Notes for owners · Industry playbooks
What US buyers check before they trust an Indian vendor
The questions a US procurement or operations lead asks before signing with an Indian supplier, and the one-page vendor pack that answers them before they are asked.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
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A US buyer is asking two things: are you good, and will choosing you cause them trouble later. The second question often decides it. They check who you are, who will work on their project, whether your terms are clear, whether someone else has trusted you, and what happens to their data. Answer all five on one page before they ask, and the distance between Bengaluru and Boston gets much smaller.
Who is actually reading your proposal?
Usually it is not only the person who found you. A marketing head in Ohio may like your samples, then forward your details to procurement, a finance contact and sometimes legal. Each of them reads for a different risk.
The sponsor reads for fit. Procurement reads for paperwork. Finance reads for how and when they will pay a foreign company. Legal reads the contract and the data clauses. A proposal written only for the sponsor stalls at the second desk, and nobody tells you why.
So write the vendor pack for the person who has never spoken to you. Assume they have ten minutes and a form to fill.
The five checks, and what answers each
| What they are checking | What they look for | What you put in the pack |
|---|---|---|
| Is this a real company? | Registered name, address, website that matches, a person they can find online | Legal name, registered address, GST and incorporation details, named founder with a LinkedIn profile |
| Who does the work? | Names, roles, continuity | Two or three named people with their roles and how long they have done this work |
| Are the terms clear? | Scope, price, currency, payment, change process, who owns the output | A one-page summary of how engagements run, with sample clauses |
| Has anyone else trusted you? | A reference they can call or a case they can read | Two reference contacts, one written case, stated limits on naming |
| What happens to our data? | Where it is stored, who sees it, what happens when the work ends | A short plain answer, signed off by whoever looks after it in your company |
The last row is the easiest to leave blank. Even a design studio holds a client's unreleased product images. Write down where files live, who has access, whether laptops are encrypted, and whether you will sign the buyer's confidentiality agreement. If you cannot answer yet, you have found your first job. Ask your own IT person or adviser; do not paste an answer from a template you do not understand.
An invented example: a Coimbatore pump-parts maker and a US distributor
This case is made up to show the pattern. A Coimbatore foundry-and-machining unit gets an enquiry from a distributor in Texas that sells replacement parts to water utilities. The distributor's sourcing lead replies warmly to the quote. Then silence for three weeks.
The quote went to the sponsor, who forwarded it to purchasing. Purchasing found a PDF with a generic email as its only contact. It had no company registration details and a price in rupees, with nothing on the currency of payment or on quality records. They did not reject it. They parked it behind vendors who had filled in everything.
The unit rewrote it as a two-page pack. Page one names the owner, the quality head and the person who handles export documents, each with a phone number and the hours that person can be reached. Page two states currency, payment method, who bears the bank charges, how a rejected batch is handled and where inspection records are kept. It also offers one reference call with a domestic OEM customer who agreed in advance. The file moved again, but not cleanly: the purchasing desk still asked for a signed confidentiality agreement and a sample inspection report before it would raise a purchase order, and the unit needed a second round to supply both.
This works when the buyer is comparing vendors on paper. If the buyer already knows you through a long relationship, skip the heavy pack and keep to a short email.
Where does the physical distance bite?
Distance shows up as small unanswered questions. Who do I call at 9 am my time? Who signs when the founder is travelling? What happens if the courier loses the sample, and who pays for the re-make? Nobody in Texas can see your office, so these worries stay open until you close them.
Name a backup for every person who matters on the project. Give contact hours in the buyer's own time zone, not only in IST, so nobody has to calculate. Add a line on how shipments are tracked. None of it costs anything but an afternoon.
For the call itself, our post on time-zone overlap for sales calls sets out how to run it.
What should you not do?
Do not claim certifications you hold only in part, or logos you cannot back with a person who will pick up the phone. Some US buyers check. A false claim found late costs more than a gap admitted early.
Drop the "global partner" line. You are an Indian company with a good record in one thing. Say that.
The pack also needs a reason to pick you over the next vendor, and a list of capabilities does not give one. Finding that reason is what value proposition development covers. If you are still deciding how to reach American buyers at all, start with the United States hub.
Write the pack this week
Put the five rows of the table on one page, fill in what you know and mark what you do not. Ask one existing customer if they would take a reference call. Then send the page with your next US quote. If you would like help with the buyer's side of the picture, tell us what you need.
