It's a coincidence to cooperate with Edward Adam Davis, a customer from USA, because I'm going to Shanghai for international packaging products exhibition when I received his inquiry for children board books, then I asked our engineer to prepare for two types of children board books before I left, of course these two types of samples were not randomly selected, because this customer mentioned that one product in our catalog was similar to his product sample, so I selected two pleasant book samples in our warehouse, one is for OEM, the other is for Aftermarket.
After I reached Shanghai, I took these samples with me and contacted with this customer, and we decided to interview with each other in his hotel. After one hour in railway, I found out his hotel, which was a five-star hotel. A old-aged foreign man visited me after half a hour, and he was an elegant gentleman.
After the simple introduction, I gave our product catalog and book samples to him, and laid stress on our product quality and service advantages during the introduction, which provided a good basis for successive negotiations.
After my introduction and sample show, this customer agreed with me, and took his sample from his room. After checking his sample, I gave a brief analysis to it by using some professional terms and experiences. Thus this customer created a preliminary trust on me and he decided to give the sample to me. And then we discussed about the details of product packing, delivery time and payment terms, etc.
Note:
I think that the customers from America and Europe may be a bit strong, so we should refuse some unreasonable requests from these customers if necessary.
For example, here are some email communications with this customer:
"Customer: Regarding the delivery time, as you told me, it is 60 days, I will punish you if you delay, can you accept it?
Factory: I am afraid not. If we build the cooperation, we are partners, so we must be equal.
Moreover, the cooparation is based on the mutual understanding. So it may be delayed for a short time, but it will not be a long time.
Customer: Ok"
And then we communicated with each other for almost one week, and I kept on this principle that we were willing to reduce the price only if this customer increased his order quantity.
After two days, I received an email from this customer suddenly, and he said that they had found out another supplier, and this supplier was willing to undertake the sample costs and courier charges, and the price of supplier was lower than mine.
After thinking a day and investigating that supplier he mentioned, I sent an email to this customer to say "Ok, I will send the sample to the factory which you mentioned."
I didn't know what this customer wanted to do, but I agreed very smartly to send the sample to him, because I believed that friend was more important than business.
However, he replied to my email to say that he would let me wait for his decision and consider his advice again, and then I gave a call to him and explained the current conditions and production capacities of Chinese factories, and let him know the fact that the prices would be always adequate to the quality of the products.
At last, this customer agreed to placed this order to my factory. On the third day, I received the sample costs and courier charges from this customer, and we began to produce the samples according to the sample of this customer.