We receive more and more requests (and offers) which are insults to the recipients intelligence. You will see below the circular we received from a major supplier of sugar and commodities but the situation is the same for all products: Dear Sirs
first at all: this is a circular and shows the current general situation and is no complaint about you and your company. So please don’t take this statement personally and don’t send any "clarification" - you are not meant. You receive this email because we have at least one inquiry for food commodity from you and therefore you are in our client database for these commodities. If you wish to get your name removed, let us know.
Statement:
In 2003 and in the ninth year of our company history we have stopped sending pricelists and don’t quote commodities on vague requests anymore. During the last few years the number of brokers have increased rapidly and with them not only identical inquiries (one collects from the other and increases the common commission a bit) but also more and more ridiculous non realistic price requests - together with those who feel insulted if you don’t want to work in vain. For example: Market prices for Wheat could be more than 200 USD/MT it would not detain some brokers asking for 130 USD - but not enough: it should be CNF - means including freight charges - and even more: including 5 USD commission (similar examples can be given for Soybean, Corn und many other commodities).
In future we cannot and we will not check prices anymore, if an inquiry shows no target price - or if this target price will be to low. We will skip all incomplete inquiries, and we will not send pricelists anymore because it is not only waste of time, it generates more useless work, too, because the prices will be used for fishing (catching other brokers) or shopping around or even will be posted on webboards (for that reasons we have not updated the prices on our website since 1999).
Maybe, to many of you it seems no work to check prices and sending out emails - but it is - particularly if you must do this for thousands of people who never will come with an order - and you know that because the conditions in their requests are not realistic or you have seen the same request sent by others a half dozen times already. We all know that at least 999 or 1000 requests never lead to any deal - so why should we put time and effort in requests ignoring the market, and even don`t know it or delegate their work to others - all in a time while a lot of computer users miss to keep clean their computers, so that we must delete more than 100 emails containing virus every single day, anyway, because our address is stored in numerous mailboxes. (Please, in your own interest, take care, that your computer is clean, thanks).
What we will do further on:
We will quote all complete realistic inquiries as far we can - and inform you if we cannot supply.
We will send special offers from own suppliers or those we suppose serious.
The offer below is from a company we know a short time only and have not concluded any deal with yet. But their appearance not only in correspondence but in several personal phone calls, as well their offers seems to be serious - although the price is below the market. They call it a special offer because another client missed to fulfill his part. So if you have a client for this special case, who is in the sugar business, know the market prices and is willing to act fast let us know. After the statement above I hope that I must not mention, not to shop around or place these contracts on webboards. Anyway: it makes no sense, because we have sent it to many clients, so only who is in direct contact with an end buyer has a chance. Furthermore: your commission must be paid by the buyer (as you can see in the contract), who will like to do so if he is a real buyer, because the price for sugar is very very low. Export-Forum & SCAC Network reminder 1. Mandatory conditions to ask for a quotation: see 2. For cereals, wheat flour, rice, sugar, fertilizers, tropical goods, cement ... or machine plants and generally any product or service over 100,000.00 USD, we ask for a a fax confirmation and a L.O.I. and/or a B.C.L. prior ANY corporate offer. 3. For products such tomato paste, A4 photocopy paper, pastas, meat, frozen fish... we shall not reply any more without a target price. 4. For machine plants we shall not provide any contact without a precise request AND a budget see |
