Management 101

By: Brian Sheldon

Viewer Rating: / 9 Votes

Managing inventory and sales is a daunting task for everyone. From big and small to mom and pop to large full production warehousing, it is very difficult. It's hard enough keeping up with customers as it is, and effectively keeping a good sku/shelving system is just that much more pressure. Some days you might feel that the book stacks and shelves are leaning in towards you or customer's packing slips are floating around you in some kind of paper matrix. Listen, it happens, and sometimes for the better because it will make you question whether or not your system of doing things is efficient. Usually for most people it isn't until they realize the possibility of such an automated system that they really look into it. And for many and most of you reading this article, it's going to be right about now.

Imagine for a second a system that can manage your sales, inventory, customers, multiple venues, competitive re-pricing, and help you track your sales progress. Sounds great huh? That kind of integration sounds pricey, I know, but it doesn't have to be. For most of my time in book selling I've had the honor and privilege to be apart of a website, a community and a service that provides all of that and more. TheArtofBooks.com is owned and operated by two very well established veteran booksellers, Rodger & Michelle Castle . From the beginning of my bookselling career, I started selling solely on Amazon.com, and as time progressed and with much persuasion I grasped all of the other major venues in hope to diversify my business. Keeping all of your “eggs in one basket” is not only risky, but it diminishes your possibility of sales that many other large websites can bring in for you. Had I not been apart of AOB, I wouldn't have even considered the idea of trying to juggle listings on multiple venues; not only was it an immense amount of work, but it just wouldn't be economical unless I had a website that managed all.

If I had a sale on eBay, AOB would pull it from all of my other 6 venues so that it wouldn't sell twice, it became an instant solution that many find to be a problem. And right off the bat I don't want to make it seem that AOB isn't for B&M sellers as well, because if you are one and are just beginning to investigate online selling, AOB allows you to easily manage what you have in your store with what you want to put online. Even beyond the multiple venue capability, this website opens the door and opened my door to automation. Now instead of printing “Ship Sold Now” emails from Amazon as packing slips, I could create and design my own and batch print them with just a few clicks. And when it came time to ship them, I could package them with those slips and then weigh them and plug those values into AOB and then bulk print them with the assistance of Endicia, again, another few clicks. When I was done printing the labels and the packages were done, I would simply output all the delivery confirmation data, shipping costs back into AOB with an auto-generated file and it would plug all of that information to the art of books database for me. There was no copying and pasting segments from shipments or manually entering them into excel or even manually emailing customers to confirm their order. Did I mention once I upload my output file it auto-dispatches an email to all of my buyers in that bulk process for me based on my custom confirmation email? Cool huh? That is just the beginning of it!

So now you see how key automation and integration is and how efficient it can make the process of fulfillment. And not only can AOB manage your inventory, it can manage your sales and customer relations. There are also a few rather helpful tools that AOB provides to help your book business. One and the most popular is called Soloist. It is a re-pricing tool that allows you to automatically re-price your inventory based on prior specifications, or to do it manually one by one. It allows you to stay above your competition or below them, however you want to strategize, or to lower all your prices that have been penny mined with one click. (Where the competitor lowers his price a penny below yours.) Most people charge for a service like this, some more than others, AOB provides it free for its members. The next tool that they provide is the Road Tool. This tool allows you to do lookups via your cell phone, check prices and even access your AOB account. It is a great and affordable alternative to Scoutpal. Again, it's free for members, and again most charge a handful for this service alone.

If you're still reading up to this point you can pat yourself on the back, because it has been a lot of reading and a lot to take in and consider. At first I said to myself, put all of my business's integrity and trust in the hands of one website? Put all my login information on a site and hope it doesn't blow up in my face? And I have to say it's a huge risk, but when I saw all of the other AOB veterans endorsing it and cheerfully praising its ability I found that the possibility of success with it outweighed anything that could go wrong. It wasn't long before I saw the culture that people praised about, one in which the founders and owners were with you every step of the way. Most services these days and even ones pertaining to the book selling industry are so focused on volume and not the quality of the experience with their members. Rodger & Michelle are real people, book sellers like you and I, ones that you can talk to, chat with, and yeah, you can call them up and get a real voice. That personalized experience is enough to sell most of you, but it takes your initiative to take the look and to take the leap to see it. That is why I challenge you to even just look at TheArtofBooks.com. Check out the test account and take a test drive. Get a feel for its features and tools, and even sign up for a free trial. If you aren't satisfied or it doesn't work for you, you lose nothing. But consider just how much you are losing right now without The Art of Books. It's something to think about isn't it?