Coaching Toward Multi Cultural Selling Transcript

Insight on Coaching
Coaching Toward Multi-Cultural Selling Transcript

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0:01 Tom Floyd Hello everyone, and welcome to Insight on Coaching.
Insight on Coaching explores the many facets, flavors and sides of the emerging
professional coaching field.
I'm Tom Floyd, I'm the CEO of Insight Educational Consulting and your host for
today's show.
This week our topic is Coaching Toward Multi-cultural Selling.
We'll provide an overview in terms of what we mean by the term multiculture, we’ll
discuss how organizations are responding to the trends in various multi-cultural
populations and the challenges in developing multi-cultural marketing and sales
strategies, and we'll also talk about how coaches who specialize in multi-cultural
marketing and sales are helping corporations today.
With me today to explore this topic are four guests, so let me give you a quick
overview of who we have with us today.
Our first guest, Shelly Willingham-Hinton, a seasoned sales, marketing and diversity
professional, is the founder and president of The National Organization for Diversity
in Sales and Marketing™ (NODSM).
NODSM works to help Fortune 500 corporations capitalize on the increasing
purchasing power of multicultural consumers without using stereotypes and being
offensive and to help corporations diversify their sales, marketing and advertising
personnel.
Welcome to the show, Shelly.
Our second guest, Dr. Earl Honeycutt, is a Professor of Marketing and Sales
Management at the Love School of Business at Elon University in North Carolina
where he teaches courses in cross-cultural sales and global marketing.
Earl is also the co-author of Selling Outside Your Culture Zone and Sales
Management: a Global Perspective.
He has conducted years of research as well as written countless published articles,
papers and abstracts on the subject of multicultural marketing.
Welcome to the show, Earl.

2:08 Dr. Earl Pleasure to be with you.
Honeycutt

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2:10 Tom Floyd Our next guest, Michael Soon Lee, is the President of EthnoConnect, a company
which provides seminars, training, consulting and coaching on how to sell more
products and services to multicultural markets in America.
He is the author of six books on marketing and selling to multicultural customers.
For over 14 years Michael has spoken around the world on how to increase sales to
Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, Middle Easterners and other multicultural customers. Over
the past 20 years Michael’s clients have included: Coca-Cola, General Motors, State
Farm Insurance, and over a thousand other companies.
Welcome to the show, Michael.

2:45 Michael Soon Thank you, Tom.
Lee

2:46 Tom Floyd And our fourth guest, Jeff McFarland, is executive director of multi-cultural marketing
for Verizon. Jeff is responsible for the execution of all marketing, advertising and
sponsorship activities in the African American, Latino, Asian, Russian, people with
disabilities, and the gay and lesbian marketplace. To protect and grow the Verizon
brand, Jeff leads a team that ensures the most effective targeted marketing and
branding across the entire Verizon multi-cultural footprint.
Welcome to the show, Jeff.

3:13 Jeff McFarland Hello everyone.

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3:16 Tom Floyd As we always do, I'd like to kick off our show today with some data that our research
team collected to set the stage.
Some interesting statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The Latino population in the United States grew 38.8 percent to more
than 31 million, and had a median income of $28,330 (2000).
The number of Latinos is expected to reach 44 million by 2010. This
Latino segment is a young group, with more than half in the prime
spending years between 18 and 49.
Asian and Pacific Islanders (API) are outpacing the Hispanic/Latino and
African-American sectors. Since 1990, the API population grew
approximately 43 percent to 10.8 million. By 2010, this segment is
expected to increase to 15 million, with the highest median income in the
United States.
Also according to the U.S. Census Bureau, The combined buying power of
the Hispanic, black, Asian and Native American communities is currently in
excess of $1.5 trillion.
In a recent October 1st, 2007 article within the business section of the Denver
Post, Andy Vuong writes, “Companies across the country are finding that
marketing to diverse cultures is good for business. Indeed, many companies
say 2000 census figures spurred their growing efforts. Those numbers
showed minorities represented 31 percent of the nation's population, up from
24 percent in 1990. The Census Bureau projects that minority groups will
represent 49.9 percent of the population by 2050.”
Michael, I'd like to start with you.
First question, (A) how are these statistics landing on you, and (B) can you just set
the stage for us in terms of what the demographic and makeup of various multi-
cultural groups in the U.S. is looking like today?

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5:10 Michael Soon I think one of the things that we need to recognize--and I just want to add a couple of
Lee other statistics to what you've already said--minorities in the United States buy over
$2 trillion worth of goods and services, which is more than all but the nine largest
countries in the world. So this is a huge and growing market and I think a lot of
businesses are beginning to recognize this fact.
While they're doing that, large companies are marketing to the multi-cultural
consumer, we have to remember that it's not good enough just to do multi-cultural
marketing.
You have to remember that if people aren't treated with sensitivity to their culture
when they come into your store or office, they're still not going to buy from you
anyway.
What my company does, is we try to help salespeople to become more culturally
competent, which means treating people with sensitivity to their culture and basically
treating people the way that they want to be treated.

