Does It Apply To Taiwan?

Clayton,

Thanks for your kind note. The principles are the same, with emphasis on getting your customers first, working with what you love, and testing your hypothesis, over and over.

Of anything I ever sell, of all the talking that is done throughout the sales channel, I am rarely the one doing any talking. Sales reps, retailers, customers... they are critical, but I am not there. It matters little to me what language they speak. Von Mises said something about innovators necessarily use inefficient, cumbersome means to get product out there, since we are working before the conservators aply their economies of scale and efficiencies to our innovations. Perhaps fielding a chinese speaking sales force, with a bilingual sales manager, is one requirement your customers have. Perhaps not. That will be learned in time.

It gets down to you, your service or product, and your customers. Everything else will get worked out.

Let me know how it goes...

John

On Jan 18, 2010, at 10:48 AM, CA wrote:

Hi John,

I am ... living in Taiwan. I'm currently halfway through your book and noticed you mentioned a lot about success in this business depends upon understanding your customers when starting out as an importer. However as a native English speaker living in a Chinese speaking country and not knowing any Mandarin I'm sure there will be some problems encountered with understanding the customers. Not just understanding the customers but understanding the culture as well and speaking to points of contacts such as sales agents etc. I was just wondering if I can still be successful following your steps in Taiwan and if it would be better to take a different approach such as starting out as an exporter? Thanks for you time.

Regards
CA

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