Cross-Cultural Negotiations Within the United States

I had a client in West Virginia who bought from me for several years. He had a family business that he’d started in a small town with his grandfather, and it had now grown to be the major employer in the town. We had developed quite a close relationship. Every few months, I would make a trip up from North Carolina to see him, knowing after a while that he would need to place an order with me as long as I spaced our visits out every few months. When we got together, at first, we would talk about everything but business, catching up with each other. I would ask him about his life, the business, his family, the town, etc., and he would ask me about my work and the company and life in the big city in North Carolina where I lived and worked. Once we’d caught up with each other, we would get down to some business, and this was often after lunch. Each and every time, it would take a few hours of this and that, but I’d always leave with an order, and it was always a pleasant break, at least for me, from my usual hectic pace.

       One day I phoned in preparation for my next trip, to see if he would be in, to arrange a convenient day, and he told me that he’d like me to meet a friend of his next time I was up there to visit him. His friend, he said, was interested in some of the things my company was selling, and he thought I should meet him. Of course, I was delighted, and we arranged a convenient day for the three of us to meet.

   When I arrived at my client’s office, his friend, Carl, was already there. We were very casually introduced, and my client began explaining Carl’s work, and how he thought what my company sold could be useful to him. Carl then took over and spoke a little about what he did, and I thought for a moment that we were going to go straight into business talk. However, in just a few moments, the conversation among the three of us quickly turned back to discussions of life in town, North Carolina, our respective families, and personal interests. It turned out that Carl liked to hunt, and he and my client began regaling me with stories of their hunting adventures. I’d hunted a little and shared my stories with them. One thing led to another, and soon we were talking about vacations, the economy, baseball-you name it.

       Occasionally, we would make a brief journey back to the business at hand, but it always seemed to be in conjunction with the small talk, like how the tools we manufactured were or were not as precise as the mechanisms on the guns we used for hunting, things like that. I realized that quite a lot of information about our mutual work, my company, their needs, and their work was being exchanged in all this, even though business was never directly addressed. I remember the first few meetings my client and I had had with each other many years ago – how we learned about each other this way then, too. I was struck with how quaint it felt now, how different it was from the way I usually had to sell, and yet how much I enjoyed working like this!

       Well, our discussions went on this way through the rest of the morning, weaving some business back and forth through the larger context of informal chit-chat about each other and our lives. Just before lunch, my client leaned back and began what seemed to be a kind of informal summary of who I was and what I did, and how what I did seemed to him to be just the thing that Carl and his company could use. Carl agreed, and my client asked him, almost on my behalf, how much he wanted to order, and Carl thought for a moment and gave me the biggest order I ever got from West Virginia. “Now that that’s done,” my client said, “how about some lunch?” We all went to the same place we always go to when I’m in West Virginia, talking about life and things and some business. By mid-afternoon I said I had to be heading home. We all agreed to stay in touch. We’ve been in touch ever since, and now I’ve got two clients to visit whenever I’m in West Virginia.