You know the feeling. The meeting was warm, engaged, maybe even overran by twenty minutes. Everyone left smiling. You sent the follow-up that evening.
Then silence.
Not a cold silence. A polite one. Which, as it turns out, is harder to read.
The situation
A British consultant I know, senior, experienced, not someone who makes obvious mistakes, spent three months trying to close a partnership with a Colombian infrastructure firm. The conversations were good. There was genuine interest on both sides.
Every time they spoke, the Colombian team would say something like âwe will confirm with our director and come back to you shortly.â
He waited. He followed up. He waited again. The deal stalled, then quietly expired.
When I asked him what he thought had gone wrong, he said: âI think they just werenât that interested.â
Your British counterpart did his homework. He knew Latin Americans build trust over the table, not just across it, so instead of squeezing in a second meeting before your flight home, he cleared two hours for lunch. No slides, no agenda, just food and conversation.
You talked about your kids, his weekend rugby, the flight in. He laughed at your jokes and asked good follow-up questions. Two hour...
I built the Slot System⢠first. The harder question was what shape the other side would take.
I kept coming back to something small: the difference between my Oyster card in London and my SUBE card back when I lived in Buenos Aires.
Back then, topping up a SUBE was never a sure thing. You never knew which machine would work, or where. So, I'd take a longer route to the train station, one with a...
A Mexican corporate affairs manager spends the weekend before a big London pitch working through a business masterclass online. Lesson four says that holding eye contact is the single biggest signal of trust one can send.
He walks into the meeting and does exactly that. Steady gaze, no breaking away, right through the whole pitch.
Twenty minutes in, his British counterpart has shifted in his se...
THE BRITISH-LATAM FRICTION SCORECARDâ˘
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Find out exactly where your friction is.
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A personalised read of where your British-LatAm friction actually lives. The kind of specific information that changes how you walk into your next meeting. Used by British and LatAm professionals. Takes 4 minutes.
