1. Identify your target audience
Before developing customers, we must be clear about our target customers. In IC foreign trade industry, as an independent distributor, our possible target customers mainly fall into two categories:
A. Channels: domestic and foreign distributors (such as brokers on IC foreign trade platform)
B. Terminal category: domestic and foreign manufacturers (such as PCB manufacturers) and some personal purchases (such as electrical maintenance, scientific research personnel) 2. How to develop customers a. Passive: build A perfect sales platform, waiting for customers to take the initiative to inquire;
Like our IC foreign trade industry, we use a variety of paid B2B platforms and company websites to upload high-quality inventory information, showing the company's prominent advantages and convenient contact information. Due to the publicity of the company's image on the platform, there will be customers who take the initiative to browse the company's home page, or even directly make phone calls/emails and other inquiries. This kind of customer inquiry quality is high, should pay great attention to and do a good record, easy to follow up maintenance.
Therefore, the improvement of the company's website and B2B platform information, the display of the company's brand power and core competitiveness, quality inventory information and so on can greatly improve the active transaction rate of customers.
B. Initiative: integrate and utilize existing resources, actively seek potential customers and strive for cooperation intention;
First of all, salesmen must be clear about what products and services they can provide for customers and where the company's own core competitiveness is, rather than promise to any requirements of customers without focus. This can only waste energy, overdraw customers' trust in us, resulting in the loss of orders and customers.
For example, our company's advantage is in THE IC of AD, TI, NXP, MAXIM, ATMEL and other major brands, rather than various brands of audions and capacitors. Of course, if the customer has full trust in us, let us help them find some other components, we can help the customer is to do as much as possible.
Our competitiveness lies in:
Good supply channels for several major brands, good quality control and quality assurance services, flexible payment methods, quick quotation and delivery, a good grasp of the market and so on.
Identify your own resources and look for potential target customers.
A. Search for customer information on Seekic B2B, introduce yourself to customers by phone /Email/MSN/Skype, and try to make a positive impression. Running information on Instant Messengers Messengers Messengers Messengers Messengers Messengers running on Daily RFQs.
B. Enter IC, IC Principal, IC Distributor, IC broker at USA/UK/Japan/Korea by Google, Yahoo, Baidu and other search engines. Select some potential customers with relatively high quality to develop and follow up.
C. Seek trade opportunities in the electronic components section of some professional foreign trade forums at home and abroad (such as Fubu Foreign Trade Forum), communicate with peers to understand market trends, and many domestic traders are likely to become foreign trade customers.
D. Dig out new customers from existing old customers: we can learn customers' contacts from existing customers' MSN and Skype contacts. Some companies will directly mark trade references on their websites, which are all resources that can be mined for us. If some customers mainly make two or three audions, we can ask him to introduce his domestic counterparts specializing in IC, which can also expand our customer base.
E. We can try to search for some of our end customers, such as PCB manufacturers, which are mostly in Southeast Asian countries. They purchase IC and other components for PCB production.
How to maintain customers The difficulty of developing a new customer is several times of maintaining an old customer, so we must pay attention to the old customer and maintain the old customer, let it become our high-quality trade reference rather than the victim of quality problems. This problem is very prominent in the IC industry, as a foreign trade salesman, we should try our best to communicate candidly with customers, to the greatest extent to avoid the loss of the company and customers.
Personally, I mainly do customer maintenance from the following aspects:
Avoid future quality and payment disputes due to incomplete information and misunderstandings. At any time, adhering to the principle of good faith is conducive to the long-term development of both sides, and actively cooperating with customers to get orders is the most direct help to customers.
B. Good customer service: In addition to providing high quality quotes, it is necessary for us to provide customers with information on every step of the order. For example, the choice of express delivery, the information of weight/size of goods, the timely provision of tracking number, the notification of payment confirmation from our financial department, and the confirmation of receipt of goods by customers. In short, we need to know every process of an order like the palm of our hand, keep good records and timely feedback to customers, so that they can easily manage the order. At the same time, it is also conducive to our customer management, efficient service to customers.
C. Do hospitality and some human care: for example, learn about customers' preferences, birthdays, anniversaries and other important information in the conversation.
Send your best wishes on some holidays, send emails or phone calls on weekends, or send small gifts to express your best wishes.
D. Actively and efficiently and properly handle return and exchange issues: Improper handling of this point will directly lead to the loss of old customers. Many old customers choose to terminate cooperation because they failed to properly handle quality disputes in the first cooperation. As a supplier, we need to establish an efficient return and exchange process and mechanism from the system, and inform customers in advance that they need to provide relevant test results as required to quickly deal with the return and exchange problem.
We should also fulfill our quality commitment and actively analyze and solve problems, rather than delay with customers and cause negative effects until greater losses. E. Pay attention to the accuracy and completeness of contract terms, cooperate to avoid risks (P/O and P/I review), and clarify responsibilities and rights of both parties to avoid future disputes. For example, delivery date, payment method, warranty period, return and replacement conditions, dispute resolution and so on.
Conclusion: customer is not God, but our Partner, we should do neither humble nor arrogant to create a win-win cooperation situation, clever use of various sales means, discover new customers and maintain old customers.