I attended my first Power Mom Owned Businesses Event a few weeks ago, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I’m a mom-to-be. I’m about 6 1/2 months pregnant with a little girl and have been wanting to seek out other mom owned businesses to find support!

The event was held at Little Urbanites in Portland’s Pearl District. Kim Sibley, the owner of Little Urbanites and Rebecca Pearcy of Queen Bee Creations were the guest speakers. Kim offered the point of view from a boutique owner, while Rebecca shared the angle of distributing and talking to store owners about selling her products.

Kim Sibley

Rebecca Pearcy

The topic was “Products That Sell”, dealing with how to get your products out to stores, etc. There was a great turnout of women and some excellent questions were asked.

I’d really love to share some of more interesting points with you today:

When approaching a store to sell your items, be sure to include:

-your company’s bio
-color sheet for your products
-wholesale order form
-a sample of your product (if possible)

It’s important that you don’t undercut your pricing. For example, your wholesale price should be 1/2 of your retail price or very similar. It’s hard for a store to buy from you on a wholesale basis and discover that your retail price undercuts their wholesale price by 10% or more.

When approaching the buyer of a boutique or store, respect their time. Don’t walk into a store expecting to talk to them. Call ahead and make an appointment. It might take a few tries to get through, but be persistent. Don’t give up, just remember that purchasing is done in phases and a store might not purchase products until next quarter. Try to be in tune with the season.

Ask for resources, mentors, talk to your colleagues, when looking for materials, contractors, marketing, book-keeping, etc.

Don’t be afraid to contact the store buyer through different techniques: email, phone, snail mail, social media, and lots of follow up

If advertising with a magazine, which they suggested not to go overboard with, you can always negotiate a price with the magazine/paper, especially close to the ad run deadline. Never settle for the first price.

Find ambassadors (friends or acquantances) who love your products. Each time you have something new to share, send them a sample to try out. They naturally want to spread the word about what you are doing so give them free gift certificates, products, and whatever you can to make them feel special. You will definitely get more in return.

When selling wholesale to a store, offer net 30 or 60. Basically it gives the store 30 days or 60 days to pay you for their purchase of your products. This can make buying easier for some stores.

If a store isn’t sold on your product, offer to do a trial run by selling your product on their website. It’s a low risk way to offer a variety products for the store and gives your product exposure it normally wouldn’t have. If the product sells, there’s a good chance the store purchaser will do a wholesale order from you.

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• 10 Common E-commerce Mistakes You Can Avoid! Part 2

Here’s Part 2 of my 10 Common E-commerce Mistakes You Can Avoid! I posted last week….

#6 Displaying out of stock products

Don’t disappoint your customers, get them all excited and list a product that you no longer have in stock. Have your inventory set up so it’s synced with your online store. Manage expectations of your customers, it makes all the difference

#7 POP-UPs Annoy

Lots of websites try and lure customers in with pop-ups, but they cause the opposite effect. It’s intrusive,
usually looks ugly, and slows down page load time. Don’t make your customers want to hit the back button or run away
from your site. Unobtrusive, easy-to-use, and friendly is a much better tactic.

#8 Asking for too much or unnecessary info

Sure, sometimes you are tempted to gather info from your customer for marketing purposes when they
are registering, but if you attempt to ask too much, they may abandon the whole process.

Just stick to the necessary details to complete the purchase which are-

Delivery Address
Contact Number
Card Details

#9 Poor Customer Service

Treat your customers with the golden rule. Listen to them and be there for them which
includes answering emails, helping with returns, returning/answering phone calls. Providing a FAQ and and a return policy on your website that’s easy to find can go a long way as well.

#10 Plan for Growth

Before you begin selling anything online, talk to your web firm and web hosting about
how to prepare for:

-high traffic on your website
-high sales

You might consider what the costs are to upgrade your current web hosting plan and know at what point in your business’ growth that you will have special needs. Plan for peak sales around holidays and sales and know how to avoid traffic and bandwidth problems. vLearning what your options are early on will help your business grow faster.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, there are many more mistakes to avoid. Let me know if I need to mention others mistakes that are just important to avoid.

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• Who has the most purchases through Facebook wins!

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Facebook is much more than a place to talk to your friends and family. As people spend more time on this widely-visited website, Facebook has realized that value of becoming a powerful e-commerce tool. Businesses are now using Facebook to get people to directly make online purchases.

With different apps in the game, business can choose from a variety of ways. Having a Facebook Fan page is critical for a business. If you want to list products, business owners can use apps such as SocialShop. This app allows a business to choose the page they want a product to appear on and add a shop tab to it, add their store link,  or choose a product to display. When a customers visit the fan page, they click on “shop” and click on a product, they are taken to the shopping cart on the business website. There’s even a feature that allows the customer to “share” the product with their friends.

Who has tried and succeeded at Facebook Ecommerce? Proctor and Gamble launched a new diaper product on their fan site – 3 weeks before the product hit the shelves. In less than a hour, the company sold all of the 1,000 packs allotted for this ad campaign.

In addition to purchases, Facebook is influencing the  purchasing of products  - L.L. Bean uses Facebook to post news and events, promote its products and offer discounts through their fan page. They encourage customers to post photos of products and comment on photos left by others. Customers are continually posting about their hikes, camping, stories of their dog and products as well.  L.L. Bean announces promotions to its followers via blog posts, videos, and special offers and it’s working!

As a consumer, I believe we benefit on learning ways to get deals or  learn about new products hitting the market. I really hope to see more integration of reviewing/recommending products for friends and family on Facebook. I personally aren’t a huge shopper, but I find I make more and more purchases online. I know I’d much rather purchase based on recommendation than taking my chances on a new product I don’t know much about. What do you think?

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• 5 Easy Ways a Small Business Can Use Social Media Sites to Sell Online