I have been posting since I opened my AMA thread in September, so thought it was high time I gave some background on myself.
I have started from zero and built two very successful businesses, the first one involved exporting my own products after I became established, and the second involved importing right from the start.
Business #1.
Despite phenomenal success as a salesman, increasing my employer’s sales by 800% over 3 years (a compound doubling of sales every year) I was still being paid a pittance so I looked for greener pastures. I had been selling highly technical and very specialized industrial chemical products.
Here I will insert a comment about how I was so successful in sales. There were 2 main factors:
1. Product knowledge. I knew everything there was to know about the products and how to use them. It can be very frustrating dealing with a salesman who knows very little about the product they are selling.
2. Hard work. An average sales representative does 8 calls per day. My average was 17. To do that in a big city requires preparation, and each morning I started off early, with a program for my calls that looked like a bus timetable, complete with ETA and ETD for each call. No chat about football. My no-nonsense approach appealed to the buyers. I was there to talk business and they appreciated that I was not wasting their time.
After quitting that job there followed a long period of struggling to find a decent sales job because I lacked experience outside that narrow specialty, so I took the plunge and started my own business, with close to zero as my bank balance. I had to make sales fast!
It was in the same field, but I developed a far superior product range. Although I offered my main product at a price about double what the industry had been paying I rapidly made sales. The product was superior, and even at double the price the cost for my customers was insignificant, because it was a very small production input.
Let me explain how I made those sales so easily. Demonstration was the key.
My production cost was very low so I could afford to be generous with samples. The potential customer would invariably allow me to demonstrate the product in use, because I persuaded them that the product they had been using for years had serious deficiencies. The demonstration took 5 minutes and was very convincing.
Some big manufacturers wanted more extensive tests, so I went along with a drum of my product, and changed into work clothes and spent as much as a whole day sweating it out side by side with the factory workers. That no doubt got them onside and removed the prejudice against change.
Within a year I had 100% of the market in that major area, and people in other related industries began to come to me for solutions to their similar problems, allowing me to diversify. Problem solving as a way of making sales meant that I could name my price for the product, within reason.
After getting quite a few inquiries from overseas manufacturers I decided to try exporting, and I soon had customers in many countries in the Asia Pacific region, including Singapore, Taiwan and mainland China.
20 years after starting the business I sold it for 4 times my annual net profit. The buyer was the Technical Manager of one of the biggest chemical companies in the world and he had as a partner, not just a lender, a big merchant bank. I had been banking 6 figure profits for many years, and now I had a lump sum in the millions.
Not one to stand still, I immediately started:
Business #2.
With my contacts in China and other countries I had a multitude of business ideas, and I settled on one that involved importing and marketing B2B. This was in 1987. My communication then was all by fax or telephone.
Without online resources, such as the then non-existent B2B sites, I used trade magazines for a lot of my sourcing, but I also knew how to find suppliers through trade organizations and Government agencies. Later, I also began sourcing through B2B sites, and I am pleased to say that I never had to resort to using Alibaba, DHGate etc.
Business boomed. I entered the market as a high priced supplier but I quickly replaced the market leader in the most lucrative part of my market. When I started, they had 90% of the market in that sector. It took me 2 years to acquire 30% and a few years more to get to the 90% point. After his massive discounting failed to win back the customers, that major competitor sold out.
I could not have done that without increasing my labor force substantially, and I did not want to employ people other than family, so I sold franchises instead. It worked incredibly well. I did all the franchising set up, including writing the operations manual myself.
Over the space of a few years the franchise network spread to four countries, and working through Master Franchisees allowed me to maintain close control while only having to deal on a person to person basis with a small number of people.
The advent of the internet made it possible for me to add product sourcing via B2B sites, and with my previous experience gained during my countless visits to China, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, HK etc., I was able to quickly sort the sheep from the goats when choosing which B2B sites to use.
Unfortunately one day I went for a routine examination and instead of going home I was rushed to hospital for emergency quadruple bypass surgery. Recovery is usually swift, but the surgeon did some collateral damage to my lungs and it quickly became apparent that I could not continue running my international franchising organization so I sold out.
Readers have probably worked out that I am a workaholic. I can’t just sit around all day, so I wrote my first eBook, and am now having as much fun as ever helping new entrepreneurs enter the exciting world of importing.
I try to follow doctor’s orders
so I have my desk facing the window where I can watch the kangaroos and cattle sharing the grass just outside my garden gate. Yes I now spend most of my time in Australia, but the view from my window in England is just as pleasant, except no kangaroos.
