A quick question……
Why is someone 5,000 miles away going to buy something from you?
It might be that you have a terrific international offer, it is innovative, it provides great value to your overseas customers and yet your international sales conversion rates are not as high as they might be.
As a small business one of the challenges that you might face when you are trading overseas might be convincing your customers that you are a safe pair of hands to do business with – after all, who are you?. You are 5,000 miles away, your customer has never heard of you before, how are you reassuring them that your business can deliver what you say? They will not only be be asking themselves if you are trustworthy, but if you have the capacity and expertise to fulfil and support the order.
It is a question of confidence…..
Confidence comes from clarity – if your customer is not sure about something there is a good chance they will perceive risk – often unreasonably – if they cannot see, they will assume…..
Your overseas customers will be looking for
- Reality – does the team exist? – who are they?
- Credibility – who have you worked with, supplied or serviced before?
- Ability – what skills can you and the team demonstrate – how educated are the team?
- Pedigree – what experience do the team / suppliers etc.
- Capacity – are you able to deliver – how would you deal with hight demand?
- Robustness – particularly the supply supply chain
- Quality – how can they be sure that this going to be as you say it is – do you have official standards?
- Stability – are you still going to be around next year
- Third party endorsement – what do others say about you?
- Ethics – are you ethical in all ways?
Words are cheap……evidence is gold……
Any one can say how they ‘good’ they are. You would not believe how many times I hear the words ‘we are passionate‘, ‘we have the best quality‘ or ‘we are leaders in our field‘ – these statements are ‘fluffy’ unless backed up with evidence, wherever demonstrate how good you are, preferably with third party endorsement
Your challenge
Why not have a go at listing at least 10 reasons why an overseas customer will be confident to buy from your business. You can just do this list for yourself, or it would be brilliant if you could put your thoughts in the comments below so that others can see how you do this as well.
For more inspiration
get more ‘ExportSavvy’ and join our fast-growing International Trade Community – it is sponsored and hence free of charge to you
You can take a look at some different ways that you can give your overseas customers confidence and convert more international sales by watching our free module ‘communicating your offer’ https://exportsavvy20.com/what-with/
