chinese consumer. They wore Chinese clothes, ate Chinese food, rode a Chinese bicycle and spoke some form of Chinese. If they had a passport it was standard PRC-issue. Managers selling into the China market in 1997 didn’t have to worry about new product design or focus group surveys – they were more concerned about sourcing raw materials and getting finished goods to market.

The new class of ICCs (international Chinese consumers) defies explanation. Their consumption patterns don’t match traditional Chinese models from just a few years ago – but they don’t necessarily have much in common with overseas Chinese either. The business press keeps talking about the ‘Chinese middle class’, but that label tends to cause more problems than it solves as it groups second-city housewives with Shanghai jet-setters.

They aren’t ABCs, overseas Chinese, returnees, expats, or sea-turtles. They have never lived or studied overseas, but speak English and read US and HK business sites. They are willing to pay extra for international brands (even though they pretend not to be impressed), but don’t blindly follow western trends.

How do you market to the emerging ICC market?

Aspiration without condescension. Western names don’t have the shock value they once did, but Prada and Mercedes are as highly regarded in Shanghai as they are in New York. Quality & value count – but you have to understand how the Chinese view quality and value. Don’t be surprised if your Chinese clients have a completely different notion of how your product should be used – or what the brand stands for.

International products - Localized promotion. International Chinese know the global brands, but they approach them in their own way. You are best off sending an IC to sell to an IC. The good news is that the universities are churning out more ICs at a rapid clip. Make sure you are staffing your sales floor with sophisticated, well-trained locals who can shift effortless from ‘traditional’ to ‘international’ without missing a beat.

Assume nothing. Your big-spending local client may have an overseas passport and international bank accounts – or he may never have left China. He may be obsessed with 5 star service and status brands – or he may be a cheapskate who couldn’t care less about image and cache. Some are strongly nationalistic while others believe in globalism. Leave the preconceived notions at the door when you are marketing to this new type of Chinese super-consumer.