What's the best way to create an efficient, profitable international trading company? By making the points below as part of your business routine, it could save your company being yet another statistic of ‘what should have been’ within the industry.
Knowledge of All Pertinent Laws
It's never a good idea to venture into any location unless your management team is fully acquainted with the legal environment. Many organizations keep international lawyers on staff or outsource the function for this very purpose. Additionally, most firms that operate internationally do area studies, risk evaluations, and specialized internal research in order to understand the laws that affect outsiders who buy and sell goods and services.
On-the-Ground Fleet Management
Every type of company, but especially those whose activities cross borders, needs to have a fleet management platform that allows for expanding markets in an efficient way. That includes reduced spending on fleet-related expenses, real-time tracking of physical fleet assets, GPS fleet tracking being the best example of the latter. Vehicles that routinely cross-national borders are particularly susceptible to all the common pitfalls of lax tracking and management. Dealing with the everyday operations of single-country vehicle fleets is challenging enough. But when questions of multiple political and traffic jurisdictions come into play, on-the-ground monitoring is essential to the very survival of the entity.
Communication Before, During, and After Shipment
One of the most frequent points of conflict between sellers and buyers is miscommunication with regard to logistics. Unlike problems associated with product-related disputes, incorrect items being delivered, or incorrect pricing, simple communication challenges are the starting point for many other serious issues. For many entities, the key pitfall is pre-shipment communication. It's during this phase of the interaction that inaccurate data enters into the stream of dialogue between companies and their clients.
It is here that hard to resolve problems pop up and are not detectable or resolvable until after delivery is complete. Errors at this state include using the wrong type of packing, sending the wrong item, charging too much or too little for goods/services, and various problems with labeling. It's in the interest of both sides of a transaction to communicate during shipping, if for no other reason than to make certain that timelines are being met. After shipping, this same line of openness is important so customers can report any problems as soon as they receive an item.
Customer Feedback
The largest, most efficient enterprises in the world know how to leverage the inherent power of customer feedback. This is much more about learning from mistakes made and aiming for continual improvement than just satisfying a single buyer who lodges a complaint. Of course, it's essential to deal with clients who receive poor or inaccurate service. But that's a separate problem.
Companies that know how to maintain and review customer feedback on a regular basis are able to more fully respond to what their entire customer base wants. A good example is when multiple buyers offer feedback about the same issue, slow delivery for example. In that case, your buyers are giving you a no-cost diagnosis of your sales cycle. Because this kind of feedback comes from real-world situations and not from internal efficiency experts or hypothetical analysis, it should be used immediately and to the fullest extent.
Written, No-Frills Return Policies
Consumers are much more sophisticated in the 2020's than they were just five years ago. Widespread experience with online stores, web-based buying, and dozens of new forms of payment have created a massive base of educated, savvy customers. They value clearly written, simple return policies and unlike consumers of past decades, today's in the know customers actually take time to read your return policy fine print. Translation is that if you bury hard to understand terms within policies, you'll lose customers. Additionally, if return policies are not fair and reasonable, people will seek merchants who offer more user-friendly terms and commonsense policies.
Multi-Lingual Support Staff
Unless your customer base is restricted to people who speak a single language, make an effort to build a support staff that is multi-lingual. Even U.S.-based companies that sell nowhere else opt of both English and Spanish customer service phone lines and web-based chat help. Likewise, if your sales territories include large swaths of land where two or more languages are spoken, hire support personnel who can respond quickly in the customer's native tongue whenever there's a need.
QC Before Departure
If your organization's staff is minimal and you can only afford quality control checks at one point in the chain of sale, place it immediately before shipment. As noted above, the majority of snafus tend to aggregate at this focal point. At a minimum, it's wise to check labels for accuracy of all data, visually inspect the product, make sure the buyer was billed the correct amount, and check for proper packaging. When those core points are covered, you can reduce returns and complaints significantly, no matter what you sell. The beauty of doing pre-delivery QC inspections is that it's often the last time you can correct a problem before the item ends up in the consumer's hands and at that point, correcting a mistake is much more costly.
Quick Snag-Resolution Checklist
Create a checklist for what to do for each of the most common supply chain problems. Your list should include detailed descriptions of each issue as well as the person or persons responsible for resolving it. For instance, if you lose track of a shipped item immediately after it leaves your location, there should be a name and contact information for in-house employees to contact.
This is not a list for customers to use. It's for your company's workers who need quick help when something goes awry. It's one thing to build a comprehensive network of communication with buyers. What's often overlooked is that the same attention needs to be applied to company-wide communication so that any issue with a shipment can be dealt with as quickly as possible.
