Use Gun Auctions Effectively
Online auctions have become the Flea markets of the 21st century the one problem we have seen is the attitude of the sellers who use them-vs-the consumers who buy from them. GunMuse put its auction site up as an after-thought we offered our auction service to AuctionArms.com, GunBroker.com and GunsAmerica.com to be our official auction site all of them had their own personal agenda's and we can respect that as we have ours. Theirs is about money in their pockets ours is about money in yours we will never over-power these sites, nor do we want to, we do already match them in monthly Unique visitors and we are climbing higher still our service is extremely low cost and even free for basic auctions.
The difference is we focused on the consumer and not the dealer. They had to focus on the dealer because that was who was paying them. Ours is Free for both consumer and dealer. I wrote an article a while back called Making money while breaking even. In that article we go a little more into the strategy of how to make your inventory rotate. For those dealers without stores, sorry you will never get ahead without one. We have seen both strategies and have a huge DDL(Dead Dealer List) and Gunmuse doesn't allow anyone linked from our traffic in anyway to use percentages over cost as a selling point, We will not be a party to your financial death. We are trying to lift dealers up to a respectable income not help win the race to the bottom.
Back on topic, Auctions have high visibility but you have the same problems there that you have with your normal website. 20,000 people all are selling the same items at the same price. Why bid against someone wait 2 days and get the next Glock at Cost. Consumers aren’t idiots either but the current trend in selling treats them like one. Basically use auctions to Promote your site, Sell Hard-to-find, Trade-ins (get out from under them), and Odd ball items. Truly if a guy wants a new gun 10% over cost he doesn't have to go online to get it. Someone is raping the local market in every town and it can be in the store the next day. What you want to do with the online auction is get visibility to consumers. Having the proper outlook on what you’re trying to accomplish will help your bottom line.
Having one of the above items and/or lots of Bids does this. You have done this yourself - Clicked on an auction just to see why everyone was bidding on it. What a great place for a link to your website and your logo. Really what you first goal is to do on an auction site is get out from under the Slow moving items in your store with no sex appeal. If you have a 458 Win Mag Over/Under hey its going to move slow but its also going to have the guys in town talking about it and dragging their buddies in to look at it. So don't be in a hurry to get rid of it. Anything that creates foot traffic is worth its weight in Gold. By dumping your trades quickly though it puts cash in your pocket to load your shelves with all the nice shiny items users love to ooh and ahhh over. See our other article on Making money by breaking even for choices.
If they hang out more than 30 days dump them online too and get rid of them. DON'T hang on to inventory waiting for that one perfect sucker. Consumers memorize your stock and if it doesn't change they don't come back in to window shop. Window-shopping leads to the want to save money and buy. Give your window shoppers a big kiss and a hug they will be back. Hey I have told customers that were just complaining about their bills one week then come in the next with their tax refund ready to slap it down to get out. Go pay off your credit card. That extra 60 bucks a month in their pocket is actually worth more to you all year than that one time sale. That’s 3 cans a powder one month. 2 boxes of bullets the next.(That right there is more real profit than you would of made off 1 - 10% over cost $400 gun sale )With 10 months to go. This is also the guy who will tell his buddies every payday I have to stop by the Gun Store. Think long term. Auction sites are to Dump your dead wood and promote your company at the same time. Consumers HATE reserve auctions. Remember that.
I can't find the link
A while back we installed the new dealer finder. Its not too difficult to operate but we deliberately didn't make it easy either. Basically it was a test to see who can follow instructions. Along the way we learned some new things. Netscape and MaC users have a problem viewing our website. The only way to fix that is to hardcode html and we are not about to go back in technology for only 7 % of the market.
Wheres My transfer customer?
I got an email asking where is the customer that I told them about. Well this is how it works. On Sunday I look at the daily logs and find any zipcode search with more than 5 requests from different IP's(can't search 5 times yourself) and I attempt to find a dealer in that area. I will go to the other sites and look in order of easiest to hardest. Gunsamerica is the easiest to search on with direct email links it makes my job easier to just pop off a couple emails and be done with it. If no luck from that we move to Auctionarms. Not as easy and we usually have to make a phone call when we do that everyone wants to know what we are selling. Very defensive business owners out there. If I still am having trouble I will go to the pain in my butt GunBroker and try a few of those but its so hard to do I usually say to hell with it. So why did we make ours hard for the dealers? Frankly too many just can't seem to make that little effort required to get in front of customers. Folks if your relying on Manufactures to market your business your screwed I have seen their 2004 plans better tighten your belts.
