Saved Time and Money by Establishing Good Rapport with Your Korean Business Partners at Korean Business Blog

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Saved Time and Money by Establishing Good Rapport with Your Korean Business Partners

By Heejeong Haas | September 13, 2007

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I introduced Paul Young’s blog, “Product Beautiful” in my last post. In his recent posts, “The Challenges of Overseas Manufacturing Part I-III”, he covers challenges and other crucial factors that American companies may face and have to take into a consideration. The first of the three posts talks about communication issues. It inspired me to talk about how important it is to establish the “right” kind of communication line with Korean business partners.

I often locate and contact Korean businesses for my American clients. No matter what the goal of the initial contact is, there is a common thing I experience with the majority of Korean businesses at the onset of the communication process. That is, you have to spend a fair amount of time to establish good rapport in order to make matters progress smoothly and gain their cooperation. This process may seem very personal and not so professional to many American businessmen.

I have seen many American clients have an attitude that can be summarized as “everybody reacts to money, and if they want to be successful in the global market, they should accept this deal.” And they readily ignore this important “establishing personal rapport” part with their Korean business partners. This view is not only wrong when it comes to another culture especially like Korea, but it can be very dangerous as you will end up wasting a huge amount of money pursuing a deal but coming out with no good results. And even though your business relationship somehow takes off, you will encounter lots of hardships if you don’t take care of this “establishing personal rapport” part. It means that you will have to set some time for doing activities for this purpose only.

Korean business partners want to first get to know you before they get into any kind of business dealings. It is very important for them to know you as a person and have a good impression of you. It doesn’t matter how good of a deal you are offering them, this “establishing a personal bond or relationship” with them should be the first code of conduct you have to remember when you deal with your Korean business partners. Once you establish solid and good rapport with them, the benefit you get out of this is priceless. I often am even asked questions such as what I majored in college, if I am married, how many kids I have, why I am in Austin, what my husband does for a living, etc. Sure, these personal matters are none of their business and don’t have anything to do with the actual business relationship. However, exchanging such information with each other is a very crucial process of “getting to know each other” phase. Especially when I represent a company here, they will look at the company through the lens of their own view about me.

In my next post, I would like to talk more about some of these personal elements and relations in Korean business.

Heejeong Haas

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