Table of Contents Introduction Immigration Hurdles Doing Business in the US Dealing with US Companies

Doing Business in the US

American corporations and people are among the most welcoming to foreigners, and are extremely accommodative of accents, pronunciations, and even your spelling words the Queen’s way.

Now that outsourcing and offshore are accepted as business-as-usual practices in enterprise America, writing, marketing, marketing communications, and other such support services are frequently being considered as non-core and thus open to commoditization. For example, Purplepatch Services LLC is a dual-shore company: we help clients achieve creative services from our studios in Bangalore, India, and Manila, Philippines.

Building up a business in any country is going to take time, and the US is no different. At the end of it, people run businesses, not the other way around. Some of the simple—and most effective—ways I have found to generate new business are by:

  1. Developing patience.
  2. While this is contradictory to the DNA of doing business—grow fast, grow more—patience is a good quality. People need time to be convinced, take decisions or validate their opinions. Rushing them is not going to be worth the effort, and would turn many Americans off.
  3. Selling what you have.
  4. Many times, you will find opportunities where you think you can do the work, but do not have the skills. This is a dangerous situation, because you can oversell, and will surely under deliver.
  5. Building relationships.
  6. Cold calling, direct mailing, and guerilla marketing are all well, but there is nothing like building a lasting relationship with clients. Americans tend to be very loyal, and will encourage service providers to grow. This can be the most enviable quality you can ever have.
  7. Being fair-priced.
  8. Since services are being commoditized every day, the only hooks that will hold us to our clients are quality, price, and being on time. If we can develop a matrix of how much we can handle, and what we would like to earn, and create a fair price for our services, there is ample scope to grow. Under pricing leads heartache, while over pricing has its own pitfalls.
  9. Think for the client, and not for your business.
  10. Your business is secure only when your client is growing. If your services, pricing, and quality can help the American client, you will not find a more loyal client in the world. Think about it.