Tips on how to negotiate prices with Chinese suppliers

Chinese people like negotiating during the business and you can negotiate in most cases during your sourcing in China (in some special cases prices are fixed, say, supermarket ), here are the basic bargaining skills for your reference:  

1.‘Letting the enemy off in order to catch him’ – If the price cannot be lowered further, you can pretend to end the negotiation so as to make the suppliers compromise.

2.Keep bargaining – you can adopt some strategies such as conducting a war of words, a honeyed talk, and even a spoiled brat till the suppliers lower the price.

3.Keep nitpicking – to obtain a better price, you had better pick out somthing wrong to make suppliers downhearted.

4.Tempting the suppliers step by step – you can tempt the suppliers by the promise of building a long-term cooperation, big orders, and better payment terms etc so that they can make concessions in pricing. 

Above negotiation skills can be used case by case, however, the best way to negotiate during internation trade is to use following two tips: 

1.Shopping around

There is a Chinese saying,“You would not suffer losses if you shop another three or more stores to compare”, which means when purchasing any item, you should look for their competitors and the suppliers providing the same quaility items, then compare their price, trade terms, quality etc and select a best one to work with in the future. The premise of comparison is built on the similar product quality, service and price. The compared products should be at the same class.

2.Cost analysis

To be a professional buyer, what you should know well is not only the product itself, but also the costs of major raw material, production, labor and management etc. And the best bargaining strategy is to fully calculate the cost of one product, adding in the appropriate margin of the manufacturer, and knowing yourself and the suppliers well, then the lower price can be finally reached.