A trade mission, lasting several days, fruitful discussions. Two entrepreneurs: one Dutch, one Ukrainian, reach a verbal agreement. A product manufactured in Ukraine, sold via the Netherlands. They shake hands. The Ukrainian goes home and waits for news.
That news never comes.
Not because the Dutchman wasn’t sincere. Not because the product was faulty. But because he thought the handshake was the start of a process. The Ukrainian thought the process had already begun.
That difference costs deals.
We treat trust as a stage. That’s the mistake.
In most sales funnels, you’ll see trust listed somewhere near the top, like a tick box you tick off before moving on to the next step. Did the first meeting go well? Tick. Have you sent the quotation? Tick. But trust doesn’t work like that. It isn’t a phase; it’s a parallel process that runs throughout the entire collaboration, and one that you can lose at any moment.
Especially across borders.
What Hofstede tells you, and what he doesn’t
Hofstede’s model of uncertainty avoidance shows that cultures differ fundamentally in how much risk people are willing to accept before saying yes. Germany scores significantly higher on uncertainty avoidance than the Netherlands, which means that German buyers, on average, need more documentation, more time and more evidence before making a decision.
Most export managers are well aware of this by now.
What they are less aware of is that Hofstede explains the pace of decision-making, not what a commitment actually means. And that is precisely where things go wrong. In the DACH market, I have seen time and again that a verbal commitment made during a meeting means absolutely nothing to a German or Austrian counterpart. For them, the real discussion only begins once the paperwork is on the table. For a Dutch entrepreneur, that very moment already feels like half a year.
It works the other way round, too. The Ukrainian entrepreneur on that trade mission had a different frame of reference. For him, the handshake was not the start of negotiations but a confirmation of intent; something you take seriously and act upon. The silence that followed was not, for him, a normal lead time; it was a signal that the deal was off.
This ties in with Edward Hall’s distinction between high-context and low-context communication. In high-context cultures, much of the meaning is conveyed through context, relationship and gesture. A handshake following a good conversation isn’t an opener; it’s a statement. In low-context cultures, such as the Netherlands, explicit, written confirmation is the norm. Without that, nothing has been agreed yet.
Neither approach is wrong. But if you don’t know which system the other person operates within, you’ll lose the deal without understanding why.
The automation trap
Imagine: you’ve had three good conversations with a potential client in Germany. Trust is growing. Then your CRM automatically sends a generic nurture email because the lead has been in the funnel for six weeks.
That email does more harm than three weeks of silence.
Marketing automation is designed for scale, not for nuance. At an early stage of the funnel, it’s a useful tool. But the further a relationship progresses, the more dangerous it becomes to replace personal contact with a template. Especially in markets where the relationship comes before the transaction – and there are more of those than you might think.
What you should do instead
Three things I’ve started doing differently after years of working in e.g. DACH markets:
B Make it explicitly clear what a conversation entails. After a good initial contact, I send a brief summary. Not as a quote, but as a reflection. What did we discuss, what are the next steps, who’s doing what? This prevents a gap arising between two different interpretations of the same conversation.
Adjust your pace, not your ambition. You can want to move quickly whilst still giving the other person space to keep up. That means checking in more often, not pushing. A short message after two weeks of silence isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s maintenance.
Remove marketing automation from the personal part of the funnel. As soon as you’re in conversation with a specific prospect, they’re taken out of the automated flow. Personal contact, even if it’s just a quick text, always beats a generated email.
What happened with the deal?
The Dutchman on that trade mission probably never understood why the contract didn’t materialise. He thought the other party was still considering it. The Ukrainian thought he’d already said no. What started promising died a slow death.
What do you see as the starting point for a commitment in your own sales process?