Business Etiquette
business lunch and you want to sell the client on what you have to offer not on how many drink you can down. During the course of the meal it is fine to dispense with the pleasantries in the opening but after that keep the conversation involving around the business at hand. Conduct your self in a business manner as if you were in the boardroom and were trying to sell your client on your idea. Because if you continue to talk socially, it distracts form the real reason you and your client have met for lunch. But do not let the time for lunch keep on going and linger on and on. You, as well as your client, may have to be somewhere after lunch and can not be late, so it is better to keep and eye on the time and not let things get carried away. Be respectful of ht time and when you feel you have reached the peak point in the meeting and/or it seems and end has come tot he conversation and you might be drifting into some other conversation, it is time to subtly end the meal and pay the bill. When you have finished your meal, it is appropriate to place your cutlery on your plate in a click position of ten to four. The knife is place with the sharp edge toward you and the fork goes to the left of it. Now come the time for paying the bill. A polished host never lets the bill come to the table. The host has already made arrangements for paying the bill ahead of time, and if the host comes to this restaurant a lost, there may already be an account set up. One of the ways to ensure that the bill never comes tot the table, when you arrive give the maitre d’ your credit card to make a print of and then at some point towards the end of the meal, excuse yourself and go sign the receipt. This is a good idea for both men and women so there does not seem to be any awkwardness in who should be paying for the lunch when the bill arrives. So when it is time to leave and your client asks about the bill, you can simply reply, “It’s been taken care of.” Netiquette and the Business World Netiquette is the code of etiquette for communicating by computer on the Internet. In today’s business world, being familiar with the rules of conduct will provide guidelines for keeping the relationship between consumers and businesses a happy one. In 1997 alone, there were 6.7 trillion e-mail messages exchanges on the Internet. Communicating by the Internet is no different from writing on your company letterhead. Just because e-mail is more immediate, doesn’t mean it should be less personable. A business should keep in mind that a degree of formality is required. Computer networks bring people together who would otherwise never meet. But the impersonality of [next page]