Serious buyer or time-waster. The signals before spending.
A foreign enquiry doesn't cost an email. It costs the sheet to translate, the samples with their customs shipment and three weeks of exchanges. And it is all paid before knowing whether there is a buyer on the other side.
Four ten-minute checks, to do before replying: the email domain, what that company already sells, how precise the question they asked you is, and whether they can tell you the destination country.
Then three questions, before the full price list and the samples. They aren't an exam: they are the information you really need to make a sensible offer. A real buyer finds them normal, because they ask their own suppliers the same.
The point isn't to exclude. It is to decide who gets your best two hours and who gets a courteous ten-minute reply, instead of treating everything that arrives the same way.
This piece is part of the guide to export operations for the small food producer and covers the second of the eight steps, the one that comes right after the first reply and right before the technical sheet.
Why qualifying matters more if you are small
Of ten enquiries reaching a small producer, some are real importers, some are intermediaries building an offer for a client they may not have, and some are price-list collections made to compare prices with a supplier already chosen.
Treating them all the same seems prudent, and is instead the most effective way to arrive at the right one already tired. And it is a problem that weighs in inverse proportion to the size of the company.
Translated into your day: every foreign procedure costs you more than it costs a large exporter, because you do it with fewer people and without a dedicated office. So an unqualified enquiry doesn't only take your time. It takes away your capacity to follow another one well.
The four ten-minute checks
They are done before replying, without writing to anyone and without commercial instinct. They can all be checked.
| Check | What to look at | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| The domain30 seconds | Whether the email comes from the company's domain or from a free address. |
A free address isn't a verdict, but it moves the contact among those you reply to without investing straight away. |
| What they already sell2 minutes | Their website: which categories they handle, in what price range, whether they already have Italian products in their catalogue. |
Whoever already sells Italian has channels, customs procedures and customers ready. It is the strongest positive signal of all. |
| How precise the question is1 minute | What exactly they asked: a product or «the price list»? Did they mention formats, shelf life, certifications? |
Questions reveal the trade. People in the sector ask things only people in the sector know to ask. |
| The destination countrystraight away | Did they say where the goods end up, or only where they are based? |
The country changes label, documents, duties and sometimes prior registrations. Whoever can't tell you isn't yet at the point of buying. |
None of these four requires knowing the buyer. They require ten minutes and the willingness to look before replying.
The signals that the contact won't buy
Taken one by one they prove nothing, and they should be read together. Two or three in the same message form a picture.
- They ask for the full price list without naming a product. Whoever has to buy something knows what they are looking for. Whoever is collecting prices wants everything.
- They don't state the country or the channel. An importer knows whether they resell to food service, retail or large-scale retail, because that choice determines formats and prices.
- They ask for free samples before anything else. The order of requests says a lot: first the product, then the terms, then possibly the tastings.
- The message is impersonal and replicable. No reference to you, to your product or to why they wrote to you in particular.
- They insist on price before asking about a single feature. Whoever buys food to resell it needs to know what they are selling, not just how much it costs.
And the signal that works the other way, the most underrated: a buyer who asks you difficult questions is almost always a real buyer. Whoever asks for the guaranteed residual shelf life, the pallet configuration or whether your plant is registered in a certain country is doing their job. Those questions cost them effort too.
The three questions, and how to write them
They should be sent before the full price list and before the samples, inside the first reply. They don't lengthen the timeline: they shorten it, because without that information the offer you would prepare would be generic anyway.
Subject: Re: your enquiry - [product] Dear [name], thank you for your interest in our [product]. So that we can send you a precise quotation instead of a general price list, could you confirm three points? 1. DESTINATION Which country will the goods be sold in? (this affects labelling, documents and duties) 2. CHANNEL AND VOLUME Which channel do you supply - retail, food service, distribution? And what indicative quantity are you considering for a first order? 3. REQUIREMENTS Do you have specific requirements on format, private label, certifications or minimum residual shelf life on arrival? As soon as we have these, we will send you our technical data sheet and a quotation with delivery terms. Kind regards, [name] - [company]
Three things on why it works. It asks for nothing confidential, so it puts nobody on the defensive. It states what the buyer gets in return, namely a precise offer instead of a generic price list. And the three answers, when they arrive, are exactly the data you need to quote: destination, channel, requirements.
