Foreign trader, can you quote correctly?

Quotation is a very important work in foreign trade. In many cases, the failure to negotiate the price is largely due to errors in the quotation link. Some foreign trade personnel even lose customers as soon as they make a quotation.
 


How should a foreign trader make an offer? I have summarized the following points and hope they can give you some ideas.
 
1. Quote based on combination of truth and falsehood
In many cases, the ingenious use of virtual offers will have unexpected effects in foreign trade negotiations. For example, after the quotation, if the customer does not respond, you might as well send a low price dummy offer to test the customer's idea.
 
If the customer is interested in your false offer, adjust the shipment volume again to make small profits but quick turnover. Or deliberately extend or shorten the delivery time according to the situation, facilitate the arrangement, save transaction costs and make up for price reduction losses. In addition, we can also use multiple product combination quotations to make up for losses.
 
Although the quotation can be a phantom offer, it must be in the form of a firm offer when the price is finally confirmed. The price, quantity, delivery time, payment settlement method, etc. are bundled together and sent to the customer for confirmation. If it is not a firm offer in the end, and the customer orders in large quantities at low prices, but finally fails to ship, our storage costs and production costs increase the burden, and the original intention of small profits but quick turnover completely loses its significance.
 
Of course, our customers will also make inquiries based on the combination of false and real quotations. Especially for the first time, customers often ask about a lot of products, but actually only pay attention to one or several of them. Be careful about the quotation of such customers, and do not easily use matching quotation. Because when we use the matching quotation, we don't want to let the customer know our real intention. If the customer finally wants the low price rather than the high price, then we can only suffer from a loss.
 
2. Learn to "leave room"
In most cases, the quotation is flexible. Especially those products with large profit, such as daily necessities and handicrafts. If we just stick to one price, we will often lose a lot of trading opportunities. Leave room for customers to bargain.


 
A suitable quotation can create such a space for customers. The quotation principle I follow is that the quotation for developed countries in Europe and the United States is slightly higher, while the quotation for developing countries or backward regions is slightly lower. As far as products are concerned, the price of old style products is low, that of conventional products is medium, and that of new products is slightly higher.
 
If we don't understand the needs of new customers very well, we should be careful in quoting. Try not to use formal words such as "quote" when quoting. In addition to "leaving room", there are other methods, such as: specify a minimum order quantity; The quotation ends with the following sentence:“The above prices are for reference. As you can understand, depending on the order quantity, delivery time and payment method, prices can vary considerably - sometimes by up to 10%.”
 
3. Learn to turn passivity into initiative
I found that many salesmen just passively act as a microphone between the company and customers. Such a simple and crude treatment can easily lead us to a passive situation. We should try to guide customers and companies more, so as to facilitate the transaction.
 
When the customer thinks the price is too high, we should coordinate with the company and the customer to develop several sets of solutions for the customer to choose, such as: larger order quantity, more advance payment, longer delivery period, modification of process or material, etc. Guide the company to make orders with customers.
 
In a word, the skill of foreign trade quotation is the same as that of fishing: you can neither just throw bait for nothing, nor throw an empty hook coldly.