Cultural Evolution
Introduction:
The second trade was going to be tricky due the subject I had chosen for the transaction. I was very cognizant of the fact that my 1st trade had been a success because of the cultural knowledge that I had gathered and my relationship with the opposite party. I knew that although I have gained what I wanted the opposite party had gotten a lot more from me as I had only gotten a pen and the 1st year MBA student had gained a lot of knowledge and valuable practice for his interview prep. In retrospect he might have just given me the pen for free had I asked him for it.
This was going to be different and challenging. I was going in for a direct transaction with no groundwork or intelligence. I was going to give him my pitch for why he should buy me that bottle of coke in return for my pen and show him how the perceived value of the pen was more than that of a bottle of coke.
Approach:
Picking the second person to trade with was very difficult for me. To begin with I wanted to challenge myself by trading with someone who was different than my 1st trade. I also wanted to make this a pure play trade in the way that I did not want to influence my trade with other actions as I had done before. Finally, I wanted to stay away from people from India and the US with whom I have interacted with over a great period of time and don’t many transactions with them in the past. Thus I spend a significant time finding the right target for this trade. I decided on choosing someone from China as I personally feel that I have struggled with connecting and negotiating with people from that country. I do not believe that it’s the language barrier is the reason behind this as I have a lot of friends from Thailand and Korea who too have a language barrier when it comes to English.
Trade:
I play squash at the Fezter gym each Monday and that’s where I decided to conduct my negotiations. I met him after the session and told him that I am trying to sell pens as a side business
The second trade was going to be tricky due the subject I had chosen for the transaction. I was very cognizant of the fact that my 1st trade had been a success because of the cultural knowledge that I had gathered and my relationship with the opposite party. I knew that although I have gained what I wanted the opposite party had gotten a lot more from me as I had only gotten a pen and the 1st year MBA student had gained a lot of knowledge and valuable practice for his interview prep. In retrospect he might have just given me the pen for free had I asked him for it.
This was going to be different and challenging. I was going in for a direct transaction with no groundwork or intelligence. I was going to give him my pitch for why he should buy me that bottle of coke in return for my pen and show him how the perceived value of the pen was more than that of a bottle of coke.
Approach:
Picking the second person to trade with was very difficult for me. To begin with I wanted to challenge myself by trading with someone who was different than my 1st trade. I also wanted to make this a pure play trade in the way that I did not want to influence my trade with other actions as I had done before. Finally, I wanted to stay away from people from India and the US with whom I have interacted with over a great period of time and don’t many transactions with them in the past. Thus I spend a significant time finding the right target for this trade. I decided on choosing someone from China as I personally feel that I have struggled with connecting and negotiating with people from that country. I do not believe that it’s the language barrier is the reason behind this as I have a lot of friends from Thailand and Korea who too have a language barrier when it comes to English.
Trade:
I play squash at the Fezter gym each Monday and that’s where I decided to conduct my negotiations. I met him after the session and told him that I am trying to sell pens as a side business