During my 3 years' working experience, I have the same feeling with most of sales when doing business with foreign buyer, if there's a chinese assistant beside him, whomever the person is his partner or just a translate, the order is very difficult to close. Simply put it, the chinese person is a big trouble and he always do something to obstruct your business.
I've experienced too much of these events, the first time I encountered this situation at the end of 2007, one of my customers from Ukraine came to visit our factory with great interest, because he can't speak English, he employed a Chinese translate who can speak Russian language, before they came, the translate who is a woman called me and told me that she is our customer's partner in China, and they have business all the time, the customer imported many products by her company, and she took care of his chinese business. I knew from my customer's simple email that she was just a translate, why did she told me so much about her relation with my customer? At last, the woman requested me to give her 2% commission, it's the point! When the customer came to our company and negotiate with us, she repeat the commission again and again, the meeting is successfully except the woman's participation. After the customer left, the woman called me to copy the email to her and don't forget her commission, but I know from my customer that he never mention this woman again after visiting our factory, i realized that the woman is nobody but a translate, from then on, I didn't copy any email to her and didn't contact with her anymore. We had happy cooperation with the customer later, but the woman left me an impression that Chinese are so greed, she earn the salary from my customer, but asked for commission from us, the commission would increase the price of our products and it's very bad to our customer. But she didn't care about that, she only care about her benefit.
This year, I encountered two events which hurt my heart so much, this May a USA customer named Max planed to visit our factory for the snowboard binding business, Max has snowboard partner in Ningbo, and he did business with this this factory many years, his chinese schedule was made by his partner, he told me the rough schedule and I know there's enough time to come to our factory, I contacted with his partner and knew from her it's OK, but at that day, I knew from his partner that he had no time to come to our factory. I thought later that his partner must worried his visit would affect his business with her, because Max purchased snowboard from her company, and she knew well that we also have our snowboard partners, if Max got some information from us, it would be very bad for her, maybe Max would take our partner for reference, or list it as potential partner. To avoid these future problem, she messed the schedule and we missed the meeting with MAX.
Followed by this event, a radiator customer came to China for the first time and show great interest to our radiator stock and would like to meet us, he also have chinese partner who help purchase products for him for many years, we confirmed many things before he came, and his schedule was arranged by his partner too. This chinese man bought radiator from nearby city at a higher price, but he emphasized that the quality is very nice and had no claim all the time, I ensured him that we own the same or better quality with his provider and much better price, he agreed with us and promised to come to our factory. But this customer still didn't come until he left China, the chinese man told me the customer left in advance because of body problem, he was not suitable of Northern weather, but in my option, the customer must heard something from him. This man told me that he purchase for this customer many years and didn't encounter quality problem, if our products has quality problem in future, it may affect their cooperation,it's not good for his business in future.
Find someting from my stories? This is chinese.
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