Terri Morrison - Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands, Sales and Marketing: The Essential Cultural Guide—From Presentations and Promotions to Communicating and Closing

Global sales and marketing involves meals. Hopefully, you will be dining with your international prospects from the initial sales call through to the contracts close. Therefore it is wise to learn about particular customs they may observe around mealtime. You can be sure they will be observing your mannerisms at the table. Understanding how to manage an important meal is indicative of your capability to manage an important contract. Some dining tips have already been included in several chapters (for example, Malbec, beef, and mate in Argentina and toasting in South Korea), but we would like to expand that data here. Also look for our Global Dining, Drinking, and Dealmaking blog at www.kissboworshake hands.com.

We present this information in the form of a quiz. Try answering each of the questions, and then check your knowledge on dining etiquette around the world. Enjoy!

Diners in France, Italy, and many other European countries dine Continental style: the fork stays in ones left hand. It is never switched back and forth between left and right hands. As a polite diner in Paris, your fork is in your left hand, tines down, but getting the vegetables up onto the back of the fork and making them stay there until they reach your mouth is difficult. True or False: It is totally acceptable to turn your fork over, tines up, to eat.

ANSWER: False. How you wield a fork is important. While your fork is in your left hand, never turn it around like a shovel and load it up with food. That juxtaposition of good and bad manners will definitely get noticed in France. Try practicing this before your big business meal in Madrid, Milan, or Marseille: spear a bit of food onto the end of the fork, tines down, then push more food up on top of that with your knife. If you simply cannot manage it, eat US-style. But try not to wave your utensils around as you swap them back and forth. And keep your elbows in, with your arms and hands horizontal to the table.

Which of the following table mannerisms is NOT rude at a restaurant?

A. Unfurling your napkin with a fwap and draping it over your lap

B. Tasting your food as soon as it is served

C. Setting your cell phone on the table alongside your place setting

D. Leaving a napkin on the floor if you accidently drop it.

ANSWER: D. If you drop a napkin (or a utensil), leave it on the floor, and quietly ask the wait staff for a new one.

The other responses are incorrect because:

A. Your napkin is not a towel, and you are not in a locker room. Place it, still semi-folded, unobtrusively upon your lap.

B. Do not begin until everyone is served and the host invites you to eat.

C. Do not put any personal items, including your cell phone, on the table.

You can silently communicate information to the wait staff with the position of your utensils. True or False: When you are finished with your meal, line your knife and fork up together on your plate, with the tips at ten oclock and the ends at four oclock.

ANSWER: True. The manner in which you set your utensils on your plate indicates to the wait staff whether you are finished. If you are not finished, cross your knife and fork on your plate in an X formation.

At dinner, your bread plate will be on your left. True or False: If someone uses yours by mistake, take the one to your right.

ANSWER: False. Never replicate an error by taking your neighbors bread plate. If someone annexes your plate, and you would like bread, just balance it on the edge of your dinner plate.

When you eat bread and butter, break your bread into manageable pieces (nothing larger than a few bites). Take a pat or two of butter from the butter serving dish, put it on your bread plate, and butter the piece you are about to consume. Do not take butter from the butter dish and slather it directly onto your bread. It is not your private butter dish.

5. True or False: When you are not using your utensils (fork, knife, or chopsticks), you should lean them off the edge of the plate, onto the table.

ANSWER: False. Never let your utensils touch the table once you begin to eat. This goes for Western cutlery and is similar with chopsticks. For Western cutlery, balance the utensils completely on the plate when you put them down. Never hook or balance them off the edge of the plate, onto the table. For chopsticks, balance them either on a chopstick rest or on your plate, side by side. Never separate them and set them on either side of your plate, as if they are a knife and fork. Never set them down on the table, and never cross your chopsticks in an X formation.

Different varieties of chopsticks can be found in South Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia. They may be wooden or metal, angular or smooth, connected at the base or wrapped in a beautiful packet, made in different sizes, etc. Which of the following behaviors with chopsticks is appropriate?

A. Passing or receiving food between your chopsticks and another diners chopsticks

B. Gesturing, tapping, or spearing food with your chopsticks

C. Sticking your chopsticks straight up in your rice bowl

D. Repeatedly rubbing the large ends of your wooden chopsticks together after youve split them apart

E. Turning your chopsticks around and using the large end to serve yourself from communal plates

ANSWER: E. If you are serving yourself from a communal plate or bowl, and there are serving chopsticks on the large plate, use them. If there are none, turn your chopsticks around, and use the larger end to transfer food onto your plate.

Why are the other responses wrong?

A. Traditionally, there is only one time when two people hold a single item with their chopsticks. It is at a funeral, when relatives may pass the remaining bones of cremated ancestors to each other with chopsticks.

B. Do not wave chopsticks about or point them at people or food. Spearing food with the end of your chopstick is inappropriate as well.

C. This visual reminds many Asians of the joss incense sticks used during ceremonies for those who have passed, or the chopsticks placed in bowls of rice for ancestors.

D. If you rub the chopsticks together too much, you are implying that you think they are cheap and might give you splinters.

You are suffering from a miserable cold but must attend a business dinner in Tokyo. True or False: It is appropriate to use a handkerchief as discreetly as possible during your meal.

ANSWER: False. You should never blow your nose at the dinner table. Excuse yourself politely, and take care of it in the rest room. And never use a handkerchief. The Japanese find the custom of preserving mucus in a carefully folded handkerchief to be grotesque. Use tissues.

Soy sauce is a strong condiment and should never be poured directly over your rice. True or False: You should dip the rice side of your sushi in your little bowl of soy sauce, perhaps mixed with wasabi.

ANSWER: False. If you dip the rice side in, you may leave some soaked rice in the dipping bowl, which can look crude. Turn the sushi over, and dip the fish side in the soy sauce/wasabi mixture. Sometimes Japanese diners use their fingers to eat sushi. Emulate whatever your Japanese associates do.