Waiting for Windfalls—Big Customer Acquired Through DiDa

Mr. Lin is the director of a blister packaging factory. The outsourcing service of network marketing we provided for him is too common to mention. But the start-up story he shared with me is worth writing about. Now I’d like to tell his success story in the first person：

I’m fond of a story told by my chemistry teacher when I was a kid, saying that Mendeleev, the Russian scientist who discovered the periodic table of elements, eventually deduced the secret formula of explosives by spying on the number of train wagons of different raw materials that entered the warehouse every day at the German explosive factory.

I work in the food packaging industry, and my customers are mainly from large food factories in and around Shanghai. After working as a salesman in a company for ten years, I resigned and started a food-grade blister packaging factory. Since my old boss was my relative, I didn’t take my old customers, which means I had to start from scratch.

I listed out the best-known blister packaging factories in Shanghai with a view to grabbing a few customers from them. At first, I parked near these factories every day, waiting for the delivery trucks to get out. During the waiting, I always communicated with my potential customers on the phone to make full use of the time. When catching sight of a truck coming out of the factory, I would follow it at a distance to see which company it was going to. Ten days later, I made a list of 30 customers and screened out 10 customers related to food. Then I singled out one customer that was suitable for the size of my business (customers of a large scale might turn their nose up at our small factory, and customers of a small scale were not worth working with) according to the product quantity they received as well as their popularity (thanks to years of experience in food-grade blister packaging, I was capable of estimating the value of goods based on the cargo quantity). As we are still working with this customer, we will call him Customer A for the privacy.

Through the tracking for several times, I already knew who the receivers in the warehouse of company A were. There was a cafeteria in the company, but the warehouse staff would sometimes go to diners near the factory for lunch. I had just set up my company and didn’t have many things to do. So I often parked my car next to the restaurant waiting for an opportunity. According to my years of experience, I didn’t rush to the purchasing department for cooperation, because I knew I would have been rebuffed.

At last, one day, I saw several workers of the warehouse go to a small diner together. I went in as well and sat next to them. I ate individually, catching what they were talking about. When it was about time, I went to the cashier quietly and said, “I’ll pay for the meal of the table next to me.” After paying the bill, I went out without saying anything.

I had planned to invite them to several meals before making them acquaintance. But unexpectedly, when I sat in the same restaurant for the second time, one of the workers recognized me. So I rushed over to greet everyone, handed them cigarettes, and added two more plates of food. Over the meal, I expressed my wish, that is, to become their supplier of blister packages.

Like the old saying goes, gifts blind eyes. Because of the last treat, they started to give me leads and names of their main purchasers, but they didn’t gave me the contact information of these people. I knew their warehouse supervisor, Mr. B, must have the contact information of the purchasers, so I asked for Mr. B’s phone number and promised to keep in touch.

Usually, when salesmen dealt with public relations, they rarely contacted low-level workers of the customer’s company. But I didn’t think so. The warehouse staff was also an important part of public relations. As long as our same-level staff (drivers or inspectors) showed some kindness, they would be very willing to assist us. I just put this work in advance. According to the last conversation, I learned that Mr. B had a three-year-old daughter. My factory happened to be packaging products for a toy factory, so I took some toys and sent them to him. He was very happy upon receiving them. Then it became natural to ask him for dinner alone. Over drinking, he told me two pieces of very important information. One was that they were going to change the purchaser of package material, and the other was that the quality of one type of blister package was not stable. When the new purchaser took office, the success rate of approaching him or her would be higher. If we could launch a better product than the one with unstable quality, we would be very likely to be their qualified supplier.

After the dinner with Mr. B alone, we added each other as friends on QQ, and he promised that once the new purchaser came to office, he would send me his or her contact information right away.

One day after half a month, Mr. B sent me on QQ the phone number of Ms. C who was the new purchaser. At first, I didn’t know whether I should contact her directly for business by phone, or later when I had figured out the situation. Finally, I decided to follow her after work first to get a sense of her preferences. So I asked Mr. B to tell me the license plate number of Ms. C’s car.

Different from the last time I followed delivery trucks in the morning, it was near the after-hours. I parked my car on the route which must be passed bystuffs of company A. When Ms. C’s car showed up, I followed. On the first day, she only went to a cake shop to buy some desserts. On the second day, I saw her meet her husband, and went to the promotion site of an off-road car 4S store. Her dinner was the buffet prepared by the 4S store. It seemed that she was fond of desserts. The third and fourth days were weekends when Ms. C was off work. So I spent the two days gathering information on famous Western dessert restaurants in Shanghai and learning knowledge about off-road vehicles (because I didn’t know either of them).

The fifth day was Monday. I dialled the number of Ms. C’s office at around 4 o’clock, which I supposed was the least busy time for purchasers, highlighted that we only focused on food packaging and specialized in solving packaging problems. Maybe impressed with the two points, or maybe she wanted to find suppliers on her own, she invited me to the company for a further talk. Our first communication went smooth. She took out the product with unstable quality and asked if we could address the problem. I said yes immediately, and delivered to her the sample in half the normal sampling time, which surprised her a lot. Actually, when I engaged with Mr. B, the warehouse supervisor, I was already working on this product and had finally solved the quality problem.

The next step was to arrange a tour of my factory for Ms. C. I rented the off-road vehicle she liked to pick her up. All through the drive, we kept talking about the performance of the car. Although the factory was not big, it was newly built with good internal and external environment. In addition, it had passed QS certification, which was in line with the requirements of food packaging, so she was very pleased. After the factory tour, I arranged for dinner at a carefully selected Western restaurant, so that she could enjoy the desserts as she wanted.

Now company A is working with us, and the order volume is gradually increasing.

I have long since stopped selling products by myself. Whenever new salesmen are recruited, I will tell them this start-up story. Sometimes they will also follow the lead.

One of my employees, Wang, even had the tracking keeping with the times. He obtained a big customer through DiDa, a kind of carpooling software. Company D was also a big food factory in Shanghai. For many years we didn’t get the chance to make contact with them, so I tried to leave the task to Wang. He liked to use DiDa to pick up passengers while commuting or negotiating business outside. One day he was at the gate of Company D, so he checked the passenger orders on DiDa. It so happened that someone from the factory needed a lift. Though the person was not a factory employee, he still revealed some information during communication. After that, Wang paid special attention to orders from Company D, whether the passengers were going to depart from the company or were going to the company. Finally, one day, he ran into Ms. F, a finance person in Company D (a carpool fan who had more than 100 carpool records), and they had a very good time talking. After that time, Wang followed Ms. F’s account on DiDa. As long as Ms. F placed a carpool order, the platform would inform Wang right away. As a result, Wang learned a lot about the inside scoops of Company D. What’s more, with the help of Ms. F, he got to know the purchasing assistant who carpooled together, and eventually became the supplier of Company D.

Summary:
Tracking is an important way to gather business information. On today’s business battlefield, more information in hand holds the key to getting more big customers easily.
Suggestions:
Tracking also comes at a cost. With the help of newest tools like DiDa, the cost can be minimized.
Tracking is like walking a fine line. Stay on the right side of it, or you might go for wool and come home shorn.
Creating an “unanticipated” encounter after the tracking to realize “friends first, business later” is the most ideal way.


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