Notes for owners · Business growth
Export enquiries from the first call to the first shipment: what the overseas buyer asks
Overseas buyers ask about samples, documents and payment before they ask about price. The questions in the order they arrive, what to have ready for each, and how a first export order reaches the port.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
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An overseas buyer's first email asks whether you can send samples, which documents travel with the goods and how payment works. Price comes later. The buyer is about to pay for parts that will be seen only at their own port, so the supplier is tested before rates are compared. Prepare your answers in the order the buyer asks them. Hold the price until the sample is approved and the shipping and payment terms are agreed, because those terms change the price.
Why price waits until samples and payment are settled
A domestic buyer can drive to your unit. An importer in the UK or Australia cannot, and a wrong first shipment leaves the importer short for weeks while a replacement crosses the sea. So the first exchange is about whether you are safe to buy from.
Your price depends on things not yet settled. Do you deliver to an Indian port or to the buyer's? How are the goods packed? Does the buyer pay in advance or against documents, and which test reports go with each lot? A price sent before those are agreed is a guess, and correcting it later looks like a rise.
The questions, in the order they arrive
| What the buyer asks | What the buyer is really checking | Have this ready before you reply |
|---|---|---|
| Are you the maker or a trader? | That the factory is the one answering | Plant photographs, machine and furnace list, an offer of a video walk-through |
| Can you send samples from our drawing? | Whether you understand the drawing and the material | Sample lead time, tooling or pattern cost, who pays the courier |
| What documents come with each shipment? | Whether the buyer's customs and quality team will accept the goods | A sample test certificate, a dimensional report format, your packing list layout |
| How do we pay? | How much risk each side carries | Your terms for a first order, agreed with your bank beforehand |
| What is the price, and on what terms? | Whether you compare well once everything is counted | A price on a stated term such as FOB or CIF, with tooling and packing as separate lines |
| Can our inspector see the goods before dispatch? | That the lot matches the approved sample | Space and time for inspection in your plan, and photographs of packed lots |
Answer the first four rows in your first reply, even if only one was asked. Leave price for the fifth, as the buyer does. A supplier who answers in the buyer's own order sounds like one who has shipped before.
Samples are the first real test
Make the sample on the pattern, fixture and process you will use for production, not by hand in the tool room. A buyer who approves a hand-finished sample and receives a differing production lot is unlikely to order twice.
Once a sample is approved, keep a sealed one at your plant and ask the buyer to keep one too. It settles arguments about what was agreed. Record the date each sample went out and the date you will ask for comments. The post on getting export orders covers sampling as a sales routine.
Documents and payment, answered before they are asked
Documents are where first shipments get stuck. The buyer's customs broker and quality team will want a commercial invoice and a packing list that match each other exactly. They will want test certificates for each heat or batch, and sometimes a certificate of origin if the buyer claims a lower duty. Wooden crates may need treatment and marking. What each country requires differs and changes, so confirm it with your freight forwarder, your export promotion council or a customs broker before the first lot is packed.
On payment, decide before the enquiry arrives what you will accept from a buyer you have never shipped to. Common choices are an advance with the balance against shipping documents, or a letter of credit through the buyer's bank. Ask your own bank to explain the risk in each before you offer it. Do not ship a first order on open credit.
Imagine a foundry in Agra
Imagine a cast iron foundry in Agra that has made pulleys and flywheels for Indian engine and machinery makers for years. A power transmission distributor in the UK writes asking about a range of pulleys. The case is illustrative. The foundry replies the same day with a rate per kilogram in rupees, ex-works, and a line saying "samples on confirmation of order".
The buyer writes back asking for samples, test certificates and payment terms. The foundry then works out that its rate left out the pattern cost, export crates and the trip to the port. Its corrected price, now on FOB terms from Mundra, reads as a rise of several rupees a kilogram. The buyer goes quiet, and the foundry never learns whether a rival got the order.
Its next overseas enquiry gets a different first reply. That reply carries plant photographs, an offer of a video walk-through, the pattern cost and the sample lead time. It adds a sample test certificate and the payment terms its bank has approved. It says the price will follow once the shipping term and packing are agreed. When the price goes out, it is in pounds sterling, on FOB terms, with pattern and crates on their own lines. Nothing has to be corrected later. That enquiry still took five weeks to reach a sample, and the first sample was rejected for a surface finish the drawing had not specified.
From the purchase order to the port
The first order is the first time the buyer sees whether you do what you said.
- Confirm the approved sample and drawing revision in writing against the purchase order.
- Book the buyer's inspection, or a third-party inspector the buyer names, before the lot is packed.
- Photograph the packed crates and the container loading, and send them the day it leaves.
- Check every document against the letter of credit or the order before it goes to the bank. A spelling difference can hold up payment.
- Call when the goods arrive, before the buyer calls you.
If you cannot yet handle letters of credit or the buyer's documents, start through a merchant exporter or a buying agent and learn on their orders. That is slower and pays less, but a failed first shipment costs more. If export mail waits for the owner, the post on replying to export enquiries when the owner is away sets out who may answer what.
A pulley distributor in the UK asks different things from a pump importer in the Gulf.
Write the export reply sheet now
One page, six answers, in the order of the table. Where an answer needs your bank or your forwarder, ring them this week rather than when a buyer is waiting. The manufacturing hub has more for factories. If you would like to talk through that sheet, with export and international market development in mind, tell us what you need.
