customer experience

[mmmaweiyuan]

I have been doing foreign trade for more than two years. I have contacted many customers and met many unexpected events. No matter what kind of situation I encounter, I believe that as long as you persevere hard, you will be able to achieve success one day. Today, I want to share with you my previous experience of following up customer inquiries. This is my personal experience. I want to tell you not to give up easily. Customers need you to follow up.



Last year I switched to my current company. Because of the different industries, everything has to start all over again. I don't have any customer resources on hand. The most difficult thing is that before this company did not do foreign trade, but did domestic trade. Now the boss wants to develop in foreign trade. So the company only has me as a foreign trade salesman. I undertake all the responsibilities of the foreign trade department. I need to do the foreign trade part.



At that time, I was under a lot of pressure, but I hope to exercise myself through this opportunity, which is why I promised to come to this company. If I did, promotion and salary increase would be affirmative, and I could make great progress myself. I use all the available time to work, without a customer resource, I do my own platform, to find their own customer development. At that time, it happened to be the so-called off season of foreign trade. Most of the places at home and abroad were in high temperature. It was pitiful to receive few inquiries from customers.



After August, the weather turned slightly cooler. I also sent a lot of development letters over the past two months. Slowly, I began to have some effective inquiries. Someone finally asked me for an offer, but this customer is not the target customer, he and we are peers, he received the order and then asked us to do, and then take back to sell, in order to make some profits, anyway, I am very happy to have such a foreign peer to come to my door. Soon someone from their side came to open the factory, but this time they were not very satisfied with the factory, I think the customer's reaction may be that our factory is relatively small, when he left, he just purchased some small accessories.



The customer obviously ignored me when he went back to the factory. No matter how I sent Skype to him, he just answered perfunctorily and sometimes did not return information. I must be particularly unwilling to find a customer. The company is struggling with me alone. When the next customer loses this customer, I don't know when. Maybe the foreign trade department of our company can't do it at that time. So I contact the customers every three or five times, send texts and make phone calls. No matter whether the customers want to talk to me or not, I can't give up first. It was with this idea that I persisted for more than two months.



Two months later, the customer finally told me the reason. My persistent spirit touched him. He told me that the size of our factory could not meet their requirements. But I always had a good attitude and was very professional about the products. He could not deny our company because of the size of the factory. So he was willing to give us a small order to try. After I waited for a month, the customer really went down. In fact, I was really happy at that time. After waiting for a month, I thought the client was just talking about it casually.

[mmmaweiyuan]

This customer is a real foreign trade customer. After I sent him a development letter, I received his inquiry very soon. He asked me to quote a price for a product. After the quotation was finished, the customer had no news at all. This is the same as all foreign trade stories, but he was not bloody at all, because the customer did not give me any response because of my repeated inquiries. I called the customer, the customer asked me to add skype, after I added skype, the customer did not take care of me, I think the customer is to see me call in the past embarrassed to refuse me, so casually perfunctory me!



Anyway, after adding Skype friends, I often chat with customers, who seldom reply to me, or even for a period of time completely do not reply. Strange is that every time a customer replies to me, he will ask me for some company introduction, verification reports to show him, I suspect that this person is a liar, how to repeatedly ask for these information, and finally found that because the customer completely did not impress me, every time he replies to me, he communicates with any customer, first of all, their information.



I also know that the customer has found a domestic company to be their supplier, what he did is the product he quoted me last time, but I think our company has its own factory, the price must be competitive, depending on whether the customer would like to place an order for us. One day, I sent a message to the customer that I am sorry that I did not succeed in arousing the customer's interest. When the customer asked me the reason, I said that because he had not answered my information and asked me for quotation, he always chatted with the customer half-jokingly and half-seriously.



To borrow a sentence from Liu Qian, the following is the moment to witness the miracle, and I don't know what happened to the customers. He said that he had a product to purchase and asked me to quote him quickly. After I quoted, the customers slightly returned the price and then said yes. Then he told me that he would place an order for me next Friday. I can't believe it. Happiness comes too suddenly.



But later, because of the payment methods that we negotiated for a long time, it was about a month later that the contract was formally signed. At that time, we were worried that the customer was playing with me. After all, after such a long follow-up, we took it down. My so sad sentence really worked. It really took a long time, and eventually a good result was achieved.



Our company has been focusing on domestic trade. With my persistence, the boss has more confidence in the Ministry of Foreign Trade. Later, the boss recruited an experienced supervisor, and our Ministry of Foreign Trade began to recruit several people one after another. Now I am not alone in the battle, and I have become a foreign trade manager as I wish. I am very satisfied with my two years of graduation. 。

[mmmaweiyuan]

I developed four valid customers at one go (just checked email records), four of which are of different significance to me personally.

