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I participate in *SEBRAE's ALI program and the consultant who has been following my work before and during the pandemic, seeing that my sales have increased a lot, asked me if they could use my data as a success case of a program participant during the pandemic.
I stopped to think ...
Well, I work with healthcare products, some of the manufacturers that I work for provide essential products that are in high demand right now, so yes, sales have grown a lot.
But I worked day and night for almost two months to meet all this demand, mediated conflicts, nervous and hurried people. What was under my responsibility to dispatch I did, what not, I mediated until the end and some are still pending.
The problems are diverse and do not end: New regulations, price auction, technical specifications that are not clear enough, the buyer who does not pay attention to the sea of information that is sent, many of them are buying these materials for the first time.
The constant change of scenery means that manufacturers and importers have to change the rules of the game without notice, prices that were on the moon start to fall, purchase orders that were already being manufactured are canceled, cargo stuck at the customs, closed borders for the flow of people, scammers in all sectors, every day is a different problem, or the same problem that continues for weeks without a predicted solution, and it has no end.
I did my best, even coming into conflict with my customers (who are the manufacturers) to try to protect importers, but for the mostly it was not enough to keep them happy.
I feel that despite having sold more, I lost the trust of several importers. And I say I LOST, because the perception of the majority is that they did business with me and not with the manufacturers. Of course, they also had their losses, but I did everything I could to minimize those losses, from all sides, and being an intermediary, I feel that they chose a culprit, and that culprit is ME.
Not the pandemic, not the governments that forced us to the limit, not the lack of attention on both sides in sending clear information, the fault is always with the interlocutor.
So, I don't feel like a successful case in this pandemic because I sold more, no number can explain what has been these past months. But I feel like a winner because I am going to get out of it all more strong and with certainty of where I want to go, and with a clear conscience that nothing different could have been done by me.
* Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service