Things to Know When Doing Business in Latin America
Among the most critical decisions your company will make is in choosing the right person to represent you abroad, and this holds true if you are attempting to do business with Latin American partners. We are going to present here some suggestions, and if you read more, you will be helped to learn and be guided more about your options in choosing this point person to travel abroad and represent your company.
The number one thing to know is that Latin Americans are a diverse population, thus you have to realize that your representative does not necessarily need to have a Hispanic name and background, because you will not encounter favoritism or discrimination in this regard.
Another tip is to be aware that English is still the language of business in Latin America, with an interpreter to help further would be better, although having a bilingual representative could be a plus. If your representative has good conversational skills, it will be a plus factor for your company as this point person will be able to communicate well with the hosts and enhance good relationship with your company.
Another thing to learn is that beside being highly skilled, knowledgeable and competent in your area of business, your point person must be able to do everything first to get to know the hosts so that there is a slow but sure building of trust in the relationship.
You should then be looking for some characteristics of a good representative that you can further develop in the person. To become the company’s ideal representative, look for the person who is flexible, very patient, and good with people most importantly.
By flexibility we mean one who is the type who can have fun in new experiences, who can be adventurous, and who can adapt to surroundings unfamiliar to him or her. In addition, this representative must be willing to accept cultures not familiar with him or her, can travel on successive trips just to seal the agreement, and even after the business relationship has established, must be able to offer customer service continuously as long as needed.
Your representative should recognize that patience is a virtue, especially in Latin America the pace of life is slower considerably. Thus your representative will need a long time to develop relationships and he or she can do this with a genuine and personal friendly relationship with the Latin America team.
Know that Latin Americans appreciate intellectual conversations on broad range of topics, thus your point person must have the intellectualism to engage with the hosts in social situations, considering he or she will be spending lots of time with them.