Hi, 

My company in India represents various foreign companies situated in
America, Europe and Japan, and sells their machines such as machine
tools etc., for them in India.  We act as agents and earn a commission
from those companies which they pay my company after the sale.  Some
of these companies situated abroad are companies which we have never
dealt with, nor know anything about.   Our problem is ?will they pay
our commission after we have done their selling for them in India?. 
My question is how do I get much more information about a prospect
company on issues such as whether they generally pay commissions on
time, what is their reference list of machines supplied all over the
world etc., do they deliver in time etc., so that I can decide whether
to deal with them. We already get Dun & Bradstreet reports which help
us, but are not specific enough about specifically what we want to
know which is will we get paid our commission, how good are their
machines, what is their reference list etc?  Are there any companies,
consultants, bodies, associations, websites etc., from where I can get
such detailed information about companies in this fashion.   I need
such information in about 2 weeks once I decide the companies name,
and therefore may not be able to appoint a detective etc.  Hoping you
will be able to help me,  I await your reply.

Warm regards 

Ranjit Malhotra

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Clarification of Question by abrahamemp-ga on 13 Jan 2006 21:59 PST

The thing to understand is that our customer in India places the order
directly on the foreign supplier and we are due to get paid from the
foreign supplier only after the machine is delivered to the customer
in India, hence our problem.

I don't know of any ways to get this information, but it sounds to me
like you need someone to represent you in each of the countries that
you do business with. This person may act as a "middle man" for you
and the company you are purchasing your tools from. In essence, they
won't get paid until you get paid. How large is your company?

Hi

pretzelking-ga 

Thanks for your comment.  In answer to your question our Company has a
variety of suppliers it is dealing with at any one point of time all
over the world, and hence the need of too many middle men.  Also many
of these are one time suppliers which change deal to deal.