With this post I hope to take you by the hand and give you some tips on How To Approach Suppliers.
When you approach suppliers either with an enquiry or when you are ready to buy you need to approach suppliers in the correct way or sadly they will show you the door or not answer letters or emails.
1) Get Your self a Business Name or Trade Name. Unless you want to, at this stage you can trade as a sole trader. You will need to come up with a business name. Please give this some thought, you can use a generic name that will cover anything you want to sell or do, or you can be more direct and call your self something like sally’s brown bears. Now the only problem is with the latter you can only really sell brown bears.
Something like Sally’s Bears and toys would allow you to sell bears and toys.
Also while you are thinking up a name check that the domain is there for you and if it is go buy it. http://www.godaddy.com offer very cheap .com names.
2) Right once you have come up with a name and bought a domain name, get your self a business bank account or another account as you need to keep your business money seperate.
3) The next stage on your journey is to get some business cards made. You can get these made at VistaPrint often for Free.
4) Now fire up your word processor or publisher package on the computer and design a simple letterhead and include your Business Name, Address, web and email address.
5) You are now all set.
When you write to suppliers say you are new and setting up an online business and please could they send you their latest Catalogue, Trade Prices.
Also mention that you are happy with a Cash with Order account to start with.
Please type the letters and never hand write them as it looks far more business like.
I hope that you were able to follow those steps. And when you do very soon the postman will be delivering you Trade Catalogues and Price lists day in and out.
Happy eBaying and good luck with approaching Suppliers
Andrew Milburn