The first is a British customer from a completely different industry. He ordered me an outsourced product from our company, which can be used in combination with our company's products or separately.

In fact, this customer only ordered two samples (one of which was quickly destroyed) from me. In order to cooperate with this product, he also sent me his new application design. This simple illustration gives me a very important inspiration: the original outsourced product can be bought by a completely layman to process and resell! When the customer finds the sample has problems, he still confidently tells me that as long as the next goods do not have problems, we can certainly promote more and better cooperation. These are the flames of hope.



The second one is still a British customer. It's our real professional customer. He also ordered the same product from the above customers, but did not make a formal order. After ordering the sample, he ordered another sample every other year, keeping a simple contact between them. This customer has played a very important role in my psychology, and he has strengthened my confidence in the future of this product in the market from the beginning.



Combining the feedback from these two customers, I have reason to believe that a product with good prospects for both professional and non-professional customers must have something to do.



The third customer is a Chilean, professional customer. Speaking Spanish, English is very common. As can be seen from his email, too many "inverted sentences" are used.

He doesn't have many problems. He may be limited by language. It's so easy to place an order without many e-mails coming and going. To be such customers and friends in foreign trade all over the world, we will be developed! ___________



He received our products before Christmas and applied them to engineering after Christmas. Everyone was very happy when the cooperation began. This was one of the few clients that I maintained a "long-term" cooperation with during that period. He basically contributed more than half of my income next year. Without this customer, I could not start a full-time SOHO later.



The fourth customer comes from Israel and is also a professional customer. When I came on stage, I was very professional. From the mainframe to the supporting equipment, he could say it all over. Then he asked me questions. I had to consult {Sanitized by moderator} before I could answer him (this is one of the benefits of EMAIL). On the whole, he was satisfied. After 1, 20 days of communication, he made a request that I had never dealt with before: to be the sole agent of our company in Lebanon, Palestine and Israel! I'm both nervous and excited, and this can also be wow! ___________ Summarize four elements: 1. Agency period, 2. Agency tasks (volume or total value of goods), 3. Task deposit, 4. Exclusive agency preferential measures.

After checking these, I responded to the guest, and expressed to him that we welcome the cooperation of sole agent, and also initially put forward the agency requirements, that is, the above four points. He had no objection to point 1.4, but expressed his concern about the agency and the task deposit. Then he started bargaining. He depressed himself by saying that he had a small population and a small business, demanding lower tasks and deposits; I quickly raised him by saying that Israel was rich and strong, with a high standard of living and strong consumption, and was trying to maintain the tasks and deposit requirements. Finally, I gave in with kindness. We agreed to sign the sole agency contract with the unanimous agreement to grant Israel agency only and to adjust the task deposit fee from $5,000 to $3,000.

[mmmaweiyuan]

In August 2015, I left the company that had been in business for more than 9 years. I started my own independent portal and started my own business. I started SOHO and SOHO for 3 months. I couldn’t stand the environment of going to work at home, and I rented my office immediately. The next step is to build a website, buy a domain name, and register for those messy things. By the way, an advertisement, HUNK and the website to do, haha.
I bought Alibaba, and combined with the method of God, Google found customers, LINKEDIN and other social platforms, just beginning to be full of enthusiasm, every day until the early morning, one month down, the enthusiasm slowly retreat, until one day the mail jumped out The email suddenly appeared.

A development letter has been reflected, and the guest asked me how to send me a drawing. My God, happiness came too suddenly, the first email did not see any information from the guests, and later the drawings sent by the guests came with company information, drawings and so on. According to the method of the material god, I found it in Google. My God, big company, almost 100 years old. I am happy and fearful, happy to come to the customer, and still a super big customer, the fear is, but the website is all there, only the domain name. Let HUNK help me hang a "website upgrade on the website. After the decoration, I will contact you. This person is the head of the design department. The technology is technical. Let's start chatting inside the email. Just add SKYPE to chat later. Then talk. A joy. But as soon as the first project is about to place an order, he said that he asked their purchasing manager to contact me. i_f04.gifi_f04.gif, I wipe, this is how big the official, let their purchasing manager contact I am thinking that this order is almost the same, happiness is too sudden, I thought the original business is so good.
Since the emergence of Brendan, my real "good day" is the beginning, and then began to analyze Brendan, just that he is a purchasing manager, there is no information on Google, no social media such as FACEBOOK. I rub, who is this? Later I learned that this person is a China Tong, professional procurement. not simple.
Seeing this email is not all the small partners feel that this has become the case? But the good things are more than grinding, this is just a precursor to the beginning.
Then I have been in contact with this Brendan since September until 2016, Google, customs data, ask ice brother, all methods are used, the guests are not placing orders, the world is the most painful thing, this is the contact price of more than 30 PI, did 5 copies, anyway, there is a wooden letter. This really happened to stop the tribulation. How to solve the problem, only persist and wait! ! !
Finally, I really couldn’t stand it in March of this year. I asked the guest directly on SKYPE. Will you give me an order, and then the guest will return to such a paragraph, so that a sentence calms me down. This person is a A true purchasing expert. In a word, I can comfort the supplier very well and I have to admire it.

