General

The foreign trade inquiry process plays a very important role in foreign trade. It is believed that many foreign trade business personnel look forward to buyers' foreign trade inquiries or emails every day. Even if there are inquiries, when we reply to customers and make quotations, many of them are lost and there is no response. So how should we screen out so many complex foreign trade inquiries? Let's take a look together.

The buyer's inquiry can basically be divided into the following categories:

The first type is a targeted professional inquiry. This inquiry has the following characteristics:

1. The buyer's information is comprehensive, including country and region, company name, address, phone number, and fax contact person.

2. The product objectives are clear, with specific names, quantities, delivery conditions, delivery dates, etc.

3. The questions raised are professional and detailed, but the content is concise.

This survey deserves your high attention. This type of buyer is quite professional and has plans to purchase this product. Therefore, we should provide professional, accurate, comprehensive, and detailed responses to such inquiries as soon as possible.

The second type of foreign trade inquiry is non professional and has clear objectives. The characteristic of this type of survey is that there are fewer professional questions compared to target oriented surveys. This indicates that the buyer has no procurement experience or understanding of this product, but they can feel the level of demand for the product through email. This type of customer is a potential customer and should be patiently and professionally answered, followed up in a timely manner, establish a harmonious relationship with the customer, and lay the foundation for achieving the order.

The third type is unclear, and most of these queries are forwarded through trading platforms with fixed template formats, which may require you to send a price list or catalog. Such inquiries should be filtered out, but should not be returned, just do not quote the other party's words in the first place. We suggest that you handle this type of inquiry through a response with questions.

For example, you can reply to the buyer as follows:

We have dozens or even hundreds of products. What kind of product do you need specifically for those places? Where is your target market? What is your specific procurement plan? So we can recommend it to you. If the customer responds, then follow up. If the customer does not respond, then this is a good thing for us, and such queries can be filtered.

The fourth type is information collection. This inquiry is more professional than our business scope, and the specific parameters are very detailed. You may also need to provide samples. They will investigate the market for this product, and if they are an experienced company, this inquiry is sensitive. They will be very cautious when answering and it is easy to detect defects in the other party's email. They must be peers or competitors.

The fifth type is the request sample type. These customers are completely indifferent to your price conditions and request free samples. For the requirements of such free samples, corresponding measures should be taken according to the company's regulations. For example, if the sample is free, the shipping fee will be paid by the other party.

In summary, there are several issues to pay attention to when screening foreign trade inquiries:

1. Check the time when the other party sent out the inquiry. There is a period of time difference between foreign clients and us. His working hours are different from ours.

2. Use a search engine like Google to search for another company and see if it exists.

3. It is best to track through IP queries to see if the other party's IP is in China or abroad. For queries that cannot be fully determined, the best way to communicate by phone is to directly call to find the answer and then decide whether to reply.