Daniel & Friends / Blog / GTM & Sales
Your German client tells you off. Your Japanese client thanks you and disappears.
In more than ten years I have watched deals die in most of the available ways. The nastiest one looks like a win. The meeting runs smoothly, everyone smiles, nobody objects. A month later you learn the client had serious doubts from the first minute and simply did not consider it appropriate to raise them.
Daniel Votruba · 9 September 2026 · 4 min read
We ask whether anything is unclear. Then we believe the answer.
In Munich you ask what they think of the timeline and the answer arrives with the precision of an exam board. It lacks the time and cost of each step, they say, and this is no way to work with clients. It sounds like a reprimand. It is a gift, because you leave the room knowing exactly what to fix.
In Tokyo you ask the same question and hear that they like the solution very much and just need to think a few details through. You leave feeling one signature away. A month later the work goes to somebody else and you find out sideways that the pricing worried them from the start.
Both answers were honest. One was meant to be heard and the other to be decoded.
A fathom in Munich was not a fathom in Frankfurt
The anthropologist Edward T. Hall named the difference in Beyond Culture back in 1976. Low-context cultures put meaning into words, so whatever went unsaid does not count. High-context cultures assume the other side already knows most of it, so meaning moves into the hint, the pause and the thing that was left out.
The explanation sits in history. Countries with a long unbroken past and a homogeneous society got their shared context for free, because everyone was born into it. Japan and China are the textbook case. Countries assembled out of pieces had to spell everything out instead. Germany unified only in 1871, and until then a fathom in Munich ran to a different length than one in Frankfurt. Order a hundred fathoms of cloth under those conditions and you learn to write detailed contracts.
Erin Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, built on Hall in The Culture Map (2014) and added seven more scales: feedback, persuading, leading, deciding, trust, disagreement and time. Communication comes first, and it shows up in the room before any of the others.
Nobody wins on this scale
Note the word approximate. An English speaker feels like a diplomat next to a Dutch one and like a brute next to a Japanese one, without moving an inch. The scale describes a likely tendency and, more usefully, the distance between two parties. That distance is the only part that actually burns you in a meeting.
Education flips the whole thing. In low-context cultures an educated person is recognised by speaking precisely and leaving no room for guesswork. In high-context cultures, by knowing how to imply. Both are forms of refinement, aimed in opposite directions.
The middle of the scale is the worst place to stand
This is the part that interests me most, because it is where I live.
Central Europeans think of themselves as direct. Next to a Dutch or German counterpart we wrap almost everything in cotton wool. "We will take a look at it" and "that might be complicated" are perfectly legible refusals in Prague. In Amsterdam they are commitments that go into the minutes and come back at you next quarter.
At the same moment, next to a Japanese or Brazilian counterpart, the same person comes across as someone who walked in and started loudly commenting on the furniture.
Sitting mid-scale is the hardest position, because you believe you are the normal one and you are wrong in both directions. Anyone selling from the UK, Poland, Italy or the Gulf has the same problem.
What to do on Monday morning
For low-context markets, which means DACH, the Netherlands and the Nordics, the answer is plain discipline. Send the agenda in advance. Work through it point by point. Close every item with a name, a task and a date. Send a written summary within the hour. And leave irony at home, because it does not survive translation into German or Dutch and gets taken literally.
For high-context markets one move keeps working, even though it sounds obsequious when you read it. You admit your own culture, admire theirs and ask for an exception. "Where I come from we say things almost barbarically directly, so forgive me. I admire how carefully you put things. I cannot do it, so please tell me the uncomfortable parts too." I borrowed that sequence from Martin Bednar's newsletter on cultural differences and it has saved me several misunderstandings.
And because we do marketing, here are three places where this scale shows up long before anyone sits down at a table.
A landing page gets rebuilt, not translated. Germany wants numbers, specifications and a comparison table. Southern Europe and Asia want references, client names and people with faces. Identical copy in both versions means one of them is failing to sell.
Outbound measures something other than you think. "That sounds interesting" carries two different values in Copenhagen and in Milan. Log both as the same pipeline stage and your forecast rests on sand.
On a demo, stop asking whether there are any questions. Ask what would stop this from happening. The first question invites politeness, the second asks for the objection.
Keep your own style, it is not the guilty party. Just watch for the moment it stops working and build the other side a bridge they can walk across. Usually one extra sentence, placed at the right time, does it.
The short version (TL;DR)
- Low context puts meaning in the words, high context in the hint. Hall described it in 1976 and Meyer built on it in The Culture Map.
- What matters is the distance between two parties, not an absolute position. The English are direct next to the Japanese and cautious next to the Dutch.
- Mid-scale cultures have the hardest job: evasive to the Dutch, blunt to the Japanese, and convinced they are normal.
- It starts before the meeting. Landing pages, outbound replies and demo questions all need rebuilding per market.
Frequently asked questions
What are high-context and low-context communication?
Low context means meaning sits in the words: whatever went unsaid does not count. High context assumes the other party already knows most of it, so the message hides in a hint, a pause or an omission. The anthropologist Edward T. Hall introduced both terms in Beyond Culture in 1976.
Which countries are low context and which are high context?
The United States, the Netherlands, Germany and the Nordics sit at the low-context end. The UK, Central Europe, Italy and France fall in the middle. India, China, Korea and Japan sit at the high-context end. Positions are relative, so the same person can read as blunt in one room and evasive in another.
How do you do business with a German client?
Send the agenda in advance and follow it point by point. Close every item with a name, a task and a date, then send a written summary within the hour. Skip irony, because low-context cultures take it literally. Treat blunt criticism as information rather than an attack.
What is The Culture Map by Erin Meyer?
A 2014 book by INSEAD professor Erin Meyer mapping eight scales of cultural difference in business: communicating, evaluating, persuading, leading, deciding, trusting, disagreeing and scheduling. The communication scale builds directly on Hall's high and low context.
Sources & inspiration: Edward T. Hall, Beyond Culture (Anchor Books, 1976) · Erin Meyer, The Culture Map (PublicAffairs, 2014, INSEAD) · prompted by an issue of Martin Bednar's newsletter on cultural differences in business · and a decent number of meetings where I learned this the slow way.
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