6:11 Tom Floyd In terms of a little bit more of a definition in terms of what we're talking about in terms
of the various groups that fall within this category of multi-cultural, Shelly, I noticed a
definition of how your organization defines multi-cultural within your website, the
National Organization for Diversity in Sales and Marketing.
Can you tell our audience a little bit more about who we're talking about when we say
multiculture, or multi-cultural?

6:44 Shelly I think in a lot of cases it really depends.
Willingham-
We found some companies, when they talk about multi-cultural, it may be focused
Hinton
around ethnic minorities.
Our organization, when we say multi-cultural, we mean not only ethnic diversity, but
also gender, sexual orientation, ability.
We also include the whole multi-cultural youth division, baby boomers and diverse
religious beliefs.
So we understand that when we talk about multi-cultural, it stands beyond just race
and culture.

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7:17 Tom Floyd Some of the information that I shared in the beginning was specific to a few groups.
When I took a look at your website I noticed it contained facts about a lot of different
groups. Can you elaborate more on some of the other facts about some of the other
groups?
For example, I saw that women-owned firms employed 19.1 million people and
generated 2.5 trillion and sales. Not only did I think that particular fact was
astounding, but that's just fantastic.
Can you tell us a little bit more about some of the other trends and facts that are
going on within some of the other groups that are out there as well?

7:59 Shelly Definitely, like you said, the women's market is booming and it's huge and it's a great
Willingham- opportunity for marketers wanting to capitalize on that group of consumers.
Hinton
But also the GLBT segment, the gay/bisexual/lesbian/transgender segment is also a
very, very growing segment. A lot of companies are starting to recognize that and
understand that that group has a lot of money to spend, especially in financial
services and travel.
I read an article in the New York Times about Las Vegas really wanting to market
more to the GLBT segment because they are recognized and they have a significant
amount of purchasing power to spend and they want to go after and get their piece of
the pie.
As more of these numbers come to effect and people start to recognize and see that
these groups do wield a lot of purchasing power, I do believe that more companies
will begin to market to these different segments.
I would say that with the Census Bureau, and maybe the next time it comes around
we'll see a change, but I know that the numbers for the GLBT segment may not
necessarily be that accurate.
I know this was the first year that they asked, not necessarily if it's a gay household,
but if there are two people living in the household of the same sex, so it's not very
specific.
But as we get more sophisticated in that type of information, I'm sure the numbers
will definitely increase.

9:21 Tom Floyd What have been some of the specific things that have really caused some
corporations, organizations, to start to recognize the need to market some of these
groups?
Has it been a louder voice from each of these various groups or communities kind of
making themselves known and making people realize, “hey, maybe I need to pay
more attention here and change some of my efforts?”
What are some of the things that really caused some of the growth here?

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9:47 Shelly I think that definitely the Census Bureau information contributes a great deal to that.
Willingham- I get this question a lot when I speak to students.
Hinton
They ask, well, why should a company really focus on multi-cultural marketing if
they're already profitable, and that's a valid question.
But if you start to look at the numbers and the demographics and the changing face
of America, by 2050 what are considered minorities will be the majority and forward-
thinking companies are starting to recognize and understand that if they don't
capitalize on this group that they're putting themselves at a competitive
disadvantage.

10:20 Tom Floyd In terms of the percentage, just to get a sense of how many companies are starting
to do that, what's your best guess in terms of, if we talk about the Fortune 500, for
example, in terms of the percent of companies who are really starting to make
greater strides there?

10:35 Shelly I wouldn't know an absolute percentage.
Willingham-
I will tell you this year our organization partnered with Fortune Magazine on the list
Hinton
for the best companies for diversity and we added a segment around the best
companies for multi-cultural marketing and Verizon made our list for doing a great job
in the multi-cultural segment.
I can't give you an exact statistic, but I would say that a lot of companies definitely
have a multi-cultural segment.
I think where you'll find the most forward-thinking companies are the ones that really
break down the segments beyond just African American, Hispanic or Asian, and
really try to go beyond those kind of obvious differences to try to make more of an
effort in the different segments that are sometimes not equally marketed to.

11:23 Tom Floyd Has it mainly been something that pretty much the larger, like the Fortune 500 or
1000 corporations are looking at, or are even small businesses and sectors like that
starting to respond, too?

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11:36 Shelly In my experience, because we deal mostly with the larger corporations, I would say
Willingham- yes, because marketing budgets are getting tight all across the board. So for
Hinton companies to invest in a multi-cultural marketing strategy they do need to have a
significant amount of revenue.
I think for smaller businesses, we haven't really done much research in that area, so
I'm not really sure if they're specific.
But I think that companies that are in local areas and recognizing the emerging
growth of Hispanics in the marketplace, or Asians, or maybe in their neighborhood
the African Americans, are definitely doing multi-cultural marketing and don't even
realize it.

