When should you start using List Perfectly?
Yesterday. Yes, I know that sounds strange but it’s never too soon to start using List Perfectly. New seller or seasoned seller, 7 listings or 7,000 listings, the time is now.
“Why?” you ask. Many reasons. I’ve seen time and time again where people say, “I wish I’d done it sooner.” The sooner you start, the less you will need to “catch up” on later. Ask those who waited and had 2,000 listings to import into List Perfectly. On top of that, they also had to figure out which listings were crossposted and where they were cross posted to. Not that it can’t be done, but why put yourself through having to do all of this when you can hit the ground running now?
“I just started reselling and only have 10 listings so I am signing up for List Perfectly today,” said no reseller ever (and it’s too bad we don’t have that hindsight). We don’t think about these things when we are just starting out. We are so anxious to “get going” and we don’t know how it might benefit us in the long run if we start with List Perfectly from the very beginning.
You launch your business with a great inventory system by doing this. You start off on the right foot and implement best practices sooner and learn these best practices faster because you started using List Perfectly from the beginning. List Perfectly isn’t just a service, it’s a system. List Perfectly is a system that, if you start early and use best practices from the beginning, saves you so much time and headache. You have a sure-fire system in place from the starting line and once this system is in place, you build and grow on it and through it.
I started with the Business Plan when I was very part-time. I was working 50+ hours per week outside the home and reselling when I wasn’t at my full-time job. I had fewer than 200 listings so I wasn’t like the reseller with 2,500 listings that had even more to import and implement into my “system,” but I look back and think, what if I’d started using List Perfectly with my very 1st listing? Knowing what I know now, it blows my mind to think about it. Some may think that I started early with List Perfectly, but in the great scheme of things, I would have benefited greatly from starting even sooner.
List Perfectly is a business partner
To me, List Perfectly is my business partner
Bringing List Perfectly into your business at any point is great, but just think about what a difference it would make to bring this business partner into the fold when you are first starting out. Both of you are going to mesh faster and you will be implementing all of the great features of your new business partner from day one. Again, yes, you can do this at any point in your reselling business, but doing it from the beginning has so many advantages that we don’t even realize or think about.
I’ve heard some say, “I don’t have enough listings to use List Perfectly yet.” That is the best time to start. It’s like saying to yourself that you want to wait to implement something and then put more time and effort into implementing it later. Again, yes, it can be done, but you are creating more work for yourself by implementing it later.
If you have inventory and have no listings yet, that’s an even better time to start. Sounds odd, doesn’t it?
You have nothing listed and someone is recommending that you implement List Perfectly into your business? Yes. You start everything in List Perfectly this way and you aren’t out on other platforms figuring out all the nuances and quirks of each platform. You start all of your listings in List Perfectly and learn one listing format. This one listing format is all you need because List Perfectly takes care of the rest. Fill it out once in List Perfectly and that’s it. Also, you start off on day one with an inventory management system. With that very first listing going into List Perfectly when you are first starting out, you have implemented an inventory management system into your business on day one!
Another thing to think about is the fact that, since you start in List Perfectly early on, you will have a healthy catalog. What does having a healthy catalog mean? One very, very important element of your List Perfectly catalog is having valid and active item ID numbers in place. If you start with List Perfectly on day one, you are setting yourself up to have all of your item ID numbers in place. This is crucial when it comes to taking advantage of all of List Perfectly’s great features (present and future) like analytics, updating, delisting and ensuring your sold listings are ended on other platforms properly. You learn best practices from the very beginning and know how to start with a healthy catalog and maintain a healthy catalog. Best practices are so important in your business and are also equally important when making List Perfectly your business partner.
Start with List Perfectly early
Starting with List Perfectly early on also prevents you from having crossposted listings that you don’t have control of through List Perfectly. For instance, before I started using List Perfectly, I had all of my listings on eBay. I decided to manually crosspost eligible items to Etsy. It’s great to diversify and branch out, but since I wasn’t using List Perfectly, I had listings on eBay and Etsy with no way to track either set of listings. I made a note on each of my eBay listings that the listing had been crossposted to Etsy but this just became more and more complicated the more sales I had and the more manual cross listing I did.
Having all of it in List Perfectly would have saved me so much time and headache in those early days. Something else to think about with this situation is it is way too easy to double sell when doing it this way. We can be as careful as we want to be but we are human and overlooking something isn’t an impossibility.
If you start in List Perfectly, you have your best practices in place, your catalog will be healthy and up to date and you can keep a close eye on all of your listings and where they are cross posted to. When you mark an item sold, it is ended on all platforms and your up-to-date catalog is going to operate like a well-oiled machine. Double selling won’t happen because List Perfectly will end the listings for you.
I hope this helped give some insight as to why you need to make List Perfectly your business partner sooner than later. Hindsight is 20/20 and I can’t emphasize enough that it’s never too early or too soon to implement List Perfectly.
