Dropshipping: Calling Suppliers, Getting Approved! (Week 3 Dropship Partnership)

Starting the dropshipping partnership in November was a bit of a gamble as I knew we would have to deal with the holidays coming up which is both a good and a bad thing. If anything, it's forcing us to accelerate the process which normally takes 2 months. Our biggest fear was missing out on the window to call suppliers and get new accounts opened in time for the holidays. Starting the week of Thanksgiving people go on vacation, and when they get back the have hundreds of orders during the black friday rush to deal with.

If we wanted to be able to get approved by suppliers before Christmas, we'd have to start calling them this week or risk having to wait until after January. Luckily, everyone in the partnership has been pulling their own weight and grinding away and I'm very excited to announce that all ten partners have gotten approved with dropship friendly suppliers! To celebrate, I treated the group out to lunch and set another goal for the next step. Keep reading to find out how people got approved, the hurdles we faced and what the next steps are.

Calling Dropship Suppliers 

Last week everyone got their demo stores up and running and created their master list of possible suppliers to get on board. This week was the second big hurdle after trying to find 10 unique niches which turned out to be easier than we thought. 

We changed the meeting time from 10:30am to 1:00pm so people could readjust their sleep schedule to stay up late enough and call suppliers during local U.S. time. If this sounds like something you're now willing to do, then I'd either suggest you stay home until you get this part done or to just stay home until you want it bad enough and are willing to lose a bit of sleep to become successful. 

I'm very happy that three weeks into it, we have all ten partners on track and ahead of schedule. On wednesday this week we had our first three suppliers on board, and I told the group that if all ten had gotten suppliers on board by today's meeting, I'd buy everyone lunch. It's a small challenge as food in Chiang Mai isn't that expensive anyways, but the reason why it was successful was because no one wanted to be the one person that had excuses or reasons not to call and hustle causing everyone else to miss out. The great news is every single person did their job and I got the pleasure of treating everyone out to lunch. By the way, it's amazing that you can threat 11 people out to lunch for only 1,600 baht which is around $45US. Back home it would have been at least a couple hundred bucks.

Secrets to Supplier Approval

More than just celebrating the successes of what went well and why, which is super important, one of the big benefits of being part of the partnership is the fact that we share what went wrong. Instead of all of us making mistakes and individually learning from them, it's like we have scouts out making mistakes and reporting back so others can prevent them in the first place. One of the reasons why we had such good success with getting suppliers on board was the fact that everyone had a solid demo store setup that spoke for itself. 

Second, we spent a day going over our plans on calling suppliers, what we would say and how we would overcome objections. I think a lot of the reason why everyone was successful with getting suppliers on board was simply because they picked up the phone and didn't try to take shortcuts. We took everything we learned from Anton's dropshipping course and actually followed through without skipping any steps. I know Anton's course is still closed to new members right now so I apologize if you just found it and are thinking "dammit, I want to get started." But I'm assuming most of you reading this are either already members or have known about it for a while now. 

My best advice for people in this stage of starting your dropshipping store is to pick up the phone confidently with the frame that you know what you're talking about and will sell a ton of their products as well as take care of the customers well. The only reason why suppliers sometimes say no is because they don't want to waste their time with people who either won't represent their brand well, or will simply just waste their time and never make any sales. If you think about it, why wouldn't a supplier want you to sell more of their stuff for them? 

After work Acroyoga training

Week 3 Wrap Up

Now that everyone has at least one supplier on board, the homework for next week is to get the products up live on the site and start running ads to them. We'll be focusing on conversion rate optimization, and increasing profitability in the next few weeks but for now I just want everyone to get their stores up and start running ads to get the initial sale.

I challenged everyone that the first three people to make a sale on our new partner store will each be handed 1,000 baht in cash at the next meeting. Even though that's technically only $28, being handed that in cash makes the entire process seem that much more real compared to seeing numbers in a bank account go up. I remember the first time someone physically handed me money for a product I was selling online and it felt completely different than the thousands of dollars I've made online previously. 

I also set a challenge that if everyone in the group made their first sale by the end of the month, I'd take everyone out to celebrate with a night of drinking. Luckily, bottle service in Chiang Mai is relatively cheap compared to Los Angeles or New York but the point again isn't just the money, it's knowing that we're doing this and celebrating as a group. So wish us luck, and follow along the journey if you're also in the process of starting your own!

P.S. if you haven't already here is a PDF with discounts to everything dropshipping! 

Keeping it Classy with the KFC and Champagne!

Warm Regards,

Johnny FD

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