At present, China has successfully joined the WTO, foreign trade is bound to get a rapid development. Foreign salesman should be how to improve the quality of business as soon as possible to adapt to the needs of the times is a very important issue. In order to help the work of foreign salesmen and hope to be engaged in this work as soon as possible to improve their business level, the author in this paper to talk about a few personal views.
First, the need to have a basic professional knowledge of international trade
The first foreign salesman should have professional knowledge of international trade. There are three reasons: First, because we are foreign salesmen either in the company or abroad to promote, participate in trade fairs and exhibitions, the first encounter is the foreign language, to be able to read and understand the customer's correspondence, faxes and e-mail, to be able to understand the phone, and customers face-to-face negotiation, communication, signing contracts. Secondly, in the actual daily work to know and understand the single, review the certificate, customs clearance, commodity inspection, transportation, foreign exchange settlement, tax refunds and foreign exchange write-offs and a series of international trade practices, such as the operating procedures and the whole process. Third, in the process of contract implementation, it is inevitable that some disputes and friction, if the quality of goods or human irresistible problems, we must use international law, international arbitration and these important means and professional knowledge to solve these problems. Only with a wealth of professional theoretical knowledge, in order to work in the workplace as a tiger with wings, and soon be able to work independently, become a familiar with the business, a steady victory of the foreign salesman.
Second, the need to master the knowledge of production
Foreign salesmen must understand and master their own export varieties of the basic situation of the production plant, (i.e., factory machinery and equipment and production management) in order to do in the business negotiations to do in mind, to do the use of ease of use, ease of use, and the answer to the question. This is a very important thing, otherwise, it is difficult to carry out business. I would like to explain from the following two aspects:
(1) This is because it directly involves the customer's personal interests, involving product quality, product sales and economic benefits, the customer will never be in the case of unawareness, take the risk of the order to you, and you reach a deal. In other words, this will involve our foreign salesman can make business problems. In general, customers will take the following steps: ① in the negotiation to ask about the factory's production equipment and factory management; ② directly to the factory to visit the factory to visit the factory to see the factory's appearance, environmental health, machinery and equipment, production management and product quality; ③ to take to give a small sample order, the actual investigation of your service quality? Correspondence and reply in a timely manner, whether the sample order can be done according to quality, on time, according to the amount of delivery. In business negotiations, customers are bound to ask some questions, such as textiles, they will ask you how many spindles of this variety of factories, the highest number of counts can be spun 1 textile machine is imported or domestic? What model? How many looms are there? Is it a rapier loom or an ordinary B52 loom? Is it a silk screen printing machine or a cylinder printing machine? What is the output per shift? What is the starting capacity? Is there an electronic color matching machine? If our salesman can do a good answer, can give customers a good impression, he may give you the order to do, if you can not answer, it may not dare to give you a single to do, this is because you are even the most basic, the minimum knowledge are not, for fear of accidents. With the author's personal experience: new to work in the foreign salesman, it is necessary to factory workshops and warehouses to learn, exercise for a year and a half, and then return to the company to work, the purpose is to master the production knowledge, understanding of machinery and equipment, production management, process, product quality and product sales, for the future development of the business to provide convenience and lay a solid foundation. If the foreign salesman to their own units and trade partners, not familiar or do not understand the situation, as if the eagle was clipped wings, fly up.
(2) If our salesman is not familiar with the situation of the factory and do not understand, in the negotiation can not say one or two to, the hope of the transaction is very small, so to speak, the success rate is almost equal to zero. Even if by chance the business is made, but also may bring unnecessary losses to the unit enterprise in the reputation and economic. In this regard, I have profound lessons learned: in 1985 I was based in the United States, the United States had a large customer deal a business, 100,000 meters, T / C color woven plaid fabric. They imported these goods are used to process clothing, sold in the local market. Time is very tight, our goods arrived in the United States on schedule, but the product quality problems, that is, the weft skew more than -) degrees, the normal reasonable weft skew is &) degrees. The customer sued the local court and asked us to compensate their loss of &!) million dollars.) For a payment of $10,000,000 for a shipment, it was surprising to be offered compensation of &!) million dollars astronomically. At that time, because we do not have legal common sense, I signed the court summons as soon as it came. Because signed, you must appear in court to respond to the lawsuit, do not appear in court to respond to the lawsuit will admit defeat. There were three court hearings. The first time I lost, on the matter, the customer put forward due to the quality of goods, I want to compensate the importer and garment processing plant to stop work and wait for the loss of materials; but also I want to compensate for the loss caused by the sale of clothing business. The second trial, I invited a U.S. reputable barrister, he helped me win the case. He is another point of view to defend, said the prosecutor sued the wrong object, the two sides signed a contract with the China Textile Import and Export Corporation, Tianjin Branch for the head of the contract, and the current defendant is registered in the United States of America in New York China Trade Center staff; if the prosecution can only be sued Tianjin Textile Company. And in the back of this contract there is a clear provision: if the two sides have disputes, should be resolved through friendly consultation; if not in the friendly consultation can be resolved in Beijing arbitration as a final. In the end, the case was properly resolved. So, what is the root cause of this problem . The key lies in the fact that our export salesman, the downstream factory staff i.e. the order followers are not familiar with the situation of the factory. Because this factory does not have high-temperature and high-pressure fully automated advanced equipment, manual operation, hand-pulled cloth sent into the machine to heat shaping, two people's tension is certainly not uniform; coupled with our quality inspection personnel and daylight testing, and the United States of America's means of detection is to use the electronic laser scanning, then of course there will be a problem.
