Hello to all

One of the challenges you encounter when relying on a dropship wholesale supplier is the dreaded ‘Out of Stock’ email reply.  Now this poses a number of problems for you such as potentially having to refund your customer, inconveniences your customer and you, long delay for stock to arrive, may give a bad impression of your company and so on.

Something that has helped me enormously is receiving a regularly updated spreadsheet of stock levels from my dropshippers.  Now this isn’t something you might want to do on day one with trying to build a relationship with your dropshippers, however, it is something to surely ask them about.

There is nothing worse for a customer to conduct all their research and then make the decision to purchase only to be advised that the product is ‘out of stock.’

Receiving updated stock level reports can also work extremely well for you. For example, say your dropshipper may be carrying alot of stock of a particular product and consequently you could negotiate with them on a better purchase price and then undertake a promotion on that product.  Secondly, being aware that certain products are currently out of stock can prevent any problems with customers ordering these products.  You can either temporarily remove the product from your site until stock levels are replenished or make a note on your product line of ‘Currently out of stock, due (and then a date).

As you know your customer is only one click away from your competitors – don’t give them a reason to click and leave.

Regards
Damien Clarke

Hello to all

Whether you like it or not you will get customers asking questions. 

You might have thought that the process of having an online business goes something like this:
1. Customer orders online
2. Payment is successful
3. You email your dropshipper with the product and delivery details
4. Pay your Dropshipper
5. Pocket the profit

This is how it works in its most simplistic format, but in the real world this is not the case all the time.

About 80% of my sales do work like that and the process does run very smooth indeed. However, 20% of my sales are made with numerous phone calls and subsequent emails with customers asking questions about the product they are looking to buy.  This can be time consuming and frustrating, particularly when they don’t end up buying!

Now, initially I did find this annoying, however, throughout customer questions and finding the answers comes more knowledge you are gaining about your products. You can use this information to improve the quality of your website by providing answers to these questions.

In today’s competitive ecommerce businesses, your visitor is only one click away from leaving and buying a product elsewhere.  Don’t give them this reason.

Additionally, I have found that as my Page Rank has improved, so has the number of enquiries I receive. Now alot of these enquiries don’t result in any sales, as when I follow them up via email they don’t reply.  We call these people ‘tyre kickers.’  Not ready to buy but just looking and doing their research.  However, you never know when one of these could potentially turn into a major customer OR refer someone to you. So treat them all with the respect they deserve!

So it is inevitable that you are going to receive Customer Questions.  Look forward to these as an opportunity to learn more about your products.

All success comes to those who dare to begin…

Regards
Damien Clarke

Before discovering the secret to finding wholesale suppliers I spent hours and hours endlessly searching for suitable suppliers for products that I needed.  Well I have just found a supplier for a particular product that I wanted in about 2 minutes, sent them an email, received a response in about 15 minutes and after a few emails backwards and forwards to clarify carton quantities, pricing and banking details, I have just placed an order and will pay for the goods via international transfer over the next few days.

That is how easy it can be!