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You have achieved great success at Physical Movement Company (PM Co.) as their Sales Manager. PM Company is a three year old, US$25 million home healthcare company, headquartered in the northeastern part of the United States. The firm creates and sells wheelchairs, walkers or other types of "mobility products" that give a person some level of mobility when they can no longer completely ambulate on their own. Recently due to an influx of inquiries about your mobility products and some very large, direct sales to customers outside your home country, you have been promoted to the position of Vice-President of International Sales, responsible for all sales outside the United States. The job sounds simple enough - just sell your great mobility products around the world! Benefits of the job include traveling globally, eating great food and shopping for bargains in your free time. Life is good!
However, after a few days in your new position you begin to realize there is more to this job than what you were previously accustomed to as a Sales Manager who sold only in your own country. Your previous job responsibilities included finding a need for your mobility products, overcoming any objections and closing the sale. You were very comfortable in this role. As you begin to call on companies around the world by phone and e-mail, you realize that the global business environment is far more complex, involves many more details, and requires much more knowledge than you ever realized! Because of the time zone differences, you are finding yourself working all the time as business is conducted 24 hours a day, 7 days a week around the world, so there is always someone you need to contact or follow-up with. No one in the company has ever sold internationally before. There are a few employees in the company who were not born in this country. They can provide some language skills and can share their cultural knowledge, but they do not have international business experience. However, you are now the global business leader for your company.

Late one night between calls to Singapore and China, you realize you need to quickly learn as much as you can about global business issues and their implications and to communicate these issues and their solutions to senior management so that together you and the company can achieve your new worldwide revenue objectives.

Problem
Given PM Company's human resource diversity policy and its expectation that global sales will grow significantly in the future, how should you, as the Vice-President of International Sales, plan to manage the diverse team of managers that will be working for you? You've become familiar with Hofstede's cultural dimensions; how might they influence management decisions?
Bring this up the next time you meet with the other VPs at PM Company.

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Solution Summary

Given PM Company's human resource diversity policy and its expectation that global sales will grow significantly in the future, how should you, as the Vice-President of International Sales, plan to manage the diverse team of managers that will be working for you? You've become familiar with Hofstede's cultural dimensions; how might they influence management decisions?

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To manage the diverse team of managers working under me, I will need to train them or various aspects of the international business such as business customs and practices, cultural sensitivity issues, business laws and international business risks, negotiation styles, communication styles,etc. of people in different countries. A qualified HR consultant specializing in these issues need to hired by the company to provide inhouse training sessions to sales managers for international markets in order to prepare them for the regions and countries the company wish to expand. Thus, to summarize, the effort will be to prepare the sales team on all the aspects, peculiarities and dimensions of conducting business in international arena, so that they do not commit any major pitfall or error in ...

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