Why Is It Difficult For Liquidators To Get New Customers For Closeouts?
There are many ways to find new closeout buyers and liquidation buyers who can help reduce your inventory. As the economy changes and worsens, there will be more companies that get stuck with dead inventory and have to liquidate closeouts to clear out space in their warehouses. Large companies often get stuck with excess inventory when they import too much or have canceled orders.
Your current customers have a broad network of friends, neighbors, and co-workers who they can funnel to your business. You just have to provide the right incentive, especially if you are trying to sell closeouts, excess inventory and surplus stock that you want to get rid of. It is sometimes easier to find new customers for a line of regular imports than it is for random surplus inventory that you may have accumulated in the warehouse over many years.. Experts recommend being proactive and building a formal system to solicit and incentive customers. Follow up with customers after closeout sales, and once you confirm they’re satisfied, introduce them to your referral program. Be prepared to offer an enticing incentive like a commission or discount code. Wholesale closeout buyers will always be interested in working with new vendors if the price is right and the inventory is good. Liquidation buyers are always looking for closeout toys, closeouts of housewares, overstock inventory of lawn and garden products, and other deep discount goods you may want to get rid of or clean stock from your warehouse.
If you want your customers to be your salespeople, emphasize customer satisfaction. Make the in-store shopping experience clean, enjoyable, and stress-free. Put closeouts on endcaps where you can capture customers attention and emphasize overstock inventory you need to sell quickly. Additionally, build a comprehensive customer service plan to triage any potential issues and train your employees to always put the customer first. If you want to sell old inventory and get rid of merchandise taking up too much space, you have to promote it to liquidation buyers who are capable of buying the entire inventory at one time. When a business is small, finding ways to bring in business usually falls on the business owner’s shoulders. But business owners often have little experience in marketing or selling. If you’re a startup or an existing business that’s looking for more ways to grow your customer base, If you are downsizing warehouses or shutting down operations, you can visit closeout websites and do online searches for excess inventory buyers, closeout buyers, wholesale liquidators and places to sell old inventory.
The secret to creating a successful acquisition plan is to know who would make the ideal customer. If you sell to closeout businesses, consider what department is most likely to buy your closeout products or services, and what individual (what level of responsibility) would be the one to determine the specific purchase requirements. (Make some calls if you don’t know!) Companies that liquidate inventory often have management teams of wholesale closeout buyers that specialize in liquidating merchandise. These closeout buyers have years of experience when it comes to liquidating inventory and buying inventory from companies that are going out of business. There are companies that only buy dead stock and old inventory for cash, and this may be helpful if you are looking for closeout brokers and liquidation buyers. Determine how long the buying cycle is. Is buying your product a decision that can be made quickly by a single person? Or are you selling something that has a long buying cycle, possibly involving multiple individuals and teams of excess inventory buyers. Sometimes, there are different buyers for each category of merchandise you are liquidating. There may be one buyer for closeout pet products, another liquidation buyer for overstock home décor, and a different liquidator for excess inventory of lawn and garden products.
Next, think about how the typical buyer normally finds products or services like yours. What circles do they travel in? Do they visit closeout websites looking for obsolete inventory? Do they have a team of wholesale closeout buyers attending trade shows looking for overstock inventory? Are they active in social media? Who are they likely to listen to? Where do they look when they want to buy your type of closeouts and excess inventory? What could you do to get referrals and recommendations from those sources? Write all this information down and look for patterns. Then, to get more customers, plan ways to put yourself and your information where the people in your target market can find closeouts when they’re ready to buy.
