Joe Kraynak

Fast Becoming a Minority in America

In a recent article entitled “U.S. to Grow Grayer, More Diverse,” Washington Post Staff Writer N.C. Aizenman calls attention to the fact that according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, “minorities will be majority by 2042.”

I don’t know what to think of this. In a way, I became a minority as soon as I moved out of my heavily Polish neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side in 1978. I quickly became one of the few students of Polish-Ruthenian heritage attending Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. (I did meet one other Pole from “Da Region.”) When I moved to Indianapolis, Indiana in 1984, I felt even more like a minority. In my 20 years of living in Indianapolis, I met only a half dozen Poles (none of whom was very Pole-ish) and not a single Ruthenian. And Crawfordsville, Indiana? Fugget-about-it… I have yet to meet anyone who’s even sampled a perogi.

Personally, I enjoy my minority status. It makes me feel special. When I mention perogi or kapusta, I feel like a traveler from some long-forgotten land. When I speak the few words or phrases I know of Polish, like dziekuje (pronounced jen-ku-ya, meaning thank you) or idz do domu i spac (pronounced eez-dough-dome-oh-spotch meaning go home and go to bed), I feel bilingual. I don’t even mind the fact that people commonly mispronounce my name as Kray-nee-ack (Ruthenian, not Polish), although for the life of me, I can’t imagine how they came up with that mispronunciation.

As a minority, I can blame everything on the majority. After all, if the Polish-Ruthenians were running this country, we’d all have high-paying jobs, low taxes, the best schools in the world, free universal health care, and other perks too numerous to mention. And since my ancestors arrived long after “The White Man” stole the land from the Native Americans and some time after slavery was abolished in the United States, I feel none of the guilt that the majority of Americans often suffer.

So, when I read about “becoming” a minority in America by 2042, it really doesn’t bother me. I’m already there… and loving it.

Current Project - Cross-Cultural Selling For Dummies

Over the past several months, I’ve been working with Michael Soon Lee of EthnoConnect, a leading expert on the topic of selling to customers from diverse cultures, and sales guru Ralph R. Roberts to develop Cross-Cultural Selling For Dummies®. We just wrapped up the writing phase of the project and are currently working through author review - when we have the opportunity to review changes and suggestions from editorial and answer their questions.

We’re developing the book primarily for salespeople who want to expand their business into any of various multicultural markets across the country and around the world. (According to the Selig Center for Economic Growth, the combined purchasing power of the multicultural market has grown from $1.39 trillion in 2000 to over $2 trillion in 2006 and is estimated to reach $3 trillion in 2011.) However, the book is useful for others, as well, including small-business owners, entrepreneurs, and any front-line sales or customer service staff. Cross-Cultural Selling For Dummies® provides readers with practical tips and strategies showing them exactly what they need to do to appeal to clientele from different cultures:

• Assess your multicultural readiness (a self-test)
• Develop basic multicultural competency
• Hone your multicultural customer service skills
• Adjust your marketing campaign to make it more appealing to clients from other cultures
• Go beyond marketing to make your entire business multicultural friendly
• Redesign your store or office to make it appeal to a broader clientele
• Adapt your product line for multicultural sales
• Meet and greet prospective clients without turning them off
• Adapt your sales presentation and techniques
• Recognize multicultural buying signals
• Acquire closing techniques that are more effective with clients from other cultures
• Negotiate with clients who may have more experience and expertise with haggling than you do
• Build your referral base in the ethnic community
• Assemble and manage your own multicultural sales team
• Discover commonly held myths about your own culture and others that may be holding you back
• Uncover a host of multicultural resources that can help you transition your business for other markets

The book will be available in bookstores by November 17, 2008 – just in time to make the perfect Christmas present, or Kwanzaa present, or Hanukkah present, or ….