I receive many inquiry and quotate them carefully,but I always get the further more news from the customer after quotation,what can do to keep in touching with them,or how can indentify the inquiry?

Replying to [Street Smart]:
I would agree with Street Smart. However one thing that can put off most Western buyers completely is over persistence. Once you have clarifed they have received your quote, offered ways in which you can help to meet their requirements, and explained that you will be available should they require any further support, usually it is best to just leave it.
Continually chasing most buyers especially those that travel in-market, never helps. Typically your emails end up in the Deleted items box, and leaves them with a negative impression of your company should they want to source similar items again.

Replying to [lala33]:As a supplier,I always encounter such problems and before I always think the buyer is not the serious one. But now I konw what should I do actually. Thank you very much.

Dear Mikeybabes,

Western people are more open-minded than Easterners.

If they are not interested, in the first place, they would not have ask for quotation. Definitely there is a need, but can your product fulfill the need, is the matter of discussion.

In real life cases, we have a Singapore based shipowner who has a need to retrofit their ships. They asked for a quotation for the mechanical equipment, which was taken up by our Korean Sales person. It only takes a phone call to clarify if they have received the quotation, and he said no, because the Quotation file which is in PDF (Acrobat Reader) cannot be opened by his system. I tried to open this file with my system and encountered the same problem. A message "KOREAN FONT generator not found" ... please download Korean font interpretator and try again ... or something like that.

Last effort, we got the file printed on paper and faxed over the quotation to the client. If we had not follow-up on this quotation, the customer would not be the one to call us, they have received several other quotations from other suppliers, but at higher prices and longer delivery time. We got the order because of this one phone call.

You have to be tactful and diplomatic when follow-up. Do not push them, but listen for key indicators .. like "the project has not started, it will be towards the end of September 2006" .. then take notes into your diary and call him again 1 week before the end of September, and not in between.

Street Smart

Replying to [martinguo]:You earn to provide service. If you start getting orders from each of your potential customer, you would become multi-billionare!
Be patient and rest assure that a buyer whome your product and or price suits shall definitly reply.
There are rarely a few who float inquiries for nothing!
wish good luck and a very prosperous business and really good buyers as well!

Replying to [martinguo]:

Replying to [martinguo]:
There is nothing but to track again,like what streetsmart said ,do at least three followups by email ,fax and phone.In my experience,I often receive the "failure notioce "after sending email .As for the reason,I can't find out until date,so it is greatly necessary to send a fax and a call follows.
About the content of emails,try best to be simple ,just as a reminder if your customer had your quote on hand.This has to be done for many times if no answers are got.If still spending,then make the call to know what has happened in his side.

Replying to [martinguo]:this problem is simple.because I introduce you a product-business space-time .this software system is to come true online business promotion and keep touch with customer you don't do anyting in hand ,the system will sumbit you supply,order and co-operation information

automatically.


if you are interested in it ,please keep touch with me and visit our web site :

[ Please use TM to make contacts ..thanks, Moderator ]

THANK YOU ! BAY !

 

Replying to [martinguo]:Hi There.First of all,when you get enquiries about pricing and request for quotes,you have to be careful because it can come from a variety of sources from customers doing price comparisons and worse, at times from competing vendors who are on the lookout to undercut your clients by doing this.You have to prequalify them though a series of questions to identify if they are truly interested in your services or products and understand why they are requesting for this.You have to know what they need in the first place before actually giving away valuable information about your product prices.A good example is to begin asking,"Is there a budget you are working with?" or "Before I give you information on this,I would like to understand where you are coming from and what you needs are?Is there anything of concern to you that will affect the price of my product?"From there, you can pretty much gauge a truly potential purchasing customer from one who is just shopping around and looking for the best deal. Most of the time,you are dealing with someone you don;t even know and just like dealing with anyone you don;t know in the real world, you should always excercise caution and be careful not to trust someone so easily over the phone,thinking this is a opportunity for a sale just because someone is aksing for the price does not mean they have the purchasing power.The only exception is when there is residual budgets at the end of a financial year and it usually is the government bodies which will request for prices to offload all this spare cash.But otherwise, the same rules apply to anyone hunting for prices. Qualify their needs as true and then work closely with them and only releasing prices after you have solidified your working relationships.

Replying to [martinguo]:In addition to what I have posted previously, a great way to keep in touch after a quote has been sent is to periodically communicate with them subtlely,by email, a nice postcard,etc. I discovered a great site that will help in your sales and marketing efforts when following up.You can try this site which has fabulous postcards online.You can even try for free.www.youvegotcontacts.com

Replying to [martinguo]:Your customer will maintain correspondence with you as long as your quotation is favourable to him.But you can send him reminders and compliments.And dont forget,the customer is also comparing your quotation with others he received.