General

Inquiry response is a task that every foreign trade person does almost every day. Although it is a light and familiar task for experienced foreign trade professionals, many new foreign trade professionals often make mistakes and waste resources when responding to foreign trade inquiries. In my opinion, novices are prone to the following major misconceptions when responding to foreign trade inquiries:

1. Not conducting inquiry analysis and hastily responding to customers

For many newcomers to foreign trade, as they have just entered the industry, they attach great importance to the speed of responding to inquiries from customers, fearing customer loss due to delayed responses. Therefore, upon receiving inquiries, they will immediately conduct screening, and they will first respond to those "boutique inquiries" with complete information. And some customer inquiries with incomplete information are often filtered out by them. In fact, it is advisable to send an inquiry email to respond to the batch of buyers with incomplete information, in order to obtain more information as a basis for judgment, and then conduct inquiry filtering.

At the same time, it is also necessary to check customer information to further confirm the authenticity of customer inquiries, which can avoid being deceived by inquiries from peers and not miss out on some customers.

To summarize the commonly used methods, first, check the sender's IP address. Then you can find the region where the IP address belongs on the website, and of course, it is also possible to find the IP address of the proxy server, but this method can still filter some information. Secondly, check the delivery time of the customer. If the time is suspicious, it is likely that it is a foreign trade inquiry from a domestic peer. How could it be possible to receive an email from the United States at noon? Do American customers not need to sleep? However, the email has a timer function, which can only be used as a reference. Thirdly, it is easy to check the authenticity of the customer's webpage and contact information. As for the phone number, you can call them directly, even if you tell them that you have received their inquiry, which will make them feel that you value them.

2. Unified quotation reply to buyer?

Foreign trade salespeople usually have a price list of various products in their hands. When faced with this price list, a common mistake that foreign trade novices often make is to give different customers a unified quotation for similar products when replying to foreign trade inquiries. In fact, the actual situation of each regional market is different, and corresponding quotations should be formulated based on the specific situation of different regional markets. In this way, the possibility of a single order will greatly increase.

What kind of price is a reasonable price? It must meet three points.

Firstly, our own product quality should be well graded, and the price should be for products with a moderate to upper level;

Secondly, we have a certain profit margin at this price

Thirdly, the buyer has the willingness to negotiate with us.

Generally speaking, before quoting, we should do a good job of product market research in the customer's country and our competitors' research. Our quotation should not deviate from the market price by more than 10%. Unless your product has exclusive craftsmanship or patented products, if the deviation exceeds 10%, the customer is basically unwilling to continue the discussion.

3. When replying to customer questions, there is a large amount of redundant content

Some salespeople, after receiving inquiries, are focused on explaining the advantages of their products, resulting in lengthy emails and cumbersome expressions. Customers don't have the patience to read such long emails, so make sure they can understand your key points at a glance. At the same time, due to factors such as the arrival rate and opening rate of emails being relatively uncontrollable, and the waiting time being relatively long, it is recommended to use telephone communication to briefly describe the product and company to the buyer for high-quality, complete information with development potential foreign trade inquiries, and then use development letters or customized emails to enhance the buyer's impression and increase the possibility of transaction.

For foreign trade newcomers, only by continuously learning and gaining a deeper understanding of their products, managing customer emails through the AB customer email system, timely tracking whether customers have received emails, clarifying the results of emails, and whether customers are interested, can subsequent work be more planned.