Asia-Bound

Well, tomorrow morning is my next phone call with Bankworld, Inc., to semi-finalize scheduling for my upcoming trips.

Vietnam should be the first trip.  We have a 1-year project there, working with Vietin Bank to develop a plan and tools to help them become the preeminent Vietnamese bank in the SME market.  Previous experience tells me that an absolute minimum of 3 trips will be required, although 4 or 5 would be ideal.  Time has to be left between trips to allow ideas to ferment, conduct research, draft and write implementation plans, and (most importantly) send locals out to execute tactics so that the approach can be analyzed and tweaked when initial results are known.  Although the multi-trip approach does rachet-up the travel costs, it is the only way to accomplish the real objective of leaving an effective marketing team in place.

So, I'll look to trips probably in late Sept. and again in early November.  After that, nothing until February....I want to be home for the U.S. holidays, and I'm told it is almost impossible to get anything done in Vietnam in January, during Tet.

Complicating things is Bankworld's desire to have me run a training session in Yerevan this autumn on Customer Service.  While this is needed at the client bank, and I want to pitch their chairman about authorizing training for a new marketing department there, fitting it in this fall would be difficult.  Neither Nancy nor I want me to be overseas for 7 or 8 weeks....I've done that before, and it gets old.

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