12:11 Tom Floyd Earl, can you tell us a little bit more about what led you to write Selling Outside Your
Cultural Zone; and for that matter, can you tell us a little bit more about what a
cultural zone is?

12:22 Dr. Earl Basically I have been working in sales. I used to work for a company called TRW
Honeycutt that got purchased by Northrop Grumman, and I used to come to L.A. and do a lot of
work out there, mainly selling electronic components.
But what I noticed is that we were doing a lot more business, actually global
business, and we were having to deal with a lot of buyers and we were having to deal
with a lot folks who were different cultures, different language groups.
One fact that you didn't give out, today in the United States more than 110 languages
are spoken in the country. That's a tremendous cultural diversity.
I think Shelly and the folks have really come up with some good explanations for
what's happening in the United States.
From my perspective as a business-to-business person, there are a lot of engineers,
a lot of buyers and a lot of owners of businesses that come from different cultures,
and when you go out there trying to sell to those folks, as the panel has already said,
if you don't understand and if you aren't able to be sensitive and to communicate with
them in the proper way, you're going to make a faux pas, a cultural blunder, and
you're probably not going to make the sale, so it's really important.
And Michael, I thought, stated it very concisely and well, but I use the three R's,
which is to recognize the difference in cultural differences, to respect those cultural
differences, and then to reconcile your behavior with the buyer.

13:53 Tom Floyd I'm still just sitting here with my mouth ajar to 110 languages spoken across the U.S.
That's astounding.
I've never heard that before.

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14:03 Dr. Earl There are a tremendous number.
Honeycutt
A lot of people don't realize there in California, one of the largest Asian groups is
Filipino Americans.
Most people think of Chinese or Japanese, but the Filipino American group is quite
large for a consumer group.
I do a lot of work with the Filipino American community and so therefore I'm a little
more sensitive to that.
What I'm trying to teach my students at Elon University in the Love School of
Business is, that when they go out in the world, if they don't understand
multiculturalism and if they don't understand cross-cultural behaviors, they're going to
be at a great disadvantage and they're probably not going to be as successful in the
future perhaps as they would have been 20 or 30 years ago when it was more of a
mass market and more of dealing primarily with white people, which that's not the
U.S. today.

14:56 Tom Floyd It's funny when you mention California as an example.
I live in San Jose, it's where our business is based too, and I love how diverse it is
here and how different it is here.
When I moved here seven years ago I felt like it opened my eyes a lot.
It's interesting now when I see people come and visit for business, or it could be
friends or family, it's almost like they go into cultural shock when coming to the
Silicon Valley.
It's just really an eye-opener.
I definitely think it's encouraging to hear that more businesses, and just across the
country in general, people are starting to realize that there are so many other groups
out there and we have to sensitive and respectful to them.

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15:45 Dr. Earl Absolutely.
Honeycutt
I don't think we can be an expert on every cultural group, there are just too many.
But again, I think some general lessons to be able to recognize.
Starting to recognize someone else's culture is to understand your own, so that you
don't stereotype and so that you don't engage in ethnocentrism, where you feel that
your way is the right way.
So if we can do that, again, if we can recognize and then respect and then reconcile,
something along those lines.
Those are just three words that we chose for our book.
It can be stated a lot of different ways. It's important that we be respectful no matter
who we're dealing with.

16:27 Michael Soon I just have a quick pet peeve.
Lee

16:32 Tom Floyd Sure. Go ahead.

16:33 Michael Soon Because you and I both live in California, and what I've found over the years doing
Lee this kind of training for cultural competency of front line staff, is that people in
California tend to believe--and other places like New York--tend to believe that
because we all live in such multi-cultural areas that somehow automatically we know
how to treat people with sensitivity to their culture, which is obviously not true but is a
prevalent belief in many areas that have large numbers of people from diverse
cultures, as well as people who are new immigrants.
We just have to keep in mind, no matter where we are in the country, we're not born
with the knowledge of how to treat people who are different from us with sensitivity
and look at it from their perspective.

17:18 Tom Floyd Great point.

17:20 Dr. Earl Excellent point.
Honeycutt

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17:23 Tom Floyd Earl, one quick last question.
I noticed in your book there was a chapter on stereotyping, for example.
Can you talk to us a little bit more about why people stereotype and how those
stereotypes can impact the way that companies market?

