Are you ready for the real trade war? There’s one thing you must do.

by | Jun 26, 2019 | Blog

Are you ready for the impact of the deepening china trade war?

According to experts, we are now at the “pain threshold” for widespread impact:

The next round of tariffs could be the tipping point into crisis, according to a China specialist at Europe’s biggest asset manager.

“This is where the pain threshold is,” Qinwei Wang, a senior economist at Amundi in London, said in reference to the Trump administration’s consideration of 25% duties on the remaining $300-billion or so of Chinese imports not yet affected by tariff hikes. There would be a chain reaction, “and everyone will suffer. A global recession is a real risk,” he said.

Anchalee Worrachate - Bloomberg

How can you prepare?

Manufacturers who proactively engage with their market (customers, prospects, and dealers) effectively have a key advantage: first mover. If you have the right tools and processes to address your market, you have a key sustainable advantage. If you don’t other manufacturers who can properly address customer and reseller concerns will begin to take market share from you.

Why?

The enemy of commerce is uncertainty. If your customers are unsure of how you will react to the impact of tariffs, they will go where that certainty exists. 

What you can do.

  1. Take control of the message – Use marketing (email is the least expensive) to proactively stay in touch with customers. Even your message is “nothing is changing for us at this time” – that is a positive. 
  2. Get in front of customers consistently – Don’t want for customers to ask you, get in front of each of them. Schedule out a special touchpoint for all customers and make sure you salespeople touch each customer at least once in the next month.
  3. Build an ongoing communication plan – By creating ongoing, customized communication with customers you’ll be able to stay ahead of other competitors in the messaging game. We recommend using automation to do this – segment your customers on what product/service they purchase from you and tailoring the message to them.

Need help?

Flywheel provides both automation and a sales/marketing methodology based on industry best practices to assist manufacturers in effective customer communication and engagment. 

We offer a complimentary tool to help you identify sales/marketing processes that you could streamline/automate using process maps. Learn more about this service and book a sessions here.

 

Ready to go deeper? Watch the webinar below!