Archive for January, 2012

Preparing To Go To The International Business Scene

January 23rd, 2012

The reason why some people carry out international business is to obtain the goods that they don’t possess. In exchange with what you have, you will get possession of different commodities that are scarce in your country.

International trade has forced the most influential men in the world to organize meetings in which they have to settle the growing conflicts between countries which have carried out international business together in the past.

Many points have to be put into consideration if you are willing to carry out international business. The way you are going to communicate with your foreign business partners should cross your mind because the cultures are different.

Your brain should be working most of the time because the people you are going to deal with have been in the business for some good time. You must be able to balance your books perfectly because any slight mistake you make, you will lose out completely.

Nowadays the government has no say concerning the number of people who are supposed to trade outside the boarders. This has been brought about by the internet which has many sites dealing in international business. This makes it easy for the people to carry out their business without the knowledge of the government.

» Read more: Preparing To Go To The International Business Scene

How to Bow and Other Important Things in International Business – V2

January 19th, 2012

The premier (Article I -in this series) left off with an example from my Russia experiences and observations of how not educating yourself in history, cultures and manners could and will get you expelled from a country! The two salesmen in the first story were real senior level people, oblivious of any international business education and responsibility for their failure. Their company hopefully learned from the Russian expulsion and quickly instituted a change that would better prepare their management and employees for international business. Remember one simple thing; “if it were easy…everyone would be doing it right!”. You can not successfully perform International Business (IB) without cultural preparation, readiness education and practice…before…you go! All of the stories presented in the six part series come from my direct observations and experiences while working on multi-company programs or significant business negotiations in each country.

Our next example comes from South Africa where a multi-company program was responsible for surveying land to build an operations center, establish support services and assure security measures. So what went wrong in this seemingly simple task? Simply –untrained, un-managed youth! More specifically, young employees sent away for possibly the first time in their lives, to a foreign country, without any senior management, or corporate training, nor cultural education or strict observances corporate policies. The issue -was not only intoxicated in public- but causing a car accident while driving in the same condition which sent one of the local people to a hospital with a serious injury!

» Read more: How to Bow and Other Important Things in International Business – V2