How Attracting Customers Made Me A Better Salesperson

Note the words that are emphasized in the paragraphs that follow.

I once had a friend from Colombia who wanted to sell coffee from his country in the Washington, D.C., area but didn’t know how to get into the market.

Finally, he succeeded on the basis of service and distribution.

He began importing coffee from Colombia and freestanding espresso machines from Italy, placed the machines in high-traffic locations, and stocked them with his Colombian coffee.

 More recently, I worked with an organization in Brazil that wanted to sell frozen açaí pulp in the United States.

Açaí is a “superfood” berry grown mainly in the Amazon region of Brazil and is very high in antioxidants.

About the time I started working with this product, early in 1996, some firms that marketed açaí products managed to have articles published in magazines, and one company arranged to have it featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

After that publicity, sales shot up and buyers were actually competing for the frozen pulp.

Goldman Jewelry, a company based in Israel, exports jewelry from the United States to numerous other countries.

The company’s secret is to make the product available everywhere by putting it on an online auction site.

Because Goldman’s overhead is low and its methods of promotion (eBay) and distribution (basically mail) are economical, it can offer lower prices than most of its competitors.

It nearly always helps to have the lowest prices, although this is hard for independent exporters to do

After the events of September 11, 2001, the demand for security equipment began expanding worldwide. A U.S. Department of Commerce study identified 44 ports, 47 airports, and other facilities that needed this kind of equipment just in the country of Spain.

Large and small exporters began vying for the business, and several were successful because they had products that were urgently in demand. Of course, pricing was important but not nearly so much as having products that would do the job well.

At this point I should say a word about bribery, which is an all-too-common way of influencing buyers of products and services.

It is so pervasive in many countries that the U.S. government has listed it as a barrier to trade.

I suggest avoiding this kind of activity, even if you lose the business.

First, you may be in violation of U.S. law, depending on whom you bribe and how you do it.

There is more information about antibribery legislation in the section on export regulations.

Second, if you are a beginner, you won’t know how to play the game and will probably make mistakes.

Anyone can ask you for money or favors and say that he or she can arrange for your offer to be accepted, but not everyone has the power or influence to make good on such a promise.

I suspect there are people who make their living by offering to arrange sales in return for money or other compensation and then simply say that such and such happened and they couldn’t get it done.

Third, if you pay a bribe and make a sale, you will find it very hard to avoid making similar payments on future sales to the same customer.

Once you start to give something, it’s hard to stoping it.

Of course, it is common in most businesses to pay commissions on sales.

Unlike a bribe, a commission is usually on top of (not under) the table.

Everyone knows it is being paid and accepts it as a legal and ethical cost of doing business.