Qualifying doesn't mean replying badly to whoever doesn't pass the checks. It means dosing: whoever is uncertain gets a short, courteous reply with the three questions, and nothing else until they answer.
The best two hours (tailored sheet, samples, detailed quotation) go to whoever answered. Shutting the door on someone because they write from a free address is as much a mistake as sending them the samples: serious small importers exist, and some markets still work that way.
The contact collected at a trade fair
The same method applies, with one advantage and one disadvantage. The advantage is that you spoke to them: you already know the country, the channel and what they were looking for. The disadvantage is volume, and above all memory: after three days at a fair the business cards all look the same and you no longer remember who was who.
The rule that saves most of a fair's value is trivial and almost nobody applies it: the three pieces of information are written next to the contact that same evening, not when you get back. A contact without context, a week later, is worth as much as an address found online, and you paid for it with the stand.
When to stop doing it from memory
With ten enquiries a year all this can be kept in your head. The problem arises when enquiries become one a week, arrive from three different channels and nobody knows any more where the March one had got to.
At that point the question is no longer whether the individual buyer is serious, but whether there is a place to read in ten seconds the status of all of them: who received what, who never replied, who should be called back. That place can be a spreadsheet, and for a long time it should be. When it stops being enough, it is one of the things the Cruscotto keeps in order on its own: no communication goes out to a buyer without a person having approved it, which is a design constraint and not a sales promise.
Questions and answers
How can I tell whether a foreign buyer is serious?
With four ten-minute checks, before replying to them. The email domain: a structured importer writes from their own company's address. What they already sell: two minutes on their website tell you whether they handle your category and already have Italian products, and so channels and procedures ready. How precise the question is: people in the sector ask about residual shelf life, carton format, registrations. The destination country: whoever can't tell you where the goods end up isn't yet at the point of buying them.
What are the signals that a contact will never buy?
Five recurring ones: they ask for the full price list without naming a product; they don't state the country or the resale channel; they ask for free samples before any other information; they send an impersonal message that could have gone to a hundred suppliers; they insist on price before asking about a single feature of the product.
None counts on its own. Two or three together say that contact should be handled, not cultivated.
Is it rude to ask questions before sending the price list?
No, and it is the opposite of how it is perceived. A professional buyer asks their own suppliers the same questions and reads them as the sign that there is an organised company on the other side.
Form matters: they should be put as a tool for preparing a precise offer, not as an exam. And whoever takes offence at three questions is usually confirming the diagnosis.
How much does replying to a foreign enquiry really cost?
More than it seems, because the real cost isn't in the email: it is in the sheet to prepare or translate, in the samples with their customs shipment (which outside the Union requires a proforma invoice and sometimes health certificates) and in the weeks of exchanges.
And it weighs proportionally: the smallest businesses bear the highest bureaucratic and administrative costs to operate abroad, so every unqualified enquiry takes much more from them than from a large exporter.
How do you qualify a contact collected at a trade fair?
The same method, with one advantage and one disadvantage. The advantage: you spoke to them, so you already have country, channel and interest. The disadvantage: volume, and memory that fades in three days.
The practical rule that saves a fair's value is to write the three pieces of information next to the contact that same evening. A contact without context, after a week, is worth as much as an address found online, and you paid for that one with the stand.
Sources
- SACE, Piccole, medie e più competitive: le PMI italiane alla prova dell’export fra transizione sostenibile e digitale. The source of the 57% of small manufacturing businesses that export, and of the higher bureaucratic, information and financial costs borne by the smallest businesses to access foreign markets.
- The qualifying signals and the text of the first reply don't come from a study: they are commercial practice, reported here as such and not as rules.
Knowing in ten seconds where every buyer stands.
As long as enquiries are few, a spreadsheet is enough. With Itria we start from the outside to build custom digital systems for exporters. For you that translates into more requests, fewer losses and less manual work. Write us a line about what weighs on you. We take the first step: what a buyer sees when they look you up, and what we found there. Even if we don't end up working together.