Online Sellers - Plan for Your Success!
by guest author Randy Smythe
As I was thinking about what I wanted to write, I kept coming back to the one major lesson I learned while I was selling full-time on eBay -- Business begins with your first sale, but success begins with your first plan.
For those of you who do not know me, my business was Glacier Bay DVD and by the summer of 2005, I was the highest Feedback seller on eBay; with over 260,000 positive feedback. At the height of my success on eBay, I was selling $4.6 million a year in media items and running my business like there was no end in sight ... To borrow a phrase, "I was fat and happy".
Back in the day, I would have told you that I had a grand plan for my business, when in reality I was running
I just kind of went where the business took me and for several years that method of management seemed to work. Its funny, you never really seem to need a plan when things are going great, but when things turn bad, you will sink without one.
Now don't get me wrong, I did plan my business from a business model standpoint, but I never really had a plan for long-term success. I had long-term goals but really hadn't thought through how to reach them. In fact in 2004 at the height of my success, I began to overspend to reach a new sales goal, never considering that there would be a problem. Had I sat down for a few minutes to plan for this growth, I might still be in business today.
I moved into a new 5,000 sq. ft warehouse with a 3-year lease and $13,000 worth of new furniture and equipment; I hired more employees; I brought on a full-time programmer to write the perfect inventory management software and strangely enough my sales did not increase. How dare that happen - sales had been growing exponentially for the past 3 years.
Unfortunately, I was unaware that the market had changed. I now had a ton more competition, including one major competitor who was drastically under-cutting my prices. I was completely dependent on the eBay marketplace for my business and had never even considered branching out, but I still plugged along just like I always had, spending more money and getting little in return for that investment.
I won't go into any further detail, but in 2005 I restructured my company in response to the problems and actually eeked out a small profit by the end of the year, but not enough to give me any hope for the future. I was heavily in debt and couldn't see any way to turn it around, so I shut down the business. Not one of my happier days. In the months that followed, as I tried to close the
Your business, no matter how small needs to be built from a solid foundation, using the building blocks of a solid plan. You can't afford to allow yourself to just react to the challenges of the business; you need to take a moment to plan for your success.
I'm sure you all have dreams for your business, but without a plan to reach those dreams; you will most likely follow the same path as I did -- just maybe not on the same scale.
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