Learning Experiences of Chinese Salesman in B2B Settings: A Present Situation Analysis

Salesman plays a crucial role in the success of foreign trade sales enterprises, especially those small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Business English as lingua franca helps in information exchange in the process of business-to-business (B2B) setting. Therefore, the English proficiency of a salesman becomes the core competitive power for the development of an enterprise. This study, as a part of needs analysis aiming to identify the salesman's language needs, is to check out the learning experiences of salesmen in foreign trade SMEs in China. Learning experience is one part of the present situation analysis. This research adopted a quantitative questionnaire survey method. There were 57 salesmen respondents participated in the questionnaire survey. Most of the respondents have English certificates, which means they have at least basic English ability. The results showed that few companies provide training to the salesman. This indicated that the SMEs do not pay attention to the training for salesman. Most of the training courses were held in Chinese, which may hinder the effect of training. The SMEs should change their training strategies and provide proper training courses to effectively improve the salesman's English overall proficiency.