Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Won't They Go Around Me?

On Aug 17, 2015, at 10:21 AM, MR wrote:

Dear John

You taught me that I should appoach a supplier who doesn´t export himself and convince him to let me be his export agent.
Nevertheless eventually the foreign importer, the one I will be selling to, may contact my supplier and cut me off the deal.
The questions are:

How do you convince the supplier about not cutting you our as the middleman?
Is there any strategy you use?

Thanks
MR

Hey MR,

The premise of your question is assumes everyone is looking to cut others out, they have the time and resources to do so, and your participation provides no value.  What if none of these premises are true.  What if the supplier is too busy doing what they do to mess with exporting?  What if even if they wanted to they don't have the resources, and finally, what if you provide a value for which people are willing to pay you?  All of this can be true in so many cases, in any event, in enough cases to make a living.

Also, the "cut you out" comes from small biz trying to do big big deals.  Whenever I meet someone who complains of actually being cut out, they were trying to do big deals and provided no value.  They are the ones who get cut out.

Get a supplier and a customer for a LCL MOQ FOB deal, and then see if you get cut out.  Wait until there is a problem before you worry.

John

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.


4 comments:

Luke Avedon said...

It's more likely the suppliers will be thrilled to have a sales person developing markets overseas and want to keep you happy. I'm new - and I'm already meeting suppliers ecstatic to start forwarding me the inquiries they keep getting from overseas -- from importers begging to buy the product Ex Works. It blows my mind. I didn't believe it when I read about it in your book -- but lo and behold it seems to be true.

Anonymous said...

This is amazing Luke.

Thanks for sharing?

Have you contact small business that haven´t received foreing orders and don´t wanna export? Could you convince them?

Thanks

MR

Anonymous said...

"Have you contact small business that haven´t received foreing orders and don´t wanna export? Could you convince them?"

Hi John,

What if the domestic supplier does not want to export their products for whatever reason? What is to stop someone from just buying their product, and exporting it on their own? Are there any problems here that one should be aware of?

John Wiley Spiers said...

There is nothing to stop one from doing as you say, and I explore the implications in Chapter 8 of my book... How Small Business Trades Worldwide... but the ideal is a producer who welcomes your efforts yet has zero interest in exporting himself.

John