Yangtze River Delta trading company owes its success to six words

Member: Ms. Xu
Company: Wuxi Brilliant International Corp.


Country: [China]
Industry: Furniture and Furnishings
Products: door, flooring, computer desk, bathroom products, baby products, construction materials, office furniture, daily use, furniture

Wuxi Brilliant International Trading Co., Ltd. is located in the Yangtze River Delta, a place of flourishing economy and convenient transportation in China. Founded in 1998, our company specializes in design, development, production and sales.

The company has three factories, more than two hundred employees, and eight assembly lines with the world-class techniques. Our factories cover an area of over 10,000 square meters, with annual sales reaching $200 million. We have established long-term business relationships with buyers from more than 90 countries and regions, including Europe, America, the Middle East and Africa.

Our company mainly deals with construction materials, furniture, bathroom articles and baby products. Strict quality control inspectors monitor each link of production, from the materials to the finished products, to ensure that all of our products are of high standard. The company has a professional design department which is responsible for developing practical, convenient, beautiful and novel products. The accurate calculation of the cost of each link guarantees a competitive price for our products.

Since we joined Alibaba.com as a Gold Supplier in 2004 six years have passed. During those years, although we suffered from many setbacks, we accumulated much e-commerce experience.

Before we joined Alibaba.com, we attended exhibitions as a main channel to gain clients. Compared with exhibitions, the e-commerce platform is more convenient and faster. We are able to make the acquaintance of more clients. But the disadvantage is also obvious. In exhibitions, the clients can see the products with their own eyes and check the quality of products by themselves. However, they can only see pictures of products on the e-commerce platform. They can’t touch the products, feel the quality or check all the details. This makes it harder to get approval from clients. How to eliminate clients’ concerns and make them buy our products? This was the first problem we encountered.

What will be clients’ principal focus? We stood and looked from the position of customers to consider the question. We imagined ourselves as the eyes and hands of our clients. We found that we mostly want to see the truth of our products rather than beautiful pictures which had been processed. Then we summarized three words for product pictures: genuine, clear and detailed.

“Genuine” means the pictures displayed on the website are exactly those of our products instead of those casually downloaded from the Internet. “Clear” means that pictures must be clear. Blurred pictures can’t show the right information of products to the clients who may regard our products as inferior. “Detailed” means each part of the products must be clearly taken. We must let the clients see the details that they want to see. The more our clients know about the products, the more approval we will get from them.

Of course, to put through a business deal requires more than providing excellent product pictures. The most important thing is to negotiate with the clients. In this process, we summarized another three words: patient, careful and professional.

“Patient” means it is quite necessary to answer each question from clients in detail with patience. Frequently clients would ask many questions about our products or our company. Some would give us a complicated form which we must spend almost half a day to complete and some would ask questions via continuous emails over several days. Coming across such situations, some salespeople lose patience and regard such kind of clients as trouble. In fact, if we get down to think it over, we will discover that the clients ask us questions because they are already interested in our products. Therefore, we should feel quite glad about this, and answer each question patiently.

“Careful” means it is necessary to be careful in each aspect of the communication with the clients. Some clients would disconnect into silence after they had contact with us for a period of time. Then, we should not blindly ask them the reasons. On the contrary, we should start looking for the reasons for ourselves. For example, have we understood their meaning accurately? Some clients are from non-English speaking countries, so their level of English is not very good and they may make quite a few mistakes in their English, such as spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes, or some of them would blend their local languages into their English. At these times, if we don’t pay enough attention, we will often misunderstand them. If our answers and their questions are not related, the clients may think that we are insincere. Consequently, there will be no further contact.

“Professional” means it is necessary to have an absolutely comprehensive understanding of our products, from the raw materials, production process and working principles to market distribution. The reason why our clients keep a foothold in their market is not only because they are engaged in the sale of products, but also because they have a comprehensive understanding of their products which is absolutely more than we can imagine. We should give an accurate answer to each question. Then these clients will trust us as well as our products. We should have a more clear understanding of the advantages and characteristics of our products. In addition, it is necessary for each of us to know which products are suitable for which market. Then when we recommend the product to clients, it can be more targeted and there will also be a greater chance of success.

Rome was not built in one day and that goes for business, too. It is difficult to close a deal, and it is more difficult to keep a long-term business relationship with a client. Always maintaining a tight control of product quality and persisting in honest management is the essence of developing a long-term relationship.

Nowadays, international trade enjoys highly developed science and technology, and e-commerce is playing a more and more important role. I believe that our company will become stronger and stronger on the Alibaba.com e-commerce platform.