American Vs Chinese Sales Technique - A Comparison

[German_EE]

This afternoon I spent a few hours trying to find a 15 inch wide screen monitor with a VGA interface. This took some time as most of the world has now moved on to larger screen sizes but, eventually, I found a company in the USA who had just what I needed. So, I emailed them and asked how much one of these monitors would cost and what the shipping charges to Germany would be. Their reply? "Sorry but we only supply to the continental USA, thanks".

This evening after watching a quick review of a cellphone on Big Clive's YouTube channel I did some investigating to find out some more about the manufacturer. Their web pages are available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Russian. You can contact their customer care team using either their landline phone, a mobile phone, email, Skype, QQ or WhatsApp. If you want to buy in bulk they give the same details for their European and Middle East / African Sales Managers and, should I wish to, I even have the contact details of the Sales Director. So, I emailed them and asked if a spare battery is available for their new phone (it's nice to have a spare) and within three minutes I received a reply confirming that it was and how should they ship to Germany?

I've dealt with the Far East before and encountered things like 2 Euro shipping on an item being sent from half way around the planet. The Chinese are getting the business because they want to sell 'stuff' and, it seems to me, that the west have just given up.

How long before there is no alternative to electronics made in China?

[John_ITIC]

I think the issue is that, due to the high cost of labor in the USA, little time is spent on the "small" customer or anything that takes an extra effort. This is why financially successful American companies most often becomes marketing-driven, focusing heavily on peddling their stuff but much less on actually putting in the proper amount of engineering. This is apparently "needed" to survive these days in the "new global economy"...

[Rick Law]

I think the issue is that, due to the high cost of labor in the USA, little time is spent on the "small" customer or anything that takes an extra effort. This is why financially successful American companies most often becomes marketing-driven, focusing heavily on peddling their stuff but much less on actually putting in the proper amount of engineering. This is apparently "needed" to survive these days in the "new global economy"...

I think it is beyond cost of labor.  There is a distinct "lack of hunger" here with "the average staff".  It seems they disconnected their "job" with the need for revenue for the company.  At the more senior level, more people seem to take ownership.

Of course, not all at staff level behave like that.  I don't fully understand, why is one customer service agent taking the responsibility of "this is my company and I got to make the customer think well of us" whereas, next cubicle down, another seemingly exact same person (education/salary...etc) would say "who give a ***".  I don't fully understand what caused such differences.  Where is that hunger of "I will make it as good as I can because my name is on it (figuratively speaking)."  I don't understand such lack of taking ownership.  I just chock it up to poor attitude without digging further.

[chicken]

I think it is beyond cost of labor.  There is a distinct "lack of hunger" here with "the average staff".  It seems they disconnected their "job" with the need for revenue for the company.  At the more senior level, more people seem to take ownership.

Of course, not all at staff level behave like that.  I don't fully understand, why is one customer service agent taking the responsibility of "this is my company and I got to make the customer think well of us" whereas, next cubicle down, another seemingly exact same person (education/salary...etc) would say "who give a ***".  I don't fully understand what caused such differences.  Where is that hunger of "I will make it as good as I can because my name is on it (figuratively speaking)."  I don't understand such lack of taking ownership.  I just chock it up to poor attitude without digging further.

One reason might be, that the person a cubicle down experienced that the company itself doesn't give a *** about it's employees either.

[Rick Law]

I think it is beyond cost of labor.  There is a distinct "lack of hunger" here with "the average staff".  It seems they disconnected their "job" with the need for revenue for the company.  At the more senior level, more people seem to take ownership.

Of course, not all at staff level behave like that.  I don't fully understand, why is one customer service agent taking the responsibility of "this is my company and I got to make the customer think well of us" whereas, next cubicle down, another seemingly exact same person (education/salary...etc) would say "who give a ***".  I don't fully understand what caused such differences.  Where is that hunger of "I will make it as good as I can because my name is on it (figuratively speaking)."  I don't understand such lack of taking ownership.  I just chock it up to poor attitude without digging further.

One reason might be, that the person a cubicle down experienced that the company itself doesn't give a *** about it's employees either.