17:40 Dr. Earl Stereotyping is basically a positive or a negative generalization that we apply to all
Honeycutt members of a cultural, racial or religious group.
The unfortunate thing about stereotypes is that they're inflexible.
We tend to believe that all people behave in a certain way when that's just not true
and if we fall into that trap as we're dealing with customers, advertising, promoting,
selling to them, we make some pretty bad mistakes.
Because even within a group, even though they may be religious or they may be
frugal or whatever that we might somehow stereotype, there are great variations.
Some people may or may not be religious or they may be slightly religious where
other people are very dogmatic.
You make a terrible mistake or blunder when you start to stereotype people because
everybody is going to be different depending upon their socioeconomic status,
perhaps they are professional or worker, or perhaps where did they come from, did
they grow up in a large city or a countryside, are they younger or older, how long
have they lived in the current culture or current country, and then obviously the time
period, whether you're interacting with them in an emergency or just a very stressful
period.
Stereotyping is very dangerous so you certainly don't want to do that

19:10 Tom Floyd Certainly.
Jeff, I want to turn to you. We definitely want to focus on what some companies like
Verizon have really done to address and market towards the various multi-cultural
groups across our country, and for that matter, the world as a whole.
An initial question based on the article in the Denver Post that I shared at the
beginning, in terms of your experience has data like this not only captured Corporate
America's attention, but really has kind of set the stage for changing the way that
companies are marketing today?

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19:56 Jeff McFarland I think this data has caught the attention of marketers all over Corporate America, but
this data is not new.
This is census data that was started in the year 2000.
So we know that by the year 2010, African American and the Hispanic segment will
have buying power well over a trillion dollars. I believe it's about 579 billion for the
Asian market.
What we've done at Verizon, is we recognize that all of our customers are important
to us.
We also recognize the importance of communicating in a way that's relevant to them,
and that's acknowledging their culture.
So there are some things that we'll talk about on how we market to them, but we take
it a step further.
It's about having that sales and that service center so that you can really meet their
needs and give them solutions that make their life better, and we've been doing that
for about ten years.

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Welcome back to Insight on Coaching, I’m Tom Floyd.
24:00 Tom Floyd
Today the topic is Coaching Toward Multi-Cultural Selling.
With me are Shelley Willingham-Hinton, Coach, Founder and President of The
National Organization for Diversity in Sales and Marketing, Dr. Earl Honeycutt,
Professor of Marketing and Sales Management at Elon University and author of
“Selling Outside Your Cultural Zone,” Michael Soon Lee, Coach and President of
EthnoConnect, and Jeff McFarland, Executive Director of Multicultural Marketing at
Verizon.
Well we set the stage in the first part of our show in terms of what multiculture means
and discussed how the landscape is looking in terms of some of the trends within
various multi-cultural groups.
In this segment of our show we'd like to spend some time talking about how
Corporate America has responded to these trends, especially from a marketing and
sales perspective.
Some more data to set the stage.
According to Entrepreneur.com columnist Rachel Meranus writes, “All
business segments have an opportunity with multicultural markets. But the
categories that tend to do the best when engaging in multicultural marketing
efforts are: food and beverage, automotive, apparel, personal care,
entertainment, sports, telecommunications, health care, banking and finance,
and insurance.”
According to the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), “Multicultural
marketing is no longer new; it is not an add-on nor should it have a one-
dimensional approach (i.e., have a single message for all African Americans
or all Hispanics). Many progressive organizations have incorporated
multicultural marketing into their overall business models. Meanwhile,
multicultural markets have not only grown but have become increasingly
complex. There are issues of acculturation. Multiracial marriages are blurring
the lines between distinct segments, and the ethnic population is no longer
concentrated in just the major markets.
Shelly, I'd like to start with you.
What are your thoughts on some of the information from Entrepreneur.com?
Do some business segments engage more effectively in multi-cultural marketing
efforts than others?

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25:44 Shelly I think that from our experience, what we found is the companies that are really
Willingham- starting to do it well and do a good job at it are the companies that are selling
Hinton business-to-consumer--and maybe, Earl, you can talk a little bit more about the
business-to-business piece--but I think that's where there needs to be a little bit more
work done, on the business-to-business piece.
Business-to-consumer, it's obvious to see that your sales force or your message
needs to get straight to your consumer to make the difference.
So I think the companies that are selling directly to the consumer base are really
doing a good job of that and starting to recognize that that's needed.
But from a business-to-business perspective, I think there needs to be some work
done. And maybe, Earl, you can elaborate a little bit on that.

26:32 Dr. Earl I agree, Shelly. Thank you.
Honeycutt
I think we see that consumers are out there and they have different needs as far as
food products, beauty products, clothing, we could go through a number of consumer
goods, and companies are providing different goods based upon their culture and
things like that.
In the business-to-business, we're talking about machinery and other types of goods
that are used to produce products.
A lot of people have not recognized yet the importance of multi-cultural, that there are
a lot of women businesses, African American businesses, Latino businesses, and
dealing with these folks, it's a different ballgame from just going in and talking to a
European American.
It's not the same concept, the same way of communicating, the same way of
approaching, the same way of assuring, is not going to be the same, and so a lot of
the business-to-business companies need to start doing more in this way to train,
hire adaptive salespeople and do what's necessary to approach and serve the
customer the way they want to be served.

