International trade sales, this part of my work is called waiting for orders

“You got a dream, you gotta protect it”. I’m an international trade sales, and my dream is getting orders. Oh no, it should be called “waiting”, waiting for my oversea customers’ orders.

I hated waiting, waiting tortuously and endlessly with great uncertainty, just see the email contents I received from one of my customers in below:.

2014.2.11: “We will prepare an order ASAP.”

2014.3.4: “We will do as soon as possible.”

2014.4.21：“We will make the deposit soon.”

2014.5.28: “I believe it will be in the next 2 weeks. It will be soon.”

2014.6.27:“We should be able to send the deposit next week.”

2014.7.18: “I anticipate the payment coming either late next week or early the following week.”

2014.8.12: “I have initiated the wire transfer for the deposit!”

I’ve been doing this job for almost one year with strong sense of loneliness and emptiness encroaches on my enthusiasm day after day. I opened my computer each morning and expected emails with attachments of Purchase Orders from my customers. Expecting excited me, unfortunately, high expectation was always followed by great disappointment-many of the mornings tended to be great disappointment and even desperation as no new email received in my inbox.

The fortunate thing was that the customer finally placed order with me after i sending emails again and again to introduce my company and products, negotiate prices, and show my all-round speedy services, though it took totally 6 months.

“The world is brutal today, even more brutal tomorrow and wonderful the day after, but most guys would die by tomorrow and never see the sunshine the day after tomorrow” This is what said by Jack Ma, who is the owner of Alibaba. So I finally persuaded myself to believe that i was going through the darkness before the dawn and told to myself: waiting is a necessary part of life, just enjoy and move on!