2011 - Page 4 of 13 - The Last Drop of Ink

The First eSellerPro Council

September 19, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

While I’m not going to cover who was there and what was covered in this article, I am going to share a key observation and ask you the question “what does this mean for you?”.

The Table

The table consisted of nearly all the largest, most influential clients of eSellerPro and together, probably accounted for a quarter of all turnover taken on eBay UK by professional business sellers or more.

Ironically there were only two businesses that I did not implement sat at the table, the others I had either implemented personally or were the reason why they were using eSellerPro in the first place and with half the room accounting for FSP’s, eBay “Full-Service Providers”, they represented the majority of the eBay Outlets. I did, on entering wonder why the hell I was there (although equally honoured to be part of it) and wore the hat as “moderator”.

My Observation

After picking myself off the floor, as eSellerPro has now got a documented “road map”, it was really interesting to look at commonalities between the people sat at the table.

In all instances, they were “people persons”.

They actually give-a-hoot about their staff and what they are trying to do. Yes, they were all highly motivated business people, but under each one of them, they each had teams of people assisting them.

In three cases, their trusted “right-hand-man” (or woman) were with them. Some had family members as part of the team, mums, sisters and brothers, aunts & uncles, but it extended further than that, much further.

They employed people as part of the ‘family’ and extended their family as part of their business. One even quoted, “I employ mothers, because when they need me to be lenient, than I know I will see the return two-fold in loyalty”, another accounts for a substantial part of an entire islands economy and the others making a significant difference to their local economies.

And that’s the observation, none of them would would be where they are today, sat at that table, responsible for some of the largest chunks of transactional value carried out on the on-line marketplaces without a trusted team below them, which knowingly or unknowing, treating them as “family”.

Summary

In conclusion, a multitude of topics were covered. Goodness knows what several members of the table actually thought of the interactions, although the feedback given to me personally was exceptional.

The one piece of glue outside of eSellerPro joining them all together was undoubtedly, they care about people and without them, none of them would have been sat there.

So, to the original question.
What does this mean for you?

This Weeks To-Do List

September 18, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

I’m here writing out what my “to-do list” is for the week and thought I share parts of it with you.

Reading

I need to make a serious dent in a book I have been slowly reading over the past few weeks, its called “On Competition” by Michael Porter. I’m now only 75 or so pages in and what is covered is best described as ‘epic’. I’ve never looked at competitive advantages in such detail and finally understand the power of straddling and why the lust for growth can make compromises to a business.

I also just completed Freakonomics over the weekend and have ordered the following book, Superfreakonomics which should be here Tuesday, along with a book I took from Scot Wingo’s reading list called Founders at Work. I have previously read ‘Rework‘ by the chaps at 37signals.

Accountant

VAT registration is on the cards again and a special thanks to Chris from Tamebay on some pointers earlier today. I have a meeting with the accountant on Thursday. I’m also quite excited about this as there is the potential to bring her in on some of the topics that I have to cover as part of ProjectE.

Social Networking

I’m going to flip my usage of social mediums this week, one change I made a week or so ago was to keep the spam down on my personal accounts, for example, not posting updates from here to my FaceBook account. I’m going to take this a stage further and keep as many of the interactions as possible incoming, rather than outgoing, if that makes sense?

Podcasting

You might start to see a new side to this site later this week. I have been toying with the idea of releasing podcasts for quite sometime now, they’re part of the road-map for this site and you might just see this come to fruition this week (but no promises).

ChannelAdvisors Amazon 360

One of the largest strengths of ChannelAdvisor is their ability to create reports that make sense and part of their changes due out soon is something called “Amazon 360”, the Autumn press release is here and I’m hoping on seeing this before it goes live in two weeks time.

Two Key Articles

I’ve got two key articles I have been working on, the first is a critical observation from the eSellerPro council and the other is regarding the limitations on eBay and well marketplaces in general and it’s already raising more questions than it answers. Both are pending authorisation by 3rd parties, so you are may or may not see these this week.

Other Tasks

I’ve still got 4 tasks from last week to complete, none of them were simple either.

The ongoing commitments to ProjectE and the ProjectE 6 are taking up my entire Friday. They’re half way through right now and its too early to comment on their progress, other than we’re at the stages that I expected. We had an exceptionally interesting conversation on Friday regarding pricing strategies I can tell you!

How does this compare to your to-do list?

All Things Shiny (Magpies & Jewellery, Business & Technology)

September 16, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

OoooO Look it’s shiny! Wanna Ride?

