Tips on Conducting a Successful Business and Investment in Latin America
Considered as one of the most crucial decisions your company will make in attempting to build business relationship abroad is that of choosing the right person to represent your company, and this is true as far as with Latin America is concern. There are some pointers that we want you to learn here about the right point person to represent your company who will be traveling abroad, and so we encourage you to read more below about it.
First of all is to realize that your representative may not necessarily need to have a Hispanic name and background because Latin Americans are a diverse population, and thus do not expect favoritism or discrimination if your point person does not have these qualifications.
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. On the overall, look for a person who is flexible, very patient and most importantly, good with people in order to become your ideal representative.
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. Furthermore, the point person must be willing to embrace a culture that is foreign to him or her and learn to adapt various ways to get results, must be available to travel on many trips to get the business done, and eventually can offer continuously his or her customer services even after the business relationship has finalized.
Your representative should recognize that patience is a virtue, especially in Latin America the pace of life is slower considerably. Being genuine and personal in the business dealings will have to be a trait of your representative, with the expectation of developing a long-time relationship with the Latin American company.
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.