A Go-To Person for Every Shipment
In addition to your snag resolution list, it's important to have a named person who has the final word on how to resolve problems with each shipment or group of shipments. For example, one person might be the final arbiter about what to do with every tech product your company sends out to consumers. Another might be the go-to name for digital products, and yet another for foods and beverages. The goal of having a go-to individual is that disputes often arise within the organization about how to handle a particular situation. Naming a final arbiter based on product type is a tested, workable logistics technique that many organizations use to great advantage.
Solid Relationships with Carriers
So much of the business success puzzle is related to relationships. In international commerce, one of the most vital relationships a company can nurture is the one with a carrier. When you use multiple carriers, take the time to build interpersonal contacts with at least one or two key people in each company that delivers goods across international borders.
In the majority of cases when items are lost, sent to the wrong destination, or damaged during shipment, it is the carrier with whom you'll be dealing to resolve the problem. If your organization's employees view carriers as adversaries, which is sometimes the case, you begin at a disadvantage. When you start operations and initiate a business connection with a specific carrier, work from day-one to learn from their experience, meet with their teams in online discussions, and otherwise establish a solid connection with them from the moment you begin working together.
Reputable Insurers
To customers, your insurance is an invisible thing. It's a crucial part of your operations and should be given the attention and respect it deserves. Working with a reputable carrier can eliminate numerous problems from the moment you receive and order until the moment of delivery at the customer's doorstep. Unfortunately, too many owners skimp on the cost of insurance and look at short-term savings alone.
It's a common approach and is the sign of a company management team that lacks experience in international commerce. There's never been a more apt use of the old warning that you get what you pay for. Cutting corners on insurance expenses is a fast route to financial chaos. Take the time to locate and vet insurance carriers based mostly on their reputation among other owners, industry presence, length of time in operation, and the strength of their management team. Price can be a consideration but only in a general sense, based on the type of amount of coverage you're shopping for.
Standardized Product Lists
No matter how many products or services you sell, and no matter whether they're tangible or not, create a standardized listing of what you sell, and how much each item costs. In addition to posting this kind of relevant information on your website, remember to send the relevant part of the list to buyers so they become familiar with your entire line. This simple act is a powerful way to build loyalty and boost sales.
When people buy from you, they have already bought in to at least one of your products or services. It's makes perfect sense to show them what else you have on tap, especially when the other items are similar to what they previously purchased. In international selling, this principle is even more applicable.
Prevent Theft and Shrinkage
Anti-theft policies can go a long way to reducing expenses for international sellers. That's because the longer an item is in transit, and the greater the distance it must travel between seller and buyer, the greater the chance it will disappear somewhere along the way. What accountants call shrinkage, or simple theft by employees, consumers, or shippers, is a real problem in the global commerce arena. Work with accountants and consultants who specialize in reducing theft in order to cut your shrinkage expenses to the bare minimum.
Screened Employees
The first point of the sales cycle is a person. That means if you want to boost profits and make the most of your company's place in the global market, you need to have a team of people who understand the unique factors of international business. There are two ways to go about the screening process, both of which are effective. One, hire ready-made experts who have the right education and training before they arrive on your doorstep looking for work.
The second method is more costly but is preferred by most global businesses. It involves hiring generally competent workers who may or may not have international backgrounds. Your job is to train them in your systems until they're ready to fully join the team. It's a costly procedure because the first few months of their post-hiring time is devoted almost exclusively to on-the-job training. In-house training means you have to give up the full-time skills of an already-trained employee to show the new one how to do the job at hand. The main advantage to this approach is that you need not hire more expensive candidates with deep experience. Plus, new hires who have little or no experience in the field are less apt to use other methods that they learned in their previous jobs.
Cryptocurrency Usage
The world is changing rapidly. If you don't accept forms of payment that millions of people prefer, you're automatically missing out on a huge opportunity. Cryptocurrency is a form of cyber money that people all over the world use for different reasons. The main form, Bitcoin, already accounts for billions of dollars of retail sales and is preferred by consumers in places where the local currency is unstable. If you don't already accept Bitcoin or other forms of cryptocurrency, consider adding them to your payment portal so more people can purchase your goods and services.
There are Multiple Moving Parts to the Success Puzzle
Achieving peak efficiency and maximizing profits go hand in hand for any global company. Owners and managers can expand their businesses and gain new customers by implementing the best-practices solutions noted above.
