SolveYourProblem
Article Series:
Start
An eBay Business
Increase
Your eBay Backend Sales
by Jeff Cohen
It shouldn’t too hard to increase your eBay
backend sales – because the chances are you currently aren’t
making any! Backend sales are sales to customers who have already
bought an item, also known as ‘up-selling’. These are usually
easier sales to make than normal sales: in sales-speak, your
existing customers are ‘warm leads’.
It’s a technique you’ve probably noticed being used on you
in shops: you buy something, and you’re offered a $5 piece
of equipment to keep it clean, or make it easier to use. The
usual human response is to say to yourself “heck, what’s another
five dollars – it might be useful”. It’s just another five
dollars to them, but they might have just added 20% to your
profit margin.
Figure
Out What Goes Together
Out of the things you stock, which cheaper things are there
that could be useful to someone who now owns one of the more
expensive ones? For example, if you sell digital cameras, the
backend product is digital camera memory – they never come
with enough out of the box. The backend products for a printer
would be ink and paper. Try to think laterally!
If you can’t think of anything, take a look around at the
cheaper ‘extra’ items that your competitors offer, and see
if you can find a supplier for them. There are very few product
areas where this technique doesn’t apply.
Include
Letters in Packages When you send items out in the post, include a brief sales
letter with products you think might be of interest to the
customer. It’s like sending out a personalised, targeted catalogue
to your customers with every purchase. Again, you’ll find that
a significant percentage of people won’t have bothered to look
at what else you were selling, and will go back to buy a few
more things.
To stop people from just putting such a letter aside and thinking
they won’t do anything about it right now, you might like to
include some kind of limited time offer – 10% off if you order
within the next month, for example.
Email
Your Customers
Each time you sell something to a customer, you get valuable
market information about them, and they get to see that they
can trust you as a seller. That’s why backend sales are so
powerful. Keep your customers updated in your newsletter, making
sure you list any new products there that you might have in
stock. The chances are that these customers will be far more
eager to buy from you.
Consumable
Products
If the product that the customer bought from you to begin
with is consumable (it will run out), then this is a special
case. You shouldn’t try to make the backend sale straight away,
but should instead wait long enough that the average customer
would have just run out of the product. That’s the time to
strike.
# # # # # SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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