Now my situation is the reverse, I am a Indian sales guy recruited by an American company, for sales in the United States. So I thought maybe I should share my two cents or two paisa on this.

The author is right, when he says that there are cultural differences between the Indian organisations, and their American sales folks. Now the other option is to send a Indian manager to the US to do sales. Now the biggest challenge in this scenario is building relationship. Most relationships are built through your school, college and mostly your B -School networks, which an Indian managger is unlikely find in the US. I have faced this situation many times and I don't have an alumni base to fall back on, unlike say someone from Stanford or Harvard would have.

Secondly sending an Indian manager here after an initial stint in India does create certain challenges as most of us after a certain age are more or less set in our ways.

So what is the solution to this problem?

In my opinion every sales guy working for an Indian company, should spend some time in India. It could be a couple of weeks in a quater or maybe a month in a year. This really helps the sales folks understand the culture of the organisation they are serving. Visits to India have been eye openers to many people and this would continue as more and more people make the visit. I am so surprised to see many US based employees selling Indian based services without ever having visited India. Cross-cultural sensitisation is an important aspect of business and this should be a policy with most sales folks. Hindustan Unilever Limited follows this model extensively with many of its emplyees. Recently I met PHD students from Europe who were doing their projects on outsourcing in Cognizant Chennai. This is also a good example of undertsand the underlying culture which fosters a spirit of outsourcing.

Secondly while creating a sales force, heterogenecity should be the name of the game. The team should compose of both local sales folks, American/European as well as people with a stint in India (as opposed to only Indians). This helps the firm to leverage the best of both worlds. Heterogenous teams have been used by many truly global organisations like GE. Most of their managers are rotated across geographies so it is not uncommon to see a US GE manager in India or a Indian Manager in Vietnam.

Thirdly internal training at regular intervals to make sure they understand the differences in the Indian entity and the alien market that it is trying to do business in. Often it is taken for granted that the initial oddness would give rise to a feeling of familiarity with a passage of time. But unfortunately that does not happen. Instead misconceptions only deepen as there is lack of any internal correction.

These are some of my thoughts based on my experiences. There can be other ways top overcome these challenges and I welcome you all to send your comments to me.