Find buyers/suppliers for your export import business (Best Methods)
Updated at 02.04.2023
For most of the new exporters and importers, the biggest issue is, how to find international buyers for their goods. How to get export orders and genuine buyers?
You may have a brilliant import-export business idea. Or you may have found a highly profitable import-export business opportunity and a great product with a great price, but still, this is not enough to make money in the import-export business. Untill you don’t know how to find buyers for your export-import business.
This question is very valid because your export business success will depend on it. Also, it’s important how fastly you can solve this question. Sometimes speed is very important because the prices for various products depend on the world market prices. World market prices are not stable. Sometimes the more you wait, the more you will lose money, because your stock may lose its value.
Related article: Biggest risks in export-import business and solutions.
On the other hand, for people from developed countries, let’s say from Europe, the USA, and the UK, it’s important to know, how to reach to reliable suppliers in developing countries for their import business.
Even though there are a lot of different options out there for reaching out to potential buyers, it’s still hard to select the best options for you. People also don’t know, how to use those methods properly, to get sincere buyers for their export-import business.
So we decided to write what are the best viable options nowadays to find buyers and reach to potential customers. We will also explain how and when you can use particular options.
Before we go further and handle every option, I would point out, that there are still two main ways, how to find and reach out to the buyers and suppliers for your export and import business.
There are online methods and offline methods to find buyers and also suppliers.
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Offline methods for finding buyers/suppliers for Exim business
Are traditional ways, which include more real work and require meetings, networking and traveling. Those ways are also more expensive and time-consuming. Still, usually, those can give you good results and can bring you long-term and reliable partners for your export/import business.
It is still a very viable option for finding business partners nowadays. Especially great for the ones who love networking and meet different people.
Online methods for finding buyers/suppliers for exim business
The online world gives a lot of new options for how to search buyers for your goods of exports and get more export orders. Those methods are also fast, trough the internet, you will get more contacts, but the quality of the contacts can vary a lot.
There is a wide choice of different online methods what you can use to search buyers for export and the possibilities grow fastly. Most of the online methods are still not very reliable. These may not give good results because the internet is still full of unreliable people. In online its not easy to make sure of is the buyers sincere or not.
How do we use online and offline ways to find and validate buyers
From our experience, I would suggest using both: online and offline methods.
The best way to reach to successful cooperation is to combine both ways. We usually start with online methods to find/search buyers and buy requests and make a list of potential partners ( sellers or buyers) with their contact details.
Secondly, we will communicate with the potential partners online and sift out the most promising contacts whom we will work further.
Finally, we will fly for a business trip and meet the potential suppliers or buyers by ourself. It’s always smart to have many potential partners in the same location, so in the case, if it didn’t work out with one we meet first, then we can meet another one as well.
We have a case study about importing from China, where we show exactly, how we visit and validate suppliers in real life. We suggest you read that case study as well, importing from China -how we made 100,000 USD with only 6 months in the export-import business.
So we would suggest using online methods to search buyers for to get the raw-list of potential partners. Secondly, use some traditional ways to meet the people in real life and make sure you have found the right partner.
Note: Before, you learn, how to find buyers for your goods, it is crucial to learn also about export marketing. Export marketing will give you a clear understanding, who are your buyers, why and how to approach to them
So, let’s now look now some of the best methods you have nowadays for reaching out to the buyers and suppliers for your export and import business.
Find buyers/suppliers online for export-import business
Before we look closely, how to find international buyers for your export business, we want to highlight something for you. In online, some people are offering buyer lists for you against some fee. We warn you, that you should never purchase any buyers lists online. Purchasing buyers list is the easiest way to get rid of your money!
Now, let us look at the realistic ways, how you can really find buyers for your goods of export.
Online Marketplaces to find buyers
There exist a lot of online platforms ( marketplaces) where export and import companies are listing their products and trying to reach out to buyers. I would suggest starting with the biggest platforms, like Alibaba, Indiamart, Tradekey, go4worldbusiness. There is no point to participate in too many of them. It’s enough when you are listed in the biggest one – Alibaba.
