The Adapter’s Advantage: Neil Patwardhan on Navigating Cultural Differences in B2B Sales

Navigating cultural differences in B2B sales can be a daunting challenge. Do you find yourself unsure of how to adapt your strategies when moving into new markets? Are you concerned that your sales reps’ approach might not resonate with customers from different cultural backgrounds? Those are valid concerns, especially in today’s global economy. However, with the right mindset and strategies, you can overcome these challenges and help your reps build strong, lasting relationships across borders.

Our latest guest on the Adapter’s Advantage podcast, Neil Patwardhan, has some invaluable insights to share on this topic. As the senior vice president of sales at Accenture, Neil has a wealth of experience in leading teams through complex sales processes in diverse regions. In this episode, he discusses how his journey—from corporate giants to startups and back—has shaped his approach to sales.

Neil emphasizes the critical need for cultural awareness in sales, particularly in regions like Asia, where understanding local customs and business practices can make or break a deal. He shares how adapting to these cultural nuances, building trust, and creating rapport are essential components of successful B2B sales strategies. Neil also explores how enablement leaders can equip their teams to navigate these complexities, ensuring that their strategies are not only effective but also culturally relevant.

This episode is filled with actionable advice for sales and enablement leaders looking to expand their reach in international markets. Watch the interview below or read the transcript to learn how you can drive success by embracing cultural differences in your sales approach.

Episode 65: From New York to Singapore: Mastering International Sales | Neil Patwardhan

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From This Episode:

Deniz Olcay: We’re talking today about navigating cultural differences in B2B sales. But before we get to the topic, Neil, it’d be helpful for folks to get a sense for how you arrived at the role that you have today.

Neil Patwardhan: My career trajectory is highly non-linear, and for me it’s always been about risk. That’s been the cornerstone of my career. I’ve been in corporate for many years with the likes of Dell, Dun and Bradstreet, and LG. I’ve been in the startup world with two startups, well, three startups, and then back into large corporate with Accenture. But throughout all those roles and sort of the twists and turns, every one of them carried a risk, a very high potential upside, but not a clear route to get there.

A mentor of mine once told me that I do my best work in the first 18 months of a role and post 18 months. If it’s highly stabilized, I will start to get bored. So, taking the risk and moving to Asia Pacific where there’s significant growth, but it’s not a region where I’ve traditionally operated in, I didn’t have the relationships and the cultural understanding, has all been exciting.

What were some of your initial observations on some of the cultural differences in how people approach complex B2B sales in Singapore?

Patwardhan: Coming to Asia, very quickly you realize how the American way of working is perceived. Taking a step back and listening and reading the room, understanding that cultural significance, and working through a conversation of pitching a deal has helped shape my mentality a lot more than me just coming in and saying, “Listen, this is how we’re going to do it.”

The folks I know who have moved from the U.S. to Asia and have succeeded have “tempered” their Americanness in some ways, at least in the sales process. — Neil Patwardhan, SVP of Sales, Accenture

The folks I know who have moved from the U.S. to Asia and have succeeded have “tempered” their Americanness in some ways, at least in the sales process. This allows them to build a repertoire of insights first on how to behave in a particular culture and then come in as a subject matter expert and help boost the conversation. So, it’s a more listening and adapting versus approaching things like “this is what it is.”

Typically, enablement leaders arm their teams with skills and knowledge and practice before going into conversations. But if you have sellers distributed across key geographies and selling to different geographies, it’s important to understand their cultural difference. So sometimes taking a playbook that worked in market A and applying it in market C won’t give the same return. Enablement must help coaches manage those differences and complexities. How did you do that for your team?

Patwardhan: There are two levels of trust you’ve got to build. One is with the client or the customer, and the other one is with your team that’s servicing the client or customer. And how you go about building it is different in every country in Asia. It really is. Asia is always hungry to learn new things. They want to understand how folks in other countries and markets are doing it, but they also want to localize it. And if it’s not localized, more than likely it’s going to fall on deaf ears and just become another asset that sits in a dam somewhere that will not get utilized to its full extent.

Building that trust internally takes a lot of time. You’ve got to win trust with the first one, which is your internal teams, so that they are comfortable enough putting you in front of their customers so that you could help them boost their upside.

The sale will happen if there is enough of trust, credibility, and time spent where the client clearly understands that what you’re offering is the best solution for them. — Neil Patwardhan, SVP of Sales, Accenture

So, it’s kind of a sequence. At the end of the day, with complex B2B sales, it’s never about the sale. It’s about the journey, and it takes time. It takes time to mature, and you may have multiple stakeholders that you need to build that credibility and trust with. The sale will happen if there is enough trust, credibility, and time spent where the client clearly understands that what you’re offering is the best solution for them. Again, it’s all about that individual trust because the deals will happen.

What are some of the approaches that you take at Accenture to build competency around developing rapport, trust, and relationships?

Patwardhan: We have some core curriculum that we walk a majority of our sellers through on how to build rapport. It covers topics such as, how you do research before you talk to a buyer, and how you follow the rabbit hole to the right buyer. So, if you had to jump through multiple levels, but then also not a pure salesy, we are a growth engine. And that’s the thing that I try to be clear about from the onset with all of my customers that I meet for the first time. I tell them, “Look, if you’re looking for someone to give you a staff augmentation and a price to the bottom, I’m not that, and that’s a very near-term view. But if you want to truly unlock 5, 10, 15 times growth over the next five years, let me help you out, and we can get deeper into the mechanics of what that would look like.”

I think credentialing yourself fairly quickly is important, but you also have to be bold enough to say no—to stand your ground. Sometimes where the conversation leads to may not be ideal for either party, and you have to be willing to walk away from the table, which is really hard in sales because you’re trying to book every deal. But on the flip side, depending on the solution you sold, people still have to deliver it. And if it’s not scoped out correctly, then it’s going to be a major CSAT [customer satisfaction] issue down the line, which will prevent future sales happening in that client or account.

What are some of the changes that you’re implementing in your team to account for these cultural differences and navigating this complexity within your team? How are you helping your team adapt?

Patwardhan: There’s never going to be a substitute for face-to-face trust building. So again, how do you spend more time with your customers and your clients to really live a day in their shoes? You need to start outside-in. Stay with your client, understand what is happening, and be one of their employees. And if you have an innate understanding of what’s happening, what they care about, and where they want to go, then we can work our way backwards into the type of solutions that we can provide for them. During your first three months, you should spend more time with the clients than anything else, and less time on your own products and services. Because all of that, the positioning will change depending on what your clients want.

Thank you so much, Neil, for all your great advice and tips on navigating cultural differences to be successful in sales. It was a pleasure to have you in the program.

Patwardhan: Absolutely. Happy to be here.

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