The impact of the epidemic on foreign trade and countermeasures

The new coronavirus epidemic has caused a lot of challenges to our foreign trade industry. How to respond objectively, rationally and properly to the impact of the epidemic on foreign trade will test every one of us in foreign trade.The real crisis is not external, the external demand has always been there, and the real crisis is internal.

If the goods cannot be obtained, or the goods obtained cannot meet the customer's delivery period, this is a crisis that all enterprises will face after the resumption of work. Affected by the supply, customers will definitely seek a second choice in the market when they cannot get the goods. Once a solution is found, the customer will cooperate with other suppliers and evaluate other suppliers. At this time, customer ownership will face a large-scale reshuffle.

From the boss to the business and the lack of work commitment due to panic and pessimism, the improper arrangement of remote work will bring trouble later.

Funding issues will surface. The salary payment of companies with poor profitability last year has become a problem. Similarly, after the resumption of work, purchases will also require cash scheduling.

Three, coping strategies

1. Supply chain management

It's time to build supply chain management capabilities! It’s annoying to have no orders, and it’s annoying to have orders if you can’t get the goods. After the resumption of work, the supplier will have a large number of orders to arrange. When will yours be placed? There must be some customer demand, but it has been suppressed. After the resumption of work, the demand comes in, the order comes in, and the goods cannot be obtained, what will the customer do? - Replace you!

Therefore, it is recommended that the personnel responsible for procurement of each company should immediately strengthen contact with suppliers and pay attention to their dynamics, such as the time of resumption of work, the status of upstream raw materials, the status of orders on hand, the status of the capital chain, whether they have done statistics on workers who have actually been employed after the resumption of work, etc. .It is also necessary to strengthen personal contacts with existing suppliers and provide suppliers with assistance within their capabilities. At the same time, you can immediately start to find new suppliers and contact, prepare alternatives, and avoid hanging from a tree.

2. Remote work

In the current epidemic situation, we must make long-term preparations for remote work.

Remote work is very mature in many countries, especially the United States, and there is a proper name to describe this working state: work from home. If you google the title work from home, you will find a lot of information. Many websites think that migrant workers make a living by selecting the best work from home jobs and technical guidance, and they earn a lot of money.

Israeli Society of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, this organization did a study and came to a conclusion. Work from home can bring the following benefits to society:

• Protect the environment because of reduced greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution

• Savings for business owners as office space no longer needs to be large, saving employees on transportation costs

• Create more jobs for those who need it, because geography is not an issue

• More talent can be recruited for the same reasons as above

In the current special circumstances, in order to promote work progress and coordination, the sooner or later meeting system will become very necessary. Video conferencing should now be without any difficulty. Every day, go over the tasks to be completed by each person, and go over the general work content of yesterday, which is a mutual supervision and a mutual reminder.

At the same time, we need to strengthen our work arrangements. At the same time, it is recommended that you use the AB Guest-Foreign Trade Intelligent Marketing Management System. This software can not only manage customers, create tasks, assign tasks, monitor progress, but also facilitate communication with customers: e-mail and overseas phone calls are all available, and customer development: customs data, smart customer recommendations, etc. are very powerful, after registration, you can Free to use, can fully meet the needs of most small and medium-sized enterprises.

3. Do a good job in the basic work, and regard the overall review as the core business

When summarizing the meeting every day, if we do a review or case analysis in combination with the daily work, our meeting will become valuable. The review is a review of the business side, which can also be called a case study. Through the video conference, you will find a lot of problems by analyzing the emails and real-time communication records of each business person.

According to the experience of most foreign trade bosses, these problems can actually be solved. If the problems can be found in the past few days, a solution can be found, and after the construction starts, isn’t it optimized and implemented?

Do many foreign trade companies start like this? The boss will read the salesperson's email and phone records, find out the problem, give guidance, and then stare at the landing. It works well, why not do it?

The boss is the brain of an enterprise. Most bosses do work and review consciously, but they are struggling to cope with various things. Now they can take care of these jobs. At present, the general business foundation of foreign trade enterprises is weak, and there is a lack of business materials. When everyone is rushing forward at full speed, no one wants to stop. Now the epidemic forces you to slow down or even stop. Don't do it now, get busy , another cycle.

Take the overall review as the core business, find out all the problems on the business side, formulate improvement plans, and implement them gradually to avoid inexplicable low-level mistakes caused by low efficiency and high randomness.