My daily job as a foreign trade person is to receive inquiries, reply emails and quotations, but is your quotation effective? If the customer asks you for a quotation sheet, will you give it? Not afraid of losing a customer, but even more afraid that the customer will not reply. How do you deal with inquiries that are not valid or valid every day?
Maybe a lot of people do this:
1. honestly do pricelist, try, anyway, no loss, maybe is your future customers
2. Let customers go to their websites and then tell you what products you are interested in and quote again.
3. Send him an electronic catalog so that he can choose his own products and report them again.
4. Select the most competitive products to quote to customers In general, customers ask for pricelist only in one of the following situations:
1. Be interested in your products and have a general understanding of the market situation.
2. I have been dealing with other related products for many years and feel that there is room for your products in his target market. I would like to know about the price to see if there are new business opportunities.
He has customers making this kind of products, and he needs the price of the supplier as a reference to calculate the profit (operating in the form of middlemen or commissions) 4. His competitors are entering related industries, and he needs to follow up.
5. I don’t know the product, but I really want to buy it. After asking the price, I am ready to talk about the import of trade directly. (This kind of customers are few, ask you the HS code of your goods, and some may even be confused about FOB and CIF) 6. Customers are not familiar with the products in the local bidding plan. They want to see if you have the same or similar products.
This kind of products are being imported. I would like to compare the prices with the existing suppliers and see if there are any new products in your quotation sheet that interest him.
For the first case, your quotation is meaningless.
For cases 2-6, your quotation is meaningless if he has not fully studied your products, understood the local market, coordinated the import and export trade terms with you, solicited his own customers with your side of the information, determined which kinds of products are mainly imported, did not have a good understanding of the profit margin, or was confused by your quotation sheet.
For the 7th case, if he compares the prices and finds that your Price list is not attractive (the more products you quote, the lower the price competitiveness), or the specifications you quote do not meet the requirements of his market (unprofessional), then your quotation is meaningless.
Therefore, the above situation shows that it is not the best policy to report directly to the customer price list.
In fact, the first step after receiving the inquiry is to analyze whether the customer is a real buyer, which is the most important. First of all, we should know whether the other party is a real customer, and then analyze whether it is big or small, professional or not.
Generally speaking, whether a customer is a real customer or not can first be seen from his website.
If there is no clear answer in the website and you want to know whether the customer is a real buyer, then you should use customs data to investigate and study the customer and analyze the customer.
If, after customer analysis, it is still uncertain whether the customer is a real buyer, then you can choose several questions to ask the customer:
1)FOB or CIF ? Which port you usually buy from ?
FOB or CIF ? Which port do you normally buy from?
(Judge where the customer’s supplier is located. For example, in the non-woven fabric industry, the ports are basically Wuhan and Shanghai ports. For plastic products, there are basically Shenzhen, Wuhan, Qingdao, Zhangjiagang and Shanghai ports.
If your customer tells you that he bought goods from Dalian port, then it can be basically concluded that the customer does not know the industry very well and must be buying goods from Dalian’s foreign trade company.
Sometimes the customer will reply to a FOB Felixtonwe, which reveals that the customer does not know much about the trade terms, and may have imported less or none, or may be a novice purchaser. ) 2)For this industry, what’s the main products you are buying ?
( for this product, what’s the main specification you are buying ? what’s the packing way ? ) What are the main products you purchase in this industry?
(What specifications do you mainly purchase for this product? What is the packing method? ) According to your experience and whether the customer’s reply is specific or not, judge the authenticity of the customer.
For example, a customer in Dubai told me that we buy all of these products.
The fact is that it is impossible. According to preliminary judgment, the authenticity of the customer is discounted. We should only ask the price in general terms.
You can modify the quotation based on other customers in this market and send it to customers.
(A really interested customer will reply to your question and he expects you to give an attractive price after you know more about the situation. ) If the customer replies: wemainlybuynon woncaps, pegloves, pesleeves, peapron, vinylgloves mixed intocontainer.
Or: weusallybuyxxx with the specs: 18 “,single elastic, white, 100pcs/bag, 10bags/ctn.
According to experience, the information returned by this customer is true. These products are products that are in greater demand in this market (the specifications of this product are the more common specifications in this market. ) [Question]: I don’t know much about foreign markets and market conditions. How can I get to know the market conditions of foreign markets?
[Answer]:
1) Ask old customers or find benchmarking customers in the industry Many customers are generally more open than we expected, so you can ask your old customers about the market situation.
Of course, if you have one or several industry benchmark customers in the customer market, then you don’t need to ask already. If you don’t have such customers, look at the websites of the top 5 companies in this market and study those products.
2) Study B2C websites in the customer market, the purpose of which is to know the common specifications of the products in other local markets, the price range of the final retail price, the packaging method, which brands (and thus the companies that find these brands) and whether there are more suppliers (market competition) Methods: Before, websites of every country were published every week. You can choose shopping websites from the website classification and look for websites (generally large comprehensive shopping centers or large online shopping centers) Take the United States as an example: Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Best Buy, Nextag, Bizrate, Grainger …
(PS: Many brand customers can be found on retail websites) 3)GOOGLE Search Price+ Product English Name+Website Country Limit For example: price+ product English name+site: … us Price+ product name+site: … in Other non-English speaking countries use local languages, such as Spain: precio+ Spanish product name +site:.es In this way, many local online shops and retailers in the online industry can be found out so as to learn about product specifications, retail prices, packaging methods and other information.
According to the customer’s reply to your question, consider it, then select products according to your needs, foster strengths and circumvent weaknesses, and report the products you have advantages. There is no need to make a pricelist.
Some customers will tell you honestly that they have never bought such products before, but the company is ready to develop the business of such products.
For example, the customer replied: We are a trading company, and your products are still a relatively new concept in our market. We very much hope to introduce your products into our country’s market, but at present we are not sure which of your products has more potential, so we hope to get information about all your products so that we can make a comprehensive promotion.
You can tell your customers which products in your market sell well and what specifications and styles sell well, and provide some professional opinions. (Sorry ! ! I have stressed many times! ) It can even provide customers with websites of customers whose businesses in this market are mature. Let customers study them first, then determine which products they are interested in, and then give detailed quotations.
Original Artical，Author：China Trade Agent，if repost，please give references ：https://offers-bg.com/respond-to-foreign-trade-customers/
