I just finished reading the International Trade
Administration’s Trade Finance Guide (you can find it at http://export.gov/static/TradeFinanceGuide_All_Latest_eg_main_043219.pdf
). There is plenty of useful advice on it on things such as Export Credit
Insurance, Factoring and a brief summary on Letters of Credit. The guide is useful and its language is plain
and easy to understand. I tend to read
most of the products that come from the ITA, such as A Basic Guide to
Exporting, but after reading this one a concern seems to continue to come up. The
ITA seems to be publishing good products but without any clear cohesive
strategy, the SME owner basically has a guide that explains the basics of
exporting and then another guide that gives information about financing. There
is no “cradle to grave” guide that tells you HOW to export!
The most fundamental and basic step, finding
clients for your products overseas, seems to be overseen at best or assumed at
worst. A guide that explains the
business process could be more beneficial. Clearly defining steps such as
assessing your products/services, finding clients overseas, negotiating with
clients overseas (to include method of payment and negotiations), financing, shipment
of products/delivery of services and receipt of payments would be good a start.
Obviously the business process is far more complicated but a coherent guide
that takes the SME owner from the “cradle” of exporting (i.e. product or
service self assessment) to the “grave” (i.e. goods shipped/service provided
and payment received) is far more beneficial than good guides published at what
seems to be random times. I know that services such as Gold Key Matching exist
to find overseas buyers but not all SMEs prefer to pay the associated premiums
of such services.
As always I look forward to your thoughts.
