Necessary preparations for foreign trade include learning about foreign trade and becoming familiar with products.
A good way to learn about foreign trade is to use documents as the center and key point, and to “string” together the various steps of the foreign trade process. Through factory business information, peer exchanges, and Internet downloads, collect templates of common foreign trade documents such as invoices, packing lists, commodity inspection lists, bills of lading, certificates of origin, bills of exchange, beneficiary statements, letters of credit, etc., and keep them for future reference. For factories, product categories are relatively fixed, and export procedures are similar. Once a full set of documents is made, they can be copied in the future. In particular, letters of credit are varied, and letters of credit from Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, etc. often have their own distinct regional characteristics and special terms. If you have the opportunity, select representative letters of credit from different regions for archiving. When encountering special terms, record the handling methods and accumulate experience.
Familiarity with product knowledge is the basis for a successful foreign trade salesperson. The more you understand the product, the more customers respect you, and your words will have more weight when bargaining. If you have time, go to the workshop more often, consult the workshop director and old technical workers, and if conditions permit, you may even operate some production links yourself. This can not only build good interpersonal relationships, but more importantly, let you learn some things that are not in the books. Understand the production process of the product, the links that are easy to cut corners, the main raw materials, the source and origin of the raw materials, the quality of the raw materials and the resulting quality differences of the finished products, the methods of quality inspection, technical parameters, common quality problems and leading factors, etc. Understand the composition of the production cost of the product, the amortization of water, electricity, manual packaging, etc. In this way, you can estimate the product price yourself in the future and have a clear idea of the price bottom line. This is the key for a foreign trade person to conduct business independently.
Actively make a few friends or worship a few teachers. One is the freight forwarder, one is the Commodity Inspection Bureau (if the product falls within the scope of commodity inspection), and one is the international settlement department of the bank. These three aspects are often consulted by novice foreign trade workers in the future. With these friends and teachers to give some advice, you can get twice the result with half the effort.
Respect the senior colleagues or colleagues you may meet. Take them as your learning opportunities. When you are a novice, don’t expect to make a lot of money overnight. Relationships are an important resource for future development. There are many trivial things in the foreign trade industry, but they are also opportunities to learn things in a solid way. Although they are trivial things, there is often a difference between “knowing how to do” and actually doing them. When you are assigned to do these trivial things, as long as it does not affect your own work, try to do them. If the customers you have worked hard to develop are “snatched” by your predecessors, you don’t have to worry too much, because this is probably due to the boss’s instructions – in order to keep the customers safely. At the same time, this is also the common situation for novices in most industries.
Finally, abide by professional ethics. Reputation is very important in the foreign trade industry. The place where you work is also where you learn product industry knowledge, and it is more likely to become a project you will run for a lifetime. Whether you switch to another manufacturer in the same industry in the future, or do foreign trade yourself, the industry circle is so large and well-informed. Once your reputation is tarnished, it will be greatly affected. For novices in foreign trade, it is very important not to do “private work”, not to sell commercial secrets (such as customer information), and not to take kickbacks. Because you have not yet established a firm foothold and do not have a wide range of relationships, you will be unable to solve it once something goes wrong.
By paying attention to the above points, you can create a relatively relaxed and healthy environment for your “newbie” career, avoid the troubles of technical factors and interpersonal relationships, and devote more energy to market development.