Dear E-Myth Reader,
This week's newsletter summarizes a two-part article by Paul Wenke, an E-Myth client writing about his family's hardware store, and how they expanded sales onto the internet. You'll get an inside look at an ecommerce site, and at applying Mastery techniques by reading My Long Journey to Successful Selling on the Internet.
An eBayTM Store is A Business
Paul Wenke and his wife own an ACE hardware store in a small Colorado town. Like storeowners everywhere, they had products on the shelves that would not sell. They tried changing displays, marking down prices and auctioning in bulk, but they had no good way to dispose of their dead inventory. Then Paul thought of selling on eBayTM and HardwareOverstock.com was born.
In Paul's words, selling on eBayTM "is truly an amazing experience" but after 10 months selling on ebay, they had 12,500 items listed, an annual sales pace of $175K and an increasing sense of unease.
Back To The Drawing Board
They realized they hadn't defined a Strategic Objective for the eBayTM store, so they put on the brakes, and did a re-design using the same E-Myth fundamentals they previously had built into their bricks-and-mortar business. They answered questions like
What items could they sell online and be profitable?
What were their size and growth objectives?
What advantages can be leveraged with an internet store?
What data elements need to be automated to manage online inventory?
The resulting Strategic Objective includes
We will be recognized as an honest, dependable provider of high quality hardware products
We will maintain a positive feedback level of at least 99.8%
We will achieve $3,000,000 in sales by the end of 2009
We will always embrace technologies that will advance the efficiency and effectiveness
They also implemented a set of strategic indicators to monitor progress. See these indicators and the rest of Paul Wenke's account in My Long Journey to Successful Selling on the Internet.
On The Website
Next week we're delivering Virtual Tele-Training sessions on Systems Evaluation and on the Key Frustrations process. Check the Tele-Training calendar for signup details.
Our poll question on the current credit crunch has generated interesting results. Check responses, cast your vote or take an Instant Business Evaluation at the E-Myth website.
Yours Truly,
The E-Myth Team |
My E-Myth
