Double launch

Last year, our company started to operate in France. It is relevant to point out, that not long ago the company had some experience with the French market, and this experience cannot be called positive. It resulted in a long and quite expensive lawsuit that is still ongoing, one way or another, and it had a negative impact on us working in other geographic markets as well.

Nevertheless, by the time we entered the market with our brand we had had positive experiences in the USA and Germany; particularly in Germany where our products were the second most popular in their category, and sometimes higher.

The experience of launching in France showed us that typical product lifecycles, turnover and business practices  there differ significantly from those in Scandinavia, the USA, and even more so than in Russia.

We would like to share some of the conclusions from our observations and research.

First of all, we would like to focus on the positive sides.

Strong points:

Technical competence

You should always expect a French colleague to be highly-qualified and competent in his/her area. A French person would prefer to be unemployed than have a job that does not utilize his/her qualifications. Therefore it is likely that your colleague will understand the nuances of any issues that demand specific knowledge.

Independence

In France, you rarely come across teamwork the way Scandinavians or Americans practice it. In France, the task will be divided into several parts with a member of the team working autonomously on each part. This originates from the peculiarities of the French education system which focuses on individual task assignments.

Creativity

Creativity at work and in interpersonal or business communication is considered a value in itself. Do not expect, as in Germany, that a presentation about a product will feature nothing but a presentation of a product. It is a demonstration of your capability to create a story surrounding the product. Consequently, if you arrange a press-conference that does not go well, it may not be the fault of poor quality material, but that you chose to hold the press conference to a café that does not produce the best croissants in town, or which is not the oldest  coffee-house in that district.

Unfortunately, a French person can be so attracted by something which is non-standard they can get distracted by it, and forget the routine.

Système D

Système Débrouille is a common expression that means the habit of performing work  without counting on outside help or support from the office. The French are used to working on a low budget and do not expect great expense from the company, as is common in many other countries.

Project Orientation

In France, there is a high level of constructive criticism. It is a common situation that you send  a description or a presentation  to your partners for their information, and you receive it back shortly afterwards with detailed amendments and comments. It goes without saying that your partners expect a similar attitude from you. Consequently, your partners and colleagues will see themselves as participants of the project, not only acting as a helping hand or providing a favor.  The most important thing is to deliver the aim and focus of the project.

Personal Connections

In this aspect France is very similar to Russia. A lot of issues are solved with the help of personal connections, in work this means your favorable relationships with your colleagues. It does not mean that your business partners become your buddies  or friends, but it definitely means that, in contrast to your German counterparts, in order to replace a manager  in a partner company you will have to, in fact,  start  building new relations from the business point of view. Also, apparently, you will have to  count less on contact via e-mails as the main form of communication, so initially you should take into consideration higher telephone or business-trip expenses in contrast to other European countries. In addition, there is another vitally important thing to do in business in France: business lunches. Do not count on a snack with your business colleague followed by a detailed business discussion in the office. The key issues will be talked over during a two-hour lunch and then only touched upon slightly. Also, the attitude to time is different in France. If you hurry during a conversation or through the aforementioned business lunch, it will not be appreciated. And one more thing: there is a saying that the French dislike to communicate in any other language but French. It is true. You or your co-workers have to learn how to write in French,  at least so it is understandable. 

After this brief description about the positive sides, I would like to dwell on problems that can occur whist working in France and with French people.

Responsibility

There is no accurate synonym in French for the English word accountability (and we should note that the Russian meaning of the word responsibility does not carry this same impact as the English word).If we take the meaning as " to carry responsibility for something to someone", then  the most accurate analogy in French  is ‘etre redevable’ a phrase that only entered into common use a few years ago. According to French business tradition you are only responsible to the boss, and this is acknowledged in the majority of businesses in the country’s vertical administrative structure. If you are used to horizontal administrative and project control, it will be difficult to work. It is common that the participants of a project will not be informed about a delay in the project being delayed.. The work demands significant control from the project leader and a lot of patience in explaining the role of a person/firm in the project.

Fear of errors

A common characteristic of French management is a tendency to avoid taking any steps that might lead someone to be responsible and answerable for mistakes. Moreover, if as a result of a situation it becomes likely that someone’s actions will probably lead to a mistake, and that this might be your French colleague’s responsibility, they are more likely to take no action at all.

Reward and recognition

Another French characteristic is fear of success. Very often, as in the USSR, recognition from the boss leads to jealousy and irritation from other colleagues. Yet another characteristic is that team relationships are given a higher priority than in Russia. So, the standard range of motivation techniques cannot  be used in France without being significantly adapted.

Leadership

The French, compared to Russians, are far less aggressive when arguing their point of view or attitude. Further, in their opinion, even temporary leadership in a team is not considered something worth striving for. Consequently, an offer of team leadership will be regarded as a rather negative motivation for a French participant, both for project work and for relationships in the company...

Dependence on administration

As for taking decisions autonomously, the French often demonstrate considerable dependence on administration. As we have said above, in France there is a vertical administrative hierarchy with distinctive employee rights on each level. Even unimportant issues are supposed to be raised to the level of departmental manager, and when you take into consideration the difficulties connected with responsibility and fear or mistakes, you will find that you will hardly ever be informed of the reasons  for delays or a failure to get any results...

Negative way of thinking

It is not easy to define the cause of the problem, but as we have mentioned above, French managers demonstrate a high level of criticism. Thus, any serious inspection of a project/product will concentrate its  drawbacks, but not on the advantages. Again, taking into consideration the fear of making mistakes we have described above, your French partners will tend to pre-destine failure in any partnership.

Resume

A recently published research¹ says that it takes on average 6 years to launch a new product in Europe, but in France it takes 7.5 years. We should mention here that the majority of companies featured in the research² here and in other studies launched their product on a range of markets simultaneously, using  "the effect of waterfall". So that "swifter "markets, for example, Scandinavian³  provided the promotion on "slower" markets, such as that in France.

However, we could not use this technique in full, primarily because our product is country specific (our company PROMT produces  software for machine translation). So we tried a technique of  "double launching" by introducing both the first French market version and then, once demand had been assessed and local peculiarities integrated, launching a new version 7 months later (i.e. 2 versions in the same year).Taking into consideration the lack of structure in  the distribution  system  and the local mentality,  we concentrated on PR, working with  press, experts and important clients that would provide us with public support  for our product in the media. As a result, from my point of view, we managed to make an impression that our product was a "point of reference" in the marketplace, and within a year we did what it would normally take two-and-a-half to three years to achieve. We could not have done this without knowing the strengths and weaknesses of our clients and partners.

I hope someone else will be able to use our experience and the research that we have introduced briefly in this article.

¹ "The international take-off of New Products" Tellis, Stremersch and Yin, "Marketing Science" Cambridge University, 2003