Why Other Cultures Matter Even Close to Home

Imagine an interior designer named Maren Ashworth who is redoing the living room for Hana and David Park. Mrs. Park grew up in Seoul and moved to the US for university. Her mother, Soo-ja Choi, moved in with the family last year. The Parks have chosen a pale wool rug, a long linen sofa, and two lamps. They have also talked with Maren about doing the dining room next.

On installation day, Maren arrives with two installers and a van. A row of shoes sits by the front door. Nobody mentions it, and the team carries the sofa and the rug through the house in their work boots. Mrs. Choi watches from the kitchen doorway and says nothing. At the end of the day, Mrs. Park tells Maren that the room is beautiful and thanks the installers.

After that, Mrs. Park’s replies slow down. She used to answer the same day, and now she takes a week. Maren puts it down to the price of the dining table she proposed, so she sends a cheaper one. Mrs. Park writes back, “Thank you, we’ll wait for now.” In the spring, Maren sees the Parks’ dining room on another designer’s Instagram. When a friend asks Mrs. Park about Maren, Mrs. Park says, “Her work is lovely. Her team walked through my mother’s house in their boots.” Maren never finds out why the Parks stopped.

Suppose instead that at the end of their first meeting, Maren asks the question she asks every new client. “Before my team comes in, is there anything about how your household runs that you’d like us to know?” Mrs. Park thinks for a moment. “We take our shoes off in the house,” she says. “Covers over the installers’ shoes would be fine. My mother will notice.”

On installation day, Maren and the installers put on shoe covers at the door. Mrs. Choi watches them do it and nods. A week later, Mrs. Park books the dining room.

Maren did the same work in the same house both times. What changed was one question before the work began. In the first version, the shoes meant nothing to Maren, so she did not see a mistake. Nobody told her about one. She guessed at the reason for the quiet, and her guess was the price. In the second version, she asked first, and Mrs. Park told her in three sentences.

So before you start work for any new client, ask how their household runs. When a client from another culture goes quiet, ask them instead of guessing. Here is why this matters close to home, and why the reason for a misstep so rarely reaches you.

A Palo Alto brokerage sells about a third of its listings to Chinese buyers

Michael Repka is the CEO of DeLeon Realty, a real estate firm in Palo Alto, California. In 2015, he told the San Francisco Chronicle that about 30% of the firm’s listings sell to Chinese buyers.

The firm changed how it does business for them. It prices homes to end in eights, which the paper said Chinese buyers consider a lucky number. It also got the address of a listing in Portola Valley changed from 4 Arastradero Road to 28. Four is considered unlucky.

These buyers are buying houses in the firm’s own market. A firm that changes its prices and its addresses for them counts them as a large part of its local business.

A West Coast broker found his clients expected the system they knew at home

Jerry Koller runs International Realty, a brokerage on the West Coast. In a 2016 profile for the National Association of Realtors, he described the sale that changed his business. About three years earlier, he was working with a Chinese couple who wanted to buy a home. The husband spoke enough English to show which houses they liked. “But when it came time to close the deal, the language barrier was too high,” Koller said.

Koller reached out to an agent at another company who spoke Mandarin, and she agreed to help. The experience showed him “a huge need in our area,” he said. He opened his own brokerage to help international clients in their own language, and the agent who helped him became his partner. “About 80 percent of our business is international,” he said. “Most clients live here for maybe half the year.”

Koller also found a gap that his clients did not mention. In China, he said, most real estate brokers are independent. So Chinese buyers here “often think they need to go from broker to broker to see what each one has to offer.” Koller tells them that there is a multiple listing system, so they do not have to hunt around.

His clients expected buying a house to work the way it did at home. Nobody had told them how it works here, so Koller tells them before they start. The step to other trades is the course’s own. Any service has habits that a client from elsewhere might not expect. These include how it bills, what it includes, and who does what. A client who expected something else may not ask about it.

The reason for a misstep rarely reaches you

A wealthy client who is unhappy can simply hire someone else. That is often easier than telling you what went wrong.

How a client complains also differs between cultures. In 2001, Raymond Liu and Peter McClure compared how shoppers complain in two kinds of culture. In one, people see themselves first as part of a group. In the other, they see themselves first as individuals. The researchers found that customers in different cultures complain in different ways. So the signs you know from your usual clients may not be the signs you get. A client who would not send you a curt email may simply stop booking.

There is a second reason, and it is the course’s own. A misstep with a client from another culture is usually something that means nothing in yours. If it meant something to you, you would not have done it. So you do not notice it when it happens, and you have no reason to ask about it afterward.

