Selling To Industrial Customers

May 09 2008

Published by Ricky at 12:21 am under Ideas

Consider this case study. You own a company in Malaysia selling a kind of machine to factories and industrial customers. Most of your customers are within the country. But recently more and more buyers are from overseas such as India, Pakistan and Vietnam. These buyers are middlemen who buy on behalf of their customers in respective countries. They come to know you through word of mouth.

Now, what can a web site do for you, especially to help expand your reach to overseas? The normal answer would include:

Establish presence online - Many customers do research on the Internet to make purchase decision.
Increase your exposure - Have another channel to reach your customers. What if some buyers don’t get to know you by word of mouth?
Give good first impression - They look at your web site and form an impression before even contacting you.
Show your products online - They can look at photos online so that you don’t always need to email them.
Contact you online - Now they can have another channel to contact you instantly - email, instant messaging or even SMS.
Eliminate intermediaries - The end user customers can deal with you directly without the middlemen.
Give technical support - Save costs supporting and servicing your customers by doing it online.

Now these are the common reasons why you should have a web site. But the Internet can potentially do much more wonder than we can imagine. It can be a strategic tool to change your business model, rewrite the rules in the competition, give you unfair advantages over your competitors and even lead you to a blue ocean.

Furthermore, the Internet is not only a new medium, but also a revolutionary one. Its benefits lie in its interactivity, community building and “word of mouse”, among others. It is different from other mediums such as print and TV. You will under utilize the benefits of the Internet if you merely apply the old model to a new environment.

Imagine your customers can design the product they need online using Flash. Imagine your customers help to build a knowledge base online through Web 2.0 technologies so that they can support themselves. Imagine you use a blog to build and maintain your brand online. Just imagine…