Become a Successful Wholesale Seller - Top Sellers' Secrets part 3: Repeat Buyers
If you've been following our Seller's Secrets blog posts about how to become a successful wholesale seller, you should by now have optimised your stock, planned an upload schedule, checked your merchandising, and with any luck the orders will have started to come in! And this is where the top sellers differentiate themselves from the rest of the crowd. Once they have a buyer, they keep them coming back.
According to popular research, you have around a 13% chance of making a sale to a buyer who is completely new to your brand. However, this increases to a 70% chance of converting a sale with a buyer who has bought from you before. With numbers like these it should be clear that maximising your potential repeat sales should be a no-brainer. But how can you convert a first-time buyer to a loyal customer?
Buyer Trust
As with any relationship in life, brand-buyer relationships must be built on trust. Even more so when it comes to distance selling and e-commerce - the moment a buyer places an order they are placing their trust in your brand, and it's vital that you don't give them a reason to doubt this trust. However, the number one complaint we receive from customers is that they have taken the time to select the products for their customers only to be let down because the products are no longer available.
This can happen to the best of us – with sales coming in from a number of different channels it can sometimes be difficult to keep a track. Most buyers will give a brand a second chance if this situation occurs, but if it happens more than once they are likely never to purchase from the brand again.
It's worth setting aside some time each week to make sure that your online stock accurately reflects what you have available. And any out of stock products should be updated immediately - it only takes a few moments. If you're having trouble keeping your stock updated it may be worth limiting the number of products you currently have on the site – quality over quantity is an important factor to bear in mind. You may also find it easier to set aside a few pieces in each style to make sure that you always have stock available for your customers as the sales start coming in.
Responsiveness
At TradeGala we have a dedicated team of sales assistants who are always available to help out buyers and respond to any issues they may have. However, there are times that we need to contact a brand directly to answer a specific query or help solve an issue. This is where you can help turn a potential buyer into a sale, or a first-time buyer into a happy client. By always responding to client queries in a timely fashion and by proactively looking for solutions, you may even be able to turn a problem into a sales opportunity!
The little details
TradeGala is a B2B website, and everyone is here to do business. But that doesn't mean that at the end of the day we're not all human. Even corporate customers appreciate a little extra effort, and when choosing between brands on a busy work day, they're more likely to remember yours if you have gone that step further in the past. What you can do to make your brand memorable depends entirely on your business. Perhaps you can offer free shipping on all orders over a certain amount? Perhaps you can offer a discount code to returning customers? Or perhaps you can add a small extra gift or sample products as part of a shipment? Whatever your business can do to go that extra mile in offering the best possible service will have your buyers coming back for more. And that's just money in the bank
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Written by: Amber Domenech Patey
