What exactly is “cultural competency”?
3. To ensure that all tasks are carried out, set a specific deadline for the project and a timeline to keep everyone on track
Attach a deadline to every responsibility assigned in Step 2. For example, the marketing director may need to have fliers translated and printed and have permission to hand them out in two weeks. The pro- duce manager may need to ensure that the additional bok choy is on hand on a certain date.
Consider creating a graphic model of your plan to make it easier for your staff to visualize and remember. For example, organize the main five or six points as a color pyramid. Then develop the action plans to support each step on
Getting Your Entire Company on Board
A house (or an organization) divided cannot stand. If one or more members of your organization are opposed or even lukewarm to the idea of pursuing ethnic customers, your efforts are going to be diluted, and your multicultural initiative is going to have less of an impact.
Everyone in your organization needs to offer their full, enthusiastic support.
In the following sections, we offer some suggestions on how to motivate others to join your efforts, especially your frontline staff — the people who have the most contact with customers.
Adjusting your corporate culture
In just about every business, the corporate culture starts at the top and trick- les down to the masses. If the boss is involved in fraudulent activity, you can bet that at least a few underlings are ripping off the company or defrauding customers. If the boss is committed to volunteerism and building strong com- munities, everyone else is likely to follow that lead.
The same is true in terms of commitment to multiculturalism. It has to start at the highest levels of leadership. The people at the top of the corporate ladder must show a genuine interest in hiring and treating all workers with a sense of fairness and respect. They must demonstrate a commitment to learning about other cultures and accepting and accommodating differences among and between people.
The key to creating a diversity-friendly team or company is to create an atmo- sphere in which people feel comfortable talking about their differences. If workers are willing to discuss their own differences as well as those of their customers and co-workers, you’ll be able to overcome your own multicultural challenges and answer your own diversity questions.
Identifying the potential impact of key departments on multicultural customers
Every department, every staff member, and everyone who’s even remotely associated with your organization can have a positive or negative impact on your sales to multicultural customers. As highlighted in the nearby sidebar, even subcontractors and vendors have the power to attract customers or drive them away.
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Some departments and personnel, however, have a greater potential impact on customers. Obviously, anyone in sales or marketing and your frontline staff, including receptionists and cashiers, have the most influence, but other departments and personnel can play an important role as well. In the follow- ing sections, we highlight some key areas that demand the most focus.
Everyone in your business can benefit by reading this book. For the bare mini- mum, have them read Chapter 4, which starts them on their way to developing cultural competency. Additional training may be required, depending on how closely and in what capacity they work with customers from other cultures.
Later in this chapter, in the section “Offering a crash course in cultural compe- tency,” we provide a list of topics your training program should cover.
Marketing
Although your marketing people may have little or no direct contact with customers, they’re in charge of painting the portrait that the ethnic commu- nity uses to judge your company. So it’s critical for these folks to understand how your target customers influence your goals. Make sure your marketing people obtain the training they need to attain an acceptable level of cultural competency. Chapter 4 provides a good start, but your marketing personnel can gain additional expertise by checking out Chapter 5. Even with the best training, however, you may need to outsource your multicultural marketing to advertising agencies that specialize in your target customers.
If you do have to outsource your multicultural marketing, get your marketing staff’s buy-in. They must understand the need for a multicultural marketing initiative, recognize that they lack expertise in this area, and be willing to learn from experts. We can cite plenty of instances in which marketing staffs have sabotaged these kinds of efforts because they didn’t buy into the program before it was initiated.
Sales
Salespeople play perhaps the most significant role in attracting members of ethnic communities. They’re often the first people in an organization whom customers meet, which is why we include several chapters specifically on this topic primarily for salespeople (see Part III in particular). Because of their close contact with multicultural buyers, they must surmount language barriers, contractual idiosyncrasies, endless negotiating, and more. Obtaining training in cross-cultural selling, as provided in this book, is essential.
Cashiers
Cashiers are like the Rodney Dangerfields of the retail industry — they get no respect. Many businesses treat them merely as entry-level employees, and so that’s what they get — clock punchers who simply ring up orders, take money, swipe credit cards, and bag the goods. Managers who treat their cashiers with respect realize that they can be profit centers for the business.
This is particularly true in respect to multicultural customers. As profit cen- ters, cashiers can benefit your business in at least two ways:
They can treat multicultural customers the way they want to be treated to keep them coming back.
They can perform field research, recording the changing demographic, asking customers questions (such as whether the customer was able to find everything she was shopping for), and sharing the information with managers and other departments. (See Chapter 2 for more about asking important questions of customers.)
To tap the full potential of your cashiers, train them in cross-cultural relations and reward them for their efforts in collecting and providing you with valuable market data. See “Offering a crash course in cultural competency,” later in this chapter, for guidance in training your staff.