Selling ... Middle East Style - an intro!

Selling in the Middle East is like selling anywhere in the world and yet it is so much more different than anywhere else in the world!

Let's look at some interesting aspects of the Middle East when it comes to Selling and engaging with Customers.

• Customers are hospitable and nice by default and will make time for you, if you ask nicely, even if they don't have any requirements. The Customers in the Middle East don't like to deliver bad news and so they might drag you along for months while assuring you everything is going well and all is on track. They will even accept to go out for a meal, meet your management and ask you to come in and deliver sessions to their teams. So what do you do? You qualify, qualify and keep qualifying! Check out my Blog, the Qualificator!
• Customers love to haggle in the Middle East and will always ask for discount in every single meeting and will tell you that they are an important reference for the rest of the customers etc etc. They will even haggle with you and ask for extremely aggressive discounts even if they know you won't get the deal. Why? They love haggling, and they also use it as a negotiation tactic with their vendor of choice, saying xyz vendor gave me a much better price and force them to discount otherwise they will go with the other vendor. What do you do? This definitely needs a blog by itself, but in short, always sell on value, and be ready to walk away from the deal if it doesn't make sense anymore. I will share some personal examples in a blog dedicated to discounting.
• Customers love POCs/Pilots in the Middle East and will dedicate time, effort and resources. They will spend months POCing and Piloting technologies from different vendors for a single requirement and will never agree to pay for the POC. The expectation is for the vendor and/or their Channel partners to deliver a full fledged POC for free. What can you do? In most cases you need to deliver on the POC, but once again you need to Qualify and set clear success criteria as well as challenge the customer on the reason(s) behind the POC.
• RFPs and Tenders are the norm in the Middle East region and in most cases these are competitive bids which the customer will invite at least 3 competing vendors to participate and then carry out a technical and commercial bake off. As a Sales Person, you have to learn how to engage and influence the RFP/Tender and work hard on managing the entire process as the competition will do everything they can to undercut you and win the deal. Even if the RFP and Tender favors your technology in one way or another, winning it is not guaranteed. This topic definitely deserves a Blog post all to itself. Stay tuned!
• People buy from People....this is true across the world and even more so in the Middle East. You need to invest a lot of time and effort into building relationships in the Middle East and to build out trust with the customers. Customers value face to face time in the Middle East and will request in person meetings rather than calls. They also prefer the meetings to take place in their offices. This will require a lot of time on the Sales person's side, as well as coordinating resources to be available on site for meetings and sessions. However, the Sales person who spends the most time with the customer and builds out the relationship and trust is most likely the sales person who will win the deal. However, it is no longer enough to just build relationships, you need to show and deliver value throughout the Sales engagement and more importantly after closing the sale! This is a small market after all, and news travels fast. I will share examples as well as advice in one of my blog posts on how to best tackle this.

In Summary, the above points make it evident that the Sales Cycle in the Middle East is much longer than anywhere else in the world as Customers expect the sellers and their organizations to commit time, resources and a lot of effort for any engagement. They will then draw out the process further by going through a formal RFP/Tender process. In some instances, the Sales Cycle can take 18-24 Months. The average is usually 12 months and there are definitely exceptions where Sales Cycles can be reduced, but a 6 months closing cycle is very much a mirage rather than a reality.....