Finding Cross-Border Customers

By Laurel Delaney (Founder and President, GlobeTrade.com)(The following is an unabridged excerpt from Chapter 7 in Laurel’sbook, “Start and Run a Profitable Exporting Business:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1551801396/qid=921889823/104-7434993-1535140)Finding customers for your export products can be accomplishedby means of a range of programs, largely government-sponsored,including trade shows, trade missions, and related trade networkingservices. This chapter introduces a number of these services and howyou can take advantage of them.Many years ago, I attended a dinner hosted by HarvardUniversity. A friend of mine had invited me to join him in celebratinghis completion of a very intense Owner President Managementprogram. I was delighted to go. It presented a good chance to seewhat he was up to, visit Boston, and network.My expectations were high. I assumed everyone I met would beexuding energy and enthusiasm from their very pores afterparticipating in such a high-powered program. I would have thought,at the least, that they would have welcomed an opportunity to showoff their newly-acquired training and ideas to an uninitiate, like myself.Did I get a rude awakening! The program graduates turned out to bestandoffish and uncommunicative, as if they thought that their mereattendance had made them so superior that they didn't need to botherbeing pleasant. I was deeply unimpressed; I even began to wonder if some of them had learned anything at all!

Fortunately, the dinner was held at the beautiful KennedyMemorial Center, and I soon found myself absorbed by thebreathtaking views of the waterfront. After a little while, I was joinedby a woman in her early thirties who had completed the program. Westruck up a conversation, and she told me about the England-basedtrading business that she had taken over from her father. I wasimpressed that she was running a 10-million-dollar company, althoughI might have been more impressed if she had built it herself! It didoccur to me, of course, that I could do some business with her -- shetraded everything from pasta machines to textiles to ironing boards. Ifigured, why not give it a try and contact her once she returned toEngland?So that's what I did. I don't even remember what I was offeringher at the time, since this was back in my operating-from-the-seat-of-my-pants days, but we must have traded at least 50 faxes over thecourse of three months. I thought I had a hot one. But somewherearound the fourth month, her faxes slowed down and then stoppedaltogether. I faxed her the most tactful inquiry I could frame regardingthe status of my product offerings. No reply. She was history. For acrazy moment I thought of appealing to my friend to see if he couldfind out what had gone wrong, and then I thought, what's the point?

Why am I trying to force a product on a customer when it'sclear that she's not interested?

I would have expected her to sayso right up front, or to let me know if she changed her mind later --but then, people simply don't always behave as you'd expect. Thisepisode was discouraging, and maybe a little embarrassing, but if youhave never experienced anything like it, something is dreadfully wrong

in your approach! We all need to be alert for opportunities and followup on potential customer contacts, but even with your best intentionsand your sharpest, most professional handling, things are going to goawry along the way. There's nothing to do but learn from it and moveon. But I'll bet you're thinking you'd rather find one seriouslyinterested potential customer than a dozen of these casual contactsthat may lead nowhere, right? Read on . . .I've taken a lot of shortcuts in exporting, but I've also found thattaking the time to inform myself about what I'm trying to accomplishalways pays off. You might admire my naive enthusiasm anddetermination, but did they serve me well in the long run when it cameto making long-lasting cross-border contacts? Not really. The fasterthe response from a prospective customer, the more seemingly intensetheir interest, the more abruptly their communications would stop. Noexplanation, no regrets. It's always easy to cut off contact withsomeone you haven't met -- with whom you haven't corresponded foryears or shared life stories, or, God forbid, a near-death experience.There's no relationship and therefore no commitment. It's over.I made my share of quick but low-quality contacts, but luckily Irecovered -- and learned -- from my mistakes.

A scattershot approach to the global marketplace of the sort I used in jump-startingmy company ultimately makes as much sense as advertising men'sunderwear in a magazine for kids.

Someone will get the message outthere, but they may wonder why! And you may wonder when. Andthere it ends.

A thoughtful, focused and long-term approach tomaking cross-border contacts is the best.

Your objective is tostart, cultivate and maintain productive customer relationships and,