Making the Case for Credibility - A Latin American Exec Confirms My Comments

As posted in commentary on October 31st of this year, the key to establishing successful business in Latin America is through the hard work and profitable pleasantries of personal relationships.

Recently, I met at length with the G.M. for Latin America of a company specializing in high-tech solutions for security within the Information Technology (IT) industry. The company is on the smallish side, but the products and appliances they offer are excellent, with a fantastic cost/benefit advantage. They compete with some of the biggest and best known companies in networking, security and similar technologies, and they do so without a huge physical infrastructure, local/on-the-ground presence or a well-known brand. As a result, they have to compete with not only the quality and competitiveness of their offerings but more specifically with their commitment to the marketplace.

In what seemed like an echo to the words I wrote here last month, when asked what I thought it would take for his company to expand its success in the region, I told him the following:

• Your company has to be willing to invest for the long-term, in people, talent, product, services
  
  
• You have to be willing to create a presence, and not expect results through once-in-awhile efforts
  
  
• Your credibility is earned over time, with consistency and actions, not words
  
  
• Your brand has to be positioned and nurtured to establish it as worthy of the region's business; you have to earn the right to do business in Latin America
  
  
• You must create value in what you offer, and not just expect pricing or discounting to lead to long-term success
  
  
• You have to become "local" in every sense of the word, and reach your consumers, customers and partners by ways they deem appropriate or useful, not necessarily by your ways

When I finished running down my list of attributes and qualities that in my experience have proven to be tried and true, he said, "I couldn't have said it better! That's exactly what I think about doing business in Latin America." So, in sum, it's not just my experience that underlines these realities in Latin America, but the experience of others that corroborates these realities.

Will every firm take this approach? Certainly not! There will be those that prefer the quicky method, the Wall Street-driven "gotta have it now" approach, but in the end, these will not garner a long-term presence. They will pass through, and their presence will be short-lived. Latin America has changed immeasurably in the past 20+ years, and consumers and buyers throughout the region are far more demanding now about who and how they engage with for commerce, for investment or for any number of other opportunities that continue to arise within the southern neighbors of the United States of America. Which approach is your firm taking? Is it the right one?