Surplusmania.com

Marketing Liquidation, Closeout and Surplus Merchandise!

In order to better focus your marketing efforts it will be best if you specialize in a certain type of surplus, liquidation or closeout merchandise that interests you. For example if you specialized in surplus tools you could concentrate on hardware and auto parts stores. Or if your specialized in closeouts for women's wear you would know to call, fax or email small boutiques and clothing stores. This will help you to stay focused and keep you interested, but remember if you want to sell products to people, you need to find out what people are buying first. If you find that the products you are interested in selling are being sold for much less than you can afford to sell for, then you know that’s not a product you can compete with. There is no substitute for good old fashion homework. ebay is a good place to start researching what is selling and at what price.

• Ask yourself who is also selling the product
• What is the average selling price
• Also pay attention to who is buying the products. If it is other sellers they will probably have a very high number of feedbacks.
• In short do your research and check out the competition before deciding what to sell. Check our the sources page for what other merchandise liquidators are doing.

Of the two types of retailers the chain stores sell the latest and newest models and there is the small retailer privately owned mom and pop business that you will sell liquidation and surplus inventory. So who are the primary buyers of surplus, liquidation and closeout merchandise? They are independent retail stores with fewer than 5 locations. They will need small minimum order requirements that large manufacturers will not want to deal with. Never forget this is your niche market focus on it.

Usually Inventory mark-ups are 100 percent full value is retail 50 percent of retail is the wholesale price. 25 percent of retail or half of the wholesale price is what you want to price your merchandise to the small retailer.

So to make a profit you should pay absolutely no more than 15 percent of retail for your merchandise and even less if possible.

When pricing your merchandise never price it at an even zero, zero cents such as $1.00 dollars instead use for example $1.01 for the price.

Be prepared to negotiate the price when selling but never offer beforehand , but and this is important always ask when buying merchandise if the price is negotiable. This simple question " IS THE PRICE NEGOTIABLE ?" will save you a lot of money.

Use online business yellow pages such as superpages.com to find prospects then call and talk to the owner to find out what type of merchandise he or she handles. You are not trying to make a sale on the initial call the objective is get permission to send future faxes preferably or email if necessary. When the business owner finds out you are not trying to sell him something he will usually be glad to let you send him a fax or email to consider. Send one page faxes with additional offerings every 2-4 weeks then follow up with a call asking if any of the items are of interest. Once you discover the products that are of interest to the business owner and after a relationship has developed and he trust you enough to place an order the sales will start arriving. Expect the orders to be small at first.

Typically your customer will be the owner of one to five stores.

Do not leave voice mail instead call another day voice mail does nothing to enhance your relationship with the owner. Until the owner begins to know and trust you there will be NO orders. This takes at least 5 different contacts before the owner starts to trust you. Build your list of store owners to contact to 200 and keep working those same store owners. Constantly contacting different owners will not work. Obviously this list of 200 store owners will change from time to time and this is just an approxomation of what it take to build 50 working accounts. This is about what one person can handle easily. If you have 50 customers for example nobody can fire you. If you lose a customer just go out and get another one, there is still 49 customers buying from you.

When the sale is made get a purchase order from the buyer. You may have to fax a blank purchase order form to the prospective buyer not all small stores have them. A purchase order is important should there be any confusion as to what was ordered. Everything must be in writing to protect yourself should there be a dispute.

Arrange for payment usually done by credit card if you are brokering for a larger surplus liquidator they may accept his credit information from you or you will need to get a merchant account to accept credit cards. Before spending a lot of money for a merchant account check out www.paypal.com. Fax the buyer a credit card authorization form that must be signed and faxed back.

Never promise shipping date up front call back when shipping is confirmed with estimated shipping date and arrival date.

Call the day after merchandise arrives to confirm delivery. The key is to make the whole process easy and effortless for the buyer or they will not buy from you again.

The only action the buyer takes is to send a purchase order and credit card authorization everything else must be done by the seller.

Most of your day will be spent prospecting for customers at first. When calling prospective customers : Note you must talk directly to the decision maker or you are wasting your time. And as part of your ongoing research while you are talking to them find out what type of merchandise they would be interested in. How do you know what they would want to buy if you do not ask. • Send follow-up fax • Call to verify they received fax and while you have them on the phone you must inquire as what type of merchandise that might be of interest to them if the price was right.

The most important question is what are the potential ways of selling liquidation and surplus merchandise so let's brainstorm.

• Small independent stores with fewer than 5 locations.
• Other vendors such as people that sell at flea markets.
• Sell at live auctions in your area.
• Online such as eBay!.
• Start your own retail surplus store.
• Broker merchandise to other people.
• Using a jobber truck loaded with merchandise and creating a route.
• Viral Online Marketing View ToplevelPosition.com To see how it is done

Find buyers with fax and email campaigns and a lot of cold calling to small businesses that fit your profile. And by advertising both offline and online see Killer Ads for more tips about finding buyers. Remember to market to the whole USA not just the local area.

Anyone who resells is a potential buyer such as discount variety stores, convenience stores, dollar stores, closeout stores or bargain stores.

Your local flea market is full of potential buyers so go shake some hands. Or better yet setup a booth and sell some merchandise while getting to know the vendors as well.

On 2007-10-21 at 12:36:02 we received this response: Good information and Great website. Thanks! We appreciate your comments thank you.