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Archives for April 2017

Forming a Mastermind

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Three heads are better than one…I believe that’s the saying, right? But seriously, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, what line of business is involved, or the format these groups meet in, teamwork provides unparalleled results.

We believe having a discussion with someone is the single most powerful thing you can do. Sure, information is great, as well as product information – but nothing enhances the effectiveness like community. If you build a great community or group, people will take away endlessly and grow beyond their wildest imagination.

We truly realized the power of a mastermind in early 2014. We started opening up and talking to people. We shared without the expectation of receiving and things came back to us ten-fold. Nothing compares to having someone else’s perspective or insight into your business. As a business owner, we work tirelessly to improve but too often overlook the glaring issue. The real problem. Fresh eyes can often discern what we are blinded to.

This is why Masterminds work. It gives you the perspective of a team of people working towards a common goal or interest. It offers insight into your business that you might not have seen otherwise. As you can imagine, based on this article, we are a strong proponent of Masterminds. Business professionals pay tens of thousands of dollars to be in strong closed-session masterminds. I realize that some people don’t have the budget for that, so we are going to tell you how you can make your own.

First, look at the goal of your Mastermind. Is it general business growth or shared information? What we have come to realize is fully-open masterminds tend to operate the best. The ones that share information as well as contribute towards the common goal are the groups that succeed. With that in mind, we will lay out how you can do that.

Step 1: Recruitment

Look for people who fit the following criteria the closest:

  • Close in sales to you. While it may seem counterintuitive to would want someone with your sales, rather than a bigger, stronger, and faster teammate, it will provide you with a much better experience. People in the same sales range often encounter the same issues, look at deals similarly, have roughly the same budget, and have similar infrastructures. It doesn’t make sense to pair someone doing minimal sales (say $10k) with someone doing $1MM in sales because their respective businesses aren’t remotely similar. A deal that the million-dollar seller finds to be favorable may be horrible for a smaller seller because they aren’t capitalized the same. Similarly, it’s easy to rally as a group. You can look to encourage and lift the group as a whole rather than being dragged along.
  • A similar mindset and goals for growing their business. This is incredibly important, as it is hard for full-time people to work with part-time people because their goals and commitment don’t align. You are looking for people that can contribute without being a taker OR being a workhorse for the group. The group has to work together as a unit.
  • Look for diverse interests or skill sets. While it might be cute to clone myself, it is very ineffective. We (my clones and I) would look at products the same way; we would target the same types of products and would miss the same things. While awesome, we would be a poor Mastermind. Instead, you’ll want a diverse skill set among people who examine things differently. Ideally, you would focus on people who specialize in different categories or sets of products and people who review different information than you.

When you have decided on what you are looking for in a Mastermind, and have a good idea of what will make your team successful, it’s time to take to the streets and start talking to people. Ideally, you want to keep your group small. Mean and lean, as they say. These groups provide a more intimate feel, as well as generally keep more people engaged longer. A suggested MM size is between four and six people. Remember, these are people you are sharing your business with, potentially your SKUS, and most importantly your philosophies which govern your business.

Step 2: Setting up the physical Mastermind Group

  • Set up a Facebook Group (set to secret)
  • Set up shared Google docs
  • Do a live webinar-style meet (Skype/Zoom/Spree) to introduce yourselves and interact
  • Share phone numbers for texting
  • Use an App like Voxer

Once those things are in place you should start working to help each other’s business grow. Here are some objectives you should consider with your group.

Step 3: Establishing Your Objectives:

  • Don’t focus on being rules-oriented. If you set a minimum, people achieve the minimum. It’s simple human nature. If you tell me I only need to contribute 5 SKUs per week I will set out with that as my mission. If instead you focus on the promotion of the greater good, say, improvement across the board, then people are more invested in the success of their team.
  • If someone has continued weak performance or isn’t involved heavily in the group, approach them about it. Talk to them first, and develop a strategy towards resolution. Things happen, life happens If something can’t be resolved then cut them from your group and move on. Look to refill the position as necessary.
  • A team is as strong as the weakest player. Period. When you are in this setting, DON’T BE THE WEAKEST PLAYER. No one and I mean no one wants to be the dud, the last pick, or the patsy of a group. Get in there and work! Contribute to the efforts of the group and jointly grow your businesses.
  • Contribute beyond the SKU level. Look at strategy; sourcing, pricing, and seasonal strategies. Look to increase your effectiveness and jointly make your TEAM money.
  • Develop a relationship with your team. Work towards being close with each other, and learn to invest jointly in each other’s success. Don’t be the person who secretly wants to be the best, JUST to be the best. Work towards making everyone better and you will get the most out of this experience.
  • Develop team-oriented goals, and approach situations with the team in mind. As an example, look to raise the ENTIRE teams’ performance rather than your own. Make realistic goals and develop maps to get there.