A Florida broker did not hire an agent who put his boots on his desk

Trisha Roy is a broker in Gainesville, Florida, who teaches international real estate to other Realtors. In a training video for Florida Realtors, she said that when she first came to the US from India, she “expected some of the cultural norms to be the same.”

Then she met with an insurance agent. He put his feet up on his desk while he talked with her. “He had on these big cowboy boots and, while he didn’t mean to offend me, he did,” she said. “He was just relaxing.” She did not work with him.

The agent meant no harm. He was relaxing, and his boots on the desk meant nothing to him. From his side of the desk, a customer came in, listened to him, and did not come back.

A New York broker learned why a sale fell through after the client pulled out

Tristan Harper is a broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman in New York. In 2012, The Real Deal reported that he had a Chinese client who was about to go into contract on an apartment. The client pulled out at the last minute. As the magazine put it, “It turned out the apartment’s views of a nearby domed church are considered bad feng shui.”

Harper had another buyer who would not look on 74th Street at all, because of the four in it. “One of my purchasers wouldn’t even consider 74th Street, although the apartment was perfect for her,” he said.

Neither reason was one Harper could have spotted by looking at the apartment. The first one came out only after the client had gone. Suppose a client is asked at the start what would rule a home out. Then they have a way to tell you before the search begins.

Why turning one client’s answer into a rule goes wrong

Imagine a private chef named Teodor Vance who cooks three dinners a week for the Lins. They moved from Hong Kong six years ago. On Teodor’s first visit, Mrs. Lin told him that her husband does not eat beef. Teodor wrote it down, and he has kept beef off their menus for two years.

In March, a friend of Mrs. Lin’s, Grace Ng, hires Teodor for a trial dinner. The Ngs moved from Hong Kong too. Teodor thinks of Mr. Lin and leaves beef off the Ngs’ menu without asking. At the tasting, Mr. Ng asks, “Do you not do your short ribs? They’re on your website, and my wife was hoping for them.” Teodor says, “I thought you might not eat beef.” Mr. Ng says, “Why would we not?” Teodor has no answer he wants to give. The Ngs pay for the trial dinner and do not book another.

Teodor’s mistake was turning one client’s answer into a rule about anyone from the same city. Mr. Lin’s preference belonged to Mr. Lin. A label is only a starting guess, and the client in front of you can prove it wrong, as Mr. Ng did. The version that works asks the Ngs the same question Teodor asked Mrs. Lin. Then he writes their answer on their own page.

A firm like DeLeon prices a house for buyers it has not met, so it is guessing about many buyers at once. You have one client in front of you, so you can ask.

Asking how a household runs is not singling the client out

Many professionals hold back from this question. Raising a client’s culture can feel like pointing out that they are different, or like prying.

The question does not mention culture or country. It asks how the household runs, and you ask it of every new client, wherever they grew up. A family with no customs to mention says, “Nothing, really,” and the meeting moves on. Mrs. Park needed three sentences to tell Maren what mattered in her house. Roy’s advice to Realtors points the same way. “You must care enough about the culture of your global customers to spend time learning it,” she said. “They will respect you for it.”

How to hear what a client from another culture may not tell you

1. Look at who your clients are. List the clients from the past year and the clients you want next. Mark each household that grew up in another country or keeps another culture’s customs at home. That is the course’s suggestion, so you can see how much of your work this touches. For example, a dog walker might find that four of her 11 households speak another language at home.
2. Add one question to the short check at the end of a first meeting, and ask it of every new client. For example, a photographer can ask, “Is there anything about your family I should know before the session, so it goes the way you’d like?”
3. Before the first job, explain how your work runs in two or three sentences, as Koller explains the listing system. Then invite the client to say what they expected. For example, a tutor can say, “I set work each week, and I send you a short note after every session. If that’s different from what you’re used to, tell me.”
4. When a client from another culture goes quiet or pulls back with no reason given, do not guess at the reason. Make one call yourself, the same day, and ask about the job and how you handled it. For example, an event planner can ask, “How did Saturday feel to you and your family? Was there anything in how we ran the day that wasn’t right?”
5. Write what you learn on that client’s page as that client’s preference, not as a rule about their country. Ask the next client yourself, even one from the same place. For example, a home organizer might write that the Haddads like to be called Dr. and Mrs. Haddad. They also want the father’s desk left alone.

Next: You will see how standing and face shape who decides, and what a client from another culture says and does.