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By miguel-ingles
- In Uncategorized
Experts consider this country as one of the largest global markets. Therefore, it is attracting entrepreneurs from all around the world. Nevertheless, before setting up a company in this country, we should take into consideration some cultural and economic factors that will decide our corporation’s success. In this article, I will explain how to do business with your company in the UK.
British Business Culture Aspects to Note When Doing Business with your Company in the UK
Courtesy with Partners and other Entrepreneurs
British business communicative style stands out for its formality and politeness. They use euphemistic and subtle forms, even when giving orders. In addition, unlike Americans, it is unusual to employ colloquial language.
I must also mention how they use humour. It is common to utilize irony and to laugh at oneself. That being said, you must be careful when employing humour. You should do it in a polite and respectful way.
Other topics I should mention are the importance of punctuality (arriving late is seen as disrespectful), how they employ a more moderate and cautious body language than in other countries, especially than in Southern Europe, or the necessity of complying with the established dress code (suit and tie for men, classic style dresses for women).
Loyalty
British entrepreneurs greatly appreciate loyalty and transparency with their clients, in addition to the product’s quality they buy. Therefore, this may mean that you will have to face some problems when entering this market.
A possible solution would be to hire an already established link person in the UK, that has connections with companies you might be interested to do business with.
An alternative would be to reduce the prices of your products and services. However, this is not a good option. Potential customers will associate this fall in our tariffs with a low quality of what you are offering.
Business Cards
Because of everything mentioned in the last section, it is important to put you in the map as soon as possible. With this objective, you must build a unique corporative image. You shall design your own logo and slogan, build a company webpage and record some adverts (in this article you will find more information about this topic). But, in addition, you should create your own business cards.
Going to business meetings and conferences is a good way of finding possible clients and partners. Nonetheless, you will need something that gathers the key information of a company, because giving away our data and asking the potential customer to make notes is highly unprofessional. Here is where business cards come into play.
They must be small and perfectly understandable. They will include your name, some contact information, the services your company offers and, preferably, its logo. Also, they will have a white background. Remember, this is your letter of presentation. The feelings and sensations you cause in the potential customer will determine whether they will hire your services or not.
Monetary Aspects to Note When Doing Business with your Company in the UK
Unlike any other European State, which most of them use the Euro, the UK’s legal tender is the British pound.
You must take into consideration currency fluctuation, if you operate in a country and in the UK. It is true that aggressive variations are not common if you do business in some nation with a stable currency, like Spain. However, if you utilize cash from countries like Argentina, you will be exposed to sudden change in value. Its worst consequence will be the loss of liquidity, putting your company’s financial health in risk.
To avoid that, businesses can try to optimize paying and cashing time intervals as much as possible. This is done with the aim of not holding large quantities of foreign currency, especially if they are catalogued as volatile. Moreover, it is advisable to check daily progress of currency’s values you work with.
Develop a business plan
A business plan is a document where executives detail financial, operative and sale strategies, objectives and economic previsions of the company. The aim of this type of plans is to determine whether a business project is viable or not. Among the aspects that people usually include, we find a front page with the corporation’s logo and name, a summary of the document, a market research report, a financial plan, the sales tactics the company will apply and the working team structure.
Preparing a business plan is quite useful, especially if you are trying to gather private investment and funding. Apart from that, it is usually a needed requisite to ask for government subsidies.
In this link you will find a British business plan template.