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27:42 Michael Soon What I've found is that the longer and deeper the relationship needs to be, the more
Lee important it is to be culturally competent.
When you're selling a car certainly the relationship has to be deeper and longer than
if you're just selling socks over the counter.
Which, by the way, if you are culturally competent, you can sell a lot of socks, too,
but it doesn't have the same kind of profit margin when you're selling insurance or
you're selling a home to someone.
If you don't build the relationship in a way that's comfortable to the customer,
obviously they don't feel comfortable enough to buy from you or make that next step
or that big investment.
So I've seen the longer and deeper that relationship needs to be, the more people
need to be culturally competent.

28:28 Dr. Earl It's about establishing trust.
Honeycutt
And if you establish trust, again it's being respectful, doing what's best for the
customer, communicating with them the way that they want to be communicated and
they feel like they've won at the end of the transaction or the end of the business buy,
then they're more likely to come back because they know that you'll take care of
them and do what's right.

28:51 Michael Soon The sad thing is though that a lot of businesses insult, especially people from other
Lee countries and other cultures, they insult folks the minute they walk in by trying to
shake their hand when they don't want to, giving them eye contact when they don't
want it, standing too close or too far away.
Not on purpose and certainly not discrimination, but just not being aware that there
are these cultural differences that can build trust more quickly, and if you're unaware
of it can really break trust very quickly.

29:20 Dr. Earl Let me just give you a quick example.
Honeycutt
One of my friends was a European American and he had an auto dealership and he
had a lot of Asian Americans coming in and they always brought their father with
them.
And so he realized very quickly that the grandfather or the father had a lot of
influence, and so he would bring his father in, who was about 75, on the weekends,
and the first thing he would do is he would introduce the Asian family, “oh, this is my
father and he helps me here and I always listen to him”, and right away many Asian
customers felt more comfortable because his father was there.

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29:58 Michael Soon That's beautiful.
Lee

29:59 Tom Floyd That is fascinating.
What's the best way, just in general for the average person out there, what's the best
way or resources or places where someone can go to become more multi-cultural
sensitive?
Are there multi-cultural workshops out there?
What is the best way for people really just to learn more so that they're making some
of these mistakes less frequently?

30:28 Michael Soon I think it's quite simple.
Lee
If you're really serious about increasing your sales to people from other countries,
other cultures, there's plenty of resources out there.
Shelly has a great conference that goes on every single year.
Earl has a book.
I do seminars.
There are plenty of resources if you want to find them. So that's not the challenge.
The main challenge is that people have to just stop assuming that people want to be
treated in any particular way, that they want to have their hand shaken, that they give
you the normal eye contact that Americans are used to, and start letting the customer
determine how people should be greeted.

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31:09 Jeff McFarland I agree with that.
It's important that you understand who your customer base is and how they want to
be communicated to.
I know here at Verizon, for over ten years we've had service centers set up--my
business is a little different.
Because although I have some stores that are brick and mortar, the Verizon Plus or
Experience stores, we even have wireless stores.
The majority of our customers for local telephone service and broadband service will
call us over the telephone. We handle millions of calls per month.
So it's important for us, especially when we're dealing with our Hispanic and Latino
customers or our Asian customers, that even in the Asian market we don't just group
them all into one market because they're not all the same.
So we found that it's very important to reach that customer and give them a way to
reach us in a culturally relevant way, where we're acculturated and we understand
their needs.
We've got over a thousand employees that are committed, skilled, and they go
through training and they're part of the community that they're serving and we've
found that that's been very successful for us.

32:16 Michael Soon Are you finding that the cultures that are more collective, the Hispanics, the Asians,
Lee the African Americans, tend to prefer that face-to-face contact as opposed to phone
or internet?

32:28 Jeff McFarland No.
I think when you're speaking to somebody that's of your culture, they can have a
relevant conversation, they understand your needs. T
he needs for the African American segment may be a little different when you're
talking about a broadband product than the Asian segment or the Hispanic segment.
So when you've got somebody that's trained and understands your culture, those can
be very comfortable conversations over the telephone.

32:52 Michael Soon So it all comes back to that cultural competency training that you provide.
Lee

32:55 Jeff McFarland Correct.

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32:57 Tom Floyd Can you talk more about your experience with Verizon as well, and highlight some of
the things Verizon has done to support its sales team to develop multi-cultural
strategies?

33:14 Jeff McFarland Yes.
Our employees are trained in the centers.
But one of the things we do, we don't call them service centers any longer.
They're called solution centers. Because our employees in all of our centers, but
especially the multilingual centers, they are trained and they understand that we
provide solutions for our customers.
But we've got to understand their culture and what their need is in order to provide
those solutions.

