My first job as an international representative

Here comes with my first job in Taiwan as an international representative . Back to the days in university, I majored in Transportation Science. I had taken courses such as international trade practice, marine transportation and had an internship in a forwarder company when I was a senior student. Therefore, I decided to apply a job related to my area.

At first, I applied the vacancy of assistance. Being a fresh man and being honest, I had no experience I told my boss. He said " We will see how the probation goes. Remember, you regard yourself as an assistance, you do assistance's work. But if you regard yourself as a representative, you will do whatever it takes to look like one, right? It's all about attitude." I really appreciate the opportunity he gave me. That's how I became an international representative. Tried to learned as much as I could.

“The only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.”-Steve Jobs

Everything can be fun for a novitiate from big event to little stuff. Here was basically my duty at the time.

Clean and Errand

Keep the office area clean including mopping floor once a week and take out the garbage every two days and definitely Friday, trash can not be left during weekend. B will not be happy attracting mice and cockroaches . (B refers to my boss)

Cleaning was not an issue for me, there were only two people in the office anyway, include me. Oh, yes. Did I mention that B started the company and I was the very first employee. That was a bold decision to join a star-up company but it was the best decision ever.

Except the cleaning, I was responsible for lunch. There are so many lunch stories. Leave them to other pages. All in all, to boss's heart through his stomach; likewise, to client's heart through theirs stomachs, right! That's what I do.

Post Office and Bank

Frequently, I went to mail letters or packages to clients. Or sent documents to banks. You have to pay attention to the relationship with the front desk, and that, my friend, is called strategy, in case you need to cut the line for something urgent or purely don't want to wait. Running errand can learn stuffs too.

Products

To sell your products, homework needed to be done. The company sold rehabilitation products, mostly the front wheel of wheelchair. I took few weeks to study the products and search for the competitors around the world.

Factory

As a new blood in company, you also need to stay close to the factory who provide products to you. Purchasing procedure could drive you crazy. Communication is the bridge to success.

Develop Letter

It all started with reaching out, develop letter was essential. I hadn't written e-mail since elementary school. So I bought all the books and practiced and practiced and practiced. B would check on them before I send them out! Thanks for that. I enjoyed to classify my mail box, seeing all the different countries' label made me satisfied. 😉😉

Cold Calling

Then the most terrifying parts, the cold calling. Maybe it's because B had a barrier of speaking English. I would be the one answering the phone. It's not like I were really good at it. But you just got to try and there were only two people in the office, what else you could do about it. I got some experiences making cold calling when I was an intern. I had made over 100 phone calls a day. It's not the end of the world. I got yelled, hung up even cursed. At the mean time, I also got orders. Some people were nice even just few but they did exist.

Believe it or not! For me, foreigners were much more polite and friendly. Taiwanese just couldn't stand the sales calls anymore; as a result, they reacted terribly. One thing that I couldn't deal with foreigner calls was the accent ! I am sorry for my Taiwanese accent if my clients had a hard time understand. Just like I really couldn't understand a word of my Japanese,Korean or Spanish clients. That's why we loved to write e-mail so much. It was fun in some way. Totally opened my mind.

Exhibition

Some of the fun parts were the exhibitions.You got the chance to meet potential domestic and international buyers. It's not a easy job though, how to design a booth which attracted to eye balls ; how to get further and make good impression on clients and get their information in return. Those were factors to consider. Not to mention stood all day in the high hills which almost killed me. Fortunately, we sold wheelchair at least I could get good price in case I became crippled.

Factory guide for client

One of our client from US came to visit the factory. It was an honor to guide him around. I was much more like an interpreter. As for negotiation, headed back to B. There were lots of meaning between lines that I couldn't handle at the time. The barging, the inclusive, the benefits and so on. B told me, " Different countries' people, you deal with them differently. It's not about race. It's strategy. Also, businessman isn't philanthropist ! They see benefit as priority. You have to know what meaning under the line."

Design and taste

B was a profession designer won lots of awards when he was young. In my view, he was talented and who made arduous efforts. It was another long story of his. Keep it till next article. Therefore, all the charts, formats of letters, even the font of letters in power point were strictly asked in a certain level of clean,neat and ,of course, beautiful. Hoping that B will never read my blog, or all the articles are sending to revise.

On the other hand, we were lucky to be trained and fostered the sense of beauty by B. Yeah, I got a colleague keeping me company after a year. At least, I were not the only one to endure B's quick temper.

Shipping

I remember, after one month of sending develop letters, I got my first inquiry from New Zealand. That was such an encouragement for me. Before long, this cute kiwi made the first order. Fortunately, I was specialized in shipping arrangement, with a bunch of classmates worked in marine carrier, forwarder company and customs clearance agent. With their help, everything got smoothly and conveniently.

Inventory

Check and classify the goods when they arrived. Notice and make purchase when reach to the safety stock quantity.

CRM

Customer relationship management is imperative. I divided clients into parts based on their category. You can classified them from countries,time zone regions, position in supply chain or the products they order,anything, even birth date. The quote and the service could be various at different category. The devil is in the detail. Even the holiday, for example Christmas could be an issue. If you pay attention.

Social Skills

I am never a fan of engaging in social activities, especially alcohol involved. I am okay with close friends. But when it comes to business, I prefer to stay at home. However, our stockholder enjoyed it a lot! If it wasn't that he was kind of senior, more parties would be bring on.

Social Media Management

To respond to the high-tech era, certainly we had to manage our fans pages, social media accounts to get closer to our clients which i indicate to end user. Through developing technology, the divined middlemen of supply chain are disappearing. If you can buy products from manufacturer directly with cheaper price, I doubt that there would be margin space for those in between. It's sad but the transformation is necessary.