As I previously mentioned, in terms of the group set up those are the mediums we use. Those mediums allow for the quickest access to information and will help everyone get the most out of their experience. Here is a quick synopsis of how you can utilize each of those mediums to help the TEAM to grow their respective businesses.

Step 4: Sharing with Your Group

  • Ask your group for feedback and be open about your situation. You will realize the more you are willing to share, the same will generally be true for everyone involved. Look for ways to improve your processes, and share when you have better methods.
  • Utilize group file storage. With our Mastermind group, we share every piece of material we use in our business (templates, contracts, agreements, etc). This is an open resource, and other members of the group reciprocate. That means collectively we have access to a MOUNTAIN of information about any topic.
  • We also utilize text messages for time-sensitive information. This is generally reserved for something that needs to happen quickly or ends quickly.

After you are at this point you may very well wonder, “What should I share with my group? How can I contribute? What gives my TEAM the best chance of success?” Basically, you aren’t limited here. You should contribute to the joint success of the team, and if it helps you, it should help your teammates.

Step 5: What to Share with Your Group

  • News articles, industry-related articles
  • Sourcing Strategies
  • Experiments You Are Testing
  • New Strategies – We love this because we get tons of awesome feedback from people we trust.
  • Purchasing / Pricing Strategy (for the sake of mentioning it – I will point out agreed-upon pricing is illegal. You should only talk about this in theoreticals and should NOT agree on prices).
  • Processing Strategies
  • Business Contacts

To summarize, setting up a Mastermind group can be both fun and rewarding. When you do this, you will have a camaraderie that is unmatched by any type of lone wolf situation. The most important thing to remember is to contribute to your team’s success. Be a part of greatness, which realistically the success of everyone involved. Beyond that, it provides HUGE accountability. Not only are you responsible for your own success, but also that of your team!

Tell us what you think… What is holding you back from setting up your Mastermind Group?

Does Amazon Owe You Money?

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Selling on Amazon has provided us with the most amazing opportunity we have encountered: It allowed us to grow and scale our business with minimal infrastructure. For example, in many cases, we have over a thousand orders a day (particularly in peak season), but only three full-time employees processing products.

In most circles of the world, this wouldn’t be possible, but with Amazon it absolutely is. Amazon FBA allows us to scale without needing lots of employees and crazy systems to do it. I say this because I want to talk about some of the amazing things Amazon has allowed us to do, and use that to transition into something you might not know about:

If you already sell on Amazon, they probably owe you money!

Amazon is an amazing platform and allows unparalleled growth and scalability, but it is not perfect. Amazon deals with MILLIONS of transactions each day, and this creates the opportunity for error. While Amazon is incredibly automated, there is still a HUGE level of human input. Human input is something that can lead to errors.

The great news is: if you know what you are looking for, Amazon will review and issue you a reimbursement. However, many people don’t know what they are looking for and these reimbursements often go unclaimed.

I want to dispel a myth regarding this — this is not intentional, and Amazon is not trying to take your money. Errors happen, and they expect that being responsible business owners we should review and create cases when it is necessary. That generally raises the question of whether this should be automated, and the answer is clearly ‘yes.’ The vast majority of these reimbursements do get applied to your account and are done so in an automated way.

However, there are instances where human errors on the Amazon side cause a fraction of these to fail to be automated. Again, this is not intentional and is just a part of doing business. You should take advantage of the fact that they allow you to review and appeal, as it can make a huge difference on your bottom line!

We recently did a video with Ryan Grant (the man behind the reimbursements book) that has literally made us thousands of dollars. This video is great and we highly recommend you watch it!

