Genuine Advice for New Online Sellers Part 5: Goals vs Reasonable Goals = Success

Posted by Big Brand Wholesale.com on 8th Mar 2020

A millionaire was asked “How do you make a million dollars?”. His brilliant reply was, “You figure out how to make $1 then repeat.” - that quote has always stuck with me and I pass it along to others as much as possible because it’s the most honest, simplistic advice you will ever hear. Additionally, we all can make $1, therefore we all can make 1 million dollars. Let’s get started…

REASONABLE GOALS

One of the biggest mistakes new sellers make is setting unrealistic goals then being frustrated or depressed when they “fail” to meet the goals. If you are just starting out online selling, a reasonable goal is to aim for 1 sale a week. Yes, I said A WEEK. That’s about 4 sales a MONTH. This is a super reasonable goal because if you can make 1 sale a week then you can also make 2 sales a week, 3 sales a week… and by the end of the year, with hard work, you are making 25+ sales each month. This means you are substantially closer to making a million dollars than you were 12 month prior.

I often see new sellers who have such unrealistic goals; in fact, their goal is to “not have to work”, which isn’t even a goal necessarily because anyone who has ever been successful in business can agree on one thing; they WANT to work. So, if your goal is to be able to never work, opening an online business probably isn’t right for you. I can almost assure you that you will not succeed because there are hundreds of thousands of people in line behind you who have the drive and motivation to do what you don’t want to do. Selling online because you don’t want to work is no different than hating math yet enrolling in college to be a mathematician. You’ll never be happy. If you truly don't want to work, I would suggest marrying into wealth.

Not setting any goals is just as bad as setting unrealistic goals. A goal is a plan. If you're opening your new business with no plan... that is a plan to fail.

So, how specifically do you set goals?

Start by figuring out what specifically you want to do. Most likely you are already at, or past, this step. Write down exactly what you want to accomplish, "I will list 1,000 items by August 1st" or "I will reduce my shipping costs by 10% before the end of next month." Focusing only on dollar amounts of sales is irrelevant if you are wasting money shipping it. Saving money on shipping is worthless if you aren't listing merchandise to generate income. Generating income shouldn't be a huge concern if you don't have products to list. Point being: only paying attention to number of sales is not always the best goal because you can create money by reducing costs and without supplies you are at a standstill.

Next, write down the steps you plan to take to reach the goals. If your goal is to get 500 things listed, what exact steps do you plan to take to achieve the goal? First you need to order the inventory from BigBrandWholesale.com (shameless plug), then you need to have TIME to list it. When will you schedule time? Maybe you plan to block off 7pm - 10pm Thursday through Sunday and longer hours on Monday. When will you ship? When will you respond to inquiries? All of these factors must be accounted for because if you haven't shipped yet and 7pm rolls around you'll end up cutting into your listing time to get orders out. How many listings do you need to hit per day to reach 500?

Lastly, keep hacking away at the goal. If you need to list 100 things a week to hit 500 next month and you plan to work 6 days a week on listing, that's 16 - 17 listings a day. If you're getting things done in record time and you hit 25 one day, pat yourself on the back!

A wise man once said, "Never do it for the money. Do it because you love it. Use money as a way to gage your success".

NEXT: Go Back to Part 1: Hard Work Pays Off

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