Seek events that may bring your potential market together. Look for flyers about the event at local networking group meetings. Or, call and ask the organizers if there are sponsorship opportunities available. There may be trade shows specializing in closeouts and obsolete inventory. These shows bring closeout buyers and companies selling excess inventory together in hopes of creating new business relationships. Local events can be quite inexpensive to sponsor. Or, if the sponsorship cost is high, they may have a “friends” of the event option that will give you the right to have flyers at the event for a very small fee. To acquire new customers, you need to build trust. And one of the best ways to do that is to give away free samples of your product and ask the recipients to tell their friends if they are pleased. Or, if you’re a consultant, give away some free advice. If you are trying to unload a large quantity of excess inventory you might even consider giving out free samples to closeout brokers and inventory liquidators who may be able to find you the right closeout buyers and liquidation stock buyers.
If you’re in a service business that uses vans or trucks, your name should be on all your vehicles, so that people who see you servicing others in their neighborhood can quickly spot how to contact you. It should be on any products and/or labels on your products (whichever is practical). Have magnets made up with your name and phone number and attach them to appliances you repair, or hand them out to customers and prospects. The more people who have your name and contact, the more customers you can acquire. Many years ago there was an inventory liquidator in Chicago who wore a baseball cap with the words printed across the front “We Buy Closeouts”. You can use similar catch phrases on tee shirts, bags or even a hat. Sell Us Your Closeouts or We Are Inventory Liquidators might be examples you can try.
If your prices are perceived to be too high, then they could drive some or all of your potential customers away. The closeout business is all about low prices and if you are liquidating inventory it is important to understand this. Liquidation inventory and excess inventory holds very little of it's original value in the aftermarket. Overstock liquidation sales are similar to auctions where old inventory is sold at pennies on the dollar. It's important to understand where customers are prepared to splash out and where they would rather go without.
The aim, of course, is to set optimum prices when buying and selling closeouts, which allow you to maximize your profits while still remaining attractive to customers. Closeout buyers often make money by selling excess inventory in large volume. The overstock wholesale closeout business is based on liquidating large inventory for very low prices. This is the reason the merchandise has little value when a warehouse is closing or if a business is downsizing it's warehouse operations. If they want to get rid of all the inventory, it will have to be liquidated at a low price so it can be resold to closeout brokers, closeout buyers and even closeout websites that specialize in liquidation auctions. If you can't compete on price, you need to focus on service and the end-to-end customer experience
You might believe you look after your customers’ every need whenever you interact with them - but would they agree? Do you really understand your customers? And what about your employees - do they provide the levels of service required to attract and retain customers? What about when they’re handling customer complaints? You should aim to exceed expectations, and good customer service can help you to sell more to your existing customers. Do you and your people need to brush up your customer service skills? If you liquidate an entire warehouse to a customer who feels they didn't get a good deal, do you try to work with them by lowering the price, or do you choose not to do anything? If you don't do anything, you will likely have lost a customer and the next inventory liquidation will have to be sold to a different closeout buyer. Selling excess inventory isn't easy because every situation is different and you have to be able to assess the liquidation warehouse and put a value on a large amount of inventory that is being purchased by a closeout company.
Lack of promotion, or promoting your business in the wrong way, could explain why you’re not attracting enough customers. If people don’t know you exist, they won’t buy from you. You can pay for Google clicks online and run ads like We Are Inventory Liquidations, Have Excess Inventory? We Buy Closeouts. Or something of this nature. If your promotional activity fails to reach potential customers, and convince them to find out more about you, you’ll simply be wasting time and money.
From online marketing, social media and advertising through direct marketing to exhibitions and PR, there are many ways to engage potential and existing closeout customers and buyers for discontinued inventory. The key, of course, is to find out which methods work best for you. Another way to stay on the right track is to devise a marketing plan. If your business is to get to where you want to take it, you have to know how to find excess inventory buyers.
Merchandise USA is a wholesale closeout buyer in business more than 38 years. We specialize in liquidating inventory of closeout housewares, overstock sporting goods, toy liquidations, overstock pet products and much more. If you have an inventory closeout and are shutting down your warehouse or Amazon seller account please call us. If you have overstock items for sale or need to make room in the warehouse we buy liquidation stock.
