Serious buyer or time-waster. The signs to check before you spend.
A foreign enquiry doesn't cost you an email. It costs you a spec sheet to translate, samples with their customs paperwork, and three weeks of back-and-forth. And you pay all of it before you know whether there's a real buyer on the other end.
Four ten-minute checks, before you reply: the email domain, what that business already sells, how precise their question is, and whether they can tell you the destination country.
Then three questions, before the full price list and before samples. They're not a test: they're the information you genuinely need to make a sensible offer. A real buyer finds them normal, because they ask their own suppliers the same.
The point isn't to shut people out. It's deciding who gets your two good hours and who gets a polite ten-minute reply, instead of treating everything that comes in the same way.
This guide is written by Itria, which builds tailored AI systems for Italian SMEs. For small food producers who export, it builds the system that brings foreign buyers' enquiries from email, WhatsApp and the website into one place, sorts them by how serious they are and drafts the first reply in the sender's language. Nothing goes out until a person has approved it.
This piece is part of the guide to export operations for small food producers and covers the second of the eight steps, the one that comes straight after the first reply and just before the spec sheet.
Why qualifying matters more when you're small
Of ten enquiries that reach a small producer, some are genuine importers, some are middlemen putting together an offer for a client they may not have, and some are just collecting price lists to compare against a supplier they've already chosen.
Treating them all the same looks prudent, but it's the surest way to arrive exhausted at the one that counts. And it's a problem that hurts more the smaller the business.
In terms of your working day: every export job costs you more than it costs a large exporter, because you do it with fewer people and no dedicated department. So an unqualified enquiry doesn't just take your time. It takes away your ability to handle another one properly.
The four ten-minute checks
You do them before replying, without writing to anyone and without any sales instinct. Every one of them can be checked.
| Check | What to look at | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| The domain30 seconds | Whether the email comes from a company domain or a free address. |
A free address isn't a death sentence, but it puts the contact among the ones you reply to without investing straight away. |
| What they already sell2 minutes | Their website: which categories they handle, at what price level, whether they already stock Italian products. |
A buyer who already sells Italian food has the channels, customs procedures and customers in place. It's the strongest positive sign of all. |
| How precise the question is1 minute | What exactly they asked for: a product, or “the price list”? Did they mention pack sizes, shelf life, certifications? |
The questions give away the trade. People who work in the sector ask things only insiders know to ask. |
| The destination countrystraight away | Have they said where the goods will end up, or only where they're based? |
The country changes the label, the documents, the duties and sometimes the advance registrations. A buyer who can't tell you isn't ready to buy yet. |
None of these four requires knowing the buyer. They take ten minutes and a willingness to look before you reply.
The signs a contact won't buy
On their own they prove nothing, so read them together. Two or three in the same message add up to a picture.
- They ask for the full price list without naming a product. Someone who needs to buy something knows what they're looking for. Someone collecting prices wants everything.
- They don't mention the country or the channel. An importer knows whether they sell to restaurants, shops or supermarket chains, because that choice decides pack sizes and prices.
- They ask for free samples before anything else. The order of the requests says a lot: first the product, then the terms, then maybe a tasting.
- The message is impersonal and could have gone to anyone. No mention of you, your product or why they wrote to you in particular.
- They push on price before asking about a single feature. Anyone buying food to resell needs to know what they're selling, not just what it costs.
And the sign that works the other way, the most underrated one: a buyer who asks you difficult questions is nearly always a real buyer. Someone asking about guaranteed remaining shelf life, pallet configuration, or whether your site is registered in a certain country is doing their job. Those questions take effort on their side too.
The three questions, and how to word them
Send them before the full price list and before samples, as part of your first reply. They don't slow things down, they speed them up, because without that information any offer you prepared would be generic anyway.
Subject: Re: your enquiry - [product] Dear [name], Thank you for your interest in our [product]. So that we can send you a precise quotation instead of a general price list, could you confirm three points? 1. DESTINATION Which country will the goods be sold in? (this affects labelling, documents and duties) 2. CHANNEL AND VOLUME Which channel do you supply - retail, food service, distribution? And what indicative quantity are you considering for a first order? 3. REQUIREMENTS Do you have specific requirements on format, private label, certifications or minimum residual shelf life on arrival? As soon as we have these, we will send you our technical data sheet and a quotation with delivery terms. Kind regards, [name] - [company]
Three reasons it works. It asks for nothing confidential, so nobody gets defensive. It says what the buyer gets in return: an accurate offer instead of a generic price list. And the three answers, when they come, are exactly the data you need to quote: destination, channel, requirements.