Magpies are drawn to shiny things, they collect bottle tops and anything that they can add to their nest when trying to attract a mate. It gives them “the edge”.

Humans have this same trait, we like new things. We’ve been trained by a culture of decades of marketing that we need the latest technology, because it will make our lives better, or so we’ve told.

Do we really need the shiny things to achieve results?

I know this all to well, after the conversations yesterday at the eSellerPro conference, there are a lot of “shiny things” kicking around. Let’s take a few specific ones (Kris take note of Magento):

I’m not going to bore you with the endless list that your “magpie” manager (that might just be you) is being hounded by the media hype to be involved in. You should be doing social, you should be doing facebook, you should be on Twitter, you should be doing eBay, you should be doing Amazon, oh and you should be using Magento; you should be doing this and you should be doing that.

NO!!!

Let’s take “Magento” for a moment, so you’ve already go your website up and running and running and have customers visiting each day. You may have seen it for the past 2, 3 or more years, but if a customer comes to you for the first time today, what do you think?

Does he scream OMG this website is soooo old, it’s got this bug, it’s missing this feature, oh would it not be sooooo cool to have this or that?

NO!!!

The customer is looking to see if the product is right for them, they may be looking for social triggers to ensure they feel safe, they want to make sure that the product or service is right for them and all the common things that happen during a transaction.

You should be doing what is measurable and what is required to gain the confidence of the customer that what you are offering is the right product for them. It does not matter if the checkout is 10 pages long, they’ll get through it, if they have “SOLD” stamped on their foreheads.

So…

I like you, get attracted to the shiny stuff. We’ve been programmed to by endless hounding by mass media & even peers to do this and that.

Magpies use shiny stuff to attract a new partner, we use these things to attract managers, peers, friends, customers & status. But the difference between magpies & humans is that great big lump on top of your shoulders.

By knowing that something is shiny means you can focus on what really matters, what actually converts and making it better. Use your lump, it’s your edge.

What’s shiny to you?
Go on admit it, you have something that is shiny. I know I do. But what really matters? What really converts?

Webinar #2 With ChannelGrabber & A Users Feedback

September 14, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

Well, that was an amazing turnout, thank you so much to those who attended. We had a few technical issues to begin with, just like losing the questions on the previous week, I’ll learn from this to ensure that they get better each time.

So… What was the Webinar about?

The webinar was hosted by myself and we also have three guests, the first was Daniel, the MD of ChannelGrabber, Matthew the product director and Jason, someone who uses ChannelGrabber to run his business from.

We were not only shown what this tool can do but also cover how it can help your business be more effective at selling online. This was clearly highlighted by the feedback from Jason in the webinar and look out for the pivotal question at the end.

An Introduction to Why You Need a Tool Like This

I felt it necessary to add a short introduction before we get into the Webinar, one because it’s very long, the second to highlight the 3 reasons why you need a tool like this.

They are:

You’re not entering data into specific sites, rather you are entering into a single site and it makes updating the information later much easier
You can manage your sales orders in a single place
It’s one of the two big spikes in a business’s life (automation & sales channels)

The Webinar

I apologised about 20 times for “butting-in” but this is where I was thinking of you and that you may have not realised the impact or exactly what we were referring to, so felt it necessary to do so. (another apology here lol)

I take for granted the features found in ChannelGrabber and are doing my best to ensure that you fully understand what we’re covering.

Webinar with ChannelGrabber Today @ 17:00

September 13, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

In case you’ve missed it, I’m holding another Free Webinar this evening at 17:00 GMT with MD of ChannelGrabber.com, Daniel and one of their users, Jason who is also one of the ProjectE 6.

Who Should Attend?

If you’ve never used an “automation tool” to manage the differing sales channels eBay & Amazon, then this webinar is for you.

There are typically three spikes in an online small/medium business, the first spike is when you start selling in the first place and dedicate time, the second is when you add more sales channels and the third is when you use a tool like ChannelGrabber to automate as much as possible and to refocus on better inventory data and more inventory.

These are my three rules to expansion, efficiency (internal & external), more sales channels, more inventory. A tool such as ChannelGrabber underpins ALL of these.

What are We Covering?

The webinar will be broken into two sections, the first will be hosted by Daniel and he’ll explain why a tool like this existed and how it can help you.

The second part will with Jason, an actual user of ChannelGrabber and you’ll hear “a real customer” that uses this for his business

Why Not Wednesday?

I’m off to a “customer council” with eSellerPro tomorrow and don’t fancy trying to host the Webinar from hotel wifi.

Where Do I Register?

