—
K.T. AND SKARZYNSKI TRAVELED to Verizon’s headquarters in New York
City, where they hoped to land more orders. But Verizon had a long-
standing partnership with Samsung’s crosstown rival in South Korea, LG.
As K.T. prepared to discuss the latest Samsung models, one of the
Verizon executives handed over his business card. To the surprise of
everyone in the room, K.T. rejected it.
“You buy LG,” he said, scowling. He threw the business card back at
the Verizon executive.
“That hurt us big for quite some time,” Pete said. “It was like, all right,
okay. Nice meeting you, K.T. Now cancel those orders.”
Keeping an eye on Samsung’s Korean executives—the ones who had
never traveled before to the United States—became a matter of survival for
Skarzynski, to ensure Samsung wasn’t embarrassed in front of customers or
in the press. After a night of getting smashed with carrier executives in the
United States, he learned from a sales employee, the visiting South Korean
executives had left a bag with cash inside at the front desk, with
instructions to give it to a Samsung buyer staying at the hotel. Perhaps it
was a mistake made in the previous night’s drunken haze, or maybe it was a
bribe to win the favor of the carrier—Skarzynski thought the latter was
more likely. In South Korea, getting drunk with business partners is the
time when real business gets done. After bonding over booze and karaoke,
it’s an accepted practice to roll out bags of cash and other gifts for your
partners. Samsung executives, Pete said, preferred rounds of golf and
drinking to entertain executives, not escorts and bribes—though he
admitted Samsung made the occasional slip.
The buyer took one look, called someone at Samsung, and delivered the
cash back to the company. Pete raced into the office of his boss, Jeong Han
Kim, whom Pete knew was steadfastly honest.
“I know we can’t stop all of this,” Skarzynski said to him. “But please.
This is really embarrassing.”
Samsung still hadn’t won over Cingular, a newcomer among carriers,
founded in 2000, and a big target. Skarzynski struggled to get a meeting for
K.T. with Cingular’s brash CEO, Stan Sigman. Finally Cingular agreed to
talk.
Skarzynski and K.T. arrived at Cingular’s headquarters in Atlanta. The