I have started from zero and built two very successful businesses, the first one involved exporting my own products after I became established, and the second involved importing right from the start.
Business #1.
Despite phenomenal success as a salesman, increasing my employer’s sales by 800% over 3 years (a compound doubling of sales every year) I was still being paid a pittance so I looked for greener pastures. I had been selling highly technical and very specialized industrial chemical products.
Here I will insert a comment about how I was so successful in sales. There were 2 main factors:
1. Product knowledge. I knew everything there was to know about the products and how to use them. It can be very frustrating dealing with a salesman who knows very little about the product they are selling.
2. Hard work. An average sales representative does 8 calls per day. My average was 17. To do that in a big city requires preparation, and each morning I started off early, with a program for my calls that looked like a bus timetable, complete with ETA and ETD for each call. No chat about football. My no-nonsense approach appealed to the buyers. I was there to talk business and they appreciated that I was not wasting their time.
After quitting that job there followed a long period of struggling to find a decent sales job because I lacked experience outside that narrow specialty, so I took the plunge and started my own business, with close to zero as my bank balance. I had to make sales fast!
It was in the same field, but I developed a far superior product range. Although I offered my main product at a price about double what the industry had been paying I rapidly made sales. The product was superior, and even at double the price the cost for my customers was insignificant, because it was a very small production input.
Let me explain how I made those sales so easily. Demonstration was the key.
My production cost was very low so I could afford to be generous with samples. The potential customer would invariably allow me to demonstrate the product in use, because I persuaded them that the product they had been using for years had serious deficiencies. The demonstration took 5 minutes and was very convincing.
Some big manufacturers wanted more extensive tests, so I went along with a drum of my product, and changed into work clothes and spent as much as a whole day sweating it out side by side with the factory workers. That no doubt got them onside and removed the prejudice against change.
Within a year I had 100% of the market in that major area, and people in other related industries began to come to me for solutions to their similar problems, allowing me to diversify. Problem solving as a way of making sales meant that I could name my price for the product, within reason.
After getting quite a few inquiries from overseas manufacturers I decided to try exporting, and I soon had customers in many countries in the Asia Pacific region, including Singapore, Taiwan and mainland China.
20 years after starting the business I sold it for 4 times my annual net profit. The buyer was the Technical Manager of one of the biggest chemical companies in the world and he had as a partner, not just a lender, a big merchant bank. I had been banking 6 figure profits for many years, and now I had a lump sum in the millions.
Not one to stand still, I immediately started:
Business #2.
With my contacts in China and other countries I had a multitude of business ideas, and I settled on one that involved importing and marketing B2B. This was in 1987. My communication then was all by fax or telephone.
Without online resources, such as the then non-existent B2B sites, I used trade magazines for a lot of my sourcing, but I also knew how to find suppliers through trade organizations and Government agencies. Later, I also began sourcing through B2B sites, and I am pleased to say that I never had to resort to using Alibaba, DHGate etc.
Business boomed. I entered the market as a high priced supplier but I quickly replaced the market leader in the most lucrative part of my market. When I started, they had 90% of the market in that sector. It took me 2 years to acquire 30% and a few years more to get to the 90% point. After his massive discounting failed to win back the customers, that major competitor sold out.
I could not have done that without increasing my labor force substantially, and I did not want to employ people other than family, so I sold franchises instead. It worked incredibly well. I did all the franchising set up, including writing the operations manual myself.
Over the space of a few years the franchise network spread to four countries, and working through Master Franchisees allowed me to maintain close control while only having to deal on a person to person basis with a small number of people.
The advent of the internet made it possible for me to add product sourcing via B2B sites, and with my previous experience gained during my countless visits to China, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, HK etc., I was able to quickly sort the sheep from the goats when choosing which B2B sites to use.
Unfortunately one day I went for a routine examination and instead of going home I was rushed to hospital for emergency quadruple bypass surgery. Recovery is usually swift, but the surgeon did some collateral damage to my lungs and it quickly became apparent that I could not continue running my international franchising organization so I sold out.
Readers have probably worked out that I am a workaholic. I can’t just sit around all day, so I wrote my first eBook, and am now having as much fun as ever helping new entrepreneurs enter the exciting world of importing.
I try to follow doctor’s orders
so I have my desk facing the window where I can watch the kangaroos and cattle sharing the grass just outside my garden gate. Yes I now spend most of my time in Australia, but the view from my window in England is just as pleasant, except no kangaroos.
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