However, it is important to know, that competition in such platforms are becoming tenser every year. This means, that newbies have a hard time to “stand out from the crowd” because let’s face it, most companies are looking for a long time established suppliers.
But there are still possibilities for newbies if you are doing things in the right way. It’s important to create a nice company page and add nice pictures and make your site (inside the platform) looks professional. Then you will be rank higher inside the marketplace search engines for your products. Inside the online marketplaces there exist similar rules like in search engine like google – you need to publish quality content, then you will be ranked higher.
Secondly, it’s very important, you just don’t have a free account in some online marketplace. Nobody won’t take free members seriously anymore. In Alibaba you can have a gold membership, which is enough for you, to get a serious supplier and buyers for your international export import company.
Because Alibaba is the leading platform for exporters/importers and having a lot of experiences with it, then I would explain to you some main features in Alibaba.
1. ALIBABA – The biggest online marketplace
Alibaba is a great place searching for buyers or suppliers for your export-import company. No matter you operatexport-importt import merchant or export import agent or broker. But you need to know how to use it properly, it is a complex tool
The longer you had been the gold member in Alibaba, then the higher you will rank and the easier it is for you to get serious partners through Alibaba. Longer you stay there, the easier it is for you to find buyers and get export orders.
Being in Alibaba with one of my company as a gold member more than 4 years, I can confirm, it’s true. The longer you stay there as a paid member, the more companies start to contact you. Also, as a gold member, you will get regular support from Alibaba customer support team. They will give you free advice, how you can improve your rank to catch more clients and more export orders.
The second very important thing in Alibaba is that as a gold supplier, you can get access to the direct buyers and make offers through Alibaba. This is probably the biggest advantage of having the gold membership. This allows you to give an offer to the buyers and start communicating with them. Below you can see the buying request for “Indian jewelry” example. There is 108 buying request for this product and you can give them your offer!
So, Alibaba is a great place for getting your first contacts of the potential buyers or suppliers for your exim business. But you need to have at least basic gold membership and you need to build up professional mini-site inside the Alibaba.
All the online marketplaces are working on the same way. Indiamart- the biggest Indian trading platform works similarly. The main difference is, that in Alibaba, there are mostly Chinese suppliers and in Indiamart, there are mostly Indian suppliers.
2.TRADEKEY
has one main difference, the Tradekey has a more personal approach to their members. If you are the paid member of Tradekey, then you can use the possibility, that someone of their customer support will start to source the buyers for you. You will tell them what kind of buyer or supplier you are looking for. They will source that for you, from the database. So they have a more personal approach and “human touch” compared Alibaba or Indiamart
If you are looking to find and search buyers or suppliers from Europe, then I would also consider Europages.
Europages is a platform which includes mostly European companies, its great chance for people who are looking to expand their business to Europe.
3. GO4WORLDBUSINESS
Go4world business – This is a relatively new platform and this has the option, that you can make some offers to the direct buyers for free. You just register there and you can search buyers for export, using search and then you can submit the offer through the portal.
This is becoming very popular recently in new export and import companies because it is very easy to use. More and more trading companies are using it to get more international buyers and export orders for their business.
If you want to search some buyers for export totally free, then you can do limited searches there free of cost.
You can see the screenshot below, you can find buyers or supplier directly from the search for a particular product. You can contact with few of them without registering.
Below I made sample search for jewelry. I found a lot of international buyers for jewelry from there.
4. Europages.com
If you are looking to sell your products to the European market, the Europages include mostly European companies. You can make an account there, list your products and get buyers details. But to enjoy the premium features, like giving an offer for the buyers and buy request, you need to register as a paid user.
The system is similar to Alibaba has, just it is much smaller and focuses on European suppliers.
As a conclusion about trade platforms, I suggest starting with the one, you like most and have a paid account there and start collecting buyers information from there.
It’s a long time investment, the longer you stay there, the more customers you will get. Their searching algorithm will place you higher in the search year by year. And if you are communicating with suppliers or buyers there, I always suggest, prefer only the gold suppliers and verified members, don’t waste your time with free members.
