(…) Jessica Rathke, principal of L10n Sales & Marketing Ltd. Jessica has had 20 years experience in sales and marketing in the localisation industry

Paul: What do you see as the most important problem facing the language services industry today?

Jessica: My perspective is biased by my sales background and what I hear from the language service providers I work with.

Most LSPs I talk to are very concerned about commoditization and downward pricing pressures. The two go hand-in-hand. If the customer perceives no difference in services, they will make price a differentiator. The problem I see is the industry’s slow or lack of response to this shift in the market.

I hear a lot of people say they wish customers would value our services so they will pay more.

My response to this is two-fold. First, it is our responsibility to give customers reasons to value us ourselves and second, for those who don’t or won’t value what we offer, we need to leave them to do business with price only sellers or let them use Google Translate. They might come back to us after they experience the problems associated with poor translation. If they don’t, then nothing lost.

The second part is easy. But the first part requires a fair bit of time and effort and requires us to change the way we communicate and sell to customers.

We need to abandon the “our quality is better” or “we’re better than the competition”pitch. These do not convey value. Nor does laundry-listing services, saying we“specialise” in all languages and subject matter. This is mutually exclusive. Customers are busy people these days and are unlikely to change the way they do things unless we can give them a compelling reason to do so. Ho-hum claims such as “best of breed” or“ISO-accredited” or “one-stop-shop” just aren’t enough. More.

See: Translator Pay Blog

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