Creating contacts

Just before the trip we were briefed about the task and goals that our group should achieve in South-Africa. Our main purpose is creating contacts to local organisations and companies. Now, after the first two weeks we can say that creating those contacts has really been an eye-opening experience in many ways.

We had our own doubts about the way to approach local people and organisations and especially how they would respond to our presentation. Surely our uncertainty is quite understandable with South-Africa being on the other side of the globe. Also we started making the contacts from nothing. On the day we landed we had only one meeting arranged in South-Africa.

When still in Finland, we started to create the contacts, We sent e-mails to Finns who already had been in South-Africa. These people we found like you find everything else nowadays: by googling. We believed they might have ideas on how we should approach the local people and maybe even which ones to start with. From them we got our first contact at the Finnish Embassy. At the embassy we were given lots of time and attention. Because of the people working there we felt right at home already on our first night in Pretoria. The following day we visited the South African offices of an international ERP -provider, SAP. From there, we also got an excellent welcome and lots more contacts. After our first two presentations we had plenty more people to approach. The start for the project could not have been better.

First phone calls: exiting.

Generally the way how the contacts have come up seems to follow a certain pattern: someone knows someone and so on. So after almost every appointment we have at least one more person to approach. Although we have the contact information, the first approach is always the hardest, getting in touch with the person and deciding a time to meet. The way of how we should approach people here in South-Africa was also a lesson to learn. Once you get over the sometimes not so good phone connections and funny receptionists, there is still the e-mail culture. Although e-mail is as common a way to be in touch with people here as it is in Europe, there are some differences. Quite fast we learned that making a preliminary call before sending e-mail is essential. Many of the local people don’t like to read e-mails without knowing the sender, or at least won't answer them.

After getting the contact the arranging of the appointments has been surprisingly easy. Almost everybody has been available in a few days and everybody also has been very open-minded and polite. In general we can say appointments have been very fruitful and we have gotten plenty of new aspects for our project.

Now, when most of the meetings are already behind we can say that all those expectations and doubts we had before the trip about how the meetings would go have cleared away. We have approached many highly educated people in a totally different culture and everybody has given us ample time and has taken us seriously.