The coffee ceremony

Next post Monday Feb 13th

We talked about food last time and the importance for an Italian guy to have lunch.

Now there is something also very relevant in Italian “food culture” and it’s coffee.

Coffee for us is much more than just a simple hot drink. It means welcome and care. It’s a pleasure, and even more it’s a ceremony. When we invite someone to have a coffee it’s much more than just an opportunity to spend sometime together, its’ a way to share a profound pleasure.

When the soluble coffee arrived in Italy, it was the Seventies, brough by Nestlé, the Nescafé can, it was a terrible flop. Why? Why it took so long to Nestlé to re-position Nescafé and find a market niche?

Having in mind that the coffee ceremony is a way to welcome a friend into your house, how can you really take care of her/him if you just have to boil some water and dissolve a brown power into it? How much more care and love will you show her/him if you have to set up carefully the “caffettiera”, and prepre a hot and strong coffee for your guest?

That’s why Nescaffé is now presented as a different drink, for young people, competing with liqueurs and soft drink much more than with traditional coffee.

So the coffee ritual is important for an Italian, remember it next time she/he will invite you to have one!

What food means to us

Next post Thursday Feb 9th

What food mean to an Italian? You need to know if you want do business with us. Because it’s relevant.

I once read a book about European habits that open my eyes. It said that when two Anglo-Saxon people met they usually invite each other “let’s have a drink together” so they can talk about their memories.

Now when something similar happens in Italy, when I met a long time lost friend what I would suggest is “let’s have lunch together” or a pizza or a dinner or a “panino”. Never just a drink.

That book linked these main differences to some religion issues, which is not the subject of this post.

Food is.

Sitting around the same table for having meal together for us in Italy it’s really significant: it means we can shelter you, invite you to one of our inner part in (business) life, since we all know that we eat and we drink, good wine, and… “in vino veritas”… that we can translate “wine brings truth”… meaning that when you are even slightly drunk you start talking from the hearth.

Being sit at the same table means for us sharing our problems, find common path, be open to  intimacy, business confidences.

So if you want to improve your relation with an Italian guy, take him to a good restaurant and do not start talking business till he starts doing, or at least after the pasta…

Normal Jeans: like a candle in the wind

next post Monday January 16th 2012

How to dress for a meeting in Italy?

I wore just twice jeans in a working day and both time I have been reproached by my boss, actually two different ones.

We are pretty formal, and we do judge potential suppliers and partners by their dressing style. I know, that’s not fair neither too relevant. It’s our culture.

Yes, Sergio Marchionne, the famous CEO of the Fiat Group, Chrysler included, can wear a sweater, a black polo neck sweater and no one dare to judge him.

But, unless you are Marchionne, or someone at the same level of popularity,  my suggestion is to follow the tradition dressing code: so wear a jacket and a tie and try to avoid too bright colors, that could be suitable if you work with the fashion gurus but not for more traditional niches like mechanical, heavy industry, power generation, ICT and so on.

Accenture and particularly McKinsey people in Italy uses to wear black dress, sometime daring to go for a sober chalkstriped one, while ladies use to wear a somber black or gray close fitting dress (like Audrey) or a tailleur with a smart and moderate pearl necklace.

Of course you are not asked to dress that way, but the closer you can go to this sample, the better it is. In any way my suggestion is to avoid any kind of affectation: gold Rolex could work during the “anni da bere”, the 80s, not know.

I used to work for a filtration system companies and many of my clients were iron mills, paper mills, machine tools producers and end users and so on. We use to filter lubrication oils. So we had to visit the maintenance manager down in the subsoil where the tanks and pumps are.

I’ve been taught to dress anyway as I was meeting their CEO in their smart headquarter downtown.

And what about summer, when hot hits hard? Same thing. You could try to forget your tie in the last fortnight of July, south of Florence, and if you have already met the client, so that won’t be your first impression.

What is your experience of the dressing code in Italy?

Dressing code: making a good first impression

next post Friday January 13th 2012

There is no second chance for the first impression: the most trivial and worn commonplace are very often the smartest one.

That’s the case. So how to start a sales meeting in the Bel Paese? What to say and what not to say if you want to look trustworthy and friendly? I always remember that wonderful sequence from Gung Ho, when Michael Keaton address the board of Nissan Motors to support the acquisition of the car plant where he works. 

That’s a true masterpiece, a rich book full of hints of what you absolutely need to AVOID to start positively a meeting.

What about Italy then?

We need to distinguish two main populations: multinational companies and Italian owned companies, especially SME.

If you have a meeting with a director or a manager of  Italian subsidiaries of multinational companies, like IBM, Shell, Toshiba, Volkswagen, Dell and so on, you could behave like in the international context: be professional, concise, straight to the point, do not indulge too much on greetings, don’t be too personal. Although Italian people seem to be very open and friendly, they want to decide with whom they like to share their privacy. Do not push us or we could react even firmly against what we believe could be a sort of violence and violation.

But if you are talking to a SME owner or director, you need to know that the first challenge you have to face is to overcome their skepticism. Italy has been overridden by many foreigners, I mean in its history. When the Roman Empire felt down our country has been conquered and spoiled by almost all the folks that lived in ancient Europe. German barbarians tribes? Name one and you found they invaded Italy and ravaged our cities and countryside.

And after that the French, the Spanish, the Austrian, the Turkish in the South, the Nazi…. So you can imagine people tend to be a little suspicious, even just for genetic reasons, something embedded in our DNA.

So first thing you should do: win their trust. Show them you have studied your lesson, did you homework: tell them you know something about their company, their history (website can help you), show them that you know something about the city they are based in, about Italian culture; avoid commonplace like I love Venice, love your food, love your wine. We take it for granted, we know we have the best food in the world and some of the most magnificent cities of the globe.

Try something different: what would you think of an Italian guy coming into your Manhattan office and start talking of Jo Torre and Derek Jeter or meeting you in Paris and quoting some Aznavour’s songs or Prevert’s poetries? A totally different approach…

Don’t overact. Better be calm, quite even cold, and then warm up during the meeting, that act too warmly and lose the grip of the meeting.. And if you need more hints, just write me.