How You Can Start Selling in China with Confidence When You Have No Experience and Limited Budget with Heidi Dugan

Wealth Without Borders Podcast

Do you want to expand your market to China but don’t know the basics of Chinese business culture? Are you confident with your sales strategies for China?

Do you want to know how you can successfully sell in China?

Heidi Dugan is a TV host, celebrity, author, entrepreneur, and China Market Expert. These are the terms often used to describe her.

Having lived and worked in China for over 24 years, she has her own TV show with 6 million viewers daily and is Director and Founder of Arete Group, which helps foreign companies expand and succeed in China. Her influence across China has been recognized through her coverage on ABC News, Australian Financial Review, Harper’s Bazaar, and China Daily.

Heidi was recognized by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as one of the 45 people who represent the breadth and depth of the friendship between Australia and China.

In this episode, Heidi shares her insights on the importance and benefits of having a clear and planned pathway in expanding your market to China. She also talks about how cultural understanding and continuous business learning is important as well in expanding your market, specifically in China.

What you will learn from this episode:

• Learn how to expand your business in China even with no knowledge
• Discover the reality of Chinese business culture and remove any false expectations
• Know more about what stage you are at and what you should do if you want to expand to China

“We erase people's doubts and concerns, give them absolute clarity on how they can enter one of the biggest markets in the world. And basically, we help them succeed.”

- Heidi Dugan

Topics Covered:

02:41 - Heidi defines her ideal client

03:16 - Problems that Heidi solves for her client: Erase doubts and concerns, and give absolute clarity

04:00 - Fear due to lack of knowledge, unsuccessful stories, and false expectations are some of the symptoms

05:02 - Being paralyzed and confused or jumping into things with no knowledge, two common mistakes when trying to solve the problem

06:50 - Heidi’s valuable free action: “I think advice is what people need. And so, if they go to the website heididugan.com/chinaaccelerator, they can log in and select a 15-minute call with me. I can go through things, see if they're ready, and see what stage they're actually at.”

07:24 - Heidi’s Valuable free resource: Go to heididugan.com/chinaaccelerator to download Heidi’s tool

08:16 - Books Alert: The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss, and The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino

09:32 - Question that should have been asked to Heidi: What is the next thing that people should do, besides getting the 15-minute phone call and the download?

Key Takeaways:

“China as a market is incredibly confusing. So, people have this sort of confusion of, "Where should we start? What should we do?" And then they also have a real fear of it because of their feeling of a lack of knowledge, and also some of the stories that they may have heard from other people that perhaps were not that successful.” - Heidi Dugan

“When people come to the China market, because they don't know the culture and the market, they think, ‘Well, we don't know anything.’ And what happens in those circumstances, they put all good business knowledge to the side, and they do some really silly things, like handing their brand, even their product over to someone they don't know, to let strangers market them to China.” - Heidi Dugan

People / Resources Mentioned:

• The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller
• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as If Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss
• The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino

Ways to Connect with Heidi Dugan:

• Website: https://www.heididugan.com/china-accelerator
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidi-dugan/
• WeChat: HeidiDugan

Ways to Connect with Howard Whiteson:

• Website: http://www.wealthwithoutborders.net
• Podcast: https://wealthwithoutborders.net/podcast/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/howardwhiteson