a salesman is to visit a customer at a near date a letter should be written announcing his com ing. This is the best introduction the salesman could have and adds materially to his prestige. In the same way, whenever the firm engages in something which may interest a group of foreign customers, they should be notified.
The salesmen should be instructed to report de tails of interest about the customer's personal affairs so that polite reference may be made to these in later correspondence. The business man abroad, espe cially in the Latin-American countries, never entirely divorces business and social life, and nothing pleases him so much as to find the house 3000 miles away taking such interest in his affairs, as the following characteristic extracts from letters would indicate: "We have heard with pleasure of the splendid pro motion of your son and are sending you by parcel post a small gift which you will be kind enough to hand him with the compliments of our firm." Or: "Our Mr. A. notifies us that at his recent visit he found you in sorrow over the loss of your esteemed father. Accept the expression of our most sincere sympathy." Communications like these help to cement a friendly feeling between distant houses. The interest felt and expressed lifts the business transaction out of an atmosphere of mere dollars and cents. Competi tion finds it hard to "cut in" here.
Technical descriptions must be avoided in letters, if only because of the possibility of making mistakes in terms. Where it is necessary to give technical descriptions it is best to employ a professional trans lator, unless the correspondent has exceptional ex perience in that line.
Such technical translators specializing in narrow fields can be found in many of the larger cities. Their charges are not high. The usual charge for ordinary translation work is from twenty to thirty cents per hundred words for translations into English and from thirty to forty cents for translations from English into a foreign language. Technical transla tions may cost as much as a dollar per hundred words.
American firms are careless in the way in which their letters and documents are signed. In foreign countries the signature of the firm is sacred. When the head of the firm is not there to sign, the function is performed by the oldest and most trusted employe who has been appointed and legally documented to this office. Such an employe is proud of his posi
tion and on his visiting card makes mention of the fact that he is "procuratie-houder" (Dutch) ; "charge de procuration" (French) ; "Procuratore" (Italian) ; "procurador" ( Spanish) or "procurahlilter" (Ger man) , of his firm.
The use of a rubber stamp or a signature of some minor employe; or worse, of the name of the man alter signed by a clerk or stenographer, with initials appended, are practices which are regarded abroad as wholly unbusinesslike and in the nature of an affront. They will destroy the confidence of foreign firms in a house employing them.
6. The mail.—In a foreign trade department look ing after the mail means more than pasting postage stamps on envelopes. The clerk in charge of it should be well informed regarding the dates of sail ing of the most important over-sea mails. He should bear the responsibility of supervising the dispatching of all letters, samples and documents in time for the last collection. This is an important matter, for miss ing the mail may mean a delay of two or even three weeks. If the documents do not arrive at the port of debarkation on or before the time of arrival of the goods, storage charges accumulate.
In foreign trade it is customary to send out at least one duplicate copy of each letter or document on a later boat to avoid delay thru possible loss of the mail. Sometimes the copy is inclosed with the next letter, or it may be dispatched independently. Care should be exercised that the copy actually does go on a later boat. The indifference of the average export departments of American houses in regard to sailing dates often leads to the absurd situation that original and copy reach their destination by the same boat.
Business concerns abroad usually employ envelops of light but strong paper and nearly square in shape to distinguish the foreign outgoing mail from the do mestic. This lessens the likelihood of affixing post age stamps of the wrong denomination. Foreign firms complain of the annoyance caused by having to pay "penalty postage"—twicc the ordinary postage— on American mail.