Ten years old foreign trade: sharing can be successful

The international trade environment is not what it used to be. "Made in China" urgently needs to be transformed. How can foreign trade companies create their own development strategies? Global Sources, together with its "CEConline", continues to create a series of "Outsmart the Future" export forums, providing an excellent exchange and learning platform for foreign trade enterprises. Mr. Feng Zhaohui, general manager of Dongguan Hewang Electric Co., Ltd., gave a keynote speech on "How to Effectively Expand Overseas" at the forum.

Feng Zhaohui was born in Changsha, Hunan in 1971. He is a diligent and visionary business leader. His "ideas determine the way out, attitude determines the state, vision determines the realm", "communicate with the wise, read books, and think hard" The idea of influences the corporate team. He focuses on the cultivation of the team and pursues a high-efficiency, high-quality and professional enterprise. In addition to maintaining the continuous growth of hardware foreign trade, Feng Zhaohui established an e-commerce team in 2013 to develop cross-border e-commerce.

Feng Zhaohui: In the first quarter, both the import and export volume declined, and there was a double decline, which made the outside world question the performance of China's foreign trade exports.

But our goal at the beginning of this year was to grow by about 40%, but from now on, we feel that our target value increase is at least 80%-100%.

Why are we able to grow so fast? Because American manufacturing and European manufacturing have been recovering at a high speed, the financial crisis began in 2008. At this time, all European and American leaders, starting from Obama, have realized that finance is wrong for the country, and only manufacturing can prosper the country. At that time, I was desperately trying to recruit local companies. It has been almost five or six years from 2008 to the present. Indeed, the return of those companies in the United States, coupled with their continuous encouragement of entrepreneurship, has made American manufacturing and European manufacturing stronger now.

But when they recover strongly, they will never touch those low-end, labor-intensive things, which makes our low-end hardware bring very large inquiries and demand.

A very exaggerated concept appeared today. Today, a customer came to an inquiry for nearly 30 cases. The cases I am talking about are 30 different categories of products. Then we will give him a quotation tomorrow, and he can transfer the money to the account in Hong Kong the day after tomorrow. I asked the salesman not to visit the factory, and he said no. I said that it is not used to review ours, no, it means that they can't wait to innovate, can't wait to bring products to the market, and they count against every second, that is, industrialized management. Our foreign trade, our hardware, has experienced rapid growth for at least five years.

A major topic for today is how to effectively expand overseas. I came to Guangdong to work in 1999, and it took four years for a company in Guangdong to become a vice president from an ordinary employee. Having mastered the whole marketing thing, I started my own business. Then we didn't think about doing overseas at the time either, because of my own culture, that is, a high school student, and I didn't even think about doing overseas.

At that time, I was limited to the Pearl River Delta and felt vicious competition. An inquiry was just made, and within three days, if you reported one piece, someone would pay 80 cents. . I wonder why the competition in the Pearl River Delta is so fierce, and how can it go on like this. I was thinking that our hardware supports the world. Without our hardware, no matter if you are an aircraft carrier, no matter if you are a spaceship, no matter what high-end things you are, you can't do it. At that time, the salary in 2003 was only 1,000 yuan a month, and the hardware we made manually for 1,000 yuan was severely overcapacity. In Europe and the United States, what do they do with three or four thousand euros and US dollars? I am wrong. Of course, I should not only focus on the Pearl River Delta. At that time, I wanted to do overseas markets.

I went straight to Global Sources at the time. Indeed this move was done correctly. After we entered the market, we felt that the first step of the strategy was right. In the first few years, the growth rate was 100%-200%, and then the first step was just like this. The level of our investment now, I add full-page advertisements every year, plus more than 20 overseas exhibitions every year, the annual investment will not be less than 2 million advertising fees.

The first topic shared today is how to deal with inquiries from overseas customers. After our inquiry came, I asked my salesman to do a filtering job. What is filtering? Let's analyze it. I said that I don't value third world countries, nor do I value India or Brazil. My goal is Europe and the United States. If you are from Europe and America, give me an A first, this is the first job.

Second, I don't want to cooperate with a trading company. If he is a local manufacturing company in Europe and the United States, you will give me another A. Then you log on to his website and you see how much his annual sales are. If his annual sales are not less than 200 million euros or 200 million US dollars, you will give me another A.

