More of the “Doing Guy” and also the “Talking Guy”

Published : 27 June 2011, 04:18 PM
Updated : 27 June 2011, 04:18 PM

A slick black Buick was waiting for us at the airport. We hustled into the car and started inching through the mind boggling traffic of Guangzhou, Canton to the uninitiated. We landed in the municipal airport near the teeming City on Pearl River around 2 PM in stifling heat. The flight from Shanghai took two hours in China Eastern Airlines narrow seat extravaganza. If you are over six feet tall then it is advisable to avoid the China Eastern Economy class. Both my partner Gerdur and I are over six feet and ah the agony of folded legs!

After an hour in the car we arrived at the destination. I was expecting to be at one of the largest garment factories that we are visiting for sourcing. But instead we ended up in a fancy restaurant and were handed over to a guy in a casual suit. Folks, meet the "Eating Guy"!! The Chinese Business class has figured out that the Goailos (The Foreign Devils) like to eat first and then do business. So, nothing serious ever gets done without eating whole series of meals first. Large scale businesses are done with competitive drinking sessions (Baiju) over dinner that lasts for hours. Our Eating Guy was on his 6th lunch of the day at 3:15 PM. He is skinny. Boy, I would like to know the secret sauce for such a fit!

This is not a story about Chinese eating habits but rather a story about adaptability. The Chinese have figured out that it is important to communicate with the customer in their own terms so they have a class of employees called "The Talking Guys" whose only job is to communicate effectively with the customer any and all information that the factory wants the customer to know. The communication is prompt and full of bulleted data as opposed to rambling of two-page communiqué that one gets from Bangladeshis about how good the factory is, what a great building everything is housed in and how the managing director has a lineage going all the way back to The Prophet! The "Eating Guy" is simply there to keep the customer company over lunches and dinners.

The "Doing Guy" is typically the Laoban (The Boss) who grunts, huffs and puffs and make all decisions for companies sometimes as large as 20,000 employees! The Laoban rarely is very social but he gets it all done as long as he is sure that he is going to make money and will get paid.

Now, let us look at Bangladesh. I have not found the secret sauce as to how to make Bangladesh apparel manufacturing work for me. It maybe that our business models simply do not mesh with each other. However, I think the fundamental issue is one of communication. As The Wall Street Journal says about Indian graduate workforce, "So few of the high school and college graduates who come through the door can communicate effectively in English, and so many lack a grasp of educational basics such as reading comprehension, that a company can hire just three out of every 100 applicants (Indian Graduates Millions but too few are fit to hire; The Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2011)".

Oh, how true is it for the folks in the land of my father! All emails are laced with obsequious but irrelevant facts and figures, "I am Sunni Muslim, my father is a respected businessman, and I hail (sic) from Sylhet, blah, blah". All nice things but totally irrelevant.

What the Bangladeshi business class can do is learn a thing or two from their Chinese counterparts. Hire, train and pay a King's ransom to "The Talking Guy". Give the "Talking guy" a set of tight guidelines and make sure all the talk is pre-determined and scripted. Give up on the concept of paying peanuts for critical customer relations work. Peanuts get you monkeys and not "Talking Guys".

"So, what a Bengali Talking Guy would look and sound like? First of all it will have to be a "guy" for now. It pains me but the society is still at a place that the Glass Ceiling has no cracks whatsoever and the social norms are not quite there to have a woman on the frontline as a "Talking Guy". I wish this reality would change. Until then, it is important to understand that the "Talking Guy" is not a sales person. He is more of a Social Ambassador, a concierge, a fixer and sometimes a buddy all wrapped into one. He works as team alongside the Eating Guy to build confidence and feeling of excellent service for the customer.

The Talking Guy is the first person that the customer encounters and generating the confidence within the first few minutes, nah, first few seconds is paramount. The Talking Guy will listen to the gripes, make sure that the lunch or dinner is not too ethnic or too exotic but just exotic enough to maintain interest, will not divulge any private information about the owners of the factory and will not try to cut his own side deals. All these simple things can be immensely difficult to execute and yet listen carefully to the customer's requirements and wishes. One reason the Talking Guy is worth his weight in gold!

So, here is to the Bengali Talking Guy!

—————————————
Kayes Ahmed lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA with his three dogs. He runs a small yet global apparel and design business based in Boulder.