4. Expert portals and freelance portals to find buyers and partners
Expert portals and freelance portals are booming now. More and more people are looking for the new ways, how to work and make money online. Those portals are also great places from where you can find buyers or partners for your export import business. I would suggest freelancer.com and upwork.com.
4.1.Freelancer.com
What you as a business owner can do is, that you can find sourcing agents through those portals. Sourcing agents can search the buyers or suppliers for you, in different countries. What you should do, is to post a project in some of those portals. You can post something like ” Source me a buyer in Germany” then people are starting to give you their offers.
Finally, you can choose which person you would like to work with and what are the requirements. In Freelancer.com you can also make the payments to the sourcing agents through the portal.
You can pay only if the person made a good job for you. Using this kind of portals, it’s easy to get a list of verified potential buyers. You can also let the sourcing agent “dig deeper” and make sure that the companies are serious and willing to buy the product what you are offering. Why not let the sourcing agent contact the buyer and let them issue a signed confirmed purchase order or letter of intent (LOI) to you.
Sourcing agents can source the buyer or supplier for you, also they can do other necessary things for you. As an example, helps you communicate with local suppliers in the local language.
You can see the screenshot below, inside freelancer.com, there is a special category for buyer sourcing.
4.2 Upwork.com
This is the analog of the freelancer.com. There are similar features like the freelancer.com has, so we won’t stop on this.
4.3. Clarity.fm
Similar to the freelance portals, there exist also expert portals, like Clarity.fm. This is a platform, where experts all around the world are selling their consultation. You can book a call with the experts there. You can also find the sourcing service providers from there. This is also a great place where you can make great connections for your future business. It’s possible to find business partners or even investors from there.
If you want to expand to different countries, then those places are great places to find great contacts which can be very beneficial to your export import business. Not only for looking buyers for your business, but you can even get investors from there.
As a conclusion, the expert and freelance portals can be one of the cheapest ways to find the buyers in some specific country. It’s important you are making sure the person who you choose is also reliable and able to do the job you request.
5. Social media to find buyers and new connections
Social media in one of the best ways to reach to the wide range of companies and key persons all around the world. For you as an importer or exporter, its viable option to participate in different social media groups. Linkedin, twitter, facebook all they have inner groups related with the import-export in general and also more specific groups around some particular products. In linkedin alone for import-export there exist more than 2200 groups!
5.1.Linkedin free groups for finding buyers for your exim business
Below you can check screenshot about how many export-import related groups there really are. And pay attention, how many users there are. These are the places where suppliers and buyers are looking at each other.
If you want to reach to the overseas buyers, then it’s useful to join some of the groups what seems to fit your product(s).Most of the groups are free to join and you can post there. It’s important to understand, that if you want to get people notice your offers and posts, then you should post there regularly, many times per day.
5.3. Use Linkedin Salesnavigator possibilities
Fortunately, there is a perfect tool for very salesperson and this is called Linkedin Sales Navigator. It costs about 50 USD per month, but it gives you tremendous opportunities and possibilities to find news leads. You can search the companies you are particularly interested in ( your target group), then you can see who are the decision makers ( the right contacts) and then you can send a private message to these selected person trough the Sales navigator. Based on our experiences the response rate is higher compares to cold emailing. This tool is probably the one of the best option for your export business to find new customers leads.
5.4. Facebook free groups for finding a buyer for your export product
The Facebook has also all kinds of groups. Facebook includes more entertainment than Linkedin. But there are also serious groups, where suppliers are looking buyers and backward. it is important to note, that in Facebook there is much more noise, so you need to be more active there to stand out from the crowd.
To find suitable facebook groups, you can type into search something like this: “product X export import groups” and see what is coming up.
5.5. Social media paid adds
If you have more resources, then all main social media platforms has the paid-ads option. You can choose the kind of people or companies what you are going to target and you can customize your ads to them directly.
You can use filters and choose people by their interests, location, age etc.
Using paid ads can give you more leads ( contacts). But if using the paid ads, you should also have something to collect your leads. You should use a landing page and opt-in forms and email marketing software.
