By Lewis Smith - Dropship Unlocked

Hi, everybody. It's Lewis Smith here and in today's live stream, we're going to be talking about how to sign domestic dropshipping suppliers, specifically what not to say to them when you contact them. So if that's something you've been wondering about or are interested in, then I hope you enjoy today's Live with Lewis. If you do have questions throughout, as always feel free to ask them inside the comments. And if you don't know me, I'm Lewis Smith, and I help people start e-commerce businesses using a particular model of dropshipping, which I refer to as the home turf advantage method. But it's probably not in the way you might be thinking. So if you're interested in learning more about what that is and whether it might be of interest to you, what you can do to learn more is head over to DropshipUnlocked.com/FREE.

So if you're... I mean, the members that we have within our Dropship Unlocked community often come to us because they want to start an e-commerce business, right? They often haven't done it before, they've had to go, but sometimes it's been in a slightly different model and they realized they don't want to buy stock from China. They don't want to pump thousands into inventory that then may or may not sell. They ultimately want a business that frees up their time, gives them that financial security, but also the location freedom. That's a big one for people running this type of business because you're not tied to any one place, right? So that's one of the big appeals.

And even though they have income to invest towards their business, they're not looking for one of these get rich quick kind of things, they know the importance of working with domestic UK, or wherever you are based as your company, suppliers so that you can offer that fast next day, or at least at the very longest one to two day delivery to customers that customers now expect. And they often tell me that they don't know what to say to convince suppliers to work with them in the first place. And that can be a hard one because they're scared of getting rejected when going into those supplier conversations. And I get that. No one likes rejection and they just don't want to go in and blow their chances. And it makes sense.

I don't know about you, but when I first started dropshipping, I didn't know what on earth to say to suppliers. Even though I had some decent business background, I'd been able to hold a conversation in the business environment before, I was talking to people in almost a completely different language. It's not something I'd ever done before. So the terminology was new to me and I didn't want to go in there and be taken advantage of and end up getting a bad deal and not negotiating correctly. But I also just didn't really know what I was saying and I felt like I was treading on eggshells. So it was completely new to me. So I get that.

But whenever I speak with our members, they often tell me they feel nervous about saying the wrong thing to suppliers, they're uncertain about whether they're going to be walking away with a good deal or whether they're just going to get taken advantage of, because they didn't know what to go in looking for in the first place. And they just feel unsure about what to say to convince suppliers to work with them in the first place. And I think that's completely natural to feel that way. If it's new, it's hard, I get it. But I always tell clients of ours to remember one specific thing, right? Although you think you're dealing with a supplier, so this kind of faceless enterprise, you're dealing with a human and with humans, it all comes down to relationships. So if that human can trust that you know what you're doing and that you can help them, then think how much easier it's going to be for you if you do that.

So it's an interesting one. When you think about it like that, you're not trying to convince suppliers, you're just trying to show them that you can be of benefit to them. And by the way, if you're interested in learning the exact strategy as to how we do this and you want to watch an on demand training that we're running, you can register for that at DropshipUnlocked.com/FREE.

So I want to tell you a quick story about when I first got started dropshipping and it's one of those moments where I can still vividly remember it to this day. So I was working for a company and I was spending all of my time in the office and I was building this online business to try to free myself up location wise, so I didn't have to be in the office the whole time tied to one place. And I was trying to replace my income as well because they're kind of the two things that were tying me down. It was the reliance on income, monthly salary, and I started the dropshipping store. I had some suppliers lined up that I wanted to contact and I wanted to get them on board, but I was stuck in my own head. I was going crazy. I was walking around the office thinking like, "I don't know what to say. I'm going to get rejected. It's all going to go terribly wrong. It's going to come crashing down. I'm going to say the wrong thing."

And it was a mental block. Right? And I'm sure you can probably relate to this if you've ever been in that kind of situation. Sometimes, you know the only thing stopping you is yourself. So when I first sat down, I thought, "Right, I'm going to pluck up the courage and just do this." So I stood up, walked outside, took my phone and thought, I'm going to make the call. And I made the call and typically said all the wrong things and within about 30 seconds, I had been rejected. The supplier literally said, I remember it vividly said mid-sentence whilst I was still speaking and saying like, "Oh, can we dropship your products?" And he just said, "No, thanks." And hung up.

And I was like, Hello?" Surely that's a mistake. Surely they can't have been that rude? I'd never been rejected in that brutal a form before, I just wasn't used to it. I had not been in business for myself. And I was really shocked. I was really taken aback by it because that evening I remember going home and, I was living with my parents at the time, and I spoke to my parents and said, "I just got flat out rejected today and I'm not sure why." And my parents both own their own businesses and so they've kind of got a lot of experience in the more traditional business environment. And the first thing they said was, "Well, why don't you go and meet them face to face? It's often easier in person."

Now, to me, my initial reaction to that was like, "Absolutely not." As an aspiring internet entrepreneur, the last thing I'm going to do is go and see someone in person about closing a business deal. I had these visions of making all of my money from a laptop whilst lounging on the beach with a pina colada and that would be how it happened. But I ignored their advice, right? And I left it a few weeks and I called a few more suppliers and I realized, I was just getting rejected. I was saying the wrong things, firstly, that was the first problem. But I was also not getting past the trust barrier. That initial gatekeeper trust barrier that you have to get past with a human in order for them to even listen to you, let alone want to interact with you and do business with you.

