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It's a Smaller World

Your special issue on doing business in foreign markets was excellent ["Gone Global," April]. Nowadays just about every business and every employee has international responsibilities. You missed one key element in your coverage of global business, however. Some business schools have stepped up to the plate and restructured their curriculums around doing business globally. I attended Duke's Global Executive M.B.A. program, which visited foreign businesses and held more classes in overseas locations than in the U.S. We visited seven countries in all. Even more significant, many of my classmates not only came from other countries, but were also actively doing business in Russia, South Africa, Taiwan, and everywhere in between. Our graduation program had "congratulations and good luck" listed in 25 languages.

Avi Deitcher
CEO and President
Atomic
White Plains, New York

Having lived and worked in 70 different countries, I was very interested in your global business issue. The information in the issue is tremendous, bordering on stupendous. I hope every American business will read and heed your advice. My only caution is that I believe some of the World Bank's GDP growth data is a bit exaggerated on the upside, especially for countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Myanmar.

I have always suspected that failing autocratic socialist governments tend to inflate their GDP figures. My recent visits to Cuba have reinforced this suspicion. Myanmar is in a time warp. As for Venezuela, Hugo Chávez is taking it down the same path Fidel Castro trod 48 years ago. I would bet that Venezuela's GDP is shrinking, not expanding, and will continue to do so under Chávez.

Larry Grupp
Vice president of operations
Northwest Business and Consulting
Moscow, Idaho

Dissecting the PR Machine

Amens and hallelujahs were coming from my office as I read Geri Denterlein's open letter to her clients ["Conflict Is Key," April]. I particularly agreed with her point that companies should take an active role in the PR process. PR isn't a turnkey service. Clients can't just say, "Go get some press" and expect it to happen without significant involvement on their parts.

In the five years since I started my PR firm, nearly every relationship that's gone sour can be attributed to a client who didn't make time for meetings or provide adequate, timely information about the company. I plan to make Geri Denterlein's letter required reading for both my clients and employees.

Cooper Smith
Principal
Cooper Smith Agency
Dallas

Geri Denterlein's letter was very well written and a helpful read for entrepreneurs who want to make better use of their PR firms. But I do have a bone to pick. There's a perception of PR people as spinmeisters who can't always be trusted. Ms. Denterlein did little to dispel that image. She mentions that some CEOs ask, "Can you get us on the front page of The Wall Street Journal?" She says, "The short answer may be yes," and then switches from talking about The Wall Street Journal to "a major newspaper" before explaining why it was unlikely to happen for most clients. That hardly sounds like a yes to me. It would be more accurate, and engender more trust, to underpromise so she could overdeliver down the line.

John Seiffer
Owner
The Small Business Coach
Milford, Connecticut

I generally enjoyed Geri Denterlein's letter to her clients, but she does all her clients a disservice when she and her team place their own expertise on the back burner in order to pacify a client's demand. She is the public relations expert, not her clients. Yet she recounts that, against her better judgment, her firm pitched a story to reporters about a real estate developer whose condo owners "really liked him." The reporters, she says, "didn't take us seriously." If that's so, I doubt the reporters will be inclined to call on her expert opinion the next time they are writing a story.

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