As a conclusion, Social media is one of the cheapest options out there to reach to the wide range of people in your target market. But remember, only about 5% of the people in your group will notice your posts, so you need to post regularly. Nowadays more and more export import companies are promoting their products in social media groups, this has become a part of the export marketing.
6. SEO and PPC to find buyers directly from search engines
These methods are great If you have more resources and you are ready to invest in your webpage and content creation. Methods like this are only useful if you are selling something that people are actually looking from Google or from other main search engines. SEO and PPC can give you lot of customers and leads, in the long run.
Ranking in google takes time and the best option to get good rank in google for certain keywords ( related to the product) what people are looking for, is to create quality content regularly and improve your SEO. If you are a beginner, then those tasks may be overwhelming to you, so you can reach out to some freelancers or companies who can help you with this.
This method is something, that export-import entrepreneurs usually are not using, because they don’t know, how to do it properly.
So, In this article, I won’t cover, how you should deal with SEO or PPC because those are very wide topics. Here I want to inform you about the potential it offers to you. In future, if its right time you, then can start taking advantage of these options too.
The potential of SEO and PPC for getting buyers and leads
SEO ( search engine optimization) gives you the “natural” rank in google, so people can find your website in google if they type some specific keyword into Google. The PPC can rank you into the first page of the google with selected keywords immediately if you pay for this. PPC can give you the immediate results, but it costs you money per each click.
Either SEO or PPC you need to have a website, landing pages or opt-in forms where you are going to direct the traffic you caught from search engines. Then you need to be able to collect those leads ( usually emails) and start communication with your prospects to convert some of them real customers of you.
SEO and PPC both are great options if you are selling something that people are searching for Google, example consumer products. If you are dealing with something that people are not looking for google ( maybe they search it only from online marketplaces), then PPC and SEO are not very helpful.
As a conclusion, the online methods are affordable for most of the people who want to find buyers or suppliers for their export-import business. But remember, the contacts what you are getting online maybe not so reliable, you need to dig deeper. You need to make sure the real person behind the contact is sincere and really willing to do the cooperation.
Find buyers/suppliers offline
1. Expos and trade fares for export-import companies
The old-fashioned way, how to reach to potential buyers or suppliers in your niche or sector and find buyers. This option is a good fit if you are already a long-time established entrepreneur and have more resources. There are two ways, how to take advantage of the trade fairs.
1.1.Participate as a visitor.
You can visit the trade fares and basically just collect visit cards and create connections. This is a good option if you are looking partners for cooperation or you are looking for the suppliers. Visiting ticket is also not very expensive. If you are going to visit some trade show or expo, then it’s better do not to it alone. Do it with some friend, who help you. World-famous expos are taking place on the very big territory and alone it’s sometimes hard to notice everything and collect all the needed contacts.
1.2. Participate as an attendee.
Here you need to set up your own team to attend the expo. It can be quite costly, you also need to carry the samples of the products and other things necessary. Also usually the ticket for attending the expo is quite pricey. This option is thinkable if you are looking sincere foreign buyers for your products and you are a well-established company. This is definitely not for the newbies export import companies. As an attendee, you need to plan it properly, you need to have a plan and team and resources for it. You need to think very clearly what you want to get out from this expo for your company. You need to plan how you are going to make it.
Basically, all trade-fares and expos are like very busy marketplaces where very targeted and seriously interested companies and people are attending. If you use just a marketplace or online marketplace, then there you can see all kinds of people, also lot of scammers.
In Expos and trade shows are places where only serious people are attending because it’s too costly for “average joe” to attend there.
There are a lot of different expos going on in the biggest cities. Asia and China are very famous for expos. It is smart to google and to find the one that best fit for you.
As conclusion, from expos, you can really get high-quality contacts of serious companies and find buyers, but the cost of getting them can be also high.
You can find some expos, what you like from here
2. Discovery trip
This is also an old-school way of how to find buyers or suppliers. Having great experiences with this I would also cover this and explain what the good and bad sides of this.
Best side for this method is that you can find serious buyers and sellers with good price. It’s possible to find local suppliers or buyers who are maybe not so informed about the world prices jet. Also, it’s a great way to expand your network and get more personal connections for your export/import business. During this kind of “adventure,” you will also get more new business ideas, because usually if you are in the strange country you will notice something that may present you a new business opportunity.