Third, the need to master their own business knowledge of goods
The so-called knowledge of goods, refers to the export salesman to operate their own export of each variety of strengths and weaknesses, specifications, composition, weight, physical properties, etc. to know as well as from what place. What factory. All to do in mind, to memorize. As far as textiles are concerned, I think it is more important to master and understand the knowledge of goods than production knowledge. Know more or less of the production knowledge, just involves the ability to make the business, and the knowledge of goods to master more or less, it will involve legal disputes, life safety issues, which is for both sides of the partners to carefully consider the matter. Because customers import your fabrics are used to process clothing to sell on the market, in economically developed countries have such a provision in the law: in the sale of clothing must have a label description, indicating the fabric composition, washing methods, whether or not environmentally friendly products; especially stressed that this commodity is not allowed to contain carcinogenic substances, are not allowed to contain the metal elements of the dyeing agent, the main reason is to be afraid of the children with their mouths to bite the adults or children wearing their own clothes, the child poisoning accidents. The main reason for this is to prevent children from biting the clothes worn by adults or children themselves, which may lead to poisoning of children. In addition, in economically developed countries, there is an unwritten rule: no matter how long the clothes are sold, as long as it is found that there are problems with the quality of the goods, take it back to the store owner without saying a word, you have to give the customer for a new piece of clothing or at the original price to give you cash. You can imagine the importance of commodity knowledge has reached what degree. This requires that our salesmen must seriously and carefully consider the following points when signing a contract: Whether the commodities we deal with meet international standards. Whether the quality of the product is acceptable. Whether our products have passed the / 0 / international testing center test. Whether there is a qualified laboratory report. Whether our factory has the ability and certainty to do on time, quality and quantity delivery, should be arranged to which factory production. To do so, in order to prevent the occurrence of errors and accidents.
Fourth, the need to master how to calculate the export price skills
A salesman must have a good understanding of domestic and foreign market price levels. Currently found that many of the new salesman only know the price reported by the factory plus the tax rebate rate, multiplied by the company's cost level, divided by the day of the Bank of China exchange rate to the U.S. dollar, the resulting number of U.S. dollars, the offer to customers. In fact, this is far from enough. I feel that to seriously do a sensible and reasonable offer, its learning is great, there are many hard and meticulous work we need to study: (1) to see whether the factory's offer is reasonable, there is no water. Should be calculated from the raw materials, that is, according to the day of the international market announced the price of $ raw material prices how many percent, and then add the factory's reasonable labor costs and profits, resulting in a standard price, usually we call the bar price. (2) to understand the same type of varieties, the same type of area of the price level of other factories, to do a comparison analysis of the reasons. (3) To understand the same type of species, other foreign trade sister companies or self-employed business units in the end how much the offer level? Analyze the reasons.
(4) to understand and master different countries, different regions, on the international market for the same type of varieties of offer levels, so that we know ourselves and the enemy, win a hundred battles, targeted. For example, the textiles of cotton, cotton yarn, the two bulk commodities in Hong Kong and Macao, the Middle East market or the European and American markets, we must first look at Pakistan, Indonesia. Offer level, because Pakistan, Indonesia's two cloth and two yarn of the lowest price level, the largest sales volume, is China's two cloth and two yarn export products of a strong rival. As long as we understand and master to their level, according to our actual situation reported sensible and reasonable price will have the certainty of victory over them, for the turnover rate.
