Carlos Sentís «Hay que crear marca, España sigue siendo desconocida"

Hello, very good welcome to top of abc.es today I want to chat with

carlos

sent

is who is the CEO of en why chain spain sunshine project good morning

carlos

with these hours for bringing nothing a pleasure to talk to you and above all to understand from you how it was born This idea of ​​this project is so exciting in the end chinchay na china is a huge country and can offer great opportunities to spain surely and not just to spain so how did it come about as it has and how did you get into this well well thank you for the invitation and The project was born after six years working to promote Spain in China and China in Spain.

We have been working for a long time for organizations, both private companies and government institutions, to try to generate mutually beneficial links between the two countries and what we have realized It is es

sent

ial that we join forces and bring together companies and institutions from both countries so that together we can develop those relationships that until now have been very limited because they are always specific individual tactical actions and also in some way to summarize it is each one doing the war on its side so what we have done has been to unite 50 organizations now and prepare an action plan for all of 2018 so that Spain occupies the position in China that corresponds to it so that more Chinese tourists come more trade more investment and also for that we can offer the best of Spain to China throughout next year and since then, lately you have had a meeting here and you have organized a meeting at the royal theater that has been crowded and very interesting.

It would also be interesting if you could tell what the 2018 doubling project of a series of initiatives but I think it is interesting to know what it turns out at the end of this wonderful project. Well, what we did was last Monday, October 30, it was the second Spanish communication forum. china the first edition was in 2015 it was inaugurated by my father jose antonio santis the honorary president of the forum and what we talked about was the importance of communication so that we know each other better and thanks to knowing each other we can have the necessary confidence to be able to do business after For two years working on the preparation of this project, we have officially begun by clicking on a project that takes shape in communication actions on the one hand and business development on the other in actions, let's say for the entire year that can help position the brands that participate and also to help position Spain in China, these actions include, on the one hand, marketing work through Chinese social networks, media events, street marketing, video marketing, but we are also going to work in the field of relations with delegations between Spain and China 25 meetings with Chinese companies and institutions we are going to do workshops we are going to do corporate events and in the end we are going to advise all the organizations to try to develop that market for Spanish companies and also to help companies Chinese companies in Spain who also need help and this platform we believe can be interesting for them, what kind of care a Spanish company has to take when thinking about the Chinese market also goes with philosophical futuristic because they are different philosophies and a different way of relating to what our our custom then what is what are you that also since you speak Chinese I also speak Chinese and I don't write very well but so good but sometimes speaking it seems to me to be very difficult and I don't achieve any important achievement I would like to have or maybe a little bit more I imagine it's easy to see if it can be learned now and in relation to what the fundamental risks are, I believe that at any time if a company is going to open a foreign market, especially a distant market, it is essential to do good research to know what the possible risks are. risks that we can have in that market and see which are the most interesting partners to be able to develop the activity in that sense what are the risks of putting some well because like any other market if it does not generate enough economic results you can have problems if we put what we We recommend investing as little as possible and doing a very prudent activity not because China is more complicated than other countries but because in any case it is convenient to reduce the risks and in this way if we start doing research with the community in Spain' and collaborating with the Chinese community and then little by little we develop relationships with Chinese clients or partners and then when we have to make the decision to land in China and set up an office we avoid many risks, many operations that are set up from Spanish companies are decisions that in some way What they do is how they intend to land in China and they believe that the most relevant thing is the physical presence.

They make large investments both in the operation and also in advertising and marketing and they do not really know what the strategy to follow was and they do not know exactly what the strategy would be. best way to invest those resources so that after several years in which they do not achieve economic results they return to Spain considering that China is an impossible market and the problem was not China but that they did not do the job well so I believe that at It is better to be prudent and look for the right clients, distributors, and partners from Spain without having to invest in China and move forward so that when you already have solid clients you can go little by little investing less than what you are generating from the point of view. about the culture, what are the differences?

I think the biggest problem we normally have is that we assume that they are very different when in reality they are quite similar. I went to China for the first time in 2008 and I was there for the first 10 days of trip and with a tourist trip looking for the differences and this is very Chinese, look how Chinese this is and this is so different and after 10 days I told my friend that what I had realized is that in reality most things are the same, what a person is concerned about, what they need, what they want, is practically the same, because speaking of that, regardless of the cultural differences that may exist, the vast majority of their life concerns are the same: they want to have a good job, they want to be able to have economic freedom they want to have a healthy family they want to be happy they want to enjoy they want to travel we are talking about the fact that in reality we are very similar and I think that the biggest problem we have is the language variation much more than cultural much more than how they are different and their culture and His story is different, there is no way to understand it, it's more like I don't understand what he is telling me, I am not able to explain to him what I want to say, so it is really very complicated, and that language difference can be solved with good interpreters. solve by learning the liver with here leite English is also spoken more and more that the young generations speak English quite well now but not even all Spaniards also speak English therefore it is a question of if we are not able to communicate which is very important communication if you don't know how to communicate there is impossible to see and complicated and then I think there is another issue not that you said it is a year that we are working so that the Chinese culture is a culture also of knowing the person who does not enter yet is 20 In business, absolutely, relationships for China are extraordinarily important.

I think they are always important and in Spain too, if you want to do any project, it is essential to have the trust of partners who can help with development. I think even more so and I am absolutely okay, if there is not a word called quanzhi, which is, let's say, the concept of relationships and understood as that network of interest and mutual benefit in which the first you work on the friendship relationship for a long time when that trust is generated is when you really get to do business and in the West it is often true that a meeting between two companies starts by saying what one wants what the other wants and they close with ropes and it's and this in Chinese doesn't work they basses this they get a little in defense because they manage or know you because they don't trust and there is another word that I think is key which is camps which is that is not trustworthy and the first thing they do is ask friends or acquaintances if that person who is or not trustworthy and if they consider that it is trustworthy because it has already been demonstrated in meals during relationship time and also even in times in which they have been able to ask you for help and you, without expecting anything in return, have helped them and have continued to maintain that relationship over time that is essential and think in the long term and not be constantly oriented to the short term because many times in Spain we are so focused on the short term that in the end we have many negative consequences in the medium and long term.