We are your sales representative agency for ASEAN markets and since 2012 we are focused in creating “bridgehead” with ASEAN markets.
A Glimpse on How We Work
(.. easy explained..)
We are working as extension of your sales network and are committed to facilitate and promote your access to the ASEAN markets.
This is DB Business Development main business and mostly the full range of services is related to this core activity.
So how to proceed forward? Here a possible breakdown:
After a first brainstorming between us, we will (together) manage to analyze your products and services to find out what is the most suitable to be promoted in ASEAN.
Note: NOT every product can be sold in ASEAN, indeed low value-added products are normally quite difficult to sell, high resistance of the market, import duty and tax, abundant of local production and strong competition make the product less appetible.
Instead, high value-added products have market share and can be marketed to the suitable channels.
Every Company has high and low value-added products, we have to find out which one is what!
We move on to define what is the best channel for your product according to your Company “philosophy” (are you more into the online sale? Or into wholesale? Or into retail? Etc..) in order to:
- Collect info from the market
- List out potential Customers/Partners
- Make a deeper evaluation of your product according to local needs
- Contact potential Clients for meetings and presentation
- Follow-up
- Finalizing sales/deal
Step-by-step let’s see more details
1 – Collecting info from the market
Mainly done autonomously with our own resources we try to match your product with the local market need.
Note: during this phase we will regular get in touch with you in order to adjust our researches and better define the target Customer.
Our researches are coming mostly from:
- Web pages
- Social media
- Our own network (whenever your product matches the same sector/niche of the products we are currently dealing with)
- Public organizations (ICE, Chamber of Commerce, Embassy etc.)
2 – Listing out potential Customers/Partners
We create a list of potential contacts where, together, we sort out the priority Companies to be contacted according to some parameters such as reputation, market position, size and market share. Note: this type information is not always available and sometimes a different approach is required; for examples sorting the names according to their location (ease to approach for meetings) rather than other parameters.
3 – Deeper evaluation of your products
This activity takes the effort of your managers as well, in order to find the right product and service for the right Customer or Market.
In the specific the activity might include the support of:
- Export managers (their previous experiences in similar markets, their knowledge regarding your most competitive products etc.).
- Technicians (able to compare the existing Competitor’s product in the market and elaborate the due evaluations).
- Marketing department (who is able to support and advice their favorite marketing tools according to the Company policy).
The goal is to identify a range of Competitive products worth to focus on.
Note: in general, not the full range of products is worth to be proposed. An initial shortlist of products is needed. Concentrating the effort in few competitive products to maximize the efficiency and resources means NO WASTED TIME!
4 – Contacting potential Clients previously listed out
Focusing on the most competitive products that we can boost and matching them with the most suitable Customer, sometime the reverse way is necessary; we will approach the Client first and then propose what it is believed to be the most suitable product.
We will come back with some information, possibly sensitive information in order to implement a competitive advantage against the competitors.
Along with the Company we will analyze what we have collected and formulate together a potential proposition to be submitted to the potential Client following a few main steps:
- make a synthetic proposition focusing in key points.
- make it clear; normally Asian companies are not so keen to “get lost” into documents.
- make it straight to the point
Note: Asians are (also by cultural tradition) quite wary and many times you only have “one shot”, either they like your proposal or not. Sometimes there IS NOT the possibility to bargain and having a second chance => finding the right proposition is matter of doing business or not doing it.
Note (2): Asian Companies are also quite keen to physically look and touch the product (whenever it is possible and unless we are proposing services…), we need to provide them with a good range of samples, documents and literature.
5 – Follow-up on a regular base
This will be executed in few steps, possibly as follow:
- Email right after the meeting either to formalize proposition or to summarize the discussion in order to formalize later on. In the meantime, we will add the emails to the mailing list for a future email marketing.
- Phone calls after few days to directly evaluate their knowledge after our meeting and to evaluate the odds that we have to establish a potential cooperation with the Customer.
- The Customer will be added to our mailing list.
According to the feedback we have from this initial phase, we will have a few scenarios in from of us:
- The Customer picked up one or more product where he is interested and he will go for them.
- The Customer is not interested at all; in this case we will add him in our mailing list (in case he gives us the permission to do so) to keep him updated about our business and activities
The Customer is willing to establish some sort of business with us but he is waiting the right moment to start buying. Note: in some specific businesses where the Clients are working on “project base” it might happen that they have already decided to go for our products but they are just waiting the right project to come.
In any case, any contact that we will have will be added to a mailing list. This will allow us to establish regular direct contacts with them, they will be updated regarding our activities and operations.
5 – Finalizing the deal
Once we have understood that the potential Client might be a serious partner and seriously considering one or more products to add to its vending list, we shall proceed to finalize at soonest in order to:
- Avoid wasting time.
- Maximize the results.
We will confirm the price lists/terms and conditions and set up the quantities according to the Company MOQ and proceed forward to finalize the sale.