Things have been going on like this, repeated quotes, I keep 3-4 days a week on the skype and say hello to him on time, and no longer the project and the order, I will talk about it. Until one day, things finally turned around. He had problems with the products made by another supplier, and all the goods he had made could not be used. At this time, my "prepared tires" finally turned positive.

I received an email like this on Labor Day. I saw that this email was actually very relieved. I was very calm and very polite to return the email. After all, this guest has been taking too long, so he does not fight money, I am not. There will be any ideas. Because I received too many similar emails, the content of this email is estimated to be in the millions of RMB. What does this big list mean for our company? It means that I have to move the company to Shenzhen Qianhai CBD. Haha!
Until the middle of the night of June 9th, the guests had to pay me, I wiped, and the eight months of payment finally saw the return

Politely, it is still quite cute. I can't do it because of my website. He has to help me modify it for free. . Haha
Now the case is basically running, and it is relatively simple to say that the whole thing has passed, and the twists and turns in the middle are far more complicated than this. The quotation document for this customer has already been 10 GB, not to mention the number of times Skype communicates with the mail. This is the case. Waiting is not a bad thing. Persistence is king.

[mmmaweiyuan]

Now foreign trade, competition has become white-hot, from products to supply chains, from design to promotion, from flow to transformation, competition is becoming more and more difficult.

Let's talk about a big killer today.

This killer is: the ultimate service

How to provide "extreme" service that suffocates customers?

Before giving an answer, we need to understand a key concept.

Concept: Peak-to-Peak Law

If there are only two pieces of "candy" in the long product experience, when are you going to give users to eat? Daniel Kahneman, a famous psychologist and economist, said that users should be given food when the user experience "reaches its peak" and "is about to end". This is the famous Peak-End Rule.

Mr. Liu Run has an explanation of the "Peak-to-Peak Law" in the five-minute business school, which is easy to understand.

Have you ordered anything with your friends at dinner? If you are afraid of ordering, using the "Peak-to-Peak" law, ordering is a small case.

First of all, the basic method of ordering is: a man a meat dish, a woman a vegetarian dish. For example, seven men and four women, order seven meat dishes and four vegetarian dishes. If it's all men, make sure it's not less than a third vegetarian.

But what meat dishes and vegetarian dishes do you order? How can we make everybody addicted to food with a limited budget? At this point, you need to use the "law of the end of the peak" to order the two most critical dishes: one is the "rush to the peak" of the main dish, and the other is the "end of the" dessert.

The time for the whole meal to "rush to the top" is before about the sixth to seventh course and most people are full. At this time, we need a real dish, whether it is the dish, color, or taste, which is the treasure of the restaurant's town store. If it's in Hunan cuisine restaurant, you can order "Taste Snake" and if it's in Jiangsu and Zhejiang cuisine restaurant, you can order "Steamed Shad". This dish, if it can make everyone "wow! It's delicious!" It doesn't matter what you eat, because most of them can't remember.

Dessert is the time wen the whole meal is "coming to an end". By this time, most people were full. The ornamental value of this dessert becomes even more important. An imported ice cream sprinkled with dry ice is just as good as an imported ice cream sprinkled with fairy spirit. After a full meal, with a delicate spoon, scrape off a thin layer of ice cream, accompanied by fairy to the mouth. The meal ended with perfect satisfaction.

As a result, you only spend money on these two candies, but they bring almost perfect experience to your friends.

So, our memories of the past are either at the peak or at the end of the moment. The same is true for customers. Therefore, to provide the so-called "extreme" service does not mean that we provide customers with a stable and constant service, which is always the ultimate service (in fact, it can not be done), but we provide customers with a "peak" service in a complete customer experience and a "perfect" dessert service in the instant of the end.

[mmmaweiyuan]

In 2014, I co-developed a product with a French customer S. This product was designed by a Spanish designer. The shape is very good. I used the design drawing to attract the attention of S customers. He is willing to invest. Mold fee and I jointly developed this product. For me, because the customer bears the mold fee, I almost have a new product without cost. After half a year, we developed the product and put it on the market, but S customers I did not sell this product. By 2017, this product had less than 10,000 units, so it should be said that this product did not achieve a win-win situation in S. I have not achieved much profit.
However, this product factory has been sold in China. There should be tens of thousands of orders every year, so the factory is more grateful to me, but I have not made any money.