Just to give you an idea of how much money Ryan’s book has made for us (this is just from one account) from 1/1/16 – 12/31/16:

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Now, let’s talk about a few ways that Amazon may owe you money, such that you can review and get reimbursed where applicable. I’ve included time-stamped links to corresponding portions of Ryan’s video.

1) Lost or Damaged Inventory

Amazon is responsible for any inventory sent into their fulfillment centers while it is in their possession. This means if a product is lost or damaged while Amazon has it, you are able to be reimbursed for it.

I will preface with the fact that the VAST majority of these are automated and you will find reimbursements for them. That being said, depending on your volume there may be thousands of dollars in missed reimbursements that you are owed for.

For more information see video (6:38)

2) Customer Returns

Amazon has a very liberal return policy, and as Amazon sellers that extends to us as well. Basically, customers are allowed to return products for any reason. However, there are certain rules regarding returns… like the customer actually has to return the product!

You would be shocked at how many times customers initiate returns and are refunded then do not return the item. Per Amazon’s own guidelines – this is something that you can be reimbursed for. You can see this with the Returns Report.

For more information see video (10:55) & (19:45)

3) Other Customer Concessions

Amazon loves to make customers happy, so at times they will offer then an extra $20 on their refund or something of that nature. This is done at the discretion of the customer service representative and most of the time Amazon issues this money from their own account.

However, sometimes this can be issued from your account. Amazon does not have the ability to give your money away through Customer Concessions. Only you have the ability to authorize this, and therefore every time this happens, you are eligible for a reimbursement.

For more information see video (16:19)

4) Inbound Shipment Errors

The Amazon Fulfillment Centers receive thousands of shipments each day, and while it works perfectly the vast majority of the time, occasionally things get lost in the shuffle. It is very important that you monitor this and request reimbursements as they come up.

For more information see video (23:26)

5) Verifying Customer Exchanges

It is not uncommon that a customer asks to exchange an item, as opposed to a traditional return or refund. The process looks like the refund process, and should similarly be researched. When a customer exchanges an item, they have to return the original but should NOT be refunded in addition to the original return. If they are, you have an excellent case for reimbursement.

For more information see video (27:02)

6) Customer Returns that Don’t Adhere to Return Policy

Beyond having specified times in which they have to return products, Amazon also has guidelines for the type of returns and the ways customers treat them. For example, customers may not return items in the Grocery category or may not return items that have clearly been used. If they do, you are likely eligible for reimbursement.

For more information see video (29:57)

7) Warehouse/Distributor/Carrier  Damaged Units

These are all non-fulfillable inventory types. In the case of Warehouse and Carrier Damaged you should be reimbursed automatically for those types, and in the case of Distributor Damaged, many of those are cases for reimbursement. The bottom line is: you should review and file as necessary.

For more information see video (34:14)

Those are just seven of the ways you can rescue lost money. The great thing is that most of these strategies are so simple and so broken down that you can do them in minutes or even outsource them to your assistant team. Our VA team handles this and is able to create cases for these reimbursement opportunities.

Our suggestion is to check out the video here, and potentially check out Ryan’s book. This book has had the greatest ROI of any product that we have ever purchased. If you want to check out more of this information you can do so here:

https://www.onlinesellingexperiment.com/reimbursementsTWF

Hopefully, this article helped to open your eyes to some of the reimbursement possibilities that exist. Think of it this way, if you are performing profitably without utilizing these strategies, this is like picking up additional free money to further grow your profits.

Hiring A Virtual Assistant

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When it comes to hiring a virtual assistant (VA) it can be normal to feel overwhelmed at first. For those who haven’t done it, this sounds incredibly daunting. Honestly, I felt the same way at the beginning. I was under this impression for the longest time until one of the students in our course mentioned to me how amazing his VAs were doing.

He asked about our VAs and I told him we didn’t currently have any, but I was curious about what his VAs worked on for him. He actually showed me the VA worksheets that his company uses and I was floored at the level of productivity!

It was at that point I knew we simply had to have our own VAs. It was time for us to get over the hump!  We set out blindly to hire them, train them and ultimately work with them as the new members of our team. Through trial and error, we learned a lot about the hiring and training processes involved with employing someone who does not physically work with you.

