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Product Sourcing and Finding Suppliers
You have now decided on a niche
market and found a domain name and now it is time to find some
products to sell! Your selection of products to sell is a
crucial part in the success of your business and you will need
to dedicate plenty of time lining out all of your suppliers. We
will take you from start to finish on how to find your products
all the way to negotiating terms with suppliers. You should have
a specific number of products in mind that you want to sell on
your website. Throughout this chapter we will be using an
example of a fitness educational dropship business that is
selling books and DVD’s. With this example we can add thousands
of books and DVD’s to our website. Your niche may be different;
you may be adding tens of thousands of products or simply a few
hundred. The number of products you add to your site will be
directly related to your niche.
STARTING WITH
SOME RESEARCH
Google is your friend when it
comes to sourcing out your suppliers and allows a great starting
point to research your competition as well. In this chapter we
are using a fitness educational business as an example so we
will go to Google and search for “fitness books.” Now we take a
look at a few of the sites that come up. We see a few fitness
books that are published by a variety of different publishers. A
few are Human Kinetics and Healthy Learning. Now we can simply
go to these two publishers’ websites and check for a reseller
program or dropshipping program. If nothing is listed a phone
call to the company needs to be planned out. When you look at
different products always pay attention to the brand name,
publisher, or manufacturer. You always want to contact to the
source of the products first. If they won’t do a dropship
program with you, they will most likely be able to point you in
the direction of a wholesaler that will.
Be careful when
searching for dropship wholesalers! The size of the company
should be a proper indication if they are legitimate or not.
Unfortunately some people out there are offering dropship
programs but they are in fact dropshippers themselves! This
could severely cut in to your profit margin. You only want to
source your products from companies that have physical
warehouses. Remember the company you choose will be handling
your customers’ orders and you must ensure that they will get
the orders there on time.
CONTACTING THE COMPANY
You will need to plan out the call to the company and have a
list of questions ready. Getting in touch with the right person
is also very important. Your goals for the phone call are below:
• Identify if the company offers a reseller program, or more
specifically a dropship program.
• Identify the person that
works with distributors and gather his or her contact
information. Make sure to record all details including: name,
email, phone, fax, address, alternate contact and preferred
method of contact.
• Making sure the company is a
manufacturer or a wholesaler. You want to buy your products from
the source so you can get the best deal!
• Identify how the
company takes payment from their distributors.
• Obtain any
applications, contacts, and price lists you can from the
supplier you are contacting. Try to get product spreadsheets as
they will save you tons of time later on.
Now, here is a
phone script you can use to convince the supplier to establish a
relationship with you and your company.
YOU: “Hi, my name
is ________ and I am calling from COMPANY NAME. I am very
interested in becoming a distributor for some of your products.
Who should I speak to about that?”
At this point the
attendant should transfer you to the correct individual. Make
sure to write the person’s name down.
Once you are
transferred to the correct person use the following script:
YOU: “Hi ________, my name is ________ and I am calling from
COMPANY NAME. I am very interested in becoming a distributor for
some of your products. Is this something you can assist me
with?”
The person will then give you the details of their
program, if they have one. If they don’t have a distributor
program you may have just created some interest for them to
create one! If their product line is very attractive and they
don’t offer a distributor program you can ask: “Have you
considered implementing a distributor program? Is this something
you would be willing to consider?”
Make sure to ask
questions like:
“Is your company a manufacturer or a
wholesaler?”
“What kind of product discounts do you provide
to distributors?”
“How does your dropshipping program work?”
“When I place an order with your company, what is the process?
Do you take orders via email, fax, phone, website, etc.?”
“Will you provide tracking numbers for all of the orders I send
you? What is the usual turn-around for shipping the products?
What shipping courier do you utilize?”
“Do you have a list of
products you can send to me? If so, do you have a spreadsheet
with prices and descriptions?”
NOTE: The person may not
know this information. You can request to talk with the website
manager or someone who has access to the database for the
products. Preferably you will want to obtain an excel
spreadsheet with all of the product information. It will save
tons of time later on and will allow you to add multiple
products to your site all at once!
If you encounter a few
NO’s along the way, don’t be discouraged! You will be able to
find another company who manufacturers similar products. Be sure
to keep good notes about all of the suppliers you contact. Keep
this information handy because you will be contacting your
suppliers throughout the creation of your business.
In
the next section we will examine a powerful alternative method
for sourcing suppliers. Direct contact should be your first
method but this method is also very effective to find supplier
you may not have been able to find otherwise.
UTILIZING A SOURCING COMPANY
Thankfully there
are companies that will connect you to drop ship wholesalers and
manufacturers and literally millions of products. There is one
source that will connect you to 1000’s of companies that already
have drop shipping programs available.
Visit
World Wide Brands and
utilize their service to find products to sell on your website.
You will have full access to all of the products needed without
the hassle and time of sourcing suppliers directly. With World
Wide Brands you will have access to over 8 million products you
can sell directly on your website. You will also have direct
contact to drop shippers and light bulk wholesalers.
It
is a wise idea to use a combination of both direct contacts with
suppliers and to utilize
World Wide Brands to find a wide variety of products to sell
on your site.
You can also use
World Wide Brands for
more than product sourcing! They offer a complete host of market
research tools so you can research your product line before
selling it! You will have access to powerful tools like demand
measuring and supply chains. These tools will only further the
success of your company.
Invest some time in product
sourcing and start thinking about what categories all of your
products will go in to. For example, our educational fitness
site will have many categories for books and DVD’s. These
categories could be Aquatics, Strength Training, etc.
There are many ways to break down the categories for your site.
At this point begin thinking about which categories you will
need and start filling each category with products.
Make
sure to gather as many spreadsheets of products as possible. You
can sort through the spreadsheets and remove products that you
do not wish to sell on your site. Having well organized
spreadsheets with as much information as possible will save you
a lot of time when adding products to your site. Try to gather
the following information for each product:
If you are selling books, you
would want to get the number of pages, the author, publisher,
ISBN number and any other appropriate information. Every type of
product is different and you will need to gather as much
information as possible for your specific product types.
Some suppliers will not be able to supply a product spreadsheet.
In this case you will have to add products one by one. We show
you how to do this easily in the next chapter.
NOTE: If you
are able to obtain the product image URL location it will save
you even more time by not having to add images to the products
one by one. A product image url will look like this
http://suppliersWebsite.com/images/product12345.jpg
Keep your files organized by utilizing folders. Create one
folder on your desktop named Your Company Name. Inside that
folder have different folders for each part of your business
such as, suppliers, legal, customers, expenses, etc. Keeping
your files organized will help you locate documents for your
business quickly and easily.
Now that we have explored how to search out suppliers and also how to gather spreadsheets, let’s examine how to actually build you new website. In the next section we will dive in to setting up your new website and also adding categories and products. We will show you two different ways to add your products and categories.
Step 12 - Building Your Website
The True Web Money Dropshipping eCourse Outline
Start Here - Introduction
The Power of the E-Commerce
What is Drop Shipping?
Why You Should Drop Ship
Getting Started
Setting up a Temporary
Contact
Picking a Niche Market
Getting Started with a Plan
Business Structure and Legal
Picking a Domain Name
Product Sourcing and Finding
Suppliers
Building Your Website
Branding Your Business
Finding a Merchant Service
Provider
Marketing Your Business
Putting it all Together
Sales Strategy
Defining Business Systems
Conclusion
Step by Step Checklist
Website Resources