You can register here http://lastdropofink.co.uk/workshop and it starts at 5pm tonight.

See you there!

7 Leathal eBay Listing Mistakes (Including Borat)

September 12, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

I’ve put together some of the most lethal eBay listing mistakes, I’m sure you’ll not use any of these, just in case, here are some of the things to avoid!

No Gallery Picture

Have you seen how many items are in the clothes, shoes & accessories category lately? On checking there is approximately 13 million listings. Fashion items are the most visual items of them all and not including a gallery picture, which is free I hasten to add, will pretty much kill any chances you have of getting a buyer (or anyone for that matter) to view your listing.

One Word Titles

One word eBay title

We’ve now got space for 80 characters from the previous 55 this month. There are extremes of keyword abuse, however this one falls rather short.

SCREAM AT YOUR BUYERS

SHOUTING at your buyers doesn’t help.

BY TYPING IN CAPS LOCK IT MAKES READING STUFF REALLY HARD. DON’T DO IT! (pretty please).

Poor Images

One hours free consulting if you guess right what this is.

You can get mobile phones with 12Mp cameras on them now (probably more!), there is no excuse for not including great images on your listings.

Using Borat to Sell Your Wares

Say NO to Borat

Look, I cried with laughter at that film, but skimpy birthday suits to sell your wares, naaaa.

L@@K This!

L@@K This!

If you cannot think of any more constructive keywords to put in the title, stop!

Get your Pricing Right

Pricing gone AWOL?

Yep that’s a seven million pound book. I’d not want to be paying the 9% fees on that!
(£617,282.88 to be precise, ignoring any discounts)

Summary

The above are a bit of fun, I found all these on Sunday evening within a few minutes.

On a serious note though, great eBay listing’s are a combination of the lots of little things done right, great titles, superb images, informative descriptions and so on, not a Borat-look-a-like in his skimpys.

What could you do today?
What tiny tweaks could you make today, to make your listings better?
Need ideas? See an earlier guide I wrote for SEO for eBay 10 minutes per day.

I Am Failing At… Email!

September 11, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

Email, Email, Email, Email, Email, Email, Email, Email!!!

Time to rewrite the book on email usage for me and this completely down to me failing badly at answering email in a sensible amount of time. Ironically you probably have the reverse of this problem and are addicted to answering email in nano-seconds.

Failure is OK, but not recognising it and then not doing anything about is insanity.

Quick Background

One of my tasks for last week was to reach out to those I felt were “fab” and tell them so. Trust me I got some odd replies, however one was Chris Ducker from virtualbusinesslifestyle.com.

I’m not going to include what I wrote and only part of his reply, put it this way I’d have not replied to it and credit to the chap, he did.

This was his reply:

Hi Matthew

[content here]

Thanks again, and stay tuned – lots of great stuff coming up!!! :-)

C

————————————————————-
Q: Why is this email 3 sentences or less?
A: Click here to find out!
————————————————————-

Chris C. Ducker
Virtual CEO
@chriscducker

The main contents of the reply is irrelevant to this article, what is, is in the link here:
http://www.virtualbusinesslifestyle.com/my-three-sentence-rule/

Quote:

The Solution
Although receiving and replying to email is an important part of my business, I feel it should not BE my business. So, I now treat all email from this blog like SMS text messages from friends. Since it’s too hard to count and limit myself to a number of letters, I simply count sentences instead.

The maximum of three sentences.

What I am Now Doing?

Anything has to be better than what I am doing & where I’m at now with email (which is a backlog & a mess).

I have been failing badly and this may actually work! So if you get three sentences in a reply, you now know why and who’s responsible.

Image source

Be a Player not a Bystander. Get in. Get Mucky

September 9, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

Foreword: I wrote this in January and wasn’t quite prepared for the effect it had on myself and several others. I’m reposting it this morning as it might help you too.

The irony of this entire blog and some of the articles I have written here is that sometimes I do not even follow my own suggestions I choose to share with you. There is a very good reason for this, I’m looking forward to sharing this with you and hope that you follow suit.

Yes, that really is Women Playing Football in Lingerie

Bystanders

These are the fans that are stood at the side of a game, it doesn’t matter who is playing, the point is, you are stood there doing nothing, wishing you could play, thumb up your bum, where as the players are already playing and enjoying their game.

Players

Players only get good through practice. Professional’s only become great when they research and know the game backwards. Do you think David Beckham got good by having his haircut? Do you think I know the stuff I know, by sitting on my arse and wishing I did something else?

