7 Wholesale Tips
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The wholesale industry is thriving against all the odds stacked against it over the last couple of years. Let’s celebrate! But first, we’ve curated a list of 7 wholesale tips geared towards helping you keep your business operating smoothly and fortify it from any unforeseen future events.
Wholesale Tips #1: Automate, Centralize, and Streamline
If you are managing to operate a successful small wholesale business without an inventory management software, kudos to you! However, if you are growing, you will quickly find that relying solely on QuickBooks and manual methods is not enough. Before you know, during a peak sales season, the lack of automation, centralization, and streamlined operations within your business could quickly lead you to go belly up or, at least, fail to maximize profits. In order to optimize, strengthen, and grow your business, our first of the wholesale tips is to consider an inventory management software compatible with QuickBooks!
Wholesale Tips #2: Know Your Customers, Know Your Market
Data, data, data! The second of our wholesale tips is to collect it and learn from it. Your inventory software should provide you with the tools to better understand your customers, the products they like, the ones they don’t, the products they don’t even know they need yet, and your overall market as a whole. With business intelligence tools like an operational CRM, demand forecasting, sales and trend analysis, and other drilled down reporting, you will be able to understand your customers better than they understand themselves – and that is not a bad goal to strive for.
Wholesale Tips #3: Reduce Overhead
Inventory is a wholesaler’s bread and butter, as you very well know. But when it isn’t managed correctly, you find yourself facing overstocks, shortages, dying inventory, and increased overhead. Utilize your inventory software itself as well as the business intelligence tools mentioned above to make purchasing smarter. Wholesale tips no. 3 is to maintain a slim inventory as a healthy way for wholesalers to keep what is needed on hand, but never too much more or less, which in the end, reduces overhead, and keeps cash flowing smoothly.
Wholesale Tips #4: Optimize and Invest in Online Sales
More and more wholesale suppliers and buyers are moving towards eCommerce to conduct business. Online sales channels make buying direct a dramatically more straightforward process. If you aren’t online, you’re behind! While you can continue to provide traditional channels for your more traditional customers, try and invest in your online wholesale store and experience to satisfy your online customer base.
Wholesale Tips #5: Seamless Ordering from Start to Finish
Seamless ordering, regardless of channel, goes along with the first tip provided. When your operations are centralized, orders coming in from any channel will be treated equally, while also providing you the ability to sort, filter, and prioritize fulfillment as needed. One of the best ways to ensure customer loyalty is to make their buying experience from you simple, easy, fast, and error-free.
Wholesale Tips #6: Employ Competitive Pricing Strategies
As a wholesaler, you already know how the game works. The point of wholesale is to offer products in bulk with a discount to your buyers, but in the end, you still want and need to make profit from the transactions. Your inventory management software can come in handy when trying to determine the right pricing strategies for you and your customers without bring your profit margins down. Wholesale tips no. 6 is to require minimum order requirements for an order to qualify as wholesale. Alternatively, just understanding the true costs of goods with landed cost and other costing methods can ensure you are offering the most competitive pricing you can while keeping the rest in your pocket.
Wholesale Tips #7: Offer Exceptional Customer Service
While this is the final wholesale tip, it is not any less important than the rest. Customer service keeps your customers coming back, helps spread the good (hopefully) word about your business, prevents negative reviews, and sometimes aids in expanding into other markets. When your business is centralized, any questions about a customer, a product, a tracking number, etc. should be able to be pulled up within seconds, and the answers you need ready and waiting. The faster the service, the happier the customers.
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