Thanks for joining today’s workshop, “Qualifying & Closing Leads.” Today’s workshop is the second in a series of education and training sessions which we will provide to you over the course of the year. Last month, we discussed best practices for generating client leads (Link ). We hope that these workshops will help enable you to effectively scale your TA business. As you know first-hand, the TA business cycle is an iterative and ongoing process. In our workshops, we will provide training and tips on important topics spanning the entire TA business cycle, from planning your TA business strategy to retaining your clients after a sale.

TA Business Cycle

1. Planning Your TA Strategy

2. Generating Client Leads

3. Qualifying & Closing Leads

4. Selling Client Product

5. Retaining Clients

Our training curriculum will generally align with the framework outlined above. Therefore, much of our training in the early part of this year will be focused on the initial stages of the TA Business Cycle, such as generating and closing leads. Similarly, the training in the latter part of this year will focus on the best practices around retaining clients and planning your 2006 TA business strategy. To ensure you are aware of future workshops, please sign up for the TA News Group (Link ).

In today’s workshop, we will be talking about best practices for qualifying and closing leads. At this stage in the TA lifecycle, you are both selling your TA services as well as performing the due diligence to make sure the prospective client is a good match for you. As always, we will post some prepared content, but we encourage you to share your own learnings with others during this workshop. Also, please feel free to jump in with questions along the way.

Cheers!

Katie & Walt

C. Seek Good Product

• The product screening process is possibly one of the most critical steps in the lead qualification process. People will bring you a wide range of items – some will be good for eBay and others will not. You will need to become adept at identifying good items and refusing bad items.

• It is extremely important that you are careful about what types of products you accept – you want to spend time selling items that will ultimately be profitable for you.

• You can estimate the fair market value for items by doing research on completed eBay listings. We’ll discuss several research methods in the next section.
• If you don’t already know, you should estimate your costs for selling an item so that you can understand how much revenue you must make to be profitable. When estimating your costs, be sure to account for all variables (your time, eBay fees, PayPal fees, shipping & handling costs – including packaging, etc.). Clearly your costs may vary by product type, so you may also want to estimate your costs for handling different product groups/types (computer vs. clothing vs. jewelry vs. video game). Once you know how your approximate costs compare to your anticipated revenue, you can judge whether the item will be worth your time. You may want to track your sales and costs over several weeks.
• If you are comfortable working with spreadsheets, you may want to create a basic financial model that you can re-use to estimate your profits. You can build the model such that it calculates your approximate revenues, costs, and profits.

D. Set Client Expectations On The Value of The Items

• Sometimes clients will have a preconceived notion of what their items should sell for on eBay. One of the most important things you should do is give the client a realistic perspective on what they are likely to receive for their items.

• Do your research to understand the likely final sale price on eBay for the items you are being asked to sell. You can search completed items on eBay, or use one of the other many research tools that exist (e.g., Andale’s Price Finder - Link ).

• Try to compare items of the same condition when possible (e.g., new items vs. new items, used items vs. used items). You may have to review the descriptions of the various listings to ensure you are comparing “apples to apples,” but it will give you a better benchmark. Determine the average selling price across multiple listings if enough data exists.
• If you can’t find an exact comparison item on eBay, then try finding similar items on eBay (e.g., newer or older model, different condition) or look at other online shopping comparison sites to get a sense of what that item may be selling for on other eCommerce sites.

• Your message to the client should focus on the value that you will deliver to them, as opposed to the commission you will take. It’s a subtle point, but an important one (e.g., You will get 2/3 fair market value for this item).
• You will want to clearly differentiate between the likely final sale price for that item on eBay, versus the actual money the client will receive back from you – which will be less since you will be subtracting your commission.
• You can set the client’s expectations by stating the average selling price or by providing a range of prices (e.g., “similar items sold for between $x and $y dollars in the past 15 days”).
• It is also reasonable to let the client know that the actual final sale price for their item may vary from the data you have, based on fluctuations in demand in the eBay marketplace. Whatever numbers you provide, your estimates should be as realistic as possible.