(5) to grasp and understand our export varieties are famous brands and fist varieties, whether in the international market can play a dominant role is not a commodity? Is the international brand? Is the number of large? Such as the past, China's raw silk, Henan sericulture silk, Chinese tea, Chinese ceramics, the price of these varieties can be decided by our master. (6) to consider the supply and demand of goods. Is the current market situation oversupply or undersupply? It is up to us to decide our price level according to the actual situation. (7) is currently the electronic age, many customers are doing business in the website, publishing purchase information or sales information, half an hour, within an hour will receive dozens or hundreds of offer information for their reference and comparison, very convenient and fast. This depends on our foreign salesman offer level is competitive and attractive, whether in line with international market conditions.
Fifth, to grasp and understand the international market conditions
The so-called market conditions, in essence, refers to the fluctuations in commodity prices and varieties of commodities, price fluctuations are affected by objective factors, varieties of commodities is subject to changes into the idea of constraints. To capture the development of international market conditions and changes in the law, it is necessary to fight for the right to take the initiative, seize the high ground, become passive to active. The author believes that the foreign salesman to really achieve the mastery of the international market initiative, must do the following two points:
(1) pay attention to analyze the international market price fluctuations in a timely manner to take corresponding measures to take the initiative, in order to have a winning grasp. International market price fluctuations are affected by the political, economic, cultural, war, and natural disasters and many other factors, sometimes also affected by the cyclical economic crisis. 1997 Southeast Asia's financial crisis, Thailand, Malaysia's economy is in trouble; Japan, South Korea's bubble economy policy failed, resulting in worker unemployment, declining purchasing power, market weakness;? After the September 11th incident, the United States declared war on Afghanistan in order to fight against terrorists, causing the global economy to fall into difficulties again, and our export business bore the brunt of the situation and was subject to great resistance. In this case, our foreign salesman only to see the international market changes in the wind and clouds of the factors, timely research in order to take countermeasures, to be proactive, calm and responsive. Let's say, you are a livestock company cashmere products export salesman, cashmere market situation is bullish, the goods appear to be in short supply when the phenomenon of $ "million - tons of cashmere collected, may be sold to ." /-!" million - tons, you will make a lot of money. On the contrary, when the market is bad, there may be
By ."" million yuan to collect in the source, $" million 0 tons of no one asked for. This requires us to keep a cool head, take decisive measures, when to enter the goods? When to sell? Never blindly operate, blindly buy, blindly sell.
(2) to understand the international market color varieties of the development trend. This development trend is subject to human factors, it has a certain regularity and periodicity, as long as you are willing to seriously study and analyze, you will be able to capture some of the laws of development. For example, 1 * "years at home and abroad popular skinny pants legs pointed leather shoes 2 + "years popular Ba pants, big head shoes; 3 "years popular shallow gear pants, hair cake shoes; ..." I'm afraid that the popular "era" of the "board" pants and "board" shoes is still fresh in people's minds.4 This is the world-class designers, with their brains and thinking ability, artificially create a large program to arrange and combine, create the so-called new world trends, and let people follow their baton closely to go around. This is the market situation, this is the international market color varieties development trend. At present, our Chinese clothing style design and fabric color design ability in the world has not played a leading role, want to understand and master the international market color varieties than, must go to see every year + month held in Frankfurt, Germany, the World Expo on the release of information and every year (month in the United States, held in New York, Fabrics Expo on the popularity of chromatograms published. People believe that the authority of the above organizations, long history, experience, large institutions, strength. According to the authority, the source of their information is obtained through the hard labor of designers, they send a large number of designers each year to the world's major cities to study and learn about people's dress, habits, customs; even they will be every day in the city's busy areas, department stores, theaters, stadiums and exhibitions in front of the seat down to collect the information they need. In short, our salesmen must have the spirit of independent thinking, good at summarizing, analyzing, creating, inventing, and industrial sector **** with the study, designed to meet the market needs of the varieties of flowers, which is our purpose.