Although I haven't made any money for this product, I always think that the design of this product is very good. I can't figure out why the S customer didn't succeed. I always think that this product will have an opportunity to break out.

In 2016, a British customer J and I started to cooperate and selected three products, one of which is the product developed by me and S customers. Because this product is relatively expensive, it is positioned in the three products of J customers. At the highest end of the sale, J customers will have 1,500 units, and there will be no news later. I have never felt that J customers will have any big business opportunities. But in any case, my communication with J customers has been very good, including my meeting with him in the UK, and my major in the industry and products, so that he is convinced that I am the best supplier in this category in China, and in his business In the case of a small situation, my service is still relatively good. The choice of his three products is also recommended by me. He is under the guidance of me to enter the procurement of this category.

The transfer came from a sudden inquiry from this year. I asked this product developed by S and S customers. What is the price of the next 30,000 units? For this product with a relatively high unit price, an order of 30,000 units is a relatively large order. On the one hand, I doubt whether he has such sales ability, but on the other hand, he also discussed with the factory whether there is room for price reduction (after all, The amount of orders is large).

After making the basic judgment (after communicating with him on WeChat), it is determined that this is a real demand, from a large chain terminal customer of J customers (thousands of chain terminals), they prepare a product for large-scale promotion (to give away The way), our products are currently selected in the last three products.

After I learned this information, I was not eager to cut the price, because my judgment is that if the customer finally selects my product, it will not be because of the price, because my product is high-end positioning. 2 The customer can only find me in China. To make this product, others don't have the mold 3 of this product. The customer is a one-time promotion, and it is a gift. I don't think they are really sensitive to the price. Therefore, my offer is only a small percentage of my standard offer. I still wondered if the customer could get the order.

On the other hand, I also negotiated prices with the factory. Coincidentally, the factory just missed the order and promised that if I could place 30,000 orders at a time, I could cut the price by 15%.

After the inquiry, I have been keeping in touch with the customer on WeChat. I also give the customer a confidence that they should not worry about the price. It is the key to receiving the order, because I think that from my current cost structure, as long as I receive it, There must be better profits, even if you give a few more points to the customer. Customers also communicate with us about the progress of the project and the decision-making process of the end customer.

After half a month of communication, suddenly one day, his WeChat told me that the customer might decide, and the number may be 40,000, which is basically selected. But the price I want to make a point, I did not hesitate to agree, because he wants me to cut the price is actually only 2-3%, for me, in fact, the gross margin has been 10% higher than the normal order! My order gross margin is above 20%!

At two o'clock in the middle of the day, he finally gave me a message, the final number of customers is 36,000. It is also a enough surprise.

I mean, my order is worth more than 700,000 RMB!

Happy is happy, the money has not arrived, everything is empty, we quickly confirm the order with the customer, the customer promised to arrange the deposit within one week, we also arrange the factory to start preparing materials.

But a week has arrived, the customer's deposit has not yet arrived, I am also nervous, it will not change the end customer? Oddly enough, we were also asked by another Hong Kong company, and we are looking for this product. It is estimated that the end customer has released the price, but since this product is only available to me, I have no way to judge the end customer. And this project should be nailed to the board.

I also told the J customer that the deposit will be paid as soon as possible. He also said that they are waiting for the end customer to pay the deposit. The order will not change. I also believe him, so let the factory boldly prepare the materials and deliver the delivery time.

After another week, my colleague was very nervous and said that the deposit was not paid. I said it doesn't matter, I am sure. Sure enough, the deposit arrived soon. The back is waiting for shipment.

This order has been shared so far, some experience

1 Luck is still the main ingredient, don't think it's your own. J customers mainly have the relationship of end customers, and just happen to meet the timing of end customer promotion.
2 It is very important to maintain good communication and trust with J customers. J customers only considered me in this category, because I entered his field of vision as a professional and industry expert at the beginning, so he only pushed me. Product, this is also one of the inevitability.

3 The game before the order is handed is very important. On the one hand, the factory has enough support (price, product) through large quantities, and on the other hand, the customer can't quickly cut the price. I guess if I saw the big order at that time, I would directly kill the reserve price. Maybe my profit is only 5%. Therefore, price reduction must not be the best strategy, but to fully understand the customer's background information, know the key points of the project's success, and then wait for opportunities.

4 This kind of order is unavoidable, and you can't always expect to encounter such a thing. Have a peace of mind.

[Strong Eagle]

Longest stream of consciousness eruption I've ever seen.