Map Data: Penang Nyona, Malaysia
Google Earth, Google Maxar Technologies
Here’s an interesting theoretical situation. Imagine that you represent a major Asian conglomerate. You control several budgets that need to be spent by the end of the year on a variety of partnerships with organizations that augment your core offerings. Imagine that you are extremely busy and only have time to entertain one vendor pitch. There are two salespeople to choose from, so you’ll have to turn one of them away. Not an uncommon situation. The salespeople are equivalent except that one of them represents a single reputable firm, while the other represents several reputable firms simultaneously. With whom do you schedule your meeting?
The second salesperson gets more meetings across the board. This is certainly because there are more possibilities to explore for a potential fit with your variety of budgetary needs. But there are other reasons, too. The candidate who represents multiple reputable firms embodies the sum of their reputations. It is one thing to have earned the right to represent a firm with a solid track record in the Western world, but it is another thing altogether to have earned the right to represent multiple. Further, it is implicitly understood that this salesperson will explore multiple angles rather than press a single one, engendering a sense of shared purpose that lends to credibility and reduces the risk of poor budget allocation.
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John Fargis is a senior executive with over twenty-five years of general management experience in the China market. He has run Asia for a range of US and European software companies. Google purchased three of these companies. John is the Co-founder and Principal for BYG Advantage, focused on market acceleration with international technology firms across APAC, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. John’s management experience includes bridging dozens of technology companies into new global market opportunities. Until recently he was also an adjunct professor at the Hult International Business School Shanghai campus where he taught courses on Emerging Markets, Leadership and Chinese History. He is an independent director on the NASDAQ listed technology company, Ispire. (ISPR) and a Board of Managers at the Oakwood Friends School.
John first went to China as a Henry Luce Scholar in 1993 when he worked in Shanghai. He was the first foreigner in the modern era, allowed permission to work in a Chinese reform school. Prior to this assignment he had worked for four years as a New York City, special education schoolteacher in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
John has a B.A. with Honors in Medieval Studies from Wesleyan University, a Masters of Special Education from Hunter College and a Masters of Law and Diplomacy with a focus on international business and Chinese history from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. After resideing for decades in China, John currently lives in New Paltz, New York, not far from where he grew up.