meeting was set for Friday at 4:00 P.M.—a sign of its low priority. It was
the worst possible time to pitch a sale, as everyone was heading home for
the weekend.
K.T. and an unusually large delegation of Samsung executives—a dozen
or so handlers, as per Korean custom for a man of his rank—waited in the
lobby. Skarzynski watched as the clock hit four, and still Sigman didn’t
appear, an insult in South Korean business. The wait lasted an excruciating
thirty minutes.
Skarzynski, fearing K.T. would perceive this as a “big insult,” pleaded
with Sigman’s assistant to at least get K.T. out of the lobby.
“Come on up. The meeting’s really running late,” said the secretary.
Unfortunately, there was another problem: K.T.’s entourage could
barely squeeze into the small conference room. In the end, K.T. picked
three of them. Then they waited for another half hour.
Finally Sigman entered. A portly Texan with a cutthroat demeanor—“a
shit-kicker kind of guy,” as Skarzynski described him. There was nothing
friendly about Sigman’s expression. Skarzynski started his spiel on behalf
of K.T., only to be interrupted by Sigman.
“I don’t really ever meet with vendors,” Sigman said. “Unless there’s
something interesting or unique you can tell me, I have no reason to work
with another vendor.”
As the interpreter began translating Sigman’s response into Korean,
K.T., who understood English, looked Sigman in the eye.
“Stan, I like you. You get right to the point.”
As it turned out, the pair clicked.
“Okay, K.T. Show me what you got.”
From one son of a bitch to another, Skarzynski thought.
But no major deal came out of the meeting, and Cingular remained a
hard sell for years to come. Samsung’s break came much later, in 2005,
when Hurricane Katrina wrought devastation in Louisiana.
“Stan is creating a recovery fund, and he would like everyone to chip
in,” a Cingular executive told Samsung executives. “Everyone’s giving
around fifty thousand dollars.”
“We’ve got a half million dollars in our budget,” Skarzynski told his
boss. “Let’s give it to Sigman and fund a half-million-dollar contribution for
the victims of Katrina.”