How Alibaba pitches to the American SME to sell to China, in Jack Ma's own words

Author: Rachel Wang ([email protected])

Rachel writes about the Chinese market and Chinese culture

Rachel works for LTH Business Consulting, who specializes in the Chinese market research

Alibaba, the US $22.96 billion Chinese e-commerce group, hold a summit in Detroit on June 20-21 to call American SME selling to China with its help. Its chairman, Jack Ma, sent the key messages through his interview with Charlie Rose yesterday. 

This article tells you what the key messages of Alibaba are to the American SMEs, in Jack Ma’s own words.

Selling to China is your token to the opportunities of the future 

“In the past 30 years, the US domestic consumption was the engine of the global economy. I told people at that time, I say, if you miss the opportunity of selling your products to the world to the USA to the Europe, you may miss the chance. Today I want to tell the people that if you miss the opportunity of selling your products to China…you will miss the future.”

Alibaba prioritizes customer needs ahead of shareholder’s 

“Customer no.1, employee no.2, and shareholder no.3.” 

“I believe if the customers are happy, the employees are happy; the shareholders will be happy. If the shareholder is happy, may not necessarily the employee is happy, may not necessarily the customer will be happy.”

He told the shareholders: “There are (is) too much money in the world. I only need money who believe in our mission and vision.”

Trust is everything

“If one people (person) say I give you one million dollars (and another say) I give you the trust, which one I would choose. I choose those people who give me the trust because it is the trust that makes us united.”

“If you want to smart people work for you, the smart people need to be managed by culture, not by rules and laws… the base of the culture is trust.”

Jack Ma's interview with Charlie Rose at Davos, 2015

“The only thing I worry (when I started Alibaba) is that you should not disappoint people who believe in you.”

“As an entrepreneur, if everything is ready, that does not need you. Because nothing is ready, that needs entrepreneurship.”

Alibaba is on the frontier of protecting SME’s interests 

“100,000 brands partner with us.

…

We are the company online today on anti-counterfeit and IP protection, because we know there are three things that will make our site die- counterfeit, IP, and cheating. 

…

We use Alipay and all the ways we do to make sure SMEs can easily sell, easily receive the money, and the customer service is good.”

Alibaba empowers SMEs to compete with the big guys like Amazon

“They (Amazon) are the e-commerce company. We (Alibaba) are not (an) e-commerce company. We help others to become e-commerce. We believe every company can be Amazon. We try to empower the small business a marketplace they can reach to their customers. We try to empower the companies with logistics so that they can deliver things quickly and cost-effectively. We try to empower every small business. (When) they do the e-commerce, they can easily receive the money. ”

“We are not globalize (globalizing) Alibaba; we are globalize (globalizing) e-commerce. We try to making (make) sure e-commerce, the infrastructure, the payment, the marketplaces, the logistics- can make sure everybody today can compete with Amazon, Microsoft, (and) IBM. This is what we (Alibaba) want.”

Alibaba innovate, not where there is money, but where SME needs 

“We do business from marketplaces, payment, logistics, to cloud not because we believe there are (is) money there. 

When we build the marketplaces, if we don’t have the payment solutions, the customers cannot do transactions. When we have the payment, if we don’t have the logistics, they cannot finish the transactions. And when we have a lot of transactions, we say if we don’t have cloud computing, (the) cost of IT for our customers are too expensive. So we do all these things, not because there is money, (but) because if we don’t do there, our customers cannot finish their job.

Our mission is helping doing business easier.”

To see the full interview of Jack Ma with Charlie Rose

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohfA8Hcwvic