That may be true for some companies, and they probably end up failing.  Successful companies understand that the company cannot succeed until most of the employee take success of the company as part of his/her goal.  As such, they will reward the employees correspondingly.

Free market company cannot exists if it doesn't get the employee cost vs contribution equation right.  Taking the company's success as part of the employee's own goal increases the employee's value to the company.  Bad attitude can bring the employee's value to zero overnight.

[sleemanj]

"Sorry but we only supply to the continental USA, thanks".

True of a lot of companies in the US for various reasons, but usually it comes down to "international shipping is a bit more of a hassle, and the continental US is big enough a market for us, so why bother".

That's why re-shipping services exist to accept your parcel in the US and ship it to you.  Of course then you have companies (*cough* McMaster-Carr *cough*) who don't even allow you to do that, if they find out, because they are scared of potentially violating US export laws or something.

[CatalinaWOW]

I suspect folks in China are lots closer to an understanding that failure has consequences (and that success has rewards). 

Here in the states you frequently have to screw up frequently to get fired, and when companies fail there are lots of external factors to blame such as cheap foreign labor, government regulation, wall street short sightedness and on down the line.   From reading this blog I suspect that this is not unique to the US.

[ajb]

"Sorry but we only supply to the continental USA, thanks".

True of a lot of companies in the US for various reasons, but usually it comes down to "international shipping is a bit more of a hassle, and the continental US is big enough a market for us, so why bother".

That's why re-shipping services exist to accept your parcel in the US and ship it to you.  Of course then you have companies (*cough* McMaster-Carr *cough*) who don't even allow you to do that, if they find out, because they are scared of potentially violating US export laws or something.

I was going to suggest export restrictions as a factor as well.  They're an enormous pain, and in fact McMaster-Carr's policies make perfect sense.  The way the law is written, if you sell an item to someone and they then export that item improperly, you can be prosecuted even if you didn't know they were going to export it.  If you sell components to someone, and they use those components to build a widget which they then export improperly, you can be prosecuted if your components account for more than a certain percentage of the value of the widget.  Once you've read the relevant laws you start thinking very carefully about whether or not the export market is really worth the trouble.

[all_repair]

Most of us are trained to get more, you put in more.  Modern day best practises are getting more and more by putting in less and less.  No alarmist here, quite a banking industry in SGP, rich bankers and not so rich people in those industry I met have a totally different way of thinking.  Guess who gets the bigger cars and bigger house?  Silly me, I am still discouraging my kids to be like them.

[coppice]

My mom shipped me a 30kg package from China to US, and spent $30.

Later I shipped her a 6kg package from US to China, it cost me bloody $70, and this is the cheapest I can find.

A decade ago it wasn't like that. I had large heavy objects shipped from the US to HK in the early 2000s at very reasonable prices. Now my main reason for not buying from Amazon is the crazy shipping costs..

[DimitriP]

You are not describing sales technique.
You are describing behavior based on how much of a pain in the ass AND expensive it is to ship from the US to hmm... anywhere

I just calculated shipping 10kg UPS from los angeles to stuttgart and from new york to stuttgart........... $235 and $223  Yikes

for 30KG I could probably buy a ticket to stuttgart....checking.... ok planning one month ahead $664 to $893 for a return ticket from New York to Stuttgard....kinda crazy...
unless you are an EU finance minister, then you fly anywhere anytime all the time.

[AndyC_772]

Was that particular monitor CE marked? They might simply not be allowed to sell it into Europe for that reason.

[GNU_Ninja]

Was that particular monitor CE marked? They might simply not be allowed to sell it into Europe for that reason.

No problem.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Adhesive-Labels-Stickers-Black-Print/dp/B00CCCT5R8/ref=sr_1_1/280-8732652-5433854?ie=UTF8&qid=1444721785&sr=8-1&keywords=ce+stickers

CE stickers are cheap. Free delivery too 

[tszaboo]

I think the issue is that, due to the high cost of labor in the USA, little time is spent on the "small" customer or anything that takes an extra effort. This is why financially successful American companies most often becomes marketing-driven, focusing heavily on peddling their stuff but much less on actually putting in the proper amount of engineering. This is apparently "needed" to survive these days in the "new global economy"...

