Introduction!

Planning a business trip to another continent will take a lot of planing and learning.  It's important for you to be ready and prepared for your trip at least some time prior to the departure. Rushing things last minute will only lead to problems later in your trip. Taking a couple simple steps towards your trip can improve the end results and help you achieve what you set out to accomplish on your trip. Everything from the little things such as planning a route to get to a meeting all the way to the larger things like learning the main language will help create a positive end result. It will be very useful to each step into consideration to be able to achieve what you set out to do!

Step One: LEARN WHERE YOU'RE GOING

It is important when you're traveling to know where you are going. Knowing basic information from the specific place you are going can help with conversation, looking professional or just to help you expand your current knowledge. Some important things to learn about would be the language, historical sites and a general history of the country or continent. Even take it further. What do you think you would need to know? Upon learning all you need, know when to use it and bring it up because you don't want to talk about it when it's not needed and want to know when it's appropriate to talk about. Saying the wrong thing about something at the wrong time could end up being offensive to your peers which you wouldn't want to do during a business trip. These basics pieces of information will help in different ways and will be productive to you if you use it correctly. It can be used as ice breakers, topics to bring up if things go quiet or even just to look more professional.  Not only should you look at the basic information of the country or continent but it would be very useful to learn about the company you're doing business with. Going to a country for a business that you don't know anything about will end up looking bad on your part and the company you're representing. 

Step Two: STUDY UP!

Another important step in preparing for a business trip to another continent would be to study up on things such as language and customs or traditions. It would be important to have a translator to be able to understand the more in depth conversations, but knowing basic phrases such as "Hi", "How are you", "Thank you" and "Goodbye" would be important in showing respect to whom you'e with. Base off what you think you should learn off this.  If someone came to you from another country, what phrases would you like them to know? As for traditions or customs, it would be important in the sense that they might not do things the same same way as here.

 

As it shows in the video, the way to greet people in China are much different than here. If you do something incorrectly you might offend someone and could possibly wreck the business relationship before it even begins.  This step will be very important in the preparing for your business trip to another continent because of the fact on how much different things can be in a different country or continent. It is important to know how you will need to do business without offending anyone or looking unprofessional in the process.

Step Three: MAKE YOUR SCHEDULE

A schedule when going to a different country or continent will be very important to help you not only get to the places you need to be on time but to also be organized on your trip!  This would also be a very important  step because being late and or lost will lead to a business meeting or event nothing but disaster. It's going to be smart to plan where you will need to be at what time and how you will get there in this process. Going to another continent can be a big change with travel, this is why it's important to always have a plan ahead of time for how you will get to these places. For example: in India, traveling by train is a pretty significant difference than traveling by train in Toronto.

(Train in Mumbai)

Knowing that this might of been the way you would have to travel in the image above, you might not want to try that because of the possible confusion  and how one might be able to get lost very easy. This is why knowing how you would get somewhere could be so important in your stages of preparing for your trip. 

Image taken from (https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgocThrBWDuneZBtAx_FizasWxNkNjf2KwX134Y74hzdzK1hPkcq8HDpNCmmynP5fHFLQcNFGMAHLlQSh2Yhyi-LOguzwhOk0iRBf8o3lBPFD6XxaGm2Cs4N5kD2KntAtSYOCfwIsjnlf4/s1600/train1.jpg)

Step Four: BE READY FOR CHANGE

Prepare for change! Are you willing to try different things? Going to a different continent you will experience many different things that you might not be use to.  You will be introduced to different foods, customs, cultures and probably many other things you may have not experienced before. You should be ready for all of it to show you're willing to try different things and accept their customs. If they offer you food that may not look appetizing, you shouldn't be making rude remarks or faces towards their food. This is very important so you don't come off as a rude person and or offend the people that you are looking to do business with in the future. Another big issue you might have to deal with is the different time zones and jet lag. Traveling somewhere when their night is your day will certainly mess with you and your sleep schedule so you would have to try to get custom to it so you're not sleeping during the day ruining your schedule and plans. 

Avoiding this will certainly help on your trip. Jet lag will be a huge burden on you if you don't get adjusted and have long work days in a place you don't know too much about while trying to stay professional and maintain that business relationship. Learning how to beat it will allow you to worry about one less thing! In the end be ready for a pretty drastic change and be ready to maintain a professional look while going through this change. 

What do YOU Think Is Important!?

This would be different for each individual and there is no wrong way to go about it. What do you think is important?  Now each person most likely would have different ideas aside from a couple things that most people would have a common interest in. Something to you can be extremely useful to someone who could care less if they needed it or not, that's why this all depends on each individual.  It can be something as simple as something to help you sleep the night before a long day you have prepared. It can be extremely useful and help out people in many different ways.  Taking time to help you improve your trip in a way unique to you can improve not only your business trip but your experience overall!