- Use your supplier’s first name. Everyone has a name and likes when you use it. Their first name is not “Hi” or “Hello.”
- Suppliers know you are shopping out your quote, just do not make it obvious, got it?
- Don’t bcc your supplier and send the email to yourself. Another obvious sign that you did not only email this one supplier, but again,
- you shopped them out…and did not care how obvious you were at it!
- Even worse are those buyers who do not even have the courtesy to Bcc the supplier but they cc them along with many other suppliers!
- Always have a subject line in your email and make the email subject line relevant. Many suppliers use their inbox as their to-do list and their inbox becomes their ONLY filing system. Do not use in house lingo in your emails, like COP, C&H, FL, and POI. Those do not mean anything outside of Advantus. You need to explain in terms that the vendor understands.
- Copy in as many people as you want; colleagues, 3rd party providers, whoever, but just don’t expect your supplier to understand the reply-all phenomena. The reply-all concept is often overlooked. When to reply-all and when not to is not grasped. Make it your own responsibility to forward the message to the pertinent parties. Be careful who you cc, as they may get a reply from the vendor if they reply to all.
- There is a black hole in front of China that causes many emails not to arrive to suppliers’ inboxes. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that your supplier has 6,843 emails in their inbox and does not categorize anything. Either way, follow-up with your supplier and make sure they received the message. If they are not getting your emails, sending more emails at some point is not following up. Use other methods. Text, call, etc. You do not want to wait 3 days to know they have not seen your email.
- Be mindful of the fact that quite a bit of your email is going to be misunderstood. Chinese suppliers typically read emails in a hurry and not all points are digested. If you provide 5 points for the supplier to comment on, it is common they will comment on a few of the points and ignore the others.
- If some points can wait, hold them until a follow-up email. Putting too many points in a single email will be fruitless unless your purpose is to just let the points hang for a next email copy-and-paste. If you have 10 pending points and if time allows, consider dividing that up into 3 emails, spaced out by a day or so.
- At the same time, you do not want to send new info on a daily basis to your supplier. This will water down the urgency. The supplier will just think you are a “rambler” and will ignore what you are saying. Suppliers hear a lot of noise on a daily basis from potential clients who do not order. Make yourself standout.
- Having the above point in mind, think about the project before you send an email. You want your emails to be the right size, not too long, not too short. You want to avoid multiple email threads flying around. Before you send the email, think of any questions you have and any loose ends you can clear up.
- If you have 10 pending points/questions, see what you can answer yourself. Too often, buyers treat their supplier as if they are Google or a customs database. Do not ask vendors questions that can be answered on your own. Remember, the supplier is not a virtual assistant who has the job of reminding, updating and organizing all of your information.
- Speak in specifics not generalities. Instead of saying: We must hit the delivery time!!!! Say: Please confirm that the goods will leave the factory on May 15.
Instead of saying: Why was the last price cheaper? Say: The quoted price from last week was $2.00 and today’s quote is $2.18 – please explain why there is a difference. You do not want your emails to cause the supplier to have to hunt through their messy files.
15. You want to speak in a “record format” or “start-to-finish” format. You want to look at your own emails as a PATH and a record of fact. Not general questions where both sides can lose the context.
16. Have “calls to action” in your email. Your supplier should be able to read the email in a reasonable timeframe and know exactly what you are asking them to do.
- The supplier should not have to waste time trying to find your KEY POINTS.
- Too many times: the buyer thinks they’ve confirmed “x”, while the supplier is still waiting for buyer to confirm “x”.
In the buyer’s mind and even possibly in their words, they GAVE the
confirmation, but it was not written in a direct, matter-of-fact format.
17. Avoid speaking in a passive format using “filler words”. Speak direct, to the point, again, give clear calls to action.
Instead of saying: Well, we’ve decided that now would be the best time for us to go ahead and to start the samples.”
Say: I give confirmation to START the samples. Please confirm the date the samples will be ready to ship.
18. Do not take silence as agreement or confirmation. If the supplier did not acknowledge the point then it’s very likely they did not comprehend the point or entirely missed the point. This point STILL needs to be confirmed by your side!
19. Keep track of what email points were ignored and resend those points in a follow-up email and inform the supplier that these outstanding points need to be commented on.
20. Avoid abbreviations. Even something like “ASAP” or “EOD”. It likely means nothing to a Chinese vendor. Do you want your supplier scratching their head and wasting time searching for an abbreviation meaning or do you want them
focused on quoting and producing the product?
21. Spell out your dates. May 18 instead of 5/18 as we write or 18/5 as the Europeans write. The Chinese write their dates like 2015/18/05 (understood as 2015年5⽉月15⽇日) – see where the confusion may fall? Write your date out as “May 18.”
22. Avoid in-house speak—company only terms. This may be terminology you use within your own company and use with your teammates. If you use the in-house speak with your supplier it may mean nothing or even worse be visual and verbal clutter that will detract from the key points you need to get across. Eliminate meaningless clutter from your brief/RFQ/wording.
23. Avoid slang, jargon and cutesy phrases. Local speak does not translate well and it will add more clutter to the email, potentially causing the important points to be overlooked. “Y’all,” “for sure,” “you betcha,” and other phrases like that.
24. Never use sarcasm in an email to your China vendor. It will cause misunderstandings and time loss. Even worse, what may be considered as harmless sarcasm from your side may be unprofessional mocking from their point of view.
