Succeeding at Business in Southeast Asia

CHAPTER 1The Importance of Relationships: How to Build and Maintain Them

A relationship-based sales approach will maximize the future value of an opportunity. A transactional-based sales approach will maximize only today’s value.

Asian culture is a culture based upon relationships. These relationships mean more to Asian businesspeople than any other business skill set. Their premise is that if I can trust the person I am working with, together we can figure out how to do something. It also has a lot to do with “saving face” in a business environment. If you are responsible for hiring someone and six months later they get caught stealing from the company, this reflects as poorly on you as it does on the person actually stealing. Why should someone trust your judgment in the future if you were willing to bring this person into the business? Similarly, if this is a person you would associate with, are you the person I should associate with my business? The other focus here is that a relationship is not short-term; it is a long-term view that says we will work together for years and years to come. Oftentimes during this process, personal and professional relationships intersect.

I recently took on a client for U.S. expansion after becoming acquainted with the spouse of one of the company’s vice presidents years ago. Any time I am in China, I get together with this person because he has become a friend. We have explored some business opportunities together but never done business ...