How to Find Buyers For Export

The single biggest question that I’m consistently asked is, “how to find buyers for my exports?”. 

This really is the $64,000 question and one that until now, had no simple answer.  It was a matter of networking, cold calling, door-to-door visiting retailers and wholesalers, trying finding the right contact within a company or selling online to end customers through your own website or a platform like Amazon, (which by the way are all still tried-and-tested, proven to be successful ways to find buyers but they’re time consuming and you need thick skin for the rejection that your going to be faced with).

Well, now it’s different…

Updated: How to Find Buyers for export in 2024

7 Ways to Find Buyers:

1. Using the latest software to search and find buyers of your product
2. Test The Market With Retailers Such as Ebay, Amazon and Etsy
3. Google Search for “Wholesalers of {My Product} UK”
4. Kompass Wholesale Business Directory
5. Contact National Embassy’s
6. Contact Chambers of Commerce
7. Find and Research Facebook Groups

Use the Latest Cutting Edge Software

I’ve discovered an online platform that, from the comfort of your office chair, you can literally search for buyers of your product, see order amounts, see the company that ordered the products and see contact emails and phone numbers. 

Had I have had this system 30 years ago, how it would have changed my fortunes, saved me countless days driving around in the rain not to mention the savings on parking tickets!

So, to see for yourself what I’m talking about, check out our latest YouTube video: 

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Before You Start, Don’t Forget…Market Research

It’s very wise to spend time researching the market for your export in various countries and areas before you take the leap. Ask questions on forums, Facebook and live focus groups and any other ways of getting some opinions from local people. This will be valuable as you can’t beat the feedback from local people who live and work in your target area. Asking about pricing and even product opinion can be very beneficial feedback.

Golden Tip: Don’t ask your mum, grandma, partner, family and friends what they think of your new product(s) because they all want to see you do well, encourage you and give you positive feedback so it’s hard for the people that love you to be 100% honest with you and tell you that your idea is a bad idea, they don’t want to hurt your feelings.

YouTube: Finding Buyers and Closing the Deal

In the YouTube video below, Alan Bracken, offers a more hands on approach with practical advice for finding buyers for export and best tips on how to close the deal, reviewing his 35+ years of experience and hundreds of deals that he’s been involved with.

Do It Yourself

With so many websites now online that allow you to sell your own products, why not consider listing your products? The biggest and most well known are Ebay, Amazon and AliExpress and as they’re international this is a great place to start. Register an account and add your products to these sites and see if you place any orders. If you do, you can be more confident about demand for your product in that country or area.

There are many smaller but well known sites online that specialise in smaller retailers and handmade goods such as Etsy and NotOnTheHighStreet. A small amount of research for your target country I’m sure will reveal others.

Best Practice

If you take this approach, it’s worth spending some time studying the best practices for listing your products so that you can take full advantage. For example, make sure photos of your products are well lit and show enough detail. Take photos from various angles so potential buyers can clearly see all of the product and consider even developing a short promo video. Write a descriptive title and description and answer any of the most common questions about the product so users don’t have to contact you and wait for a reply in order to get the answer to their question. When they’re ready to buy, you want to make sure there are no obstacles in the way and they “Buy Now”.

Customer Service

Make sure you offer an excellent level of customer service. Answer questions promptly, when you have your confirmed orders, ship your goods quickly and don’t delay. Update the customer with shipping and tracking codes so they can keep track of where the delivery is. Zappos has sold over a billion dollars in shoes and it built this off the back of excellent customer service. There is a lot to learn from Zappos and how they made customer service their priority and in return their customers gave them loyalty.

We All Read The Reviews

In return for great customer service, ask for a favorable review which are obviously important for credibility. This gives your next potential customer confidence, not just in your product but your service. With some good reviews, they may not hesitate to click the “Buy” button.

Bringing It Together For Wholesale Export

Once you’ve sold some products and built up a base of customers and good reviews you can use this to a second advantage. Contacting wholesalers and having a credible track record can be a big advantage. To be able to say that you’re already selling your products in the local market reduces risk to the wholesaler. If you can say that you’ve already sold “X” number of products in their country and you have “X” number of positive reviews that your potential wholesaler can verify, this is a great way to begin a pitch of your products and will no doubt get the attention of both wholesalers and retailers.

This begs the next question of how to find wholesalers and retailers for your products?

Google Search

It may sound obvious but Google as we know is the king of search so start here. For example, if you are exporting rugs or carpets from Turkey, perform a Google search on “rug wholesalers in UK”.

You’ll get plenty of wholesalers that you can contact and see if you can generate any interest in your products. Wholesalers received many emails and calls, being offered products all the time, so try and stand out from the crowd. A well written email, with clear and professional photos of your products is a good start. We will write another blog on the best approach to contacting buyers and wholesalers.

Follow The Kompass

Kompass is an online business to business directory, with more than 20 million companies, in 70 different countries. This is a great business resource and have a good chance of finding buyers for your exports within its listings. The information is not free and you have to buy lists of companies but the contacts are a great place to start.

National Embassy’s

This is more of an old school approach but still relevant. National Embassy’s want to promote trade between their country and the world and are there to help create these links. Contacting the commercial section of a country’s embassy and asking if they can provide you with a list of wholesalers of your export product is well worth doing.

This also works in reverse, if you are looking to source particular products from a country, contacting the embassy of that country is a good idea. For example, some years ago, we had an entrepreneur looking to source pine furniture to import to the UK and sell. He contacted the Cypriot embassy in London, where he was based and asked if they could help. Cyprus has many pine trees and is well known for its furniture so this was an obvious place to source. The embassy was happy to help and promote its exports and give a list of reputable and well established factory wholesalers and our entrepreneur went on to negotiate some great deals and setup a successful business.

Chambers of Commerce

Chambers of Commerce (e.g. British Chamber of Commerce) are another good resource to make contact with, much like national embassy’s. The Chambers want to promote international business and commerce and have close links with many industries and companies in local areas. They can offer advice and help and often support businesses by offering training so are able to certainly push you in the right direction.

We recently wrote an blog on how to sell globally from your own website so we won’t go into any detail on this avenue in this blog but there are plenty of other ways to find buyers for exports to think about.

Import Export Training Course Online

If you’re looking to break into international trade as a career or setting up your own business, ABTS® Training offers online import export courses, taught with a series of pre-recorded videos. Study at your own pace, no deadline to finish and lifetime access to your course.

Our courses teach you the practical knowledge you’ll need to know to trade successfully, confidently whilst maximising your profits. Taught by Alan Bracken, with 35+ years of commercial experience in logistics, he skips all the theory you’ll never need to know but teaches you the practical side of how to move your goods around the world.

We were voted Best Trade Education Provider in 2017 by Trade Finance Global and our course has been validated by the London Institute of Shipping and Transport.

Check out our reviews on TrustPilot to see just how our courses have benefited our students.