Today, trade is domestic but also global. You can sell from your home, town or city to anywhere in the world. Through a website, a blog or even without an internet presence, just by having a small space on platforms like Amazon, you can have customers for your products or services anywhere in the world. But what is easy for you is also easy for your competitors.
And how can we stand out from the rest? Do you know that the payment methods you set up for your sale can give you an advantage?
International payment methods as a competitive advantage.
Finding customers not only in your country but anywhere in the world has never been easier. The widespread use of new technologies has allowed all kinds of people in different countries to have, for very little money, mobile phones that are more powerful than the computers of a few years ago and much faster broadband connections. Thanks to this, online platforms or stores have been developed in different countries such as Amazon or Ali Express, where anyone can buy or sell.
These platforms have achieved something that was literally impossible just a few years ago: allowing any consumer to buy a product in a store in another country and receive it at an acceptable price and within acceptable times. Thus, Amazon and Ali Express have not only managed to revolutionize e-commerce in itself, but have done so on a global level, further promoting international trade.
But the Internet has not only enabled the globalisation of e-commerce. It has also made it easier for sellers around the world to have information at the click of a button about the profile of their consumers in a country, the contact details of different importers, distributors or retailers or the offer of competitors present in that country. This has made it really easy to reach any customer or intermediary in different international markets.
Although what is easy for us is also easy for any competitor in different countries around the world. Therefore, the paradox arises that, being so easy to reach any client in the world, it is increasingly difficult to get them to choose us and buy from us. And so, the important thing for the success of any sales project, whether in our country or anywhere else in the world, is not knowing how to reach our potential clients, but how our commercial proposal is more attractive to them than that of our competition.
Although we can use marketing or commercial promotion to make ourselves known, these are still communication tools that must contain a message, a reason or several reasons that move a client, who does not know us at all, kuwait telephone number to value and buy our offer.
One of these reasons is the means of payment.
Knowing in detail and using the different payment methods that exist today at an international level can help us to make our commercial proposal stand out to a potential client compared to others, it can give us an advantage when negotiating with them, or to obtain the maximum benefit from a sale in other markets (or at least not to lose a considerable part of it along the way). And not only that, but using certain documentary payment methods allows us to accept risky sales operations, either due to the type of client or the country in which they are located, which would otherwise be unviable.
Selecting the best international payment method
But how should we select the best means of payment for an international sale? First of all, it is necessary to know the risk that the transaction may entail. To do this, we must assess the risk of our buyer not paying, based on their purchasing history and size, the risk of the country where we are going to send the goods and also the amount of the sale. The risk assessment of the transaction is usually carried out by the bank with which we work.
Secondly, we must keep up to date with the offers presented by the different banking entities, since differences in the commissions or interest rates applied can mean that in large or repeated operations a considerable amount of the profit ends up in the hands of the financial entity. We must also be clear about the amounts of the insurance and its premiums, since sometimes it is simpler and cheaper to use a simple means of payment covered by insurance, instead of using a documentary means of payment.
We will then have to agree on the type of payment with the client . Although in first operations or test orders, advance payment is usually used, a very convenient formula for the seller, since it avoids the risk of an operation without any financial cost, in larger operations there is usually a negotiation with the client that is sometimes much more difficult than negotiating the price of a product.
In any case, knowing and having experience in the different options allows the professional and the company to offer a greater number of options than others. And this sometimes means that a client chooses one offer or another.