InternetBusinessManual.com - Step15: Operating Your Internet Business For Success

Incorporate Smart Business Practices:

If you are new to operating an Internet business and have yet to develop business savvy on the web, you need to practice good business sense when it comes to prospective customers.

Sometimes a prospect might contact you asking me if you carry a version of an item you carry that you have never heard about. As a newbie, you mightI secretly panic and then search the web until you come across the information, or spend money on an information resource that would show you how.

The trouble with this is there is a good probability that after you have paid for the information and know how to quote a price on the special piece to the prospect, you often will not hear from the prospect again, or they will give you any number of excuses for not ordering: they found it elsewhere, more money than they wanted to spend, they were just browsing, they will order tomorrow (and never do), etc.

In your eagerness just to make the sale, you have spent what little money you have, trying to provide what that person wants before you have a sure sale to compensate for your time and expense. If your bank account survives, it won't take too many of these experiences for you to learn not to buy supplies or how-to information on speculation anymore for anyone.

The object of this step is to hopefully arm you with this knowledge so you will prevent such drains on your funds, and operate smart, and realize you cannot be everything to everybody, and that that is okay, and actually good business sense.

Spending money on a prospect, no matter how sympathetic or serious they come across in their correspondence, is bad business sense. Don’t do it. What is meant by a prospect is someone who has not "laid down the money" so to say, and has only asked you a question. Unless someone has given you a deposit for a specific item, do not purchase something on just their show of interest in the item, unless you want to experience what the Poor House is like!

If you custom-make items then sometimes you will have to do a little bit of research with the inventory you have or could easily obtain to give price quotes. But don’t ever go ahead and buy items before you’ve finalized a sale with a customer—meaning gotten payment from them.

Also, sometimes you just have to say no to prospects who want you to sell something to them that would be far too much trouble for you to supply or not be cost effective for you to do so.

An example: You might get requests from people wanting items you don’t carry, but which you could special order. However, often you will find that the trouble to order these items would not be worth it for you.

One of the reasons could be that of all your suppliers have minimum orders you have to place, and sometimes to special order a small item for a prospect, you have to order other items to meet the minimum you didn’t budget for. Also, you have to spend the time researching to find the special items these people are requesting.

Not to mention, these people haven’t actually paid up front for the items, which means that once you have gone to all the trouble to locate their items and calculate a fair markup on each product, they could decide not to order.

So you stand to lose all that time if the person fails to order once you have gone to all that trouble, and that’s time you really need to spend fulfilling actual orders or following through on other customer queries, or developing new income possibilities.
And even if they do decide to order, what do you get for all your troubles? Maybe $10, $30 tops? Not smart business sense.

Remember, it’s not about making a sale, but making a profit. This is about Internet business success, not about money changing hands; in one you make a profit, in the other you simply make a sale, an even exchange of money versus the cost. You have to decide if this is a hobby for you, or a real business venture. If a business, then you have to operate with good business sense if you want to survive...and profit!

The rule to remember here is only special order items that make you sufficient profit to justify your effort and time. That can also mean keeping an excellent loyal customer happy by doing the occasional out of the way, not very profitable sale to such a customer, but only in those cases.

Most of the individuals you go out of the way for will never shop from you again on the Internet, and they are known as One-Time-Deals. You can't afford to do favors for everyone. Keep in mind, you are in this business to make money, and provide a decent income for yourself. You can only do this if you follow good business habits.