So eventually I thought, "Okay, well maybe they've got something here. Maybe their 20, 30 years of business experience is relevant here." So I took their advice in the end and I did, I traveled to meet this dropshipping supplier face to face. And I walked in, I remember I traveled, I think I shook his hand and it was interesting. As soon as he realized who I was, you won't guess what happened. It's completely not what I expected. He apologized. He apologized to me face to face and said, "I'm really sorry. That time on the phone, you caught us at a bad time. I thought you were a time-waster." And that supplier said to me that he didn't realize that we were a serious business until he saw me face to face, until I had gone and put a face to that brand and formed that relationship with him.

He said, "We get these anonymous fly by night eBayers that just want to sell our products on eBay, all the time contacting us." And imagine if they said yes to every one of those, they're going to tarnish their brand, there's no quality control over customer service. If you were a supplier, you wouldn't want that kind of relationship with retailers, would you? So I understood it at that point. And he said, "We get all these anonymous keyboard warriors, these guys that are like, would never want to leave behind their computer screen and never want to put their face out there and form a relationship." And so, I think eventually I realized that actually, when I signed them up at that meeting, that was it. I realized, oh, I've formed the relationship now. And so at that point, you think, well you're dealing with a human and humans need trust in order to advance that relationship.

So, I mean, I guess the point here is, don't get me wrong, you don't have to go and meet all of your suppliers face to face, that's not what I'm saying. You absolutely don't have to. I certainly haven't and I've worked with probably over 50 UK based suppliers, brands, manufacturers, things like that over the years. But you need to know what to say to them in order to make sure that they want to do business with you and that they can trust you. So don't do like I did and just go charging in there and start asking if you can dropship their products. It didn't end well for me, so heed my warning and don't fall into the same trap.

So if you're really serious about wanting to sign up UK suppliers and work with them directly and you don't want to go through all the same mistakes that I did, then you just want to take a proven route to do it, then you can head over to the on demand training that we're running at DropshipUnlocked.com/FREE, and you can access that there. So I remember this other time when I was trying to sign a supplier and I decided, this time actually, I was going to go meet the sales rep for this brand or manufacturer, whatever you want to call it face to face. I thought, I'm going to go there, I'm going to meet this person for a coffee because I wanted the relationship to start off on the right foot. Because often, when you meet face to face or when you successfully build that rapport, that relationship over the phone, you get preferential things, you get preferential treatment, you might get a better discount rate. You might get other things that the other companies wouldn't get.

And so it was going to be a 30 minute journey for me to get there and I remember going there and I traveled for 30 minutes and I remember the coffee that I bought this guy was two pounds, 55. Okay? That was the investment I made. That, and the petrol to get there, right? Now some people, some early internet entrepreneurs might very well say, "Screw that. I'm not going to meet a supplier face-to-face, I'm running an internet business. Why would I do that? Why would I take myself out and go and do that?" And that's fine. If that's what they're thinking at this stage, then I wish them all the best of luck with whatever they go on to do. But here's the thing, that two pound 55 coffee I had with that supplier ended up bringing me in, and I just checked this before we went on live here, 302,850 pounds and one pence from one, two pound 55 coffee. How's that for a return on investment. Right?

And I figured out that, I should be signing and approaching suppliers correctly. And so I contacted another using just a phone call and with this one, I never even met them, and that one phone call where I went about explaining why they could trust us, how we could help them, et cetera, generated us 468,943 pounds and 20 pence. And that was a five minute phone call, right? So whilst you don't necessarily need to go and meet these suppliers, what I'm saying is, the point I'm trying to make here is that it's important to build the relationship, whatever that means, however you decide it's best that you can do that. Even if that's by phone, even if it is by email, it can be done.

And so it's part of the reason why now, whenever we have new suppliers, we always send them a welcome gift, we always send them a Christmas gift as well, just to say, "Thanks for doing business with us." Because remember, these companies, there's people at these companies that work with us every day, they work with our team, they make sure orders go out on time. And that's the kind of thing that is the difference between a long term e-commerce business and one that is looking for just a bit of quick cash and then dries up and disappears, right? And if you think about it this way, there will be another entrepreneur out there somewhere in the world who, at the time when I thought, should I travel 30 minutes for a coffee with this guy? They would have thought, "Absolutely not." And they never did anything about it. That's the thing to remember. There will be someone out there who chose not to make that tiny investment of time and two pound 55 that has done nearly whatever it was, nearly a million pounds in sales from those two interactions.

And I guess with that said, I just wanted to thank you all for joining me today on this live. I've really enjoyed it. And if you have any questions, if you are live with us at the moment, feel free to ask inside the comments. If you're watching the replay of this and you would be so generous as to give this video a like, that would make my day. And if you know anyone else that might benefit from this information, if you think they're on the verge of signing suppliers or they've been looking at this business model, please feel free to click the share button or tag them inside the comments.

So with that said, that's it for today's video. Hope you found it useful. And don't forget, if you are looking for a more in-depth training on this, an on demand training we're running and you want to go and take a deeper dive into exactly how to do this in your own dropshipping business, then head over to DropshipUnlocked.com/FREE. So, thanks guys. I'm Lewis Smith and we will speak again soon.