Take The Leads?
The Internet is good for approximately one billion things. You'd think international trade leads would be one of them.
Although the Internet is sometimes hailed as one of the greatest
business tools developed this century, there's at least one
commercial activity for which it is often more trouble than
it's worth: finding good international trade leads.
Every global entrepreneur should be aware of this apparent Net
aberration. "The overwhelming majority of [trade] leads you
find on the Internet are garbage," says international business
consultant Jeffrey P. Graham, president of JPG Consulting in
Philadelphia. "Usually, out of every hundred leads published,
no more than three are even worth pursuing. Big companies have the
human resources to sift through everything and find the good ones,
but small businesses just don't have the manpower."
As a former executive director of the South Carolina World Trade
Center, J.E. "Dewey" Teske has experienced this
phenomenon firsthand. "There's a huge number of wannabes
[to watch out for] who have an e-mail account and think they're
going to do tons of trading," says Teske, who now works as an
international trade consultant in Charleston, South Carolina.
"At the trade center, it took the constant effort of a staff
of five to qualify those leads."
Content Continues Below
Christopher D. Lancette is an Atlanta-area freelance
journalist who covers international business for a variety of
local, national and international publications.
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