Essential Tips For Successful Selling on Sears

Online retailers are always in search of new ways that can give them maximum exposure to their product listings. Making your products available on marketplaces that attracts high number of visitors is a smart strategy to increase sales and stay ahead of the competition. Most of the time, online retailers prefer selling on Amazon and eBay as these two marketplaces are very popular amongst online shoppers. But, there are other marketplaces too worth considering one them being Sears.com. It is considered as one of the most favorable online shopping portals in the United States.

According to a report by Compete.com, there are about 16 million unique visitors every month on Sears.com. Not selling on Sears.com would mean missing the opportunity of selling to this high number of unique visitors. Also, you may find many potential customers who are not necessarily buying from Amazon or eBay.

How Does It Work?

Similar to Amazon, Sears charges a percentage of your transactions and a monthly fee for your participation in their marketplace. Sears also offers fulfillment services to its merchants. Additional charges for storage fees needs to be paid by the merchant availing fulfillment services. Sears picks, packs and ships the products for merchants taking advantage of Sears’s fulfillment services. This is indeed a good option for merchants not owning warehouse or having enough manpower to handle order fulfillment.

How much does it Cost?

• Sears monthly fee is $39.99
• The commission rates range from 7% to 20%, depending on the type of products sold

To encourage new sellers, Sears waive off the $40 monthly fees if your sale doesn’t exceed $400 in a month. This means, you need to pay only for the transactions done and no other overheads. Thus, you can experiment selling on Sears, as there is nothing to lose.

How to Sell Successfully on Sears?

Now, when you have decided to sell on Sears, all you need is to sign up and the marketplace team would help you with the onboarding process. Follow these important tips in order to be successful on Sears:

• Label your packages clearly
• There should be a valid tracking number assigned to all the shipments
• Packing slips are mandatory for all the shipments. The important information to be on the packing slips are –
  1. Name and Shipping address of Buyer
  2. Billing information
  3. Contact information and return policy

Besides considering the above points, you also need to win the buy box.

How to Win the Buy Box?

• The merchants need to assign a competitive price to the products as the customers look for low prices
• The order processing time taken by the merchant should be minimum
• The customers should be given multiple shipping options and the order should be delivered quickly
• The merchant should ensure that the provided customer service contact information which includes phone, email and postal address should be valid and up-to-date in the seller portal
• The merchant is expected to reply within a committed time frame whenever contacted by the customer, marketplace support or Sears customer service
• Whenever the merchant has a telephonic conversation with the customer, a follow recap should be sent by the merchant to the customer on their email
• The inventory information should be up-to-date in the seller portal as Sears doesn’t appreciate cancellation of orders, delay in shipments and poor customer experiences
• While performing a cancel/return the merchant needs to select the proper reason code. They tally the reasons given by the merchant with the reasons given by the customer. The mismatched reason for return or cancel of a product can adversely affect merchant’s performance rates and penalties also can be charged on the merchant.

Sears.com is renowned for providing best shopping experience to their customers. So, the merchants are expected to provide high quality items at low prices and faster delivery. Also, to best serve the Sears customers, the merchants are required to update prices, inventory, time taken to process order and shipping options regularly.