How to Choose Your Chinese Company or Brand Name

Once you decide to enter the Chinese market as a western company or brand, you need to think of a Chinese name.

Localizing your company or brand name is complicated. You need a Chinese name as soon as you start selling on e-commerce sites and start using local social media. You also want to use WOM to promote your brand.

It involves in-depth knowledge of the local language and culture, sensitivity towards local customer attitudes and willingness to adapt the company/brand name. Gap and IBM decided to keep their short name, expecting Chinese consumers to learn them. This is not a clever way to build a brand in China.

How to choose a Chinese company/brand name:

1. Your Chinese name must tell your brand’s story.
2. Examples: BMW (bao ma) means “precious horse”; Subway sandwiches (sai bai wei) means “better than 100 tastes.”
3. The characters in the name must look good together.
4. The Chinese name must be legally available.
5. The name should work well in Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghainese that are three dramatically different languages.
6. The name should only have positive connotations.
   LinkedIn‘s brand name in Chinese also sounds like the word for the ghost of a dead infant.
7. Make sure the name has meaning.
   McDonald’s (mai dang lao) kept its name although the Chinese characters represent wheat, should and labor.
8. Hire an expert with a solid track record to help you. 

Success!

Ten Tips for Freelancers and SMEs/SMBs

1. Avoid being on the Road (too much)

As we all know, we spent too much time on the road. All these hours cannot be billed. Try to communicate as much as possible by email, phone and Skype. Try to schedule meetings in the same region on the same day. Check out the best way to travel: car, public transport or (my favorite) a combination. It’s best to schedule meetings outside of rush hour. It saves both of you time.

2. Cold Calls are Tricky

Cold calls as a tool for drumming up business is tricky. It is time-consuming and should therefore well-prepared. For many SMEs/SMBs, cold calling is not the way to go. WOM (word-of mouth) is far more effective and cost-effective.

3. Keep Communicating

Keeping in touch with your customers is the key to your success as a freelancer of SME/SMB. There are many ways to keep in touch: newsletters, emails with special offers, and social media. Make sure to call them once in a while to ask if everything is fine. Make sure to send out season’s greetings and personal congratulations (e.g., birth of a child). Use your business page on Pinterest, Facebook, and LinkedIn, as well as your Twitter account to inform update, and spread positive messages. Don’t underestimate the power of your corporate blog – you can position your business perfectly that way.

4. Presentations Should Rock

Presentations are still expected. But (potential) customers are sharp, so make sure your presentation is short and to the point. Keep your power point presentations short and avoid cutesy graphics/animation. Make sure there is a call to action on the last slide. It is a good strategy to send them the presentation in PDF later on by email.

5. Respect the Uniqueness of Your Prospect

Each prospect is unique and wants to be recognizes as such. You need to know what makes your potential (and existing!) customer tick. What are the pain points they are facing? What is their history with similar companies/offerings like yours? Doing successful and long-term business is based on trust. You will never be able to make all your customers happy all of the time. Be gracious, and when it does not work out, make sure your prospect or customer never looses face.

6. Make Sure You Both Have the Same Agenda

A lot of bad feelings between supplier and customer results from the simple fact that they are not “on the same page”. The prospect or customer believes that it will get A, while the supplier is convinced that the prospect or customer wants B. The best way to avoid this kind of Mexican stand-off is to send points of understanding combined with action items after each meeting.

7. References and Recommendations

References and recommendations are important. However, it is not always possible to supply them, especially if you provided services for the military, homeland security or other companies that required the freelancer or supplier to sign an NDA or confidentiality agreement. LinkedIn offers a great way to circumvent this issue as long as there are enough recommendations on the freelancer’s/supplier’s profile. A blog is also a good way to position yourself as a though leader without infringing on any agreements.

