My first oversea business trip to Germany
Preface:
Thanks to the long holiday, today, I could manage some free time to recall the memory of the trip to Germany which took place at the end of last month. Dear friends, it could be a lengthy article, but please be patient and take your time if
you have interest in this story. I just want to share this experience with our
dear forum members and hope this can be of some help to some of you. And if you
have any questions while you reading it. Please feel free to ask me. I would like to answer your questions regarding this trip and further speak of it as so many things in mind now and I am afraid that I could not make everything clear!
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Since I was transferred to be in charge of the China team of our sales department from last September, I very soon got the chance to participate every exhibition related with our field all over the world that our sale department would attend every year. Last September I lost the opportunity to attend the Recharger Show in Las Vegas due to not being able to get the Visa to US in time. But shortly
I was scheduled to attend the Paperworld exhibition Frankfurt Messe Germany from Jan 26 to 30.2005. And everything went through smoothly, including applying for the passport, taking the visa interview and all the detailed issues involved.
To be frank, I had been somewhat nervous and a bit worried before taking the visa interview as that was the first time to take that kind of interview and had no
experience of it at all. But out of my imagination, things turned out very smooth and I passed it easily. I still clearly remember the excitement I had when passing the visa interview at the Germany Embassy on the morning of Dec.14.2004! I
never thought that my dream to oversea could come true so easily and early!
Time of this trip was from Jan 24 to Feb.1.2005. The place of this exhibition is
Frankfurt Messe. Germany. People in our company attended this show : two persons( our HK sales department manager and me).{ in fact, the work of our China team
is reported to HK sales team. We China team takes care of all orders from Clients(forwarded by HK sales team)}. We joined the HKTDC (Hongkong Trade Development
Council) organization to attend this show, so Hotel booking and air tickets booking were well-arranged by HKTDC for us. We sent the samples to the Hotel in advance. What we should hand carry were our own belongs. Since I was told that during the show time the temperature in Germany was around –5 degree to 5 degree which was quite cold comparing to the weather in our city. I bought an overcoat in
advance for this trip.
The location of our booth was in Hall 10.1. HKTDC had an information counter in
Hall 10.1 as most exhibitors in Hall 10.1 were organized by HKTDC. We could go to this information counter to ask for help whatever problems you might meet during the Show and this counter offered us free drinks at any time. When I visited
Hall 10.0 and Hall 10.2( our upstairs and downstairs) at the last second day of
the show period, to my big surprise that I found so many Chinese companies attend this show and most of the people we saw in these Halls were all Chinese( including HK. Taiwan and mainland China). At seeing this, I immediately had a strong
feeling that our county is really getting powerful and developing so fast! So many our country fellows went out of our home and making business with people all
over the world. They are so active and positive and work hard! You could also see a small part of exhibitors from Korea, India and some other small countries in Hall 10. The exhibits included the World of Office and Paper Products. So it contained various businesses and you could see many new products there!
Hall one was set for all local Europe companies only. So many of our Europe customers set booths in Hall one. So I went to take a look at Hall one at the first
day of the Show. You could see so obvious different styles in Hall one including
booth setting up and the style of the people doing business. Booths in Hall one
were all in bigger sizes and had at least two or three tables with chairs in the booths for visitors and they prepared kinds of drinks and disserts for old customers and new visitors. You could see they were not like doing business but having nice talks with friends and enjoying their life! It is really a big different style which you can hardly see in the Hall 10.
Some people asked me, “ you went to Germany, can you speak German?” No, I can’
t speak German and can’t understand it either. But it’s no need to speak German during the Show but English. The visitors were from all over the world. You may see the majority was from Europe. As to my own experience during the show, only a few old people who could not speak English but France or German. But it did
not matter as we could use body language or write some simple English on the paper so we could understand each other. As our HK sales manager had to visit some
old customers everyday so I took care of our booth alone most of the time. I needed to greet many visitors at our booth everyday. The greetings and the questions between the new visitors and us were quite simple so it was very easy to deal
with. The deeper part was the business discussions between old customers and us
. During the Show when our HK sales manager was away while one old customer came
over our booth and talked about some new packing issues with me. Actually it’s
the first time for me alone to do this but the young lady was so nice and kind
and friendly. She is from England and that day was the second time we met each other in person. We did greeting each other at the day before the show when she was preparing her booth setting at Hall one we went there to see them. What I felt after the discussion with her was that our relationship with our old customers
is so solid and we are more like friends than suppliers and customers. Both sides are so sincere when talking about business and besides business, we also talked about our families and some other things, we like and care each other so much
. Maybe that is the reason we could be together and do business well. We hugged
and kissed each other when she said good bye to me and wished each other having
nice and safe jouney . I was deeply moved by her kindness and sincerity! The other thing I felt was that I need to practise more of my oral English. I ever studied English so hard but no chance to speak it everyday though our main language
at work is English, but it only needs us to write, not much or say no speaking most of the time. We don’t speak English to Chinese. So only when customers visit us or during the show time we can have chance to speak English. After I come back, I need to think out a way of how to make my oral English more fluent.
To be continued…
( sorry, friends, I cannot complete it within tonight though it is so quiet now.
but it is so late and I am afraid that I did not organize my article well. Sorry if it is so boring and wordy)
Sally
