You Need A Serious And Trustworthy Agent
A serious and trustworthy agent can always prompt up after the following filtration– CHECKING THEIR WEBSITES
Nowadays almost every agent has its own website. Even some agents even have a lot. A website is a good way to understand the people behind. In fact, that could be the only way for you to get information before contacting anyone.
You should be careful with:
#1 Talking-rubbish Agents
These agents normally saying on their sites that they’re the “Top 1”, or “Top 3”, “No.1”, “Best…””Most…””Official”trading agent.
Here are 2 extreme cases:
One agent only keeps 1 staff since 2014 but claiming on their sites they’re the “TOP 3″trading agent.
Some agent claims they’re the “Official Agent”but has absolutely nothing to do with the official company who runs the market.
For example, Yiwu market is built by local government and run by CCC Group. Only CCC group can say they’re official to run Yiwu market. The rest of Yiwu agentshave NOTHING to do with “Yiwu market official site”.
When these Yiwuagents are trying to catch eyeballs by talking rubbish everywhere, they lose their trustworthy at the same time.
#2 Promising-miracle Agents
A lot agents say they only charge a 1% as commission, or they offer FREE service, free cars, free everything.
When it comes to service, people matters. These companies who offer better opportunities and salaries usually have better and more experienced staff. The fact is that all the work are done by staff. Neither the general manager nor boss.
If a company can’t have reasonable profits, then they can’t offer descent salary, furthermore they can’t keep good staff. Quick change of staff is a disaster to service business.
The companies who keep a best experienced and professional staff resource, for the longest, can be THE BEST TRADING AGENT .
#3 With-no-rules Agents
A lot trading agents don’t have a clear and straight forward way with their service and charges, but just want you to contact them or chat with them.
This iswasting everyone’s time. Of course, if you waste some time with one guy, you won’t have the same time for another guy. You only have 24 hours a day.
Usually, these people who can state all their services and terms at the beginning clearly, have a better “awareness-of-rules” than those who don’t say anything but just want you to discuss with them.
Believe it or not, lots of agents just don’t have any rules, neither as a company nor as an individual staff.
Company add extra costs to customers, staff earn kick-backs from suppliers. Of course, it’s the customer who will pay all the bills in the end…
Having above info in mind, you can properly filtered out lots of noises, and now it’s time to select a few and talk– CONTACTING A FEW OF THEM
#1 How are they responding?
Here, of course, you will have different ways to find out if someone is right for you. Are they honestly telling about what they can do? Are they able to communicate well via emails? Are they doing what they’re saying? Do they offer sourcing service?
#2 Ask for reference from their site
Some companies now put reference on their site publicly. This is good to see what other customers said about them. But you need to see if these reviews are REAL.
You can just ask them to offer contact information about their customers who wrote them the review, then go and find out.
I bet you have more ways here, so let skip to the next step.
VISITAND WALK WITH THEM
By above 2 steps of checking their sites and talking to them. Now comes to the big step: visit them to find out.
Here is my advise: always select 2 or 3 potential agents, NOT ONLY ONE! Meet them and talk to them. Walk with them for one day in the market. Then point out your finger for the winner.
From meeting them and walking with them, you will have a clear picture of are they doing what they were saying on their website and what they told you previously in emails.
Walking in the market for one day (only for browsing market purpose), you will find out who seems like care you more and who is putting more extra costs on you.
After going through above steps, i’m sure you’re very close to a trustworthy, serious, and reliable agent. Hurray~
You Need A Professorial And Experienced Agent
TRUST is No.1, EXPERIENCE and EXPERTISE will be No.2.
Many agents claim they can source thousands different products for you from Yiwu. This is true. But can they do a good job with thousands different products? There is a big question mark.
An agentexported a lot of plastic containers means nothing when they need to do quality control on jewelry for “nickel free”. An agent shipped hundreds of containers to US doesn’t means they know well enough customs requirements of Croatia or Fiji.
You’d better find an agent that is specialized in your products, or at least is familiar with your type of products. These people will be more confident withquality controlin the end. They can also talk to suppliers before placing orders. They learnt from mistakes.
Also because they’re more experienced with a certain type of products, which means they are more familiar with the suppliers. They probably know which supplier can deliver on promise and which supplier may only deliver air in the end.
You Need An Agent With Sufficient Facilities
TRUST No.1, EXPERIENCE and EXPERTISE No.2, FACILITY comes at No.3. No one can do miracles.
For an import&export agent in , the two most important facilities are office and warehouse.
A good office is an office that close to market. Almost every day,agents staff need to go to market. A close location to the market means the staff won’t need to take a bus or get stuck in traffic jam. This makes their life easier. They can also be more efficient with your work.
Warehouse must be spacious.
Considering the fact that sometimes products need to be repacked or checked throughly. This job will be impossible if there is not enough space.
Also a good warehouse should be easy for container loading. If fragile items are carried up to container door each time. There is risk that these fragile cartons can fall off.
This can be found out easily when you’re in China. You can drop by their offices in the morning for 10 minutes and go to their warehouse in the after for another 10 minutes after market visit.
IN ONE WORD, get someone RELIABLE to take care of your business.