Coming up with a better plan
What we do at Gunmuse is collect data that will help customers reach dealers. Sounds simple but its a nightmare of a task. For instance. We sent out 1100 emails in the past 5 weeks we got 315 dealers to add themselves to the system. 35% wanted to hear from a consumer or be found at all. 15% still haven't checked their email after 5 weeks. Out of the 315 who did add their information 26 followed directions so that they would be added properly. I am happy to say only 3 used the words % over cost in the extra info box. We don't allow it so we delete that line. There are plenty of places that will encourage you to Race to the Bottom. Million Moms, Handguns inc, No-More-Guns col. Besides there is a real issue, image 23,000 dealers all yelling 10% over cost. We know from our research that the average 10% over cost seller is
- Running more than one business from the same store.
- Out of business before his first licence renawal.
- Working out of their home and has no real want for foot traffic.
The facts are I don't care what price you sell your products at but business is business and keep your business to yourself. Protect your wholesale pricing and the Industry will be able to protect your business. Slap a gun catalog on the counter and the Industry will treat you like a commissioned saleman. Only you don't draw a minimum wage when times are slow. So that is why we delete those when we find them. Out of 23,000 dealers we have found about 54 who promote to the search engines properly. Those 54 enjoy HUGE profits because nobody is competeing with them. Not cabella's Bass Pro Nobody. The big boys hired a flunky who was no better than a monkey at a typewriter they blew 10's of thousands of dollars and came up short so they quit. We haven't kept stats on it as most of these dealers are actually hard to track down and that is the "I don't transfer what I can order" guys. Blows my mind. Every other retailer on the planet is spending Big bucks JUST to get walk-in traffic. Guys stand at the door and take head counts when running different radio ads just to see what is effective. Not us we get PAID to have customers come in and act like they are stealing items off the shelves. Selling online for years I can tell you there is no such thing as the loyal buyer for online business if there were you would never beat Cabellas, or Mid-way. Most folks buy online for 3 reasons. They can't find it locally, The local guy likes his prices 10% above RETAIL, Or the dealer was rude,stand-offish,or used I don't know when asked questions instead of I'll find out.(Usually that won't transfer guy) But the facts are that 93% that buy online get sent to a store other than they are used to. The guy wants customers to walk in and is usually willing to help in any way. That gun-owner just found his local guy he wants to deal with. The true facts are transfers to your store means you didn't service, advertise to, or help the customer the FIRST TIME. If your getting LOTS of transfers but little else for walk-in traffic that is a problem you need to trouble shoot. Now it may seem like I set out to pick on people and its just not so. These are the facts that are killing this industry. We reach only 1% of our market on a whole each year because we have no clue what customer service is. If your a dealer who likes to put High prices on the tags and negoiate. Hey there are LOTS of customers who love to haggle. At the same time 87% of our buyers over the past 3 years have been FIRST TIME gun owners. This means they don't know what haggle means. They don't get your sense of humor or maybe they don't like the kid you had working on Wednesday. Only 10% of the dealers are still in business that were when Bill Clinton took office. 90% have gone out of business. Doesn't that mean your sales should be 10 times higher with less competition. Down 42% last year. Attitude,lack of willness to learn, and poor customer service skills are the three major complaints of todays gun buyers. IPSC, Three-Gun ,Skeet, Trap and Palma matches are the hottest things on the market. How many dealers even know where the next match is? What's the guys phone number that runs them? How do you calculate the load requirements for IPSC? What gun can a customer use in which class? If you can't answer these questions then you have your answer for slow sales. These are the products buyers have been hunting for. My Dad out of loyalty to local stores travel 140 miles in 3 directions to each of the shops to find his IPSC Holster and Magazines. Sadly he broke down and ordered them online. It only works if both ends of the business are making an effort.
Putting the effort forward
So the same goes for me as it does you. I have more buyers than I have sellers therefore I have to make every effort to get more sellers to get in front of my buyers. We changed our format recently and have had a Chicken and Egg problem ever since. Since we started off fresh on the new site folks come see a blank site and leave. So while we spin in the mud we are hoping your not the guy standing back waiting for me to do all the shoveling and you'll get in the truck once its moving again. Frankly I may not unlock the doors and let you in. I make every effort to level the playing field for gun dealers. I fight huge corporations. I provide super low cost hosting. We donate time and money to many worthy causes online and off. Frankly I am getting tired of being alone. AS the saying goes put your head down and keep shoveling. Its only way we are getting out of here.
Update to this article
I wrote this article some time ago and while up late moving it over to our new software I take the chance to read all my articles to see If anything is dated. Some of this one is. First off our dealerfinder is undergoing major improvements to combat the netscape and Mac problems which is also the reason for the new software as well. We are taking the new dealerfinder to a higher standard so that manufactures can use the software directly on their site and have the ability to cross talk with ALL dealers at the same time.
Author: GunMuse Date: Wednesday Sep 22 2004 20:03:30 pm