33:39 Shelly Can you talk a little bit about the Realize Campaign that Verizon did?
Willingham-
Hinton

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33:45 Jeff McFarland Yes.
The Realize Campaign was a campaign we started 18 months ago.
It was very successful in the African American community.
It all starts with customer insights.
We spoke a little earlier about you can't approach a segment and just assume that
everybody in that segment is the same.
The target that we were after were those folks that have the entrepreneurial spirit.
In the African American community a lot of folks wants to be entrepreneurs.
We came up with the campaign Realize, which was all about realizing your ambition,
realizing your dreams, realizing the possibility, but how you can use Verizon products
and services, mainly broadband services, to help you realize those dreams and
possibilities.
It was a 360 approach because everything is not done in print and on television.
There were grassroots marketing programs.
There were sponsorships.
There were ways that were developed to reach the African American community so
that we could get this point across, but also give them an opportunity to experience
our products and services.
One of the parts that made it very successful is we used real folks from the
community, our consumers, our customers, as they told their stories about what
dreams and realities they wanted and how Verizon products helped them reach
those.

35:03 Shelly I think that was brilliant and I think it speaks to the point, when people are going to
Willingham- start a multi-cultural marketing campaign, it's not okay and it's not enough--and I'm
Hinton sure Michael can attest to this too--it's not okay just to put an Asian face in an ad or a
black face in an ad, your same mainstream advertising and put that into ethnic
advertising and think that's your Asian marketing strategy or African American
marketing strategy.
You have to really go much deeper and I think Verizon did an excellent job of that
with the Realize Campaign.

35:33 Jeff McFarland That's one of the things that we realized, the old days of just putting somebody in a
print ad that looks like me.
That was the start of diversity and that's about representation.
Multi-culturalism takes it to that next step, where it's not just representation, but
you're communicating me to me in a relevant way, something that I can relate to.

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35:54 Michael Soon I think that also brings up one important thing.
Lee
We talk about not stereotyping, but we also have to let our audience know and
remind them that, for example, Hispanics are not just one culture called Hispanics,
there are at least six different groups that call themselves Hispanics, including the
Mexicans, which are the largest group, but then you've got South Americans, Central
Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and of course people from Spain, and they're all
very different.
Asians are 17 separate different cultures that all speak different languages, have
different foods.
And when you say don't put an Asian face up there if you're trying to attract Chinese
people, you definitely don't want to put a Korean face up there because Chinese
people know the difference.

36:39 Jeff McFarland You're absolutely right.
One of the things that we do at Verizon, we've got a website that highlights our
broadband products and we have it in Chinese and in Korean.
In our call centers, we not only handle just Chinese, but Mandarin and Cantonese,
Korean, Russian and Vietnamese.
So it is a difference.

37:00 Shelly One other thing I'd like to just point out is, for the African American segment, there
Willingham- are a lot of companies that think, well, because African Americans speak English we
Hinton can market to them the same way and don't take into account the cultural differences
within that segment.
Yes, African Americans speak English, but the culture is very different.
Maybe, Michael, you can add onto that as well.
A lot of companies often struggle with that.
They put money into a campaign that's about language, but when you talk about
groups of people that speak the same language, really digging in and understanding
that there are actual cultural differences that you need to take into account outside of
just language.

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40:18 Tom Floyd Welcome back to Insight on Coaching, I’m Tom Floyd.
Today the topic is Coaching Toward Multi-Cultural Selling.
With me are Shelley Willingham-Hinton, Dr. Earl Honeycutt, Michael Soon Lee, and
Jeff McFarland.
In this segment of our show, I’d like to focus on how organizations are using coaches
to help build multicultural marketing and sales strategies. Some data to set the
stage:
Now according to one of our guests on today’s show, Michael Soon Lee,
“Multicultural marketing is not enough to sell to Latinos, African Americans
and Asians in the U.S. To sell to minorities in America, your sales staff must
be trained to provide culturally-competent sales presentations and customer
service or they won’t buy from you. Questions to ask include:
How can companies increase sales to multicultural customers?
What do companies do wrong when it comes to multicultural marketing?
What is “cultural competence” and how does it affect salespeople?
Michael, to start with you, just a general question first.
What are some of the typical challenges in developing or rolling out a multi-cultural
marketing strategy?