The cost of labor in the US is below the Euro Zone.
It is the mentality which needs to change. The average American never leaves the country, and the end of the world is where they can drive with one fill of the fuel tank.
Making something for one market is fine, failing to understand that your product can have a much wider market is insanity.

[Jeroen3]

Spot on. The mentality. A lot of smaller US based companies don't even tell on their website that they are US based.
They just assume that everyone knows Some street in Some city with some ST abbreviation is the US.
Example:

Physical Address:
SparkFun Electronics
6333 Dry Creek Parkway
Niwot, CO 80503

Everyone probably knows they are US based. In Colorado, usa? But still.

[VK3DRB]

How long before there is no alternative to electronics made in China?

If I recall, in 1993 a Sumitomo plant caught fire, creating a world wide shortage of IC packaging resins. The plant made half of the entire world's IC package material. Memory chip supply was hit hard and memory prices skyrocketted for about a year as speculators bought up remaining stocks of memory. It should have been a warning to the world not to have all your eggs in one supply chain basket.

If the single source supplier, the so-called People's Republic of China closes down in a few years, the Sumitomo effect will be much worse. When the disenchanted Chinese workers start to organise using technology, it will be the end of the corrupt communist regime but the country will likely collapse back into civil war as power struggles ensue. Capital will flood out of the country. The electronics industry will collapse as the supply chain is destroyed. As their economy falters, unemployment will add fuel to the fire. In fact, the ruling class families (Politburo and Central Committee) are already preparing by smuggling billions of dollars out of China into offshore accounts and buying trophy homes in the West.

The West have put all their red eggs in the Chinese basket. Manufacturing is almost gone from our shores. When turmoil comes, prices will sky-rocket and manufactured goods will be in extremely short supply creating high inflation and economic turmoil. But it will be short lived. The Japanese economy will do well as demand for quality Japanese SMT machines, Japanese manufacturing skills, infrastructure and quality components shifts into overdrive. South Korea and Taiwan will do exceptionally well too as they pull their manufacturing out of China and have a new big demand by new customers for their goods. But countries like Australia might struggle to restore manufacturing because the infrastructure, capital equipment and highly skilled workers are long gone, discarded by politicians who lost the vision of the knowledge nation years ago.

The West might finally learn... don't put all your eggs in the one basket, and you don't get into bed with an enemy you pretend is a friend.

Fortunately, many smart countries will once again proudly reclaim their electronics industry. Prices will be higher, but so will quality. Free countries like Taiwan, Japan and South Korea stand to do exceptionally well long term. Higher prices for electronics is a good thing in many aspects.

I give the Chinese Communist Party to 5 to 10 years life expectancy. If this sounds ridiculous, who'd have thought in 1989 the evil East German communist regime would be crushed by "we the people" in 1990.

[Richard Crowley]

I think it is beyond cost of labor.  There is a distinct "lack of hunger" here with "the average staff".  It seems they disconnected their "job" with the need for revenue for the company.  At the more senior level, more people seem to take ownership.

Of course, not all at staff level behave like that.  I don't fully understand, why is one customer service agent taking the responsibility of "this is my company and I got to make the customer think well of us" whereas, next cubicle down, another seemingly exact same person (education/salary...etc) would say "who give a ***". ...

One reason might be, that the person a cubicle down experienced that the company itself doesn't give a *** about it's employees either.

It is a vicious circle. If you ran the company, which employee would you keep if you had to make a choice?  The one who understands the basic economics and works for the best interest of the employer (and subsequently themselves), vs. the one who doesn't care.  The answer is obvious.

[karoru]

"Sorry but we only supply to the continental USA, thanks".

True of a lot of companies in the US for various reasons, but usually it comes down to "international shipping is a bit more of a hassle, and the continental US is big enough a market for us, so why bother".

