Scenario:
When you join a new company, your boss says to you: "Xiao Li, in two or three minutes, tell me how you plan to start your work and boost our company's foreign trade business, considering our company's situation?" How can you explain your work plan to your boss (whether or not he is familiar with foreign trade) to ensure they understand your approach clearly within a few minutes?
Key Points in Applying Mind Maps to Foreign Trade Business
Mind maps can showcase your strong communication skills as they include a clear logical structure.
(I) Identify Key Words
- External Work: This type of work is mostly related to customers and marketing promotion.
- Internal Work: This type of work is mostly related to coordination with factories and freight forwarders.
- Main Products: This type of work is mostly related to the foreign trade staff's knowledge system.
(II) Expand on the Work Nodes Involved in Key Words
- External Work: Marketing Promotion, Customer Development, Customer Management(1) Marketing PromotionMethod: Primarily online marketing, such as building a sales-oriented website.Budget: Cost-effective (under 1000 yuan, negligible compared to B2B platforms).(2) Customer DevelopmentApproach: Actively and precisely search for customers through social networks and Google.Budget: Zero investment.(3) Customer ManagementEstablish a customer relationship management system to keep track of customers and not miss any valuable information.Budget: Around 1500 yuan.
Further expanding on these nodes will give us a mind map of what needs to be done at each node.
- Internal Work: Own Products, Outsourced Production, Import and Export Rights Handling, Coordination with Freight Forwarders
For internal work, pay attention to the following details.
(1) For own products, create a clear price list for easy quotation calculations. Also, coordinate production work and be familiar with the process and details.
(2) If it's outsourced production, it's necessary to screen suppliers and choose the best ones to cooperate with.
(3) Handle import and export rights, develop relationships with several strong freight forwarders to ensure smooth export of goods in the future and reduce freight costs.
- Main Products: Market Research, Competitor Analysis
The work for main products mainly involves determining the right price and market development strategy through sufficient market research and competitor analysis.
(1) Use Google Trends to analyze product search volume and judge potential market conditions. Also, use customs data to identify the top ten countries or regions for your company's product category in terms of exports and obtain import and export data for these countries or regions.
(2) Analyze domestic competitors through domestic B2B platforms.
(3) Analyze foreign competitors through foreign B2B platforms and search engines.
With a mind map, you can clearly express to your boss how you plan to carry out foreign trade work. The boss, looking at the mind map and listening to your explanation, can also clearly see the key nodes of your work, such as what methods you used, what the budget is, whether the cost is high or low, and what he needs to cooperate with you on. Using a mind map, both parties can communicate clearly in two to three minutes, greatly improving work efficiency.