Sam and Jim are friends. They came across each other in a restaurant and talked about their job development. Complete the following dialogue with the sentences or expressions in the box.

Sam: Hi, Jim! (1) ______________ ! How are you doing?

Jim: Hello, Sam. I'm doing great. Glad to see you here and how's your job?

Sam: Well, not that good.

Jim: Why are you saying so? What happened?

Sam: You know, nowadays, the international trading environment (2) ______________.

Jim: Yeah. I've really heard that there are (3) ______________ platforms for oversea customers to buy products online.

Sam: Yes! (4) ______________ those cross-border e-commerce platforms are more convenient for customers, and cheaper, (5) ______________ our traditional foreign trade business went down.

Jim: (6) ______________. But please (7) ______________. I believe you can also gain a lot by transferring to the CBEC field.

Sam: You're right. My colleagues and I (8) ______________. This afternoon, we'll have a training course on this theme.

Jim: Yes, be cheerful. You're always hardworking. I do think you can get a new and better development by doing CBEC businesses.

How to Sell Internationally?

Nowadays it is not unusual to purchase on some CBEC platforms and find the same product cheaper than you can find it domestically, even when shipping is included. This is especially true inside Europe but also outside in markets such as China and the U.S. The only thing buyers usually have to accommodate is the increased shipping time. However, even this barrier is becoming blurred as retailers start to store inventory in local markets.

By opening up to the international market in the right way, you put your products in front of, literally, hundreds of millions of new potential oversea buyers. Potentially, they can get products which cannot be reached before, or they can get at prices they can't find through traditional international trading. Because the latter business mode usually includes several levels of distributors, and each level needs to make a profit.

While you are doing cross-border e-commerce businesses, there are two main approaches to grow your cross-border sales through marketplaces. If you know a country where your products are either unique or competitive, you can start selling them on that market. The alternative is to start testing in multiple markets at once by listing your items internationally on marketplaces.

The obvious ones are eBay and Amazon, and there are others. This means you don't have to invest huge amounts in marketing in multiple countries or regions but can still see what sells well and use that as a basis for deciding which markets to mainly focus on.

With both approaches, fully localizing your products and/or website is fundamentally important if you want to get the best results. This means making sure your prices are converted, shipping is set properly, sizes are converted and of course your products are in the buyer's local language.

Words ＆ Expressions

1. Words

domestically /d??mest?kli/　adv.　境內

accommodate /??k?m?de?t/　v.　適應

barrier /?b?ri?(r)/　n.　障礙物

blur /bl??(r)/　v.　變模糊

store /st??(r)/　v.　儲存

local /?l??kl/　adj.　當地的

literally /?l?t?r?li/　adv.　不夸張地

potential /p??ten?l/　adj.　潛在的

traditional /tr??d???nl/　adj.　傳統的

latter /?l?t?(r)/　adj.　后者的

distributor /d??str?bj?t?(r)/　n.　經銷商

approach /??pr??t?/　n.　方式

marketplace /?mɑ?k?tple?s/　n.　市場

unique /ju?ni?k/　adj.　獨特的

competitive /k?m?pet?t?v/　adj.　有競爭力的

multiple /?m?lt?pl/　adj.　多樣的

obvious /??bvi?s/　adj.　明顯的

invest /?n?vest/　v.　投資

localize /?l??k?la?z/　v.　使地方化

fundamentally /?f?nd??ment?li/　adv.　根本地

convert /k?n?v??t/　v.　轉換

2. Expressions

open up　開發

make a profit　獲利

at once　立刻

focus on　專注于

local language　當地語言