One of the very few drawbacks of being involved in
international business is that almost wherever you travel for family holidays
or weekends away, there will generally be a sense of familiarity, whether of
surroundings, language, culture or atmosphere. So as much as possible I have
tried to avoid taking my family to places where I have been previously on
business, preferring instead to explore new ground and share that special
experience of adventure and finding something new.
But sometimes it just hasn’t worked out that way. Villa
holidays are not something I have ever really aspired to or wanted to do, and
many of the main villa companies tend to offer packages way outside the amount
I have been prepared to pay for a bit of sunshine. There was once a time when I
could get all the sun I needed on my allotment two streets away! I have always
aimed to do something off the beaten track, so when I found a company in
Huddersfield who seemed to offer everything I needed apart from ABTA insurance,
including – against the grain – a very reasonably priced villa with a full
sized swimming pool set in 8 acres of orange groves and about 6 miles from
Albufeira in a remote spot in the middle of the Algarve countryside, and a week in a nice hotel in the centre
of Lisbon, I booked it.
At the time I was working with a distributor in Lisbon, run
by two avid Benfica fans, who also sponsored Benfica’s handball team. Eduardo
and Aries and their families were possibly the most hospitable people I have
ever had the pleasure to do business with, and we struck up a very good
business relationship and friendship. I had told Eduardo about my holiday and
he went on to explain that they had a house in the Algarve and would be in the area
at the same time as us, but that also they would like to show us some of
Lisbon. So we had tentatively agreed that if time allowed and we weren’t doing
other things, we would meet up at some stage during our holiday.
Well, they met us at the hotel on day one, took us on a day
out to Sintra via one of the best restaurants that I will never be able to find
again, to Estoril to a restaurant where they had taken me many times, and on
our final night in Lisbon to a fun fair until the early hours. And when, after
the long drive to the Algarve, we finally arrived at our villa, the British
owners told us that they had received three phone calls already from Eduardo to
see if we had arrived, and a fourth came through as they were telling us that!
It was clear that he and Aries and their families wanted to meet us there and
then, but we needed a couple of days to settle in. And I told them so.
Eduardo, Aries, and their families were astonishingly kind
and took us to beaches away from the main holiday areas, out to the point where
the Atlantic and the Mediterranean meet, and then treated us to a fabulous meal
outside on Eduardo’s veranda. However we must have spent at least four days of
our two weeks in Portugal in their company or under threat of it, and at times
it didn’t feel as much like a family break as it should have done!
I have been very fortunate in business to meet and work with
so many nice people. It is because I have put a lot of effort into developing
long lasting business and friendships in many different parts of the world, and
they have reciprocated, often with interest in the way that Eduardo and Aries
did. Similarly, we met with a distributor and his wife when on holiday in
County Mayo, were wined and dined in Prague by a distributor there, and met up
with a machinery customer on Toronto waterfront where he moored his yacht,
though none of those had the intensity of our experience in Portugal.
I have sometimes wondered why it is that people with whom I
spend very little time have seemed really to value the relationships that have
developed. There are probably a number of reasons:
- I expect excellent performance from distributors but I don’t expect immediate results because that is often unrealistic. Patience reaps rewards.
- I invest time and effort in product training and supporting them with samples and brochures, and at exhibitions, giving them the tools to do a first class job.
- I plan with them how we are going to achieve our agreed targets and objectives.
- I do what I say I am going to do. No half measures. No backtracking. No disappointments. I expect them to do the same.
- I like to spend time getting to know the people as well as their businesses, their other suppliers, their customers and their competitors.
- I listen. I am prepared to be flexible with terms where a good case is made.
- And I signal that I intend to know as much about their market as they do.
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