How to sell in China
When multinational Wolters Kluwer tried to build a sales force in China, it hit a great wall.
(Fortune) -- A few years ago, publishing and information-services company Wolters Kluwer decided to try selling in China, figuring the country's growing business community would make it a ripe market for the content it produced for professionals like lawyers, accountants and insurers. But finding local salespeople to sell the Amsterdam-based company's specialized products to businesses turned out to be an uphill battle.
"There wasn't a ready pool of people to go to," recalls Matt Sullivan, managing director of Wolter Kluwer's CCH Asia unit. "Finding good people was incredibly challenging."
Wolters Kluwer's experience in China isn't unusual, says Christoph Nettesheim, a Beijing-based senior partner at The Boston Consulting Group. Many multinational companies have struggled with sales in China because there simply aren't enough qualified people to go around. Indeed, for all its economic gains in recent years, China has yet to develop a strong sales culture. Salespeople do exist, but they largely serve the consumer segment in retail settings. And thus far, few young Chinese see an employer's sales department as a place to build a career or rise to the executive suite.
Wolters Kluwer (WTKW.Y) originally had hoped to hire salespeople with five to ten years' experience, as the company had in other Asian markets, including Australia and New Zealand, says David Lampert, president and CEO of its Asia Pacific division. But Sullivan, who moved to Beijing in 2005 to build the China operation, found that few, if any, Chinese had that kind of experience, even though corporate demand for top-notch sales staff was exploding at the time.
The company quickly realized that if it wanted to succeed in China, it would first have to rethink recruiting. Wolters Kluwer decided to home-grow a sales operation, seeded with persistent young people, often with little or zero selling experience.
So last year, it began a rigorous program designed to coach new hires on the very basics of business-to-business selling. The system was based in part on a standardized sales methodology Wolters Kluwer uses in its operations around the world. But Sullivan and Lampert quickly realized they'd need to tweak their typical training program - and sales approach - for the local market.
For starters, the trainers in China simply needed to slow the whole process down. Lessons that the company would speed through in markets such as Malaysia and Singapore needed to be delivered more deliberately, sometimes repeatedly, in China. Sullivan also increased the amount of role-playing and interaction in training sessions, to give would-be salespeople more practice in the art of presenting and pitching.
Once staffers went through training, Sullivan found it beneficial for them to go out on sales calls in pairs. Indeed, the Wolters Kluwer sales team in China has adopted a very team-oriented approach, right down to the way the salespeople are compensated. "In other countries we don't bother with a team incentive," Sullivan says. "In China, a nice chunk of the commission is based on how the team does."
The team approach has encouraged more seasoned sales staff to coach newer members, and as an unintended benefit, recruit new talent. Wolters Kluwer salespeople want their friends to join not only so they can work together but also so they can share the financial upside when the group does well.
The company's hard recruiting and training work is paying off, says Sullivan. Wolters Kluwer now boasts more than 30 full-time sales people in China, up from just two in 2005. That sales staff should be a competitive advantage as rivals such as Thomson (TRI) and Lexis/Nexis pursue the same customers. It also should help the company weather a potential slowdown in China's growth.
Indeed, global companies that have built strong brands and reputations locally will likely have the easiest time recruiting the best and brightest to their China sales operations, says Nettesheim at The Boston Consulting Group. "Chinese employees are interested in career development," he says. "They want to work for good companies because it shows well on their resumes."
And while China is coming from behind when it comes to the art of sales, Sullivan says he's enjoyed watching brand new salespeople play catch-up. "Watching them develop their skills is like watching a time-lapse photograph of a flower opening up," he says. "The people who came on board with the right attitude developed faster than I have ever seen people develop." 
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