You might guess that I receive a lot of emails from overseas agents and developers asking for “partnerships”. I really do appreciate you reaching out to me but want to take this opportunity to explain why most do not succeed…and what changes need to made to make this successful. First let’s go through the specific types of proposals I get daily. I have taken out the names but here are some examples.
“This is a very lucky and profitable business opportunity”
I have XYZ exciting properties. Let’s “open the doors” to partnership and cooperation. As always, I will be happy to share the love and commissions …..
I am a developer with a pipeline of a hundred million dollar off plan developments. Email me back if this is something that interests you…..
All these emails have one thing in common. They want me to market their properties to Chinese on my dime. So I am expected to use our cash to translate their properties into Chinese, our copywriters to write effective stories that will attract buyers, my team to create marketing materials, to find effective avenues for advertising, to pay for advertising in order to get leads for their them. In other words, if he were in downtown Seattle and we spent months creating materials and marketing the North West coast of the US, most leads would be wasted as he has a small amount of specific listings pin downtown Seattle that he wanted to sell. Los Angeles would be useless to him, for example.
But it gets worse…after advertising for leads, we need to meet and interview the potential clients. That means flying around China, dinners, tea, hundreds or thousands of phone calls and our best agents time. In those meetings, we need to be prepared to answer hard questions from clients about immigration, education, local investment laws, the Chinese community in that area and so on. The only way we really can do this properly and be fair to the clients is to fly to his area, see the listings, learn about the area firsthand, meet Chinese immigration lawyers, local schools,see local Chinese supermarkets and talk to a lot of folk. Then fly back to China and set up meetings, talk to clients, educate them, wait till they are ready to make the move and arrange trips to Seattle to meet the agent.
From that point, we would be tens of thousands of dollars in the hole and dependent on his staffs’ ability to close deals and his honesty in paying us a commission… As you might guess this is not a profitable business model for an agent. The final referral fee is often as low as $3,000! To understand the utter lack of business sense here, let me put the shoe on the other foot.
You market our Shanghai properties where you are. Do you have a magic list of clients hot to buy in the exact areas where our properties are located, Xintiandi area, Lujiazui, Jinqiao? No….ok well that makes sense as, realistically, no one has a list of hot clients for random properties worldwide, you need to build one. That means paying for advertising, spending your time learning the specific properties benefits, learning about China, Shanghai and the specific areas mentioned so you can answer questions.
You must pay for translation from Chinese so your clients can read it. Then you would need to choose advertising venues, banners, baidu ads, google etc. After a successful advertising campaign, you will get raw leads. You then need to then call them, arrange and pay for dinners, coffees, sometimes airplane tickets in order to start a relationship. And remember, our properties are in specific areas in Shanghai so if you find buyers in other areas of Shanghai or other cities like Beijing, you’re wasting your time. It would make sense for you to come to Shanghai at least once and visit some listings so you can answer basic questions about China, Shanghai and the specific properties. If you don’t even see China or Shanghai, how could you gain the clients trust? Answer their hard questions? If you can’t answer basic questions, you will quickly lose trust of your new contacts. So add a trip to Shanghai to your list of expenses. Then after all that time, work and expense and time you need to trust us (in another country) to handle the client well, close the deal and to pay you a commission. This might take 6 months to a year… So you invest tens of thousands of dollars, 6 months of time and get a $3,000 commission?? Or even $30,000 commission? Either way, its too risky and I’m sure you are not interested in marketing my properties so I won’t ask again… lol But you are likely asking agents in China this very thing…
Here’s the rub. Do you generally have a middle man between you and the client? Would having a middleman increase your odds of success or lower them? Would having another person establish a relationship with your clients but added risk or less risk? Would you rather pay fees or not pay fees? If you’re like me, you’d rather have less risk, less fees and more success, larger commissions and a great relationship with your buyers. How can you do that? We’ve seen that a middleman might not be the best option. What can you do? Why don’t you learn how to sell to Chinese yourself? You can do it better, quicker and with less risk yourself! The new clients will know you and trust you as you live there, know the area and can answer all their questions. It’s in your interest to personally reach out and meet potential buyers and establish a relationship front the beginning.
Many other agents like yourself have learned how and have built a clientele of wealthy buyers from China. They watched my videos, implemented the ideas and started getting real leads. Since they knew a lot about the buyers mindset from the training, they were able to find the right client themselves, close the deal and get a referral. That first deal opened the door to friends and family of the original buyer. All without spending much on advertising (I teach you how using Chinese social media with no Mandarin ability, just in English, for example) I teach you how to present your properties in a way that is attractive to Chinese, how to talk to buyers, how to weed out lookie loos and not waste your time, how to find the decision maker in a group of Chinese, how to close the deal and how to get referrals for future sales. If this sounds like a good long term strategy for you, comment below or send me an email at paul (at) ChinaCashBuyers.com and I’ll send you the link to get started.
Sincerely,
Paul Salo