8. You Cannot Win Them All

Rejection is part of our professional lives. Job seekers are rejected for jobs they really want, and freelancers and suppliers sometimes loose out on juicy contracts. Proposals can be rejected for many reasons: the price is too high, they got a better offer, they had to hire a freelancer/company due to internal politics, the job/work is canceled or frozen, or there just is not any personal chemistry. The best way to handle this kind of rejection is to be gracious, leave communication channels open, and realize that you cannot win them all.

9. Know Your Target Market

Your product or service might be great, but it would not fit all customers. It is important to know your market. Who needs our products/services? What pain points do you address and how much are your (potential) customers willing to pay for it? Communicate with your (potential) customer to identify their existing as well as future needs.

10. Build a Relationship

Your attitude, skills, and aptitude determine if a customer wants to do business with you. Be generous with (free) advice and think with (and not for) your customer. Once you are seen as a partner, and not a mere supplier, you will have a mutual beneficial relationship that could span years. Nothing is forever, especially in this economy, so nurture good relationships. Even is a customer has to drop you, his or her recommendation and goodwill is worth its weight in gold.

The CardMunch Application Let You Scan Business Cards; Creating A Digital Rolodex At Your Fingertips

At WATEC 2011, a business contact showed me CardMunch, the latest cool application to capture business cards. LinkedIn just unveiled a completely revamped version of CardMunch, which it bought from Bowei Gai at the end of 2010. CardMunch is a free iPhone application that let you scrape business cards for vital information.

You snap a picture of the business card, and CardMunch 3.0 ties that business card with the person's LinkedIn profile. This gives you insight into mutual contacts, credentials, recommendations, etc.

What makes CardMunch powerful is its Cover Flow-like Rolodex feature. No more card scanners at exhibitions necessary; MunchCard lets you swipe through virtual business cards of all of your contacts. You can also add notes to contact cards while you wait for the cards to be processed.

You can also quickly add information from your contact’s CardMunch record to your iPhone address book. LinkedIn does not do this by default for all contacts, which shows you that LinkedIn truly cares about privacy. It is possible to send quick e-mails to contacts from within the application. It is also possible to initiate a LinkedIn connection request, but once "connect" is pressed, it cannot be undone.

It’s a great and free application to swipe business cards at exhibitions. Hopefully, LinkedIn will add some more features, such as: to "favorite" a contact, to sort contacts by company name/the date the picture of the card was taken, or to record the location where the card was scanned (e.g., Curapipe at WATEC 2011)

To grab the free CardMunch Application from the App Store, click here.

Eight Simple Tps for Starting and Using Social Media

1) Establish a presence

This may sound redundant, but you need to be on the social media trinity: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. LinkedIn is great for professional networking. Facebook is a more informal way to connect, although the business pages are very much B2B. People can “like” your business page, which is great for branding. Twitter is the cocktail party in social networking; just keep the tweets business-related!

2) Engage your peers

Your peers are your potential customers, business partners or employers, so you need to engage them with articles, blogs, comments and postings. It’d s great way to establish your brand and position yourself as a thought leader.

3) Make sure your target audience knows where to find you.

You need to promote the links to your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blog. An easy (and often overlooked way) is your AutoSignature. Make sure that you also link your website and blog to your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

4) Find your voice.

As the French say: “c’est le ton qui fait la musique”. Decide how you want to communicate with your target audience. Do you want to keep it formal (for B2B) or informal (for B2C)?

5) Pace yourself.

Avoid starting with many tweets and blog posts a week that are impossible to keep up. Too much activity can be overwhelming and lead to burnout. It’s better to set up a schedule for your social media and stick to it.

6) Keep it simple.

Tweets, postings and blogs should be fun and easy to understand. Try to avoid using complex language or concepts.

7) Visuals rule.

A picture can tell a thousand words. Use visuals in your blog and postings; people love it!

8) Engage.

You are using social media, so be social! React, like, and comment to other people’s posts. Be generous and informative. Again, it’s a great way to brand and position yourself as a thought leader.

Want to learn more? Contact me at www.tiptoppr.com