Competitive advantage in business liaison interpreting services

As a freelance service provider, the fees factor is crumbling under the siege of any other provider ready to offer "the same" for less. I got a tip this morning for a "short" assignment as an "attendant- interpreter" for some business person. I was to provide my fees and availability. I provided knowing that I would not get it, and stressed in the message back to the tip provider that "anybody cheaper will get it". The subliminal message of "short" and "attendant" is that it deserves less. But I already covered the issue a while back.

Which brings me to something more constructive. Competitive advantage in business liaison interpreting service provision must be based on some added-value, and a soon to come stint is revealing as a strong signal on what could be that added-value which would justified the higher sticker. To keep it short, the service to be emphasized is pre-meeting minute scheduling and terrain preparation to maximize the encounters ROI for the client.

I know this sounds like books you read while doing an MBA, but there is no fluff and hot air involved here. A mission coming soon to me is proving to have half-backed level of preparation in meetings schedules, agenda, and what to take back home. I got the green light to call ahead of time the receiving side here in Japan, and the result is appalling. To keep it short, the following questions I got right away is the best to summarize the issue : "What do they want exactly to talk about?" The facilities to be inspected has not yet been listed up, so a list should be coming soon, and they, my clients, will be invited to pick their favorites.

This may be an acute case, but experience tells me how badly prepared meetings are common, bringing later frustration and a series of further badly prepared meetings, unless someone in the interaction ring call it quit.

What the business liaison interpreter is potentially able to provide as an added-value, is the knowledge that meanings and level of preparedness and the average competence at coping with the unexpected (request) is usually not the same between the West and the (Japanese) East. Feed well ahead of time to your Japanese partner what you want to ask, what you want to know and what you want to take back home, and chances are very high that you'll get a carload of feedback, of course, in standard, non-threatening or conflictual situation. Don't ask much and rely on improvisation on the spot and you will get less, much less. And even the promise to send you later on additional documentation won't fill up the lost opportunities to discuss around those documents, granted things were finely set and tuned up before the meeting.

So the fine tuning, prior contacting and consultation with the other side prior to D-Day is where to focus the competitive advantage.