The bad side is that it’s time-consuming and requires some resources. If you are seriously looking to find some suppliers or buyers, then you should use the chance to visit as many local companies as possible, I think you should reserve at least 1-month for this kind of trip.
I usually have some contacts from Alibaba at first. Secondly I use a help of a friend from that country where I am going. I ask my friend to help me find more local suppliers or buyers and I please my friend there be my guide. You should definitely pay to your friend there because he/she help you.
It’s a great way to find suppliers and buyers for your exim business, usually every time I return from a discovery trip, I have a lot of new ideas and contacts. I always visit many countries, below is my catch from one of my business trip to the southeast Asia countries. I went there to find different suppliers and meet some key people for my further business.
As conclusion, this is a great way to find high-quality contacts, find buyers and build up the personal network and discover new business opportunities. This method requires, that you have time and resources and you have someone in the target country who will help you.
3. International chambers of commerce
The traditional way for finding serious business partners, but this option is suitable for big players. Chambers of commerce will ask sometimes quite a high fee and they are interested to work with serious and well-established companies. National chambers of commerce are using their own database. They also connect with other organizations and other chambers, to find reliable partners for you.
Chambers of commerce are usually government or state-owned organizations.
This method is great if you are already well established and you have a big supply capacity.
So, this is not for small merchants and export agents.
There are different kinds of chambers out there. Every country has a national chamber of commerce and then there exist big chamber which includes all the smaller ones. In Europe, there exist Eurochambers.
- Eurochamber is the European leading organization which includes:
- 43 European countries
- 1,700 regional and local chambers
- 20,000,000 businesses
For national chambers or commerce, there exist good alternative, the ICC. International chamber of commerce is the business organization which has also local chambers in almost every country. They are offering similar services like national chambers.
4. Using connections to get buyers for your goods of export
Traditional networking for finding buyers for your business is sometimes very valuable. Especially if you had been in business some time already and working with different people. Maybe you know some key person in some company which is dealing in the same industry or the same product like you?
Maybe they know who would be interested in your products?
I think people tend to underestimate using their connections…
If you can get someone recommending you to some other company, then you have already advantage. The recommender is also building your reputation in the eyes of this company. This will raise the opportunity for successful cooperation for you and gives you a good starting point.
I would challenge you to think a little bit, do you know someone in the similar industry like you are or you know someone who may know someone?
This is a great way to find buyers, suppliers, partners and buyers for your export-import business, if you are from some of these countries where personal connections have big power. I mean countries like China, India and Asian countries in general.
Conclusion about finding, and validating buyers for your trading business
In a conclusion, to start a successful import-export business, it’s smart to use both, online and offline methods for searching and finding buyers. I would suggest to search buyers online and collecting a list of potential partners’ contacts and then moving further and meeting some of the most promising ones in the real life. Of course, there is a long way to go.
If you want to learn in more depth, how to find buyers for your goods of export and how to close the orders, then we have a comprehensive premium SALES MASTERY ONLINE COURSE. In that course, we are walking you through step-by-step from each stage of the sales. Starting from mapping your ideas to customers to finding leads and ending with offering, negotiations, influencing methods and closing the orders. You can register for that program at the link: SALES MASTERY ONLINE COURSE.
We also give instructions there, how to talk with buyers, so they are most likely willing to buy from. You can check our export-import online courses and training programs.
Also, for seriously interested people, we have an export import mentoring. If you are interested, then first, you should fill out an application for export-import business mentoring.
If you want to learn how to start your own export-import business online or offline, then we have online courses and programs which will give you the instructions to start an international business either as an agent or direct merchant – from scratch. We have also tools and resources for exporters/importers which help you to grow and expand your business and get more customers and raise profitability.
You are advised to take courses and use the resources ad tools listed below:
- Export/import agency business course (start as an agent from scratch)
- Export-import business courses and programs
- Most popular online exim course: “Zero to first deal“
- Resources and action plan for exporters/importers, online sellers.