TGS Digested Week 24: Are your B2C trading clients ready for EU VAT changes?

Monday 2021.6.14

TGS Legal Committee

The TGS Legal Committee meets once a month to work on shared projects, to share information, and to imagine the future of international legal service provision. As ever, we have more ideas than we know what to do with so we decided to piggyback on the upcoming TGS Month in November this year to showcase everything TGS Legal has to offer, everywhere in the world. Everything.

We have been very successful with our series of “Doing Business In..” webinars and over TGS Month you will be able to participate in a special series of “TGS Doing Business In..” with a legal focus. Take part in a tour of the world with our TGS Legal Service providers. There will be more information about activities in TGS Month in the coming weeks. 

Other news from the TGS Legal Committee is that Stefano Faraoni gave a TED Talk on one of his specialties: AI, persuasive technology, and democracy. The talk was a dive into how social media can persuade us and put ideas in our minds without us perceiving them. Maybe it could be of interest to some of you and if you speak Italian, you can watch it here. If you don’t speak Italian or would like to see the talk live, Stefano has kindly agreed to give the talk in English during TGS Month in November.

Tuesday 2021.6.15

TGS Young Leaders Case Studies

Case Studies are an excellent tool for training and are often used in universities. You will have worked on case studies for your MBA and during your CPA training but their usefulness does not end when you leave college. Case studies can be used as part of a sustained knowledge sharing and skills transmission initiative in your firm. They can also form a solid base for ‘success stories’ for your client (and potential client) conversations, your website, and social media posts.  

Writing a case study is an excellent way to reinforce staff training and increase competence, critical thinking, and problem-solving. In a case study, your Young Leader will describe a problem or work situation, the people involved, the timescale, what techniques were used, what happened and then continue with some reflection on what else could have been done. This kind of experiential learning is a very natural way to increase knowledge and know-how. 

Today we met with TGS Young Leaders from TGS member firms in Asia Pacific, EMEA, and The Americas to explore the TGS case study project. Peter and I will be collecting case studies and helping your Young Leaders shape them into useful documents. If you would like to be involved in this project, please reach out to us or sign your Young Leaders up directly to the next case study workshop session on the 21st of September. 

👉 REGISTER for Asia Pacific: Sep 21, 2021 09:00 AM CEST Paris Time

👉 REGISTER for EMEA: Sep 21, 2021 02:00 PM Paris CEST Paris Time

👉 REGISTER for Americas: Sep 21, 2021 05:00 PM Paris CEST Paris Time

Wednesday 2021.6.16

TGS Sales Development Group

How to motivate and guide your sales team into sales activity?

This third session given by the great speaker Matthew Quinn about Sales development was, again, very insightful. Today’s subject was about understanding your buyer’s motivation. Have you ever considered asking your buyers why did they buy what they bought? According to Matthew Quinn, there are 3 different buying motivations and they never change throughout the years. 

The main problem for a salesperson is that he/she only sells to people who have the same buying motivation, but the salesperson really should adapt himself/herself to his/her buyer’s motivation. He/she should understand the different buying motivations when they come. These buying motivations are also about identifying the buyer’s motivation language. Here’s come what Matthew calls ‘SHAPER‘:

• SAFETY: safety buyer looks for trust, recommendations and pays attention to the online reviews.
• HONOR: honor buyer wants to know the company and trust the well-known brands. They are very clear about the type of things they want to buy. Yet, they do not trust the others’ reviews.
• ADVANCEMENT: advancement buyer wants to be the first to get the new services or products. He/she does not care about the brand; he/she can buy things from different brands working in the same professional field.
• PROTECTION: protective buyer asks many questions, about the company and its services. He/she asks about when something goes wrong, not what: ‘When something goes wrong, what will you do to help me?’ He/she wants the process to fix any mistakes the seller would do because he/she cares about the presale and afterward.
• ECONOMIC: the economic buyer has a budget and wants the cheapest service/product.
• RELATIONSHIP: relationship buyer is someone who remembers every provider he/she dealt with. He/she loves to know the people he bought from.

Have you heard about the SHAPER buyer’s motivation languages before? Next time you speak with a potential client, try to identify your buyer’s motivation: Is he/she a ‘safety’ buyer? an honor buyer? What motivation language your buyers use when doing business with you? Adapting yourself and sharing the same motivational language will help you to understand more your clients and improve your sales 😉.

Watch the full course on the TGS YouTube channel here:

Thursday 2021.617

TGS “Doing Business In…” 

This week, we continued the promotion of our ‘Doing Business in Italy’ Webinar that will take place next Wednesday at 3 PM CEST with our TGS Italian members Lance Audit and Athena Law. You will learn more about business sector opportunities and how to grow your business in Italy. If you have not registered yet, you can still sign up today here 👈.

We have already done two webinars of this type these last weeks, ‘Doing Business in South Korea’ and ‘Doing Business in Thailand’ and they were a real success so that’s why we are very happy to do some more with other countries. You can watch the replays on our YouTube channel. 

They are events that members and clients like because of their concrete and relevant aspects. Indeed, experts in a market give essential tips to invest in a foreign country. We talk about tax advice, regulation, and business culture. This kind of webinar raises the profile of countries and allows companies to make face-to-face connections in order to strengthen their community and establish new relationships.  

Stay tuned, more  “TGS Doing Business In…”  webinars are coming soon, it’s going to be exciting! Check the event page for our ‘Doing Business in Italy’ webinar if you want to have more details regarding the program.

Friday 2021.6.18

TGS VAT and Customs

I’ve had more requests for information about VAT this week than ever probably because beginning in July the OSS (One-Stop-Shop) VAT scheme begins. B2C suppliers of products or services will be able to register for VAT and file a single VAT return in one of the EU member states for the totality of their EU transactions. 

The OSS scheme, however, is not obligatory and your clients could still decide to file VAT reports in multiple countries. TGS is well placed with a strong presence in Europe and a depth of expertise in VAT that we will easily be able to help your clients find the best way through the new rules and decide if they would like to. 

To find more information about thresholds and exemptions, join (or follow) the TGS Tax Committee who is a working group on an agile solution for your B2C trading clients and online retailers. 

Will you be importing goods into the UK after 1st January 2021?

Of course, if I get questions about Europe, I get questions about how Brexit will impact imports to the UK. If the following question rings a bell, I would strongly recommend you use our TGS member firm, Hillier Hopkins’ Custom Import Checker.