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41:29 Michael Soon I think the first thing one has to do is recognize that you just can't place ads.
Lee
Because if people come into your store or office and aren't treated appropriately,
they're not going to buy from you anyway.
The second thing you've got to recognize is you've got to help your front line staff,
whether it be cashiers or salespeople or others.
What is their own cultural lens?
What assumptions do they make about certain people?
What words do they use?
Because some words can be very, very appropriate with some groups; some words
can be very inappropriate.
Let me just give you one example.
If you're working with an African American customer, for example, the word quot;uniquequot;
or quot;specialquot; could be very attractive to them.
Again, we don't want to stereotype anybody, but you're going to look at the words
that they use, and if you hear them using similar words, those are the features that
you want to emphasize with that particular consumer.
Whereas with other groups, such as Hispanics and Asians, they're a little more
collectivist, they tend to want to fit in or belong or be part of the group, so you
wouldn't want to use quot;special,quot; quot;unique,quot; quot;one of a kind.quot;
You might want to say things like “this is our most popular model”, things of that
nature.
So just being aware of the words you use, your body language, things of that nature,
can really help you to be much more sensitive to people and they'll trust a lot quicker.

42:55 Tom Floyd How are coaches typically able to help address challenges like this with
organizations, or with individual leaders within organizations for that matter?

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43:05 Michael Soon With the individual leader you want to make sure that everybody is being provided
Lee with cultural competence training.
Anybody who is going to have any kind of interface, and that's not just with
salespeople, we tend to assume that's the place to go, but it's also people who ring
up the register, cashiers, people in the back office who might answer the telephone,
service personnel is a whole other issue, but you've got to make sure that everybody
who has interface with the consumer who might be different has that kind of training.
A coach can help coach these folks to be aware of their own cultural lenses, their
own biases, their own prejudices, and just to help them be aware that differences are
not wrong, they're just different.
How people do things that might be a little different from the way you might do things
is just different and it's not wrong and don’t' let it put you off or hurt your sales.

44:00 Tom Floyd When you've worked with some people from a coaching perspective, what are some
examples of goals, or are there typical goals that you helped clients put in place for
developing or improving their multi-cultural sales and marketing efforts?

44:17 Michael Soon I think the first mistake that a lot of people make when coaching is they kind of get
Lee very vague and general, quot;I want to be more culturally sensitive.quot;
How do you do that?
As a coach you know that you need real specific and measurable goals.
What cultures do you want to learn more about?
Would you like to learn more about just how to make people feel more comfortable?
Do you want to build trust quicker?
What are the specific areas that you want to work on?
One of the best ways to find that out is to do a cultural competence survey, many of
which are available online. I've got one on my website at EthnoConnect.com.
There are many, many other resources, but find out first of all, what are your areas
that you might need improvement on and then which ones would you like to work on,
and that's where a coach can really help you to improve yourself and hold you
accountable.

45:06 Tom Floyd What are some of the methods or categories within a survey like that that the data
really targets?

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45:13 Michael Soon It's, number one, adjusting your sales presentation to meet the needs of other
Lee people, the words you use, your body language. Everything from A to Z. Just how
can you be more sensitive to people's culture, how do you meet them, how do you
build trust, do you get referrals, and how do you approach that process. Because
that's a crucial issue.
People from collectivist cultures like Asians and Hispanics love giving referrals, and
as Jeff knows, this is the absolute best way to get business, but we don't always
know how to ask for those referrals in a way that someone from another country or
another culture would feel comfortable and obligated to giving you a referral.
Those are all measurable issues.
Anything in a survey would be able to give you those rubrics.

46:02 Jeff McFarland I kind of build it up as relationship building.
You've got to be able to build a relationship, and in order to build a relationship with a
multi-cultural customer you've got to understand them.

46:17 Tom Floyd Really understanding what they're about and what's important to them can only help
build that relationship and take it further.

46:26 Jeff McFarland Correct.
If you don't understand what's important to them it's going to be hard to communicate
to them.

46:32 Tom Floyd A question that I wanted to ask about coaching at Verizon.
Has Verizon or did Verizon use outside coaches or other resources in developing its
overall multi-cultural marketing strategy?

46:47 Jeff McFarland When we look at our multi-cultural marketing strategy, I look at coaches, as some of
our advertising agencies that are external.
They helped us to build some the marketing strategies and campaigns.
We also have extensive internal staff.
When we look at our sales force, we have an internal training department that works
with all of our sales and solution consultants in the company.

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47:13 Tom Floyd From your perspective, what benefits could a coach offer leaders of your sales team,
or just sales teams in general if you're speaking to other leaders out there in
Corporate America?

47:26 Jeff McFarland The thing to understand in the multi-cultural marketplace is that it is ever changing.
The way that you communicated to African Americans five years ago is not
necessarily the way you communicate today.
I look at my household personally.
A lot of my purchase decisions are based on my 17-year-old teenager.
I didn't get cable or television at my house until my teenager said it was time.
I didn't get broadband services until my teenager said it was time.
So a lot of decisions that we make in the African American marketplace may be
based on the children in the household, families with children.
When you look at the Hispanic segment, it may be based on the rest of the family,
how do we communicate with the family or how do we keep the family in touch with
each other.
But these cultural insights are changing all the time, so therefore you've got to go
outside sometimes and make sure that you're up to date with that relevant
information.