25. Eliminate emotionally charged language from your emails. You are emailing a supplier not Dr. Phil. Get rid of words like “happy, disappointed, awesome, concerned”. Instead of think in terms of “Samples are confirmed. We confirm this. We do not confirm that. The quality is rejected.” If you receive samples, do not act like a screaming fan who is meeting the Pink for the first time and say, “We ABSOLUTELY LOVE the samples”. How about just saying? “We confirm the samples.” Passion is fine but show your passion in your professionalism and your order volume, not in over-the-top, hyperbolic language.
26. Avoid contractions. Instead of “don’t, can’t and shouldn’t”, use do not, cannot and should not.
27. Repeat the noun instead of using pronouns or try to limit your pronouns. You do not want your supplier spending time trying to figure what “it” refers to. Spend the extra 1 second to retype the word.
28. Repeat words when necessary. When speaking about color, and it could refer to either the material or the logo, do not just keep saying “color”, but clarify, “material color.”
29. Avoid compound sentences or anything that looks like a run-on sentence. Shorten the sentences as much as possible. Do not think you are being unprofessional in doing this. Make new bullet points.
30. Emails to suppliers should not be a stream of consciousness. The supplier is not sitting inside of your mind, understanding all things as you ramble off. Speak in a start-to-finish format. Point A, Point B, Conclusion.
31. The purpose of that start-to-finish format is, is that it will act as a running to-do list between you and the supplier. “You mean I have to make a to-do list for my supplier?” No, you don’t have to, but leaving it up to them… it won’t get done either. This running to-do list also acts as a checklist to ensure that everything you requested was answered/provided/actioned by the vendor.
32. Since, after reading my enlightening tips, you will write points in what I’ve called a “record format” (or to-do list or start-to-finish format), then use BULLET POINTS. Get rid of monstrous paragraphs with run-on sentences. Think “Dick and Jane” short and to the point sentences.
33. At the same time, avoid “cave man grunt” 1 word or 2 word answers. If the supplier asks you a question and even though it may be a “yes or no” question, do not give them a yes or no answer. Qualify your yes or no.
Here is an example of caveman grunt scenario:
Vendor emails you and asks: “See attached color, is this correct?”
Do not answer in a caveman grunt from iPhone: “No, that’s not correct.”
What should you do? Do you want to continue playing a guessing game with the supplier? This kind of 1-word or 1-phrase answer is what causes delays or is what causes the supplier to choose their own route, which will many times be incorrect. The more effective answer would be to say, “the color is not correct” and then show, demonstrate or re-explain the correct color. Pictures are worth 1000 words.
34. List how many attachments and their names that you are putting in the email and have the supplier confirm they received all attachments you are sending. If there is a critical attachment and it falls into the black hole, you will never know, until it is too late. For example, “Attached you will find a picture of the desk and another picture showing the color of the legs and the table top. Three attachments in total.”
Buyer: “Why was that logo not included in the artwork?”
Vendor: “We never received the file.”
35. Have the supplier CONFIRM they can OPEN the attachment(s). Let us say you send critical artwork in a certain file and other pieces of the artwork in other files. The supplier may confirm they received the file but are not able to open it. They may never tell you they could not open it and therefore do not incorporate it into the sample and then you have lost 2 weeks. Also, NO MATTER WHAT A CHINESE VENDOR SAYS, YOUR PRODUCTION START DATE IS NEVER BEFORE THEY RECEIVE FINAL, APPROVED ARTWORK FOR PACKAGING. So do not think the production is going fine while you waste their time not getting the artwork done. When they receive approved artwork
36. Give your attachments proper names. Make sure jpegs you email are not named DSC0114993. Name the files with meaningful names.
37. It’s an email, not a chat. Although it is not always avoidable, try to avoid rapid-firing 1-question or 1-comment emails. Too much back and forth will muddle the thinking of the key points and main topics of the project.
38. Similarly, avoid sending overly lengthy of emails. Emails should be clear, concise, points of direction, not sending the supplier “War and Peace”. If a lengthy description is required, consider putting it into a Word doc and attaching it in the email. This way, the supplier will give the Word Doc. a different degree of importance.
39. Whenever possible, avoid words. Did we just say avoid words? What? How to avoid using words? By using visuals, images, mockups, PDF files with big red arrows pointing to what you want. Key point: Avoid trying to DESCRIBE what you are thinking, instead SHOW what you want.
40. Just like you do not like it when a supplier ignores your questions, do not ignore their questions. Even if the question is unclear, mundane or you feel you have gone over the answer 100 times already—Answer again with patience and clarity. It is our responsibility to make sure the supplier has the right understanding so we don’t get incorrect product.
41. “If any questions, call me”.
If your supplier does not normally call you on the phone, then why say this?
How about, “Confirm if each point is clear. If something is not clear, tell me and I will explain”.
42. Send a “Happy Chinese New Year” email to all your contacts in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. If you want to personalize the email and send it to only one person, that is great. But if you have a huge list of folks it is fine to put all of the contacts in the BCC field. Each year the Chinese calendar has a new animal and therefore a new symbol of prosperity and luck for the coming year. In 2023 the year of the rabbit was ushered in.
43. When you email and discuss pricing talk in terms of US Dollars, abbreviated “US$.”
43) Keep in mind that foreign vendors do not necessarily know about USA holidays. So if we are closed for a holiday like Memorial Day, or even Christmas or New Year’s, put an out of office message on that states why you are out, when your out of office started and when it will end.