What to do when you invite someone round, how to set the table, how to arrange the seating.  A few simple rules for you to remember.

23	BUSINESS ETIQUETTE

The way to be successful in business passes also through restaurants, telephones, business cards, gifts and e-mails…or better, how you relate yourself with all this. In fact the rules of etiquette pervade the whole world of social relations. The etiquette anyway is still in fashion and it has its own "economic" part since businessmen travel more and more to meet new customers and look for foreign investors as well as emerging markets. 

It is not very easy to adequate oneself to the rules of good manners in business, because every Country has its own rules; then it is better to know very well the customs of the people and Country we have to deal with, in order to avoid running the risk to offend the people and upset everything.

For example, in Asia business is managed in a very personal way; therefore it is almost a rule that there will be submitted questions about one's private life; it is the contrary of what happens in Europe (in France particularly), where business is business and intimacy is earned as time passes.

A fundamental factor is the business card, that is only apparently "a small matter" as it represents the first approach where the other part can get the general idea about the people and their Company.

Nowadays phone conversations are more and more replaced by e-mail that make the communication easier and avoid disturbing people. The best thing would be to answer the e-mail as soon as we receive it or at least by the same day. In fact the delay in answering often causes to the sender, sometimes diffident, the conviction that he hasn't sent the message actually. Since many people print the message and then cancel the e-mail, it is better that the address appears also in the body of the letter.

Dinner (and luncheons, above all in the United States) and business often go in pair. Without doubt lunch is better than dinner, when you have to do with a new customer (evenings are generally bound to private and family life). It is convenient to offer to the customer various choices with regard to meeting-places and meeting-times, to book a table for four people even if you are two ones (the papers want their room too), even with a beautiful sight. The advance is "de riguer", as well as to send a note of thanks the day after. When is it more convenient to talk business? If the customer doesn't do it, it's better not before the dessert.