Imports Oriental Blog

International apparel manufacturing and sourcing. If we don't make it, we can find it.

Posts Tagged ‘sales’

Overabundance of Choice leads to Buyer Confusion

Jill Coyle

Jill Coyle

We read a lot of general business blogs as well as China-specific blogs. The concepts of good business apply everywhere in the world.

I recently read a great article on MarketingProfs talking about the importance of giving consumers an appropriate number of product choices – too much choice results in confusion and lower sales.

Although we are B2B sellers, and I’ve found the principles in this article true in the China Export arena. When we’ve given customers too many choices – whether in new clothing styles, colors, materials – they will often take longer in making a decision…or not make a decision at all.

Read the full article here

Have you ever seen a sale stall due to an overabundance of choice?
How do  you combat this problem?

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Posted in : Business in China, International Business, Textile Industry

Sell People What They’re Already Buying

Danny Coyle

Danny Coyle

One Idea That Changed Our Business Forever

We started our business as a jewelry company in 2004. Things went pretty well for the first year or so—especially when we were traveling throughout the US to sell our China-made jewelry first-hand. After our big sales push, we returned to China; and I quickly realized that trying to sell jewelry was hard for 2 reasons.

1. I’m a man and an engineer by training – those two things combined to make a terrible jewelry salesman.

2. Selling jewelry 10,000 miles from your customer is very hard. Jewelry is subjective – and therefore difficult to sell when you can’t be in front of your buyer, explaining it as they touch and feel the jewelry piece.

We were talking about these problems with a wise friend and business mentor. And he said something so simple and so genius. He said:

“Instead of trying to sell people what you want to sell them, sell people what they are already buying!”
That day we made a vital shift; and our business has never been the same. I decided to start selling what people were already buying. It was a case of jumping on someone else’s bandwagon, but I didn’t care. There were deals to be made and I was excited.

I started calling as many customers as I could find for all kinds of China-products. I specifically focused on silicone bracelets (like the yellow Lance Armstrong Livestrong bracelet). I focused on this since it was jewelry, it was easy to make, and very popular at the time. I figured we could make a deal.

One of the customers asked if we had popcorn shirts. I knew what a popcorn shirt was because someone had given one to my wife a few years back. So I went looking, found them, put them on our website and on Alibaba, and someone else wanted to buy them. Our orders started growing, and more people wanted them. Suddenly we had a whole new business.

Since then, we’ve expanded our travelwear line because people wanted to buy more. We’ve recently found that we can also meet a high demand for sweaters, so we’re selling those, too.

So, instead of selling people what you want to sell them, try selling them what they want to buy. It might be easier that way.

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Posted in : Entrepreneurs, International Business

Maintaining Long-Term Business Relationships from 10,000 Miles Away

Danny Coyle

Danny Coyle

We opened our trading business in China 6 years ago, trading a variety of products (jewelry, apparel, accessories etc.) One of the biggest challenges we’ve faced over the years is how to maintain customer relationships when you are 10,000 miles apart.

It can be expensive to maintain customer relationships when long distances are involved. Strategies you might normally employ are not suitable to a long distance business relationship. Regular face-to-face meetings are not an option. So what can you do to build and maintain trust with your customers?

Here’s the big secret we’ve found: make your customers your friends.  People like to do business with their friends.  The relationships we have with our customers will continue to last even after our business with them is over. (We hope it never is, but realistically speaking, our business will likely conclude at some point).  Our customers know that we have their best interests in mind first, because we are interested in more than their money; we are interested in them as people.

This is one area where genuine authenticity and integrity is important.  If you are interested in customers’ personal lives only because you want to get a sale out of them, your efforts are likely to backfire. This kind of dishonesty is easy to detect and could risk the business you have with them.  If you can instead find it in yourself to be interested, to ask questions about who they are, and get to know them, doing business over great distances becomes a lot easier.

It’s about doing the best job you can – not because you want to make money, but because you want your customer to be able to say “we have the best product in the world.”  You want your customer to be able build the success of his business on the quality of your product.  When your customer knows that you are doing your best to provide him with the best product, not only because of the requirements of the order, but also because you are putting your heart into it, he is more confident to sell the product.

Furthermore, if your customer knows that you care and that you are doing your best, he will be more open to your explanations when things go wrong. When a mistake happens, it is easier for a customer who trusts your motives to make the effort to understand what happened rather than getting angry and threatening with liquidated damages or worse.

Be interested, be willing to open up and be a real person.  It’s another way to keep existing customers on board for the long-haul.

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Posted in : Business Relationships, Business in China, International Business

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