This is part of the definition of an Expert from Wikipedia:

An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public in a specific well-distinguished domain.

An expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability based on research, experience, or occupation and in a particular area of study.

Let’s break this down so it’s completely ‘Matt proof’:

An expert is someone

YAY, we’re at an advantage there we are talking about someone, that is a human, just like me and you.

widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely

So, we’re still talking about a human and they have scored some recognition for their achievements. Remembering they are human, they have probably made some royal screw-ups too, mostly likely not so well publicised.

is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public in a specific well-distinguished domain.

They gained this recognition by most likely their peers or some governing body. This could be as simple as the people you work with or it could be recognised body such as AACSB (the Association of Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) who themselves are recognised by their peers as being distinguished. I wonder how that happened?

An expert, more generally, is a person

Sorry no Dolphins. I hope you’re getting my point, we’re all human.

with extensive knowledge or ability based on research, experience, or occupation and in a particular area of study.

Now here is the mother-load. Prodigies are over-rated and are you one? Didn’t think so, I’m certainly not.

How do you think this person, gained ‘Extensive Knowledge’. That’s right he got-in-the-game and played. And played lots.

So…

So back to my original point, sometimes I do not follow my own advice, at these times, I decide that by being in the game, I can learn a lot more about the game by playing.

Meeting peers, playing with peers and ultimately gaining the experiences that leads to being pronounced and being an ‘Expert’ by your peers.

Seeing a very experienced MD be intimidated by my knowledge & experience last week is quite an achievement. I play hard. I know my arena. I’m extremely passionate about my game, this shines through. You can too.

Sometimes you get caught out, but that’s OK. You are on the road to becoming an ‘Expert’.

I’m amazed by the frequency of certain visitors to this site. I’m not publishing how many hits I get, but I am extremely pleased on this blog’s success. Four months in, its known amongst the right people, I’ve been told to STFU twice and have even had to apologise three times. But I’m in the game and playing. Where are you?

Stop Thinking, Get Doing

Is there something that is holding you back?
Are you scared of embarrassing yourself?
Scared of other ‘experts’?
Blah blah blah

Who fucking cares.

No one is ‘lucky’, you make your own luck.

No expert was born an expert, they played hard.

That’s why in places this blog sucks. But that is OK. I am in the game and I am playing. Get in the game regardless of what’s going on. Right Now.

Come join me, I need you, the other players need you. Let’s play.

Tuesday (Not Weds) Workshop With ChannelGrabber!

September 8, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

I’m really excited to be able to announce that on Tuesday 13th September, I’ll be holding the next Webinar & have roped in two fantastic people to join me.

Here is your personal invitation and you can register here.

Guest Speakers

The first is Daniel Williams, Managing Director of ChannelGrabber and we’ll be delving deeper into why this product was created, how it helps businesses who sell on-line and what it can do for you.

The second is Jason. Jason is one of the 6 businesses that I’m working with as part of the ProjectE. You’ll be able to hear directly from one of the ChannelGrabber users, why he uses it, how it’s impacted his businesses and how it’s enabled him to work on his business and not purely in his business.

Why am I Excited?

I half-mention this in the video above, to be able to do “Multi Channel” effectively, then you need a tool in the background to support you & to apply processes, so that you can work more efficiently in and on your business. ChannelGrabber makes this task very easy and is exceptionally affordable.

Why Tuesday & Not Wednesday?

eSellerPro are holding a “customer council” that I have been graciously invited to on Wednesday and are attending the public “customer conference” event on Thursday. If you’ve missed this, then you can see the full article for the eSellerPro at Lords here.

BTW if you’re attending, look out for the bold bloke wearing purple & come say “hi!”.

When & Where

This workshop is on Tuesday 13th September at 5pm UK Time. There are only 100 places and on the first workshop there were 81 attendees, register now before all the places are taken!

Previously Registered?

If you’ve already registered for the “Wednesday Workshops” from two weeks ago, it’s the same registration details. No need to re-register and you’ll be sent an email automatically just before the event on Tuesday. (Thanks Andre for pointing this out to me!)

House Keeping

Please arrive early, it will take a few moments to download the free GoToWebinar application and if you can arrive a few minutes before hand, you won’t miss the start of the meeting.

Register now, only 100 places!
The first workshop there were 81 participants, the application only supports 100 and I’d hate for you to miss out. You can register here.

When People Buy from You, They Make a Commitment

September 8, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

Buyers make a commitment to you, do you make a commitment back?

