A lot is written about how Americans should deal with other cultures. I thought it would be interesting to look at how you should deal with Americans. And for Americans reading this, this is a good look at yourself. This is part of a talk I give frequently in Eastern Europe.

I thought I would begin by giving a list of personality traits, characteristics of Americans and how that characteristic might affect your dealings with them. And in presenting them, I am making no judgment as to whether or not it is better to be that way or not — that’s just the way it is.

I have lived in New York, Washington, DC, California, and now the American Midwest, so to most Americans I have no regional accent.

Let’s begin.

Informal – When Americans meet each other for the first time in business, they immediately use the first name.  So if you insist on calling someone Mister, they will think that is strange and that you are unfriendly.

We dress informally. What I am wearing today is too much for California, not formal enough for Washington, DC, and okay for New York. The tie is definitely an endangered species.

Very few Americans dress up anymore, even for an opera in the theater. It has become a very informal society.

Impatient – Public American companies (those whose stock is traded publicly) are obsessed with quarterly earnings so they want to move quickly, make a deal and go on to the next one.

Let me tell you a story. One of the businesses I am involved in is posters. I am working on a new poster with a Latvian advertising agency on toasts. To complete it I needed to get 40 labels from different countries — champagne from France, vodka from Russia, etc.

Invariably in dealing with Europeans, the answer was no — we can’t let you use our label; we have never done that before, etc.  The Norwegians wanted $10,000 from me.

On the East Coast the U.S. companies would say, “Well, maybe” but we have to send it to our legal department for review.  In the Midwest where I live a company would say, “Sounds interesting, send me some information.” In California where there is absolutely no patience, people would email the label while we talked on the phone. They move quickly and don’t want to slow down for anything including trying to figure out what your phone number is.

My suggestion to you for dealing with Americans is:  put your telephone numbers as Americans have them — three numbers together, then four, not like the three, two, two or all jumbled together. A small item but remember you only have one chance to make a first impression.

Respond within a business day to any inquiry you get if only to say, “I acknowledge your letter.”  America is a competitive place and if you don’t respond, someone else will get the order.

Americans are legalistic — We have 100 times the lawyers that Japan does so to keep all these lawyers employed, they constantly have to keep busy.

In large corporations they are concerned with secrecy so the lawyers have developed something called a “non-disclosure agreement.”  It is really a form to say you can’t reveal secrets.

In doing business with someone, particularly IT, just say, “To speed things along, I’ll sign your NDA.”

America is a great power but Americans don’t know the world — Americans don’t have any idea where Latvia or the Baltics are. A full 25 percent of American high school students didn’t know where Canada is. But no knowledge about Latvia is good and bad. Good that no one has an opinion — bad in that you have to explain. I usually leave out that Latvia is a Baltic country (always confused with Balkans). I like to say it is a country in Northern Europe. Never say it’s small:  Latvia is larger than the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Switzerland and nobody calls those countries small.

This arrogance extends to weights and measures. While some American companies use the metric system, most do not.  It is crazy not to. I worked in commodity trading for 20 years and these are the calculations you made:

1)    You bought grain from farmers in bushels — a bushel of corn is 56 lbs (25 kilos).

2)    You shipped the corn by railroad to a port or a barge loading point.  U.S. railroads charge by 100 weight (100 pounds or 45 kilos) or short tons (2,000 pounds or 900 kilos).

3)    Ocean shipping is calculated in long tons (2,240 pounds or 1,000 kilos).

4)    Sales overseas are calculated in metric tons.

Americans are arrogant and don’t appreciate other cultures and languages — The Americans you might meet in Riga are a minority — their job is to seek out international business.  But in the U.S., the international market is an afterthought, although outsourcing no longer is.  Less than 10 percent of Americans speak another language.

When approaching Americans in the U.S., be aware of their attitudes and don’t get too upset by their ignorance of the outside world.  The IT sector is a little different in that they understand and need talent from all over the world.

My best story comes from the time I called a hotel’s toll-free 800 number in the U.S. to make a reservation in Riga, Latvia.  The operator said, “Wait a minute, please.”  He came back on the line and said, “Sir, we have a hotel in Riga.  It’s not in Latvia but “Lativa.”

I responded, “Your pronunciation is wrong.  I’m Latvian and its Latvia.”  “Sir, it’s Lativa,” and he hung up.  So according to him, Latvia was now a Latin American country and was pronounced like La Paz, La Playa, and La Cucarracha.

Americans love slang — The English I hear in Latvia is correct, but American English changes everyday and is full of slang. Americans are comfortable using it, and in fact don’t even know they are. You could have a terrible accent, but if you know slang, it really doesn’t matter.

Do any of you know these phrases and how they are used?

Believe me, the more business slang you know, the better you will be regarded. Throw away any language book you can buy and learn slang directly.

These are common general phrases but there is the “shop talk” of each business you are in. The more phrases and words you know, the more serious you will be taken.  To most Americans slang is English, and if you don’t know it, you don’t really speak it.

I have developed a theory of what I call “guerilla linguistics,” learning a few key words or phrases of any country so that the party you are dealing with doesn’t know what you do and don’t know about a country. Knowing those few words can give you an edge.  Learn the slang of your particular business.

How many of you know what these words mean?

