How can you sell products online successfully and, more importantly, profitably? It’s a question entrepreneur and business owner James Sinclair answers in the exciting third instalment of our video series with him: Business Class with James Sinclair.
It’s easy to see why many business owners want to get involved with e-commerce. In retail alone, it is forecast that by 2027 e-commerce revenue will have increased for eight consecutive years to $194.1bn [1].
However, selling online can be a daunting prospect if you've never done it before, even for long-established business leaders. It’s a hugely crowded marketplace and competition can be fierce, but with 10 years of e-commerce experience to draw on, James breaks down every step of the process into simple terms and shares insights that can be applied across all kinds of business sectors.
Choose your e-commerce style then double down on sales
Take a moment to consider the different approaches to e-commerce that you might adopt. For example, will you build your own e-commerce site and set aside a marketing budget for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and search engine optimisation (SEO)? Or will you sell products through a big digital marketplace?
You might find you follow a similar journey to James, who talks about selling “other people’s products” via an online retailer before approaching manufacturers and creating his very own brand.
Whichever route you choose, it’s likely that you’ll need to come up with a supply chain management strategy, consider costs such as warehousing to store physical inventory, identify delivery and distribution partners, and know how to pay international suppliers.
But before you get carried away, there’s the big question of generating the money required to launch your e-commerce venture. As James says: “You need to become a great sales and marketing person to get your initial sales in.”
Thankfully, James is ready to talk through tips and tricks to fund the growth of your business – from building a wholesale business to selling direct-to-consumer (D2C). After all, maximising your profit margin so you can come up with smart ways to invest in your business should be a priority.
As James acknowledges: “If you can achieve a 150% profit margin as opposed to a 100% profit margin, there’s more skin in the game to invest in great marketing, to invest in great customer service and to pay your teams well in order to retain them.”
Find more of James Sinclair’s Business Class videos here.
Sources
[1] Statista, United Kingdom (UK): retail e-commerce revenue forecast from 2017 to 2027, 2023