Lets think about this for a few moments as its sometimes just glazed over, its very easy to do so, with suppliers calling, all those emails to answer and packages to pack, not to mention the kids are going to need picking up later. But are we missing what a epic journey your customer has just been on?

Unless you’re selling “consumable goods” like bread & milk, the buyer that just purchased from you, has probably been through quite an ordeal to make that purchase.

Not a one click & forget

eBay isn’t a one-click purchase, Amazon can be, I used it once, but still prefer to “checkout” to ensure the details are correct. Its even worse on most websites, with no uniform checkout process. They [the customer] has had to work to make the purchase from you and even then they still have doubts.

What have they been through so far?

So with the buyer in mind, lets flip-ourselves into their shoe, to see what they’ve completed to actually buy the item from you.

They found the item you sell
Probably amongst hundreds of others. Quite a feat.
They probably bookmarked the item, or added it to their watch list
This is especially true for “considered purchases”, typically items over £40-50
They’re happy with “you”
They checked your feedback and read the negs & neuts and are still happy
They’re happy with the description
After scouring the other products, they’ve decided that this item is “right for them”
They’ve envisaged using the product
Think fashion or a drain rod set. One’s going to solve an emotional need to look great, the other, well…
They’ve jumped hoops to pay for the item
Is the eBay checkout really that straight forward? Is the Amazon checkout that straight forward either? Logging in, signing into PayPal, these are all barriers that the customer has just been through and could have tripped up at any one of them.
They’ve handed over their money in good-will
The irony is that for both eBay & Amazon, they have paid you in “good will” before even having the goods. If you were in Tesco shopping, while you may not be able to open up the bread and take a bite (unless you have kids and they’ll do it anyway), you can still interact with it, check its consistency and “personally inspect it”.
They still have doubts
Even though they’ve been through all the barriers above, they still have doubts. Is the item right? What if its damaged? Will it turn up? Will I be in to collect it? Did they get the mooney? Did I screw something up in the checkout process? Pants, was that my old address or my new address I used?

Summary

Its like getting married (an experience I’m looking forward to next year), one party is making an epic commitment to you, what are you giving back in return?

Its easy to get consumed with the day-to-day actives and forget that your buyers have been through an epic ordeal to buy the goods or services from you.

What are YOU going to do?
What can you do to make the buyers tasks easier? What can you do right now to over-come barriers or quash doubts?

Image source: Adamjonfuller

“Apples are Apples” or are they? – eSellerPro V’s ChannelAdvisor

September 7, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

Yesterday was an interesting day’s reading. On the one hand CEO of ChannelAdvisor Scot Wingo was elected to Shop.org’s board of directors, which is frankly quite a feat considering there are only five places for non-retailers & is a highly coveted position.

A quote Scot Wingo:

“I am absolutely honored to join a board of such diverse executives and e-commerce leaders to serve the Shop.org members and continue the development of such a prestigious program,” said Wingo. “I look forward to collaborating with these other industry leaders to influence and inform many of the top issues facing the world of e-commerce.”
Source: Business Wire

And on the other hand a few minutes later, this crops up on Twitter:

It really has been a fantastic year for eSellerPro so far. I joined the company as the new CEO in January,and since then we have seen several other key additions to the management team and the sales team has doubled in size. Our annual revenues have grown to £2.4M with more than 100% growth forecast for the current year. If that wasn’t good enough, the business now has more than 200 customers, including well-known brands such as BMW, Dixons Group, JJB Sports, Office Shoes, Maplins and Tesco.

It is a very exciting time for us all at eSellerPro, and as we continue to grow we can only expect things to get even better.

Keith Bird, CEO, eSellerPro
Source: eSellerPro Blog

While at least three of these are 3rd-party clients is almost irrelevant, what is interesting is the ~100% growth and disclosure (see here) that the platform is churning over £1M in transactions per day.

Summary

While some way from the $3 Billion USD ChannelAdvisor processed in a year[2010 ?], £1M appears to be rather small. However apples are certainly not “Apples” when trying to compare two SaaS (Software as a Service) platforms that operate in the same market, one has been around since 2001, the other is just getting started, however could this be where its heading?

Image courtesy of Fir0002

This Wednesday WorkShop Postponed (More Detail this Afternoon)

September 7, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

To give you a heads up, tonights “Wednesday Workshop” is being postponed, there are a couple of reasons for this and includes politics and a bloody awkward (good, I hasten to add) situation with ProjectE.

I’ve got to dash as its playgroup this morning, however I have a treat for you with a special guest next Tuesday & will spill-the-beans this afternoon.

More to come later!