Keeping buyers from other northeastern states after the first call

A shopkeeper from Dimapur rings your counter in Fancy Bazaar and asks the rate for a few items. "I will let you know," the shopkeeper says, and is never heard from again. That is not lost interest. The shopkeeper is working out the landed price from a Kolkata or Delhi supplier who has already sent a full price list on WhatsApp, with freight to Dimapur. Keep that buyer with a second message, sent the same day, carrying your price list, the freight to their town, the dispatch route and the transporter. A second call asking "did you decide?" gives them nothing to compare.

What the quiet buyer is doing

A retailer in Shillong, Itanagar, Kohima, Aizawl, Imphal or Agartala has usually bought from far away for years. The comparison is not your rate against the Kolkata rate. It is what the goods cost on the shop floor: the price, the freight, the days on the road, the risk of a broken carton, and the minimum order. The supplier who puts all of that in front of the buyer first tends to win.

A Guwahati wholesaler can offer things a distant supplier finds hard. The road is shorter. A top-up order can arrive before the shelf is empty, and a broken carton can be replaced on the next truck. None of it counts until it is written down, and three prices said over the phone show none of it.

Many buyers from Meghalaya, Arunachal, Nagaland and Manipur plan trips to Guwahati, and our Assam page covers the city's markets. This post is about the buyers who order without coming.

The second message, written out

Send this within the hour of the first call, from whoever took it, as a typed message with the price list attached as a PDF. Follow it with a short voice note in the language the buyer used on the phone. Here is a filled version, with invented figures.

Namaskar Mr Jamir, thank you for calling about jackets and thermals. Our full price list is attached, with GST shown separately.

Freight to Kohima: ₹60 per carton by our transporter, booked from Guwahati on Mondays and Thursdays. Our last three consignments to Kohima took four to six days by the Dimapur road.

First order minimum: 20 cartons. After that, top-up orders of any size from regular buyers.

Payment: advance on the first two orders, credit terms after that. The GST invoice and transport papers travel with the goods.

If a carton arrives damaged, send a photo the day it arrives and we will settle it with the next dispatch.

I am Pranjal. This number is for orders from Nagaland.

Take the days and the route from your own transporter's records of the last few consignments to that town, not from a map. Shillong is a few hours up the hill. Dimapur and Kohima are reached along the highway through Nagaon and Golaghat. Aizawl and Agartala are reached through the Barak valley, Itanagar through Banderdewa. If transit time varies, give the range you have actually seen, because the first late consignment is measured against what you wrote.

One more message, then stop

If the buyer has not replied, send one more only when you have something new to say: fresh stock of an item they asked about, a consignment leaving for their town on a fixed date, a price change. "Any update?" is not new. After that, stop, and move the buyer to a list you return to before their own buying season.

That season is not Bihu. Many shops in Shillong, Aizawl and Kohima stock up for Christmas. A buyer who went quiet in July is worth a message in October with the Christmas lines and the last safe dispatch date. Missed and dormant lead recovery is the related service, and it only works from a list somebody kept.

For example: winter stock for a shop in Kohima

This is an invented case. A hosiery and winter-wear wholesaler near Fancy Bazaar takes a call in August from a shop in Kohima about jackets, thermals and children's sweaters for the Christmas season. The salesperson quotes three prices over the phone, then rings on the second day and the fifth to ask whether the order is coming. The second time the shopkeeper says they are still checking. The third time nobody picks up.

The order, perhaps ₹3 lakh, went to Kolkata. That supplier sent a full price list within the hour, with freight to Kohima by the Dimapur road, the transporter's name and the last date for a Christmas dispatch. The Guwahati prices were lower on most lines. The buyer never saw that, having three prices out of four hundred items and no freight.

The wholesaler spent one afternoon on the change: a single price list PDF, the second message as a template with freight and route filled in for each hill-state capital, and every hill-state buyer assigned to one salesperson who sends it first. In October the Kohima shop got one more message with the Christmas lines and the last safe dispatch date, and placed a top-up order worth a tenth of the lost one. The first large order stayed in Kolkata.

When a second message will not save the order

Be honest about where the big markets win. On bulk staples sold on a thin margin, a large Kolkata wholesaler may land the goods cheaper even after the longer road, and no message changes that. Compete there on top-up orders and speed, and leave the full container to that wholesaler.

If you cannot state a transit time you will keep, state none. A date that slips loses the buyer faster than a plain "we will confirm the dispatch date when we book". And a one-off buyer, such as a school ordering sweaters once, should still get the second message but does not belong on the October list.

Write the second message before the next call comes

Ask your counter what the last few callers from outside Assam received after they rang off. If the answer is a few spoken prices, write the second message for your three busiest towns now, with freight and route from your transporter's last bills, not from memory. Lead response and follow-up is the related service if you want the routine kept by the whole counter, and you can tell us what you need.