谈谈不要钱，谈谈不要命

做业务这么多年，跟进客户，往往立足在客户本身，你最近怎么样啊，有没有上新厂的需求啊？对我们的产品了解吗？等等这些。汪老师的课程刚刚开始学，牢记他说的一句话，谈谈不要钱，谈谈不要命。所以把老客户们又挖出来，一个一个联系。拉美的老客户，每年下一点点订单，几千到一两万美金不等。这一次，我打算换个角度，从他那里榨点信息，没想到效果出奇的好。以下是我的邮件和客户的回复。

Dear Frank,

How are you?

As we have cooperated for long time, i think we could call each other friend, so i take the liberty of asking for your help.

During the last year, we take the Latin America as our point market. We made google advertisment to this market specially, but result is not good. We got some customers information, some from Honduras, some from Costa Rica, some from Panama. But we did not set up good selling system in latin America. The customer from Honduras have rice mill, he buy equipments from us every year two or three times, but he contact me only when he needs the goods. other time any question i ask, he would never answer me. There is one distributor, who tell he worked as rice mill engineer for more than 30 years. he stay in Costa Rica and do business in whole Latin America. He asked for only agent in Latin America but we refused, because he did not give any order until now.

So i m very confused about the market. Dear could you pls share with me the situation of Latin America? The main food is rice or anything else? Are there many rice milling factories? Do they use which country machinery? Do they dry their paddy or other grain by sunshine or by equipments? from which country? If we want to open the Latin American market, what we should do?

If i can get feedback from you, i will thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Best regards,
Berry

客户的回复：

Hi Berry,

Thank you very much for considering me as your friend, I also think the same way towards you. Its a shame we could not met in my trip in July, next time I will definitely try to meet with you.

Latin American people are very influenced by the United States and also believe that Chinese products are very low quality so people will not buy anything from China unless they can verify the quality or if the price is ridiculously low. They prefer to buy from United States, Europe and sometimes Brazil. If you want to sell here you will need to have a local agent who can talk to people and explain them the quality of machines or even show them, for example I could show them the hammer mills and airlocks that I have. You could also send a salesmen and visit factories although it may be difficult since not everyone here speaks English and nobody speaks Chinese.

Our main products in Latin America are rice, beans, corn, etc. We have many factories, only in Costa Rica we have a lot of rice factories, we harvest the rice and then make all the process until the final sales happen. From Central America Costa Rica is the most outstanding country in the region.

Please feel free to write to me by wechat or even call me anytime so we can discuss about your doubts.

Regards,

看了这封邮件，我真可以说是喜忧参半。喜的是，这的确是一个大市场，未来空间可期。忧的是，那里的客户believe that Chinese products are very low quality。需要改变客户意识，任重而道远啊！但是，这么有挑战性的事，不是BERRY最爱做的吗？现在有这么一个好朋友在拉美帮忙，还有什么好担心的呢？第一步，地推啊，第二步，邀请访问啊，第三步，建立代理关系啊，第四步，建设样板工程啊！哈哈，然后我就笑醒了。

哈哈，开个玩笑。但是的确是感觉找到了契机。大家在一个市场遇到瓶颈的时候，可以从产品和单个客户的角度上跳出去，聊一聊国家和区域整体的市场环境，也许会有不一样的收获。

2018.10.23