Every newcomer in cross-border e-commerce B2B business hopes to grow into a business elite. However, the “threshold” between dreams and reality needs to be crossed. The word “threshold” makes people wonder: Is it difficult to do cross-border business? In fact, although there is a threshold for doing cross-border business, it is not unattainable. In the 1980s and 1990s, foreign trade work seemed very mysterious. However, with the highly developed global informatization today, foreign trade work has been stripped of its mysterious veil, and the development of cross-border e-commerce has greatly shortened the distance between international buyers and sellers. “Thousands of miles of orders are connected by one line.” In the business form of cross-border e-commerce, B2B has more complicated business communication than B2C, because it often involves large orders and long battle lines. In B2C or C2C business, buyers and sellers place orders directly after communication, which is rarely seen in B2B business. Cross-border e-commerce B2B work is complex, and the requirements for salesmen are relatively high. This chapter focuses on the basic knowledge and literacy that cross-border e-commerce B2B salesmen should have. Cross-border e-commerce B2B salesmen can use this as a reference to improve their own abilities, and related companies can also use this as a standard for talent recruitment.
Cross-border e-commerce B2B work is basically divided into two types, one is operation work, and the corresponding staff is called operation staff; the other is business work, and the corresponding staff is called business staff (referred to as salesperson). The basic responsibility of the operation staff is to promote the product information of the cross-border e-commerce B2B platform, so that the product information is exposed at a high frequency, attract potential customers to initiate inquiries, or obtain potential customer information through various channels, and deliver it to the salesperson for negotiation or tracking. The basic work content of the operation staff includes: the design, release and optimization of product pictures, videos, and text information on the cross-border e-commerce B2B platform, the sorting and optimization of keywords, the decoration of the store, the formulation of operation strategies, the tracking, evaluation, feedback of operation effects, and the revision of operation strategies. For enterprises with more promotion channels, cross-border e-commerce B2B operation personnel sometimes need to carry out the construction, optimization and search engine optimization of the company’s foreign language website. The customer inquiries and customer information obtained by the operation work must eventually be delivered to professional salesmen for communication. The main job of the cross-border e-commerce B2B salesperson is to communicate with customers with high-quality inquiries, receive customers, close orders, and strive to turn potential customers into real customers, while maintaining old customers and exploring more potential opportunities to close new orders.