Slow Sales Coming

My head of sales in China has assessed our sales process as being too slow. He urges us to be much faster in our responses to customer requests because, and I quote, that if the sales process takes too long (say more than a month in total) there are risks that:

“1. the factory is bankrupt.
2a. the main technical buyer went to another company
2b. the main technical buyer is in jail or fired or changed position.
2c. the new guy who takes this position doesn’t like our tool.
3. the factory has the reduction of the capacity plan and decide to cut the funding.
4. The technical buyer changed his mind.”

How can this work you might ask? With complete lack of apparent logic (nothing in there about the IRR on purchase right?) in their purchasing process how in the world can they ever out-compete us smarties in the West?

It works because all their suppliers are ‘good enough’, except some of the Chinese ones who figure out how to be better when their customers spit the dummy.

The internal chaos within these Chinese manufacturers is just part of the process whereby they keep their costs down.

I sometimes get the feeling that the factories run themselves and the Chinese that wander in and out of them are just there for entertainment value.

And the Chinese would never consider making artisan jeans that cost $5000. Although if they took off they could probably copy them with a $1 cost base.

I’m not sure who’s got the problem here.