Then we will see if his products are compatible with us. If there is one that does not match, we will give a B, and if it is our main force, we will give an A.

Customers with four A's or more are key customers. Because our time is limited, you make four or five inquiries every day. If you do this for every case, it is impossible. We must focus all our efforts on the key customers. When targeting key customers, we sent teams to Europe and the United States with some overseas students, including our own. Since 2008, when we judged him as a major customer, we have a station overseas, we have a station in Germany, and we have a station in the UK, and our personnel will go to the customer as quickly as possible.

I believe that many of you here are business experts, and the most critical aspect of doing business is how you communicate. You call him to say what to do, the customer will ignore you. If you send an email saying you want to buy something and make an inquiry, at least get an invitation letter. Our personnel use this invitation to take advantage of the fastest speed and time to be stationed next to the guests. Then build a bridge, use the engineers of our company's hardware department to get in touch, and the two parties will use the fastest speed to change a product developed by the customer, how to use a fast method, and how to reduce its cost. Use the fastest time node to turn its inquiries into orders, which is how we continue to accumulate our customers.

To summarize my approach to developing overseas markets, it is the "Five Steps". After the analysis mentioned above, we quickly surrounded him. Our personnel went to his customers. We first searched for customers, and the search was 4A. Our employees went to most of the customers to call for the surrounding, and after they were surrounded, they captured the customers. Because customers will send a lot of inquiries, he will send one inquiry to many Chinese manufacturers, but if there are a few who can kill the customers like us, we will kill them, and he will send the others. Ignore those inquiries and just contact our staff directly. As soon as the fastest time is determined, ask him to come to purchase, and ask his boss to report. It is said that the suppliers in Dongguan are really good, and they helped us shorten the entire R&D process by two months. This is called Jake.

After capturing the guest, he is called Yuke, trying to find a way to turn the little ant into an elephant. It is impossible for any R&D product to have a large volume, so we constantly coordinate its improvement, and constantly promote the speed of his R&D. If he has an order, our order will be very large. Here is a case. We just cooperated with ABB. They said that there is a product that will be sold to the world. I said to show it to me. After the end, there is a problem with this work. Here we will help it to solve it. For this problem, help him change one at the greatest speed and complete his order. It was the first time that I got a lot of orders in Frankfurt, Germany. That order was very popular. Now this order also supports 20% of our turnover, but we have the ABB system, and we became them without complaint and follow-up within two years. Complaining quality supplier. Just because of such a case, I made all ABBs, German ABB, Swiss ABB, and Spanish ABB.

The last concept is customer retention. Retention means that the boss wants to take advantage of the other party's visit. We have a European and American travel plan every year. This trip is not a tour, but a visit to a large customer in Europe and the United States. The visit here is that their turnover must reach 500,000 US dollars and our turnover, we must go once a year, and then have an interview every year. Then tell the business owner, how is our service, what kind of help do you need from us, etc., so that the other party thinks that we have become your friends. If he has any hardware products in the future, he will think that Dongguan has such a An enterprise that becomes his strategic partner, not just a supplier.

From 2004 to the present, we have faced a series of problems such as raw materials, devaluation of RMB, staff costs, etc., but our customers continue to take care of us and continue to cooperate with us. We have not lost any major customers in the past ten years. I think the most important communication and our services, as well as our continuous efforts to meet the requirements of customers, have enabled us to grow rapidly.

And we found out that we have a little advantage in the cost of making hardware. We are a manufacturing enterprise, and it will not change your manufacturer just because you spend a dollar or two. Because you are a tailor-made mold, but you have to pay attention to your quality and service. Since 2011, there should be no large-scale returns and quality problems that exceed US$10,000, but there are cases where re-proofing is occasionally required.

I personally think that I have at least five years of high-speed growth in the hardware sector, but I am skeptical about China's current products if they want to grow rapidly. This is my personal opinion. When it comes to foreign trade, I agree very much, but I also have an idea of mine. I asked my subordinates, what should we do if we grow at a high speed, even if the growth rate is 80% every year, we are also in 2010. Desperately transforming, we have established many departments, and we are also doing product research and development ourselves. Our global invention patents, etc., also intend to use a form of foreign trade to sell it to the world. Then set up a department called cross-border e-commerce to do B2C, and then you can move forward with B2B and B2C. Then I B2B mainly do hardware accessories, that is, accessories for finished products.