Airhead

Blow them away

Brick and mortar

Bundled

Chicken feed

Cook the books

Done deal

Downsize

Fedex it

Fish or cut bait

Floor plan

Fudge the numbers

Get our ducks in a row

Go for it

Hot and heavy

In the ballpark

It’s a deal

It’s a wash

Kick their butt

Let’s have it

Long shot

Loose cannon

No brainer

Nose out of joint

Pitch

Poster child

Quick and dirty

Ramp up

Run the numbers

Scope it out

Screw up

Slippery slope

Snail mail

Tanked

The whole nine yards

Tune out

What goes around comes around

What’s plan B?

What’s the downside?

What’s the upside?

Americans love jokes and sports – Before getting into marketing, I worked for a commodity trading firm.  Before you got around to buying and selling, you would tell the latest joke you heard — mostly about sex, and then you would talk sports.  I would learn a couple of jokes to say in English that you could tell at the appropriate time.

By popularity Americans love American football (there are 32 teams) so each major city has a team, golf, college basketball, then pro basketball, then baseball and finally hockey. Apart from children, there is no popular interest in soccer, bicycling, grand prix racing, and track and field.

If you are visiting a certain city with a professional football team, ask, “How is your team doing?”

Americans “love” to exaggerate — Not too long ago I had a meeting with a business associate. In one hour he told me he “loved his job,” he “loved a certain restaurant,” he “loved to play basketball,” he “loved his new car,” and he “loved a new TV show.” Americans use love too much.  If an American says he “loves your product” or he “loves your idea,” he may mean he likes it or he doesn’t and wants to be polite. I wouldn’t sell your house yet to finance the new production line if someone says, “I just love it.”

Similarly Americans overuse “hate.” I “hate that food,” etc. But if someone says your idea interests me, that does sound serious.  People in the Eastern U.S. tend to exaggerate less than those in California. And of course, Hollywood and Las Vegas and even Silicon Valley are the centers of exaggeration.

Americans are flexible and you have to be also — No plans, not even the ones that the Russians under communism made, go as planned, so you have to change constantly.  The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said over 2,000 years ago, “You can’t step into the same river twice.”

Here’s an example of a Latvian company that contacted me. They make wood products, one of which they sell for U.S. $150 each. I said at this price you could sell 400, but if you could make a miniature version for $30, you could sell 40,000 every year. This company didn’t have the flexibility to change its view of the market.

Americans are trusting — American jurisprudence teaches a man is innocent until proven guilty. Even if you have to sign a non-disclosure agreement, the premise is you are honest. In most other countries it’s the other way around. With the Japanese and Koreans it’s hard to do business without personal referrals. You can eventually do business with an American firm by just being persistent.

Americans expect you to read body language — We communicate a lot of different ways: by telephone, by talking, by letters, by email, but also in the way our bodies send messages. In a business setting when you are making a presentation and the person you are talking to begins to look around, shift his weight, or move papers on his desk, his body is telling you the meeting is over.

That doesn’t mean you won’t get the business, it just means the meeting is over so you need to take the hint and leave.  If you don’t take the hint, the person could get frustrated and then you won’t get the business.

Americans admire persistence — Researchers have shown that in the U.S. it takes an average of five visits by a salesperson on a company to make a sale.  That means you have to invest a lot to make that first sale.

You can’t be like a service organization I know in Latvia that went on one business trip to the U.S., didn’t get any business, and now says the U.S. market isn’t worth it.

Americans admire people who might have failed with one project but who keep going and succeed anyway.  Among American entrepreneurs there is no fear of failure and why the national motto is “can do.”

Don’t expect busy people to call you back — just keep calling them.  My trick is always to call Saturday mornings when busy people come into the office to clean up.

American business has the motto the customer is right even when they are wrong — To win the hearts and minds of a customer, you need exceptional service and a willingness to admit mistakes and provide alternatives once you make them.

We are right next to a building that has an HP sign.  Not long ago I bought a new laptop computer from them.  The computer came bundled with McAfee anti-virus software.  But the problem with McAfee was that it took too much space on the hardware and made the computer work slower.

I removed the McAfee, bought Norton, and sent the bill to the Chairman of Hewlett Packard and said the anti-virus software they chose was bad.  I said you could pay me back with printer cartridges that HP makes.  She sent me 10 cartridges worth over $300 when the Norton software only cost $50.  But since I tell this story over and over again, HP has gotten the best kind of advertising — word of mouth.

Follow the money — Oftentimes Latvian companies will follow the titles of the people it is selling to, but you should always follow the money in identifying where to spend your marketing dollars.  Find out all the people who have an influence in buying your product or service and then develop a marketing strategy to reach all of them.

Americans love the KISS principle “Keep it Simple and Stupid” — Americans are overwhelmed with information.  There is too much, and they don’t have time to figure out a lengthy explanation of what it is you have to sell or say.  The key part in all marketing is positioning — what is it, what it does, where can I get it, how much does it cost.  We call this the “who, where, what, when, and how much.”

I speak Spanish and Portuguese as well as Latvian, and Latvian wins the Olympic Gold Medal as a language to use the most words to explain a simple concept. Don’t let it carry over to how you speak English.

John Freivalds runs an international marketing firm.