Qualifying doesn't mean giving a poor reply to anyone who fails the checks. It means rationing your effort: an uncertain contact gets a short, polite reply with the three questions, and nothing more until they answer.
Your two good hours (a tailored spec sheet, samples, a detailed quote) go to the ones who answered. Shutting someone out because they write from a free email address is as much a mistake as sending them samples: small, serious importers do exist, and some markets still work that way.
Contacts from trade fairs
The same method applies, with one advantage and one drawback. The advantage is that you've spoken to them: you already know the country, the channel and what they were after. The drawback is volume, and above all memory: after three days at a fair, the business cards all look the same and you can't remember who was who.
The rule that saves most of a fair's value is simple, and almost nobody follows it: write the three pieces of information next to each contact that same evening, not when you get back. A week later, a contact with no context is worth no more than an address found online, and you paid for it with the stand.
When to stop doing it from memory
With ten enquiries a year you can keep all this in your head. The trouble starts when enquiries come in weekly, through three different channels, and nobody remembers where the one from March got to.
At that point the question is no longer whether an individual buyer is serious, but whether there's one place where you can see everyone's status in ten seconds: who's received what, who never replied, who needs a call. That place can be a spreadsheet, and for a long time it should be. When the spreadsheet stops being enough, it's one of the things the Cruscotto keeps in order by itself: no message goes to a buyer unless a person has approved it, which is a design constraint, not a sales promise.
Questions and answers
How can I tell whether a foreign buyer is serious?
With four ten-minute checks, before you reply. The email domain: an established importer writes from their own company address. What they already sell: two minutes on their website tell you whether they handle your category and already stock Italian products, which means the channels and procedures are in place. How precise the question is: people in the trade ask about remaining shelf life, carton format, registrations. The destination country: a buyer who can't tell you where the goods will end up isn't ready to buy them yet.
What are the signs that a contact will never buy?
Five that come up again and again: they ask for the full price list without naming a product; they don't say which country or channel they'd sell through; they ask for free samples before anything else; they send an impersonal message that could have gone to a hundred suppliers; they push on price before asking about a single feature of the product.
None counts on its own. Two or three together tell you to handle that contact, not nurture it.
Is it rude to ask questions before sending the price list?
No, and it's the opposite of how it comes across. Professional buyers ask their own suppliers the same questions, and read them as a sign there's an organised business on the other side.
How you ask matters: frame the questions as what you need to prepare an accurate offer, not as a test. And anyone who takes offence at three questions is usually confirming the diagnosis.
What does replying to a foreign enquiry really cost?
More than it looks, because the real cost isn't the email. It's the spec sheet to prepare or translate, the samples with their customs paperwork (which outside the EU means a pro forma invoice and sometimes health certificates), and the weeks of back-and-forth.
And it weighs proportionally: the smallest businesses face the highest bureaucratic and administrative costs of operating abroad, so every unqualified enquiry takes far more from them than from a large exporter.
How do you qualify a contact you met at a trade fair?
Same method, with one advantage and one drawback. The advantage: you've spoken to them, so you already have the country, the channel and what they're interested in. The drawback: volume, and a memory that fades within three days.
The working rule that saves a fair's value is to write the three pieces of information next to each contact that same evening. A week later, a contact with no context is worth no more than an address found online, and you paid for this one with the stand.
Sources
- SACE, Piccole, medie e più competitive: le PMI italiane alla prova dell’export fra transizione sostenibile e digitale. The source of the 57% of small manufacturers that export, and of the higher bureaucratic, information and financial costs smaller businesses face in reaching foreign markets.
- The qualifying signs and the wording of the first reply don't come from a study: they're commercial practice, presented here as such and not as rules.
See in ten seconds where every buyer stands.
While enquiries are few, a spreadsheet will do. At Itria we start from the outside and build tailored digital systems for exporters. For you, that means more enquiries, fewer losses and less manual work. Drop us a line about what's slowing you down. We'll make the first move: we'll look at what a buyer sees when they search for you, and tell you what we found. Even if we never end up working together.