How Clients Buy

Chapter 18All Business Is LocalFrom the Silk Road to the Information Superhighway

On difficult days—the days when no one wants to speak with us, meet with us, or return our calls—we are tempted to wax nostalgic about doing business in the good old days. We harken back to when the banker and the equipment dealer knew every farmer within a fifty-mile radius. Getting heard today in a maddeningly noisy global marketplace can seem ridiculously hard.

Surprisingly, though, this is not purely a twenty-first century problem. Open since 1455, the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, Turkey, attracts over 250,000 shoppers every day of the year (except on religious holidays) in search of bargains on everything from clothing to jewelry to rugs to food and groceries. The frenetic backdrop of haggled prices shouted back and forth colors each purchase. The Bazaar is a crazy tangle of four thousand shops underneath sixty-one covered streets vying for your attention. With so much competition, vendors often resort to aggressive tactics to get the attention of passers-by before they disappear into the next vendor's shop. For example, a carpet dealer may try to guess your nationality in an attempt to get you to stop walking. Or he may attach himself to you at the Blue Mosque to be your unofficial guide for the day.

Standing out in the global economy of expert services can seem as daunting a task as trying to sell carpets in the Grand Bazaar, but don't despair.

Despite the 24/7/365 global nature of shopping ...