Six, to grasp the customer's mentality and credentials, to avoid being cheated
Now visit the door of a lot of customers, the purpose of each customer and the mentality is not the same %, some are really to do business, some are to explore the camp to steal trade secrets, some are to scam, but also to steal a new variety of new colors to go back to fake, in short, we must pay attention to observe and analyze. Individual credit bad customer, to draw attention. I have such a case in hand: Hong Kong has a customer % he proposed to buy a $ "feet container of denim tops exported to the United States to go % specified to & & & & cotton spinning mill cotton yarn % sold to Qingdao & & & & weaving factory % and then from Qingdao & & & weaving factory to buy back the denim % in Xiongxian, Hebei Province & & &&garment factory in Hebei Province. When the clothes are ready to find that the letter of credit has a lot of inconsistencies when requested to change the certificate, only to find that the letter of credit is false after the investigation of this person was a fraudster in the mainland has many crimes. What is the main reason for this problem? I think there are the following three points:
First, our foreign salesman inexperienced % should not be in the absence of understanding of customer credentials, clarify the situation on the production; second % of our foreign salesman due to greed for success % eager to do business with the psychology of the % down by the fraudsters to grasp and take advantage of the third, the management of our foreign export company's management system is chaotic % of the leadership of the gatekeeper is not strict.
Seven, we must know how to use the network, to do business, do live, do big
Today's era is the era of electronic information, every foreign sales staff must know how to use computers, fully utilizing e-commerce to do business, do live, do big. From the 1940s to the present, in this short decades, people in pursuit of speed, improve efficiency, communication technology revolution, research a variety of new technologies and new machines. For example: from LETTER (letter). To TELEGRAM (telegraph). TELEX (telex). TELEX (telex). To FAX (fax). To E-MAIL (electronic mail), every 10 years on the invention of a new technology, a new machine, the purpose of which is to save time and improve the speed to meet the needs of people. E-commerce is not just a simple transaction behavior, it is a combination of enterprise management concepts and business practices, we must see the great significance of promoting and improving the modernization of enterprise management through e-commerce. Foreign salesman to take full advantage of the superiority of the computer Internet, to be on the highway, on the broadband network, the varieties of flowers and colors of their own business, with a digital camera into a photo to the site; reasonable and competitive prices % preferential terms of trade to the site, and strive for more transactions, more exports, early transactions, early exports.
Eight, to improve the comprehensive quality of foreign salesman
The so-called comprehensive quality refers to the appearance of the foreign salesman, manners and temperament, including dress, speech and demeanor, expression and adaptability, foreign language proficiency, as well as other aspects of the ability and so on. When you appear in front of the guests, your words, every move represents your cultural connotation and cultural cultivation. Especially ladies, ladies %% extra attention %% your dress up %% whether end dress decent, stable and generous, is just right or counterproductive %% will involve the guests on your impression of good and bad problems %% more or less will also affect your business problems. In this regard, I have had lessons: 4564 years as a foreign salesman was sent to the United States as a resident of the author's lack of experience at the time only made a set of suits, two or three shirts, do not know how to change clothes and ties every day. Although we went out to sell every day in the hope of opening up the situation, but no one wanted to contact us and we could not make sense of it. Later on, a high level person pointed out that your outfit is just like Liu Lao Lao entering the Grand View Garden. The big brother board does not want to see you because you are too poorly dressed and groomed and not enough /)78*()107% Later on, we realized that the leadership has also paid attention to the situation and allowed us to make clothes when we passed by Hong Kong. The situation has changed, and the business has changed a lot. The trade volume of the nine of us has reached 4: "100 million dollars a year. Here I must remind you of another thing % so far % a lot of domestic foreign personnel were misled into another misunderstanding % wrongly believe that Americans dress very casually % want to wear what they wear % so many people follow the wrong way to do. A lot of foreign salesmen go abroad to buy jeans, * shirts, travel shoes, and even go to visit the customer % are this dress. This will not work % Americans are very open % dress very casually this is a fact. This is only true when they are taking a break from work to go to the park, walk the streets, or shop on the street. But when they go to work, they attend parties or public occasions, and they must be in a suit, white shirt and shiny shoes. If the American ladies are in the office, you will see that they will not wear the same clothes in a month. This is the real American way of life.
Secondly, I would like to talk briefly with you about the ability to express yourself verbally and to be adaptable. It will more or less reflect a person's comprehensive ability. Still speaking of the author's own personal experience, in 1985, due to work overworked at that time, I got diabetes. One day I was at the guests to negotiate business just in time for the customer to open a banquet, many guests are drinking and eating together, the guests must stay with me to eat at the dinner table, my friend asked me to say that your spirit is very bad, is it sick? At that time, I did not know how to say the word diabetes in English, and I was very anxious. Many of the guests' eyes were on me, waiting for my answer, and the atmosphere was very tense. Yes, I'm sick. The doctor found a lot of sugar in my blood, but I don't know how to say "diabetes". The guests present all exhaled a long breath in unison and shushed, the tension eased and people started talking and laughing again. ;