Get tips below for phasing in offer clearing strategies as you onboard customers and optimizing offer clearing for maximum results.
First, get customers used to the system
Phase 1: To Start, Give Instant Gratification to Your Buyers.
When you first launch the platform, you may want to clear offers quickly so that buyers get instant gratification. This will show them that the platform is fast and accessible, and will encourage them to engage with it. If you're successful, you'll start to see the number of offers in your system increase.
Then, wait longer to clear offers.
Phase 2: Wait for offers to accumulate before clearing.
Once your buyers are comfortable with the system, it's critical to allow offers to accumulate before deciding what to clear. That way, you'll be making decisions based on a large enough sample of demand data.
Set an offer clearing schedule
Create structure for your customers.
Once you have enough engagement on the platform, you can start publishing fixed offer clearing times. This will encourage buyers to get their offers in before the deadline. It will also get customers used to the platform and create a predictable schedule for everyone.
When setting this schedule, keep in mind:
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The geographies that you need to serve. For instance, if you are based in the USA, you might want to clear once early in the morning to service Europe and once later in the day to service the USA.
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Your shipping schedule. For instance, if your shipping deadline is 4 pm, you might want to clear your last offers at 3 pm, so your buyers have a chance to place their orders before your shipping cutoff.
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Demand data. Keep in mind that the more frequently you clear, the less data you will have when clearing.
Good to know:
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If you find that you are waiting a long time and offers are not accumulating, you probably need to adjust the price. This assumes you have enough engagement on the platform.
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There will always be cases where you should break your rules. At the end of the day, your goal is to get sales and make more money. If a customer calls and asks you to clear offers in between offer clearing times because they have to send you a wire by a certain time or for some other reason, be flexible, especially if it is an important customer.
Double check offline deals
Talk to your sales reps before clearing offers.
Even if you clear all of your offers centrally, it's important to be in constant communication with your sales reps when you are clearing offers.
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Given that many deals may still be negotiated offline, you'll want to ensure that these customers have entered in offers that were agreed to.
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Find out whether your sales reps are working on any offline deals that you need to consider. For example, is one of your reps working on a big deal at a higher price than what you are planning to clear?
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You may also be able to use the offers that you have as a way to encourage your reps to go out and get even better offers. For example, if you have an offer for 100 devices at $200, you can ask your reps to go out to see if they can get more than $200 before you accept the offer. You would typically do this only for larger quantity offers, because it wouldn't make sense to do this for a 5-quantity offer.
Spur competition
Be strategic about how you clear offers.
Once you know what your demand and the competition look like, you should be strategic about how you clear offers.
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Clear your smaller, higher offers first and encourage these buyers to go in and check out.
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Then, sell the rest of your inventory to larger buyers at lower prices.
Reach out to your smaller buyers and tell them that they need to check out quickly because you have other offers for the same product behind their offers. If you do this type of outreach, it's critical that you don’t bluff. You must actually have other offers, so the smaller buyers will learn that if they don't check out quickly, they will lose the product.
When buyers start messaging you every 30 minutes begging you to clear their offers so they can check out, you know you did it right.