Here are five tips for tapping into Buyer and Seller markets. Includes: Get listed in Product and Local Directories; Scan new prospects from Trade Show Calendar sites; Get free guidance from Import/Export sites assisting small business. Also, see a mini-case study from the Toy Industry on regaining markets with the right Crisis Management.

1.         Put New Business Development into the Plan and Budget

You have business health trackers in place – Marketing Plans; metrics and measures of return on investment, pricing strategies, revenue/cost margins; P & L statement pulse checks.

Ensure that developing new business, accounts and product lines is an item in the budget, too. Instead of assuming that all marketing and advertising expenses are the sum total of your New Business Development strategy, earmark resources and time towards the goal of finding and building new product lines or customer segments.

NBD activities:  Offer commissions or bonuses for new business acquisition by any staffer (not simply Sales & Marketing staff); Assign personnel to follow social media sites, special interest blogs and industry news releases for tips on new product trends, new potential accounts.

2.         Get Listed and Get Found

Build a list of product directories and search sites specific to your product category. For low or no-cost, upload a brief description of your company, products and unique selling points … such as off-price or below-wholesale merchandise, low/no Minimum Purchase Requirements, hottest or newest season styles, deeply discounted Returns or Liquidation merchandise.

Examples: Wholezilla for clothing, accessories, dollar store inventory. ThomasNet for industrial supplies. Business.com for business services, such as accounting, legal and marketing.

 · Choose Directory Category and Key Words carefully. Even free listing sites have editorial reviewers who approve or reject directory listings. The key words you use in your listing’s headline or description are “key” to potential buyers (searchers) being able to find you.

 · Don’t overlook Local Search Directories. According to online research from Marchex and comScore, local search queries have increased more than general searches; and 61% of local searchers follow through with offline product buys. Get listed on Yahoo Local for low, flat-rate monthly fees, depending on how many business categories your listing displays and whether or not you want guaranteed listing in Yahoo Local Search Results. Google offers free listings, with registration to Google Local Business Center.

 3.         Hawk Trade Show Calendars

No one can exhibit at or attend every trade show in their industry sector or product line. But you can track trade show and convention web sites for lists of who shows and who goes: New manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and their agents; New niche market-makers; Emerging buyer demands.

 For apparel buyers and sellers: See Infomat Worldwide Show Calendar . You’ll find tradeshows staged in fashion centers like Milan, Paris and Tokyo. And, you can search geographically for regional fashion shows … such as the SIA SnowSports Trade Show in the Rocky Mountain West in January, for snow sports apparel and equipment buyers and sellers. See also listed shows to highlight contemporary and young designers of sportswear, shoes and lifestyle clothing at the Designers & Agents Fashion Trade Show in NYC (late January) and then Los Angeles.

 For trade show and trade mission information: See ASAP Global . ASAP launches two major U.S. shows every year in February and August. ASAP also hosts trade mission visits to China and Asian Economic Development partners for Buyers (manufacturing facilities; contract and licensed wholesalers) as well as Sellers (introducing department store purchasers in major Chinese urban areas to sellers in Western Europe and North America).

 4.         Learn from Buy / Sell Experience of Others

Crisis Management is a specialized area of corporate public relations. How a company or industry deals with crisis often predicts whether or not they survive in the marketplace.

 For example, look at Import Toy Safety. For all the disaster headlines and product safety recalls on “toxic” toys (toys containing lead paint, toxic stuffing or components, ingestion hazards like magnets, poor product designs that caused child injuries or death), toy manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors stepped up to the plate and addressed this crisis.

 What They Did:

(a)   Keep Customers Informed. Though the toy industry did not yet know which factories in China were cutting corners on which toy imports, executives still held regular press briefings and created consumer web sites and/or hot lines to answer concerns.

 (b)   Ask for Enforcement. Listen to any business lobbyist and you’ll learn that government regulation is the death of everything. Why, then, would the Toy Industry Association of America and its member execs call for new inspection regimes at off-shore toy manufacturing sites? Or production line audits? Or legal certification?

 Because the toy buying public was already tossing “good” companies (like Mattel’s 50-year track record manufacturing Barbie in Japan) in with bad apples (exporters of lead-laced, contaminated or toxic toys). The result was hostility to all imports, regardless of source. During a crisis, not fessing up to a problem, ignoring buyer fears or fighting attempts at enforcing quality control do spell commercial death.

 (c)   Act Accountable. Toy companies stopped talking about the “very low probability” of injury from toxic toys or that less than 1% of all toys manufactured in 2007 actually had to be recalled. (Hard facts and low probabilities of harm mean nothing if your child is the one.) Toy executives apologized for the toy scare and looked at the toy recalls as proof that the inspection system was, in fact, working. They also promised stricter inspections and enforcement of safety standards; and they made good on those promises. (See “b” above.)

 5.         Seek Import / Export Guidance

Getting into the Export Market is a sure-fire way to open up new Seller channels. Good News: If you deal in US dollars, its weakness against other global currencies makes domestic dollar-based exports a bargain to foreign buyers. Bad News: Negotiating foreign shipments, customs and tariffs, payment through Letters of Credit (very tight currently), can seem daunting.

 The answer is to get an intermediary as a trade guide.

 (a)   Find tips on doing business abroad, developing an international business plan, finding foreign agents, and more at the International Business section of Smaller Business Knowledge Base.

 (b)   Work through an established Trade Mission intermediary, like ASAP Global. (See above, 3. Hawk Trade Shows)

 (c)   Export Source Guide is an exporting tutorial from the Canadian Government.

 (d) Check trade leads and purchase requests at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Export.gov site. A seller of plus-size lingerie or men’s parkas might never know that Mexico seeks to import large-sized women’s undergarments, or that Russia needed a large shipment of cold weather outerwear.