It's not only the US thing. I've bought (in Poland) some German electric sharpening gizmo (it's nothing fancy and I wouldn't try to sharp my beloved kitchen knifes on it, but does the job perfectly for thing like drills etc), and I wanted to buy spare grinding disks. So i get to the manual, written in beautiful Polish, "go to www.wunderbarhottentottentools.com to order spare parts". So here I go, and I get some straight-from-the-nineties-designed online shop (it had several languages to choose from, but all of them ended to be German), and yes, here it is! Beautiful disks for just a couple of euros each. "We ship to: Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Japan(!!), Belgium, Russia, [...]", not Poland of course. But even if we assumed that I'm Japanese drill-sharpening-gizmos afficionado, the only way to pay for the product was bank transfer to German account. Not any of these paypal, credit card or any other modern way to send cash rubbish. It would probably be faster and cheaper to put that money in the envelope and send it three times to ensure that at least one of letters would actually make the trip unrobbed.
And sorry, I didn't want to blame Germany specifically, I had many orders from German stores which arrived to me 2 days sharp after the order:)

[Towger]

Bank transfer in Europe is all by SEPA now. You should be able to transfer next working day to any country for the cost of a local transaction.   In fact it is supposed to the Real Time, but that's another rant.
The laugh is, I can transfer euro via SEPA a sterling account in the UK next day. But a sterling transaction goes via BACS, so takes 3 days.

[John Coloccia]

I think the issue is that, due to the high cost of labor in the USA, little time is spent on the "small" customer or anything that takes an extra effort. This is why financially successful American companies most often becomes marketing-driven, focusing heavily on peddling their stuff but much less on actually putting in the proper amount of engineering. This is apparently "needed" to survive these days in the "new global economy"...

The cost of labor in the US is below the Euro Zone.
It is the mentality which needs to change. The average American never leaves the country, and the end of the world is where they can drive with one fill of the fuel tank.
Making something for one market is fine, failing to understand that your product can have a much wider market is insanity.

You don't understand what a pain in the butt it is to sell in Europe. I sell worldwide EXCEPT in the EU. I've yet to figure out precisely what I need to do to be compliant with RoHS, WEEE and CE, and every time I spend a few hours looking into it I get lost in a mess of bureaucracy, different rules for each country, etc etc. Unless you're doing a lot of selling in Europe, it just doesn't really seem worth the effort.

[Jeroen3]

Vice versa, we don't sell parts to the US because of the many lawsuits you can start there for the smallest user mistake. Happened too many times.

[Rick Law]

Vice versa, we don't sell parts to the US because of the many lawsuits you can start there for the smallest user mistake. Happened too many times.

In the news today is about an Aunt's $100,000 suit against her nephew for running into her in a party and broke her arm (or wrist).  Some talk show caller defended her because that is the only way to get home-owner insurance to pay for the medical bill.  These days, with the rapid cost increase with medical insurance, $10000 or higher deductible is back in style.  Not to debate high deductible is good or bad, but we created the condition we are in.

In the USA, many feel we should begin universal (all cases) "looser pays all legal cost."  In many cases, people can suit to recover legal cost but that itself is additional legal cost.  But that effort seem to go now where each time it re-surfaces.

As the saying goes, we deserve the government we elected.

[Mechanical Menace]

As the saying goes, we deserve the government we elected.

You don't get to elect a government. You get to pick between two candidates who will do whatever they've been paid to do before they even start running for office. Even if you have something like primaries they're just a façade, giving you a choice between people who have already been bought and paid for, paid to ignore what voters want and suck Exon-Mobil's and BP's cocks. At the same time.

[John Coloccia]

Vice versa, we don't sell parts to the US because of the many lawsuits you can start there for the smallest user mistake. Happened too many times.

Look, we can go back and forth all night playing "your country sucks worse than my country". I'm just telling you that from a small business point of view, you need to be doing a good amount of business in the EU to make it worth even considering. Practically everywhere else in the world I just fill out the customs declaration and mail it. To do business in the EU with electronics, easiest is probably to hook up with a dealer/distributor that can do the import and handle the paperwork, but that just makes it a lot more expensive for the customer. If it were easier and less expensive to give it a go, I'm sure you'd probably see a lot more companies far willing to do business in the EU. It's too bad because I'd like to tap into that market, but figuring it out the first time is not easy. Not if you want to do it right and actually be legal, at any rate.

[Jeroen3]

I know. I wanted to start selling my own boards. But when I lookup up the requirements I just quit. Only the tax and income laws are a pain already.