China sourcing trip? Time is short! You need results! Here are some tips to plan successful trips!
Start with a plan:
Define clear objectives that align with your sourcing strategic plan, set target financial benefits, and establish your trip expense budget as a percentage of that benefit. Why? You need to know your trip ROI.
Lock in the dates
- Ensure dates don't clash with Chinese public holidays or major trade shows.
- Be aware of potential weather disruptions at particular times of year (e.g., cold-weather road closures in North China from ~Dec-Feb and typhoon travel impacts from ~July-Sept).
Build an itinerary:
Build a comprehensive itinerary covering your visit plan, travel, accommodation, and objectives.
- Always involve your local sourcing team or agents in the planning. Local knowledge is invaluable!
- Be realistic about the number of visits per day, taking travel distances and hospitality into account.
- Avoid backtracking. Plan routes efficiently.
- Travel to the next town the day/night before when possible so you’re ready to work the next day.
- Use high-speed trains for reliable, comfortable transport wherever possible. Trains can be more efficient than air travel, even for longer trips considering long check-in times and regular flight delays.
- Allow time for meals with suppliers. Don’t make a habit of skipping lunch or dinner with vendors because “you’re too busy.”
- If you need to choose, prioritise dinner with key partners; it’s quality relationship-building time.
- When you are really pressed for time, having a working lunch at a factory is a great compromise.
- Another way to meet more suppliers is to ask them to come to you in a central location. Book a meeting room at your hotel and meet 6+ suppliers face-to-face in one day. Ideal for existing suppliers when no factory verification or sample sign-off is required.
- Set a high-impact objective for every supplier visit.
Cost Control:
Minimise costs to improve trip ROI and potentially free up budget to do more sourcing trips per year.
On the flip side, be careful about appearances. Factories may judge your company as not a good partner if it appears you are low budget and small time. Face is very important in China, and there is a bit of theatre involved in demonstrating that your company is successful and prosperous. So, for example, staying in budget hotels may send the wrong message.
Cost minimisation tips:
- The top cost-saving opportunity is international flights. Flying economy rather than business can save thousands of dollars per person.
- Do the pre-work before the trip; don’t waste time on low-impact visits. For example, don’t go to a factory to seek first quotes: go for final sign-off on samples and the final quote. This is where having a local team is a huge advantage, as they can manage the pre-work.
- Maximise working days wherever possible. For example: Fly in on a Sunday to start work Monday. Also, schedule visits on Saturdays.
- Working on Sunday is not ideal, since factories are likely not operating and factory salespeople need time off. Sunday can be a good day for you to rest and catch up on emails!
- There is often no need to hire a car and driver. Factories are often very happy to pick you up from the airport/train station and/or drive you to the next visit. This is where having a local team is very helpful, as they can arrange this.
- Minimise food costs by selecting hotels with included breakfast and accepting factory invites for lunch and dinner.
- Search for good-value accommodation. Let factories suggest nearby hotels as they often have arrangements with good local options with corporate rates.
Travel Light!
- Keep your luggage as small as possible. If you’re going to be travelling for 5 days, you need 5 shirts, right? You are going to be hauling your luggage on planes, trains and automobiles for the duration of the trip. You will seriously regret bringing a huge, heavy bag!
Convert Opportunities into Results:
While traveling, you can focus most of your energy on achieving trip objectives. Once you return to the home office, you get pulled back into your normal work routine and trip actions can lose priority.
How to mitigate this:
- Record meeting notes, agreements, & required actions during meetings.
- Complete any many actions as you can while on the trip.
- At the end of the trip, before returning home, create a list of required actions with a clear understanding of what needs to be done, by whom, and by when.
- Once back, report to the business on trip achievements and improvement opportunities. Share the action list and push for actions to be completed on time.
Conclusion
These tips are based on our experience of what good looks like. We hope this will help you get the maximum ROI from your future trips!