If I talk about overseas openings, that's all I have to say. But I have an experience, that is, a foreign trade enterprise. If you do not do foreign trade, but want to do foreign trade, I have a little experience to share with you. First of all, if you want to do foreign trade, you must have a concept of sharing, because if you can't have a concept of sharing on the team side, it will be difficult for your team to move forward with you. Because foreign trade personnel are now difficult to manage, many foreign trade workers have switched jobs.

I am a foreign trade company, but I don't know foreign languages at all. Others are very strange. People who don't understand foreign languages can succeed in foreign trade. I think it has a lot to do with me knowing how to share. Regardless of whether I invest in overseas markets or not, after we manage so many customer inquiries, all the previous processes will come to an end. For example, we have 25 salesmen, and there are more than 50 inquiries today. Each person has about two customers. From now on, this customer is yours. Our entire procurement engineering team and manufacturing department must fully cooperate with you. If you take this customer down, we will cooperate with you to mass-produce it. Our net profit is 25% to our salesman. In this way, I made the foreign trade salesman desperately rush forward.

I often find the light in the office on and see that our staff is still working there at one or two o'clock in the evening. I said that you can work like this from 8:30 in the morning to 3:00 in the evening, but you can't stand it every day. I gave an order that if our salesman worked more than one o'clock every day, I would fire him three times in a row. Of course, this sentence is a joke. What I want to say is that if you know how to share, you will make those foreign trade staff work hard to rush forward with you, because he is not working for you, he is working hard for personal income , which is a concept of sharing.

I manage another team, as well as the purchasing department team. I was slowly in Dongguan, and I had a two-building factory. I slowly incorporated one of the factories and sub-leased it to others. Why? I sold my equipment and I found that labor costs are slowly increasing day by day. However, small factories in Dongguan keep popping up. I discussed with my team that we don't want to produce by ourselves, and we turn to integrate suppliers to help us do it. But we have to have our own factory, and then we have to make orders to assist the factories behind, and then in turn we set up a very large team, and now there are nearly 30 people in the procurement team, specializing in manufacturing in Dongguan.

In this way, we can reduce our costs. Don't think that the small factories on the side of the road have no quality. Many of them may be some large factory supervisors, some masters, some managers, and they have just come out to start a business. , They don't have much money, but their management and technology are not bad, but they lack large-scale things. They are bosses, masters, and technicians, and their labor costs are very cheap. The things made by our own factories are always inferior to those made by their factories, and the quality is not as good as theirs. We found that this move was right again. The whole supplier made this move right in Dongguan, which has improved our business a lot.

I would like to share a concept with you. In the future, labor costs will increase a lot, and we don't think it is necessary to do everything by ourselves. I have this experience, that is, we must constantly adjust, borrow, learn, and change, that is, we must constantly integrate resources, leverage our strengths, and then continue to learn, and then change the status quo and current model of our factory.

Finally, I have an experience that I keep reminding our suppliers that the entire manufacturing environment in China will be very difficult from the beginning of this year, and everyone should be careful in the next three years, because this is China's internal self-adjustment. Shoddy production, waste of environment, and extensive growth are no longer suitable for China's development. They must carry out reforms. This is a very painful reform.

In this reform, many companies will be wiped out, because basically all industries in China have excess capacity, and some industries may even have excess capacity of more than 50%. Especially in the Pearl River Delta, 95% of our enterprises are exporting, including low-end manufacturing, because they don't know that the products they provide to customers are exported, and then the export declines seriously, plus China's self-adjustment, plus the increase in production capacity , so that a large part of our Pearl River Delta enterprises will be eliminated if they do not have ideas and methods. Why do I say I want to do foreign trade? I often tell my team that I hope we will go on. Because we have come here for 11 years, I hope we can live longer, let alone how much money we make, we can survive this major adjustment. I still think that the best way is to meet the needs of the world. To meet the needs of the world, to meet the needs of the world, to meet the rapid growth of European and American companies, and to grow in this. This is my personal experience.