Take The Leads? The Internet is good for approximately one billion things. You'd think international trade leads would be one of them.

Although the Internet is sometimes hailed as one of the greatestbusiness tools developed this century, there's at least onecommercial activity for which it is often more trouble thanit's worth: finding good international trade leads.

Every global entrepreneur should be aware of this apparent Netaberration. "The overwhelming majority of [trade] leads youfind on the Internet are garbage," says international businessconsultant Jeffrey P. Graham, president of JPG Consulting inPhiladelphia. "Usually, out of every hundred leads published,no more than three are even worth pursuing. Big companies have thehuman resources to sift through everything and find the good ones,but small businesses just don't have the manpower."

As a former executive director of the South Carolina World TradeCenter, J.E. "Dewey" Teske has experienced thisphenomenon firsthand. "There's a huge number of wannabes[to watch out for] who have an e-mail account and think they'regoing to do tons of trading," says Teske, who now works as aninternational trade consultant in Charleston, South Carolina."At the trade center, it took the constant effort of a staffof five to qualify those leads."