One of my friends has a small trading company in Hong Kong. Thanks to his network contacts, he got some steady orders from large institution such as the French police forces and some mail order companies.

Most of his customers don’t have any product knowledge. All they do is choose a sample, the color, and the sizes. They are focused on the labeling and the packing though, because that’s what might make their lives difficult.

The deal is simple: “here is an idea of what we want, we need you to deliver the goods in our warehouse”. They don’t want any question about the fabrics to use or the stitching job. It wastes their time, and they don’t even know how to respond.

So the intermediary’s job is to use his own common sense and take all the decisions. That’s why they want to work with a salesperson from their own country. It saves them headaches.

The problem is, one day a bad decision will be made. How can the intermediary guess everything right, from his external point of view? And in that case, arguments can quickly escalate. The intermediary says “but you never said you didn’t want this”, and the buyer says “it is obvious, how can you get it wrong?”

The solution for working smoothly with that type of customers is probably to develop a good personal relationship. It often comes down to paying nice dinners and putting girls in the purchaser’s bed. Business is business, they say…