I can honestly say that our VAs became an incredible part of our team. We don’t really think of them as VAs anymore, more along the lines of incredibly important and vital members of our team.  They add value to our company, they work with our team to make them more efficient and they contribute ideas daily! Our team is amazing, and hopefully, I can tell you how to identify amazing members for your team as well.

In terms of hiring, we did our hiring off of OnlineJobs.ph. We bought a membership, looked through possible applicants, and developed a list of possible candidates we wanted to interview. When it came to hiring. the things we cared about were computer proficiency, English language proficiency, and the ability to use spreadsheets.

If you notice – we did not target people who had a working knowledge of sourcing on Amazon. There are many reasons that we didn’t want to hire proficient sourcing agents, but first and foremost we didn’t want to retrain them to our metrics and to think like we do. Also, it is far less likely that they would share SKUS among other VAs for other sellers. We don’t want our VAs to work with other people. We want them to be dedicated members of our team.

Our interview process is relatively simple. We told them about our company, our growth, our goals, and our Core Values. Then, we focused on asking them things like:

  • What is your motivation for doing a great job, beyond money?
  • Do you like feedback? What type of feedback do you like about your performance?
  • Will you work American Eastern Standard time hours?
  • What do you think is the most important characteristic of any team member, and why?
  • Do you have any familiarity with Amazon.com? If yes, have you worked for someone who sells on Amazon? If yes, what did you do for them?
  • How important is the role of a team to you?
  • How do you learn the best?

We don’t focus on any skills. Recently, one of our course members said they ask them to perform a task based on their “claimed skills”, which I think is genius. It’s a short task but effectively lets you know if the VA is claiming they can do things they cannot do or are not proficient in.

All of our interviews were conducted with them over Skype at set times. Our current staff is exactly 12 hours different from our time (e.g. 6 PM here is 6 AM there).

Things we have learned about VAs, in general:

  • How much they request to be paid is NOT indicative of performance – start out cheap and give them raises or bonuses. We pay our VA’s a base rate of $1.50 per hour. After 90 days, we give all VAs a review and, if they’re staying on, a raise, normally an additional dollar an hour.
  • We also sometimes award bonuses based on performance, such as excelling at sourcing. Many of our VAs are from the Philippines, where a “13th Month” bonus is traditionally given at the end of the year.
  • Keep a record of how much you pay your VA’s – you can write this off on your taxes as paid labor (check with your CPA to see exactly how).
  • We did live training via Skype and recorded the sessions with Camtasia (you can use something cheaper like Jing, CamStudio, Screencast-O-Matic, IceCream Video, Screencastify, or Snagit). That gave us videos to reference and a working library to train new employees. Keep these training videos short (generally 4-7 minutes). You don’t want them to have to wade through a ton of material to find what they are looking for.
  • You pay your VAs via Paypal. Send it as Goods & Services, as per Paypal’s terms of service.
  • Being a part of a team really does matter to your VA. Team cohesion is also very important. If one of your VAs has a problem working with another one, they’ll be sure to let you know it.
  • Knowing that you care about them means the world and creates reciprocity. I make sure to wish our VAs happy birthday and talk to them about non-work related stuff from time to time. I cannot stress this point enough: when they do a great job – TELL THEM SO! Any employee loves to know their work is appreciated, and our VAs will take a compliment and wrap themselves up like a comfy blanket.

Our VA’s have contributed greatly to our growth and success. We have sourcing VAs and account specialist VAs. Our account specialist handles our Amazon cases, customer correspondence (through templates), deals with bad feedback, reconciles shipments, reconciles returns, tracks our inventory to make sure Amazon has not lost anything or miscounted anything after receiving among many other tasks.

This has given us additional free time to focus on the growth of business! If you don’t think you have the time or skills to adequately hire and train your own VA, there’s another option. The people at FreeUp.net have spent countless hours searching out dedicated, hardworking individuals who are then trained in a multitude of skills and to handle many tasks. They offer a wide range of services from hiring your own personal VA, to even just someone temporary to handle a specific task you’d like to outsource. They’re definitely a viable option for those of you looking to save even more time. Click this sentence to check them out!

What are some things that VA’s could do for you? Have you ever considered hiring a VA? Let us know!