Sending hundreds or even thousands of emails, they sink into the sea. Most of the calls were made to the front desk. LinkedIn added people, but the other party did not pass either. Many foreign traders have only one way to find customers: using the product term 'buyer'. The information that can be found in this way is actually very limited. Truly effective customer development generally involves three steps: finding the right person → finding contact information → assessing customer value. Today, we will share with you how to find the real procurement manager abroad.

1、 First, find the right person: who should the development letter be sent to?

Many foreign trade newcomers have two common misconceptions: sending emails as long as they have an email or only focusing on the Purchasing Manager.

Both of these are actually not very accurate. Companies of different sizes have completely different people making procurement decisions.

1. Small company: Go directly to the boss

Many small and medium-sized enterprises in Europe and America may have less than 10 employees. But you can also do business worth tens of millions of dollars a year. These companies usually do not have a complete procurement department. The boss is the person in charge of procurement.

You can focus on these positions: Founder, Owner, CEO, President, Director

These people are often responsible for: product/supply chain/customer simultaneously.

Directly contacting the boss is actually the most efficient.

2. Medium and large enterprises: find functional managers

If it is a relatively large company, it generally has a complete procurement system. Finding the boss at this time is actually useless.

More suitable positions include: Purchasing, Procurement, Supply Chain, Sourcing, Buyer

If the customer is a supermarket enterprise, they can also find: Category Manager

If it is the clothing or fashion industry: Merchandiser

Many times, these positions actually have more say than procurement managers.

2、 How to find these people?

After determining who to contact, the next step is to find the contact information. Many people only look for their email on the website's contact page. The information that can be found is actually very limited.

Google itself is a huge database. As long as the search method is correct, a lot of information can be found.

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Scenario 1: Only knowing the company name

Many times we see a company name at exhibitions and B2B platforms. But there is no official website.

You can search for (find boss) like this: Owner OR CEO OR Founder "company name" LinkedIn

Usually, you can directly find the company owner's LinkedIn.

Scenario 2: Knowing the company website

Don't just look at the Contact page.

Many email addresses are actually hidden in these pages: Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, Shipping Policy.

You can use a simple command: site: company. com email

Google will search for all pages on this website that contain emails, and sometimes there may be unexpected gains.

Scenario 3: Contact has been found

If you already know the name of the procurement manager, such as Jacky Zhang

You can try guessing the email format. Foreign enterprise email usually has fixed rules: firstname.lastname@company.com

You can also search on Google for "Jacky Zhang", "company name", and email

Sometimes you can directly search for contact information.

Scenario 4: Bulk Customer Search

If you want to develop clients in a certain country, you can search for: site:. uk "purchasing manager" "LED light"

Site:. uk Limited UK website, Purchasing Manager positions locked, LED Light industry locked. This way, you can directly find the relevant industry leaders.

3、 Why can't many people find their contact information?

Because a lot of information is not directly disclosed.

Especially: Procurement Manager's email/WhatsApp/phone number

Relying solely on manual search is inefficient. So now many teams will use some foreign trade customer acquisition tools.

For example, precise mining of customs data for buyers

You can directly extract the company list, match key positions, obtain email and phone numbers, and then cooperate with customs data to conduct customer background checks. This way, the development efficiency will be much higher.

Previously, manual search could only reach dozens of companies per day, but now the system can filter thousands of customer data at once. Sales only need to do one thing: screen customers and develop them accurately. Truly valuable customers don't actually need many. Industry compatibility is the key.

Summarize

There are actually no "tricks" for foreign trade development clients. More importantly, there is the accumulation of methods, tools, and time. Whoever can find the right person faster will be more likely to get the order.