Six months ago, my business was at a critical phase; we were expanding. Our products had caught the eye of the international market and buyers across the world were indicating interest.
Whilst this new wave of interest was long overdue, I was scared that the negative perception of Nigeria in some quarters in the international market would affect my business. My fear was not without reason, we had lost a lot of sales in the past due to this issue.
So, this time I was taking steps to ensure that the interests crystalised into sales. I engaged a PR firm in hopes that their branding efforts would help allay the fears of international buyers and drive them to patronise my business. A few months later, the branding efforts started bearing fruits.
Three months after we engaged the PR firm, we received international orders from 15 customers with three making full payments for their orders. This was a new dawn as I could sense better days ahead. But then an issue arose… the remaining 12 customers were making little orders and had insisted on making payments with their credit cards due to the cost of traditional payment methods. This was a big issue because our website through which orders came in did not have a payment functionality.
We had tried getting a solution a year ago but, the cost of acquiring such a solution was on the high side and we had to jettison the idea. This request kept me up late at night as I wondered if this was going to be another case of poor sales. Where do I even get such a solution from within 48 hours?
The next morning, I gathered my accounts team and charged them with the responsibility of looking for a solution before the close of business. As fate would have it, one of my staff in his search stumbled on an advert online about a solution called Global Pay. Immediately, he reached out to me and we called the bank. A gentleman picked up and after exchanging pleasantries we told him of our plight and the solution we had seen.
In few words, he explained that with Global Pay we could receive payments from anywhere in the world with debit or credit cards. A bit sceptical, we applied for it and the solution was set up on our website in less than 24 hours. We reached out to the remaining 12 customers advising them to visit our website to make payment. 20 minutes later, we received feedback on how seamless the payment process was much to my surprise. My accounts team reconfirmed the payments from the payment notifications and the online monitoring log and all payments were received. We dispatched their orders afterwards.
Read » The struggling entrepreneur: How I got international customers to buy my products with ease — Okon Achibong on YNaija
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