Without a doubt, something separates good sellers from the not-so-hot ones. It has nothing to do with magic either- it has everything to do with sound practice...
Here are 11 principles to live by when you start your auction business. They will work wonders for you...
1. Pick Your Niche and Define Your Market
This is ground zero for your success strategy. Find your own niche. Define your market. Then you can know the type of person you’re going to be selling to and the types of product you want to sell.
You're auction sales letters will be a hundred times better if you know the person who you are writing for.
Along with being in a superior position to take advantage of repeat business, the benefits from becoming specialized are endless-
We well be getting into this a little more later.
2. Your Vision
Know where you want to go with your business and why. Every business that thrives has a soul and a purpose. What is it that you want long term? Do you want to become financially independent?
What do you want short term? Do you want to make a steady income every week? If so, how much? Give yourself something to shoot for and try to surpass it.
Remember in the beginning to keep plugging away. The toughest time is at the start. Everyone has to serve as an apprentice before they can truly master what they do.
When you're starting out be willing to absorb every ounce of helpful information your brain can hold.
3. Order is the Foundation of Every Good Thing
One of your early foundations of success is order. Strive for efficiency in every aspect of what you do. If you’re lacking in a system of organization your whole business is going to be threatened.
This not only includes keeping things in their place but things like keeping income tax and business expenditures records.
4. Serve Your Customer With a Passion
In business your customer is the only thing. You customer is far more important than any product you sell. Strive to give them quality at every level of the transaction.
With online auctions most sellers have a hard time looking past the initial sell. As far as they are concerned after the initial bid the relationship is over. That is why most of them don’t do so swell when they try to make a business of this.
Look far beyond the first sell. It is only the beginning of a long mutually beneficial relationship.
5. Become An Expert In Your Field
Become an authority in what you do, wherever you choose to go with you online auction business. If you sell CD media supplies, you want to be thought of before anyone else.
When you become an authority in your field, a whole new universe of business and opportunity is opened up to you.
I buy certain types of things on eBay from the same sellers over and over. I wouldn't dare do business with anyone else, not when they have proven themselves and their product.
You want to earn that same type of position in the minds of eBayer’s for your niche.
6. Credibility- the Key Factor in Selling
Become trustworthy. Remove every doubt about your credibility any chance you get. You can do this through presenting yourself positively through your feedback, being passionately devoted to your business and by being an expert.
By making great complete ads and from answering emails quickly.
The X factor is the critical ingredient for online sales success.
7. Harness the Power of Technology
Use you existing software of the Internet to handle repetitive tasks. This will free you up to grow your business to a level...
One of my big sticking points is leverage. Leveraging means getting everything you can, out of all you got. When you use existing tools and methods for freeing yourself from repetitive tasks, you will compress time.
That means you will get more work done with less effort... and as a result you will make more money.
8. Get Everything You Can Out of All You Have
A wiser person than myself once said, "There are only two qualities in the world, efficiency and inefficiency, and only two sorts of people: the efficient and the inefficient."
Maximize results while minimizing your expenditures. This is the essence of what it takes.
Test ads ruthlessly to get more for your advertising dollar. Look for better ways to do business. So much can be do to get better and better returns. Set an ideal up for yourself and call it, "efficiency"- if you do this you will never become stagnant in what you do...
Always search for better and better returns for the amount of resources you put in.
9. Probably the Most Important Thing: Your Sales Letter
Your sales letter is your salesman. On the net, how you're potential buyer perceives you and your product is everything.
Copywriting is the art of showing you and what you sell to your buyer in the best possible light.
It’s the most important thing you have going for you. A carefully crafted sales letter can increase you results exponentially without having to spend an extra penny.
10. Shoulder The Risk in the Transaction
Risk reversal is on of the strongest free sales tools you have at your disposal.
When you offer your bidders a satisfaction guarantee, you are telling them that you are confident that your product can deliver, and if not you are willing shoulder the risk for them by giving them their money back…
Very rarely do they ask for one unless your product is poor.
This is one of the easiest ways to increase sales; if you have a good product to begin with, don’t neglect this technique. I see many sellers who don’t offer one when they could.
It’s a must to offer one with your Dutch auctions. A strong risk-reversing offer will clinch sales that pass others by.
11. Perseverance Will See You Through Anything
Perseverance is your greatest asset of all, especially when things get rough. To me, nothing is more fulfilling than meeting challenge head on and winning out.
Anytime you run into trouble or resistance in your business, accept it as a growth opportunity that you need in order to get to higher levels or success.
