You see, your business begins and ends with the customers that make up your niche. If you realize one day that people aren’t buying your collectible glass pigs, you wouldn’t be selling them because you wouldn’t be making any money. You would either have to close your doors or find out what your customers will buy. Maybe, glass pigs are too limited of a selection. Maybe you try selling glass farm animals. Or maybe glass is too narrow and you offer cast iron and ceramic pigs in addition to glass pigs. These are just examples but you can see how important is it to know what your customer wants.

Here’s another example. If you specialize in high end spa products, is your perfect customer a business man who spends the weekend mountain biking? No. It’s probably a professional woman who reads fashion magazines and shops online five times a month.

oasisconnect

See what we’re going after? Get to know the kind of customers that are swimming around in your niche market. Make sure the products you’re offering are what they want. Then watch their behaviour so that you can either offer difference products or build your existing product line.

If you have researched your niche and you’ve watched customer behavior and still can’t figure out what they want, then ASK them. Send them a polite email and ask them how you can help them find what they want. Find out how you could have made their experience better. Ask them for constructive criticism. Among other things, that’s what your eBay Newsletters are for!

Now that you have clearly defined your niche and your perfect customer, this is when you build a super-magnetic connection with your customers. Make your relationship so sticky that they don’t want to shop anywhere else. Phew! Now we can get to those five steps about Connecting With Your Customers…

oasisconnect

e-Books are super easy to write:

1. Don’t fret about trying to make it perfect, just write down what you know.

2. Write about something you enjoy, are passionate about or find fun. Your excitement will show and entice buyers.

3. Include facts, stories, tips & tricks, lists, (people love top 10 lists), screenshots, helpful resources, check lists, pictures, etc.

4. 15-30 page long e-Books sell better than 100 page e-books so it doesn’t have to be lengthy. The reason why is because people don’t have time to read a lot these days but they do want juicy information.

5. Turn your book into a PDF file. There are free, open source programs that convert your files into PDFs these days. You can try www.primopdf.com & www.openoffice.com.

Keep your products healthy and your selection fresh and you’ll have customers who can’t resist shopping with you again and again!

oasisconnect

Give them all the details. What are the benefits of buying from you? People buy benefits first, not necessarily the product/service you are selling (the exception is a buyer who is specifically looking for the lowest price).

If your perfect customer is the busy executive, make sure they know you will ship to their office…immediately (overnight). If they’re buying a gift, see if you can deliver it directly to the recipient, already wrapped...for FREE. If your perfect customer is a crafter, offer your favorite double-sided tape for free with that scrapbook you’re selling. The tape will makes it easy for customers to put their photos in place.

oasisconnect

Over-Delivery

Underpromise and overdeliver. In Seth Godin’s Flipping the Funnel speech at eBay Live this year, he told 800 people to become Superstars. One of the fastest ways to become a Superstar is to give your customers even more than they expected.

• If your customer asks a question, answer promptly, politely and professionally even if it’s something you’ve already stated in your listing.

• If you say your package will ship in 3 days, ship it in 1 and get outstanding feedback for your ultra-fast delivery.

• Add a nice handwritten or branded thank you note with every package, and provide your contact information in case your customers need to reach you.

• Throw in a last minute freebie because you appreciate your customer’s patronage.

• Be reliable: send your newsletters out the same day every week, make your contact information easily available, answer emails within 24 hours during the business week.

• Call your customer and ask them if they were happy with your service. Find out if you can offer them anything else. Find out if you can get them something they’re looking for. Studies show that phone calls result in repeat business and higher sales. Just make sure you’re not soliciting but actually calling about their particular order.

oasisconnect

Incentives

Incentives are rewards tied to a specific result. You see incentives all the time like the popular BOGO program that Payless Shoes started a few years ago. You can create easy incentives for your own eBay business to draw your customers back.

• After you’ve delivered your package, send an email thanking that customer again for their business, and ask them if there was anything you could have done differently to make their experience more pleasant. Tell them if they reply that you’ll give them something extra like 10% off the next time they buy from you.

This can even be automated with eBay’s selling manager. Most of your customers won’t respond, but they will appreciate the extra attention. Recognition is a very powerful persuasive tool. If you take the few minutes to recognize that you appreciate your customers, they will feel important and go on to tell everyone they know about you. Now they are your salespeople!

oasisconnect

*Whew* what a lot of information. As you can see, we've posted the workshop material early so you can read through it before the workshop.

We'll be back tomorrow (Thursday, July 26) at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time to take your questions and comments.

So for now...get to reading (just in case there's a test - not really).

See you tomorrow,

Deirdre
eBay Community Development