While you know me as author of this sales prospecting tips blog, you probably aren’t aware I’m also an eBay enthusiast and eBay Consignment Seller who achieved eBay Power Seller status in 2003-2007 by successfully mining a neglected niche market.

Like many eBay consignment sellers, after selling their miscellaneous household items, I was stumped with where to get inventory to fuel my weekly online auctions. Exhausting and frustrating visits to weekly garage sales and consignment shops annoyed me. My peers told me of their nightmare experiences with Drop Shippers. Nope, not for me!

FACT: Where can I get stuff to sell online? Is one of the most popular questions queried online Search Engines. Many of the unemployed, who once poked fun at eBay, are now giving it a serious second look as their day job, especially with Corporate America’s daily announcements of huge layoffs and hiring freezes.

Never one to let a challenge stump me, answering this question became my battle cry. One 2003 February Sunday, while sitting in church, the answer (answers) came to me.

The answers were sitting all around me. The answers were the retired seniors in my church family. Just suppose, I could figure out how to mine the real antiques and collectibles seniors stored in their attics, cellars and garages?  I bet some of them could even use the cash!

I did it and I was very successful at it! So, I wrote an ebook about my detailed marketing plan with all the fixings. Everything that worked for me, why it worked and, how to duplicate my success including free prospect list URLs and working forms are included in this 4 chapter ebook. I held nothing back!

The title of this week’s blog: Making “Real Money” on eBay is the title of the first reader review given my new ebook. I’m thrilled the reviewer saw fit to grade it 5 of 5 possible stars. Also, he placed it in the must-read category for anyone seeking to earn big bucks on eBay as a Consignment Seller.

This is the subject of this blog for these 3 reasons:

• The ebook is a near-perfect example of the marketing maxim: Find a Need and Fill It!
• My patriotic contribution for getting America’s Unemployed back to work.
• Unashamedly, I’d like to sell some ebooks at $18.95 each.

At hundreds of workshops I conducted around this country for 17 years, I always said: finding a need and filling it was the Number 1 Rule of Successful Marketing. Add the right timing of marketplace introduction, a product which solves a contentious problem; and, make it affordable. This is the secret sauce for a marketing success recipe.

Wouldn’t it be great if eBay once again became an American Success Story by putting Unemployed Americans back to work? Like the mythical, Phoenix bird rising from the ashes! What a hoot, if my little ebook had something to do with this happy ending.

To get your FREE Preview peek, downloadable to your PC, cell phone, smart phone, electronic ebook reader or PDA, go to: www.mobipocket.com and type: Gordie into the Search box at the top of the page.

It’s appropriately titled: How to Get Stuff* to Sell on eBay (*an Endless Supply of Real Antiques and Collectibles, NOT Drop Ship) and I think it does the Number 1 Rule of Marketing proud. Do you agree? 

Call Reluctance (CR) is a career-threathening condition which limits what sales people can achieve by emotionally limiting the number of sales calls they are able to make. CR is “emotional sludge”! 

I can’t take credit for the CR definition. This belongs to George Dudley and Shannon Goodson, Phds and co-authors of “The Psychology of Call Relectance (How to Overcome the Fear of Self-Promotion) a 1986 paperback published by Behavioral Science Research Press, Inc., Dallas, TX.

Since I couldn’t put my finger on the reasons many of my trainees were making excuses instead of conducting their timely qualifying follow up phone calls, I was thrilled to hear about this book which came highly recommended by another sales training consultant.

I was even more anxious to read the book when I learned both authors conducted extensive CR field testing of sales professionals from entry-level through top producers with major clients in the insurance, computer,  management consulting and telecommunications industries.   

Besides publishing the results of their exhaustive field tests, the book identified 11 specific CR Tendencies with their characteristics; and, explained their application of a pre-employment testing instrument which they used to pre-test sales candidates.

The SPQ Gold Test Instrument was not a Personality Test. It specifically measured:

• The severity of CR in 11 major areas.
• Identified wannabe “Sales Imposters”.
• Filtered Test-Takers’ Impression Management, Evasion, Haphazard Answering and Critical Defensiveness.

Out of curiousity, I took the SPQ Gold Test and much to my surprise, discovered I had some degree of Over Preparer Tendencies! While not career-threathening, I was interested in remediation so I flew to Dallas and enrolled in a 2-day CR Remediation Clinic taught and managed by  Dudley and Goodson.

At the time, I thought some of the classroom exercises designed to remediate the 11 CR Tendencies were questionable and unlikely to be practiced by even the most ardent student. I was impressed enough with the veracity of the SPQ Gold Test Instrument to become an authorized test-administrator and marketer in Central Florida.

The Test Instrument was software-platformed and test results with a Remediation Analysis were provided to client management for each enrollee.

For several of our clients, the SPQ Gold Test became the primary pre-employment testing instrument.  We offered the test instrument to several clients until the Dudley and Goodson Organization insisted we also conduct local CR Remediation Clinics. We declined since it was incompatible with our business model and we preferred to pass them on to Dallas for Clinic enrollments.

Even though we discontinued our affiliation with the Dudley and Goodson Organization, this book and the CR concepts are still relevant and applicable.

Shortly before writing this blog posting, I visited Amazon.com to see what books were in print. I found several used copies of the original 1986 Dudley and Goodson book and a later 2001 edition for sale.

I highly recommend this material to both sales agents and sales managers since the bone-shaking fear of picking up the phone to call prospects is still a malady which afflicts many of us.

Do you agree?