March 22, 2007: Proper communication, Professional posting of content, elaborate details and prompt replies to any queries and questions about your products or business would make a great difference to the way your potential customers translate into actual business for you. This guide is intended to guide about how to understand the psyche of the buyer as to what is expected by them and how to deliver the same to turn your posts into winning bid.
Sound Communications Method
Your company is as good as the first man answering the call of the prospective buyer. Borrowing a sentence out of the experiences shared in international trade conference, that impact of rude, incompetent, evasive or incomplete information gets compounded with the distance of the caller. Majority speakers in the conference tended to agree that while responses from North America were most useful and polite, surprisingly responses from east, which is dominating the global trade, were ebbed at the lowest. The first person taking the call in your company should either be able to handle most queries in the language caller is most comfortable with or straight way be able to put the caller to the right person.
Even in case for what ever reasons, you are not able to explain about the queries by the potential customer, make sure you take full contact details of the customer and do get back to him in 48 hours and do respond back to him as per his time zone unless you wake him up at dead of the night or other unearthly hour.
A 24 hour fax line or help line if sourced through a call centre could be additional advantage and automated response could tell visitor about holidays or other closed days of the business. It would also be great idea to keep your web site updated with such information too.
Updated Website
Another very helpful idea would be to keep data base of most questions asked by visitors and keep such data base updated. You may keep a section of FAQs on your site and keep the same updated from such queries. Avoid any abbreviation, acronym, unless you explain its meaning early in your document.
Selling
Background knowledge of the country such as Size, customs, key customers, distribution systems, pricing structure, Key competitors, etc of your potential customer would be a great idea. It would be impressive if the customer is able to get selling material and product specifications properly translated in his home language. Remember, if translation is faulty, it may have rather opposite effect.
ItConvert units as appropriate (Metric and U.S. equivalent).
Hire someone who can speak the language, who knows your product and its market, and who understands the export business.
Pricing:
Have an Export Price List available which list your payment conditions and delivery lead-time.
International pricing s would be better to use different units as each country have different systems of measurement of units and do indicate the local taxes that might be applicable on the prices quoted or else adjust your selling price to all inclusive basis.
Explain INCOTERMS and you may search this site for detailed meanings of various INCOTERMS.
Service and Warranty, Regulatory Issues.
Explain service and Warranty options carefully and also about various regulatory issues applicable with particular regard to importers home country.
Shipping/Storage:
Explain details about how your product can be shipped, the weight, dimensions and stackability of your boxes, how many can fit in a 20' container, etc. If possible, this information should be included on the sell sheet.
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