48:24 Tom Floyd It's really keeping the pulse up to date and making sure you're understanding how
each group is changing.

48:30 Jeff McFarland Exactly.

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48:31 Shelly One of the things that our organization does, the way we approach diversity and
Willingham- multi-culturalism is just strictly how it affects the bottom line, so how companies can
Hinton leverage diversity in their entire business strategy to positively impact the bottom line.
One of the things that we definitely work with our partners on is ensuring that when
they institute a multi-cultural marketing campaign or decide to spend millions of
dollars on this campaign, that it's not getting diluted when it hits the field.
As Michael was talking about, having that cultural competence.
You have to make sure that your field sales team and your other front line people
know what's out there being marketed to make sure that your external and your
internal communications match up.
There have been several cases where there have been wonderful multi-cultural
marketing campaigns so you definitely got the attention of your consumer, but when
they got to your store or your bank or your dealership, as Michael said before, they
weren't treated right so you didn't make a sale.
A lot of companies will take a look at that and say, “okay, multi-cultural marketing
doesn't work.”
It does work, but you have to make sure that you have it implemented throughout
your entire business structure, definitely at your front line so you can see the results
of the actual campaign.
That's something that we really try to drive home with our marketers, is to make sure
that you're not going to be able to judge the effectiveness unless you make sure that
the people that are delivering it are culturally competent enough to do that.

49:56 Jeff McFarland That is so important.
Because if you've got a campaign out in the marketplace and your sales force
doesn't know about it or doesn't understand it, when the phones start ringing or
people start visiting your location, you're going to lose that opportunity for the sale.

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50:12 Tom Floyd Another question related to the sales force in the field.
Where do the needs for multi-cultural marketing come from?
I see different scenarios out there.
I see situations where the field communicates back to corporate: We need more
training on this, we need more education on this, help us.
I see other situations where it could be marketing or HR or other groups determining:
“We think you, the field, needs training on this, so you will go through training on
this.”
How does that normally work for multi-cultural sensitivity and things like that?
Is the sales force within various companies typically realizing, “we need more training
on this”, or is it more internally the organization realizing, based on metrics and
changes in the marketplace, things like that, “I need to get my people up to speed
more on things like this?”

51:13 Shelly From our experience it's really kind of been driven by recruiting.
Willingham-
We have built a lot of our relationships around diversity recruiting and helping
Hinton
companies find more diverse sales and marketing talent.
Because if you think about putting together a multi-cultural marketing campaign, if
everybody in the room looks the same how are you really going to be able to deliver
a creative and insightful campaign for a particular group.
So recognizing that as corporations they need to definitely have their workforce be as
reflective as they can of their consumer base.
In a lot of cases when we get involved with recruiting a division, or diversity recruiting
teams, is when we're able to filter through the rest of the organization and they can
kind of see the disconnects sometimes between your sales force and the marketing
divisions and the light bulb kind of comes on, “okay, if we're going to have this
diversity recruiting strategy then maybe we need to take a look at how we're
marketing to these different consumers.”

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52:11 Michael Soon I would agree that a lot of this is driven by HR and trying to find people of diverse
Lee cultures.
The challenge is, number one, there aren't enough people to go around.
For example, in the National Association of Realtors, only five percent of their
realtors are currently people from diverse cultures and over a third of our country
today is composed of people from other cultures.
But also recognize the fact that while it's a great thing to try and bring a few people
from your target audience into your staff, in the meantime while you're doing that,
recognize that people from other cultures don't necessarily have to or want to work
with somebody from their own culture.
Many people, in fact, look deliberately outside of their own culture because of privacy
issues and other kinds of things, where they may not even want to work with
somebody from their own culture.
Which is why most of my work for the last 15 years has really been in the area of
training Caucasian salespeople on just how to be a little more culturally sensitive and
they're finding that it works very, very well; in addition to trying to bring in folks from
other cultures as well.

53:22 Tom Floyd Interesting.
Earl, anything that you would add?

53:26 Dr. Earl Yes.
Honeycutt
I agree wholeheartedly with everything that's been said because I think good
salespeople have to be adaptive.
You can't match up certain cultural groups with the people that are going to sale to
them, or vice versa, salespeople and customers can't be matched up precisely, so
we have to have adaptive salespeople who are, again, accepting, respectful and
willing to sell to people the way they want to be sold to.

53:55 Tom Floyd A huge thank you to the four of you for joining us today.
And always, a big thank you to our listeners as well.
For more information about our show you can look us up on the Voice America
business channel, you can visit our website at www.ieconsulting.biz , and you can
always feel free to drop me an email at tfloyd@ieconsulting.biz .
You can also access the podcast version of this show as well through Apple iTunes.
Thanks everyone, we'll see you next week!

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