When it comes to The Art of War, it’s familiar to every Chinese. One day, when I was at home, I suddenly had the interest to read it, and cannot stop complimenting how intelligent the ancients are. Even if you put all the phrase in Modern World or keep it for thousand of years, it’s still priceles.

In Foreign Trade, if you can use The Art of War, I believe you will benefit more.

In the Art of War, it has emphasized many times the importance of”know the enemy and know yourself”. Sunzi says: “Know the enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.

I believe everyone will receive many enquires all over the world, and the content will be much different. When you receive the enquiry, many freshmen will quote directly in a fixed way,and then follow up, then keep asking the same questions to clients everyday. After many times, it’s obviously there are rare feedback, just like the sentence, “If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself”.When you receive the enquiry, how to analysis the client? Here are very easy steps to follow as below.

To Find the client type. Regularly we will use the website in the signature to guess. Use Google tool and Whois website, you will find the found time of the company, view data, founder info,etc. After getting all info, you will easily categorize the client.

To check the position of the client. You will have preliminary understanding.

Of the status of the order from the responsibility and position of the client in the email.

To inspect the receiver of the email so that the activity of the client can be found. Part of the clients prefer to send the enquiry in group secretly. In the receiver of the email, it will show Recipients. Besides, those kind of client will call you Mr in the email instead of your name.

How to find more if the client didn’t note the company name or contact info in the email?

To check the email’s suffix. If your client use suffix, like Gmail, Hotmail,etc. First, please check in search engine like Google/Yahoo to see if any related info can be found. If not, follow the next step, further search with email plus product key words. If still nothing found, you can put the email address into the skype to see if any contact person show up.

If the client uses enterprise email, also it’s able to check the suffix in Google. Like, if the suffix of the email is lina@fng.co.id, the suffix is fng.co.id. Check on Google, then the company website can pop out, same way as Linkedin page.

To use email check tool: http://bbs.fobshanghai.com/checkemail.html. It’s developed by FOB website. Just enter the email address and click the engine accordingly, you will find all the info like previous enquiries, related company info on B2b platform, social networks and so on.

To Enter email address suffix into Linkedin search or Facebook. You will see if any correct contact person show up.

https://www.peoplelooker.com/

https://www.beenverified.com/

If you want to know much more, it’s better way to communicate on the phone with the client, after all necessary info has been found, the next step is to quote the best price and negotiate.

“Know the enemy and know yourself” Is just a very small part of The Art of the War. Like, the founder of Matsushita Electric Industrial- Konosuke Matsushita said before, “The Art of War is first God in the world. We must worship, recite it carefully and use it flexibly so that the company can develop and be prosperous.

Tianjin Xinyue Steel Group, as one of the famous steel pipe enterprise in China, has over 30 year experience in manufacturing and exporting steel pipes and supported many big-scale projects all over the world. Any enquiry will be warmly welcome.

Written by Lisa