Ep 271 || Helping Sellers Grow

[podcast_team]

eBay Growth Advisor Casey Yardley joins Griff in a conversation about how he and his team help sellers overcome obstacles and adopt customer service strategies to ease stress and better grow their business to higher levels of success. Griff and Brian answer questions about eBay International Shipping package handling, reprinting bulk labels, and their favorite eBay swag item from the last 27 years.

Episode Links:
eBay International Shipping
Printing and Voiding eBay Shipping Labels

Recurring Links:
eBay for Business Podcast
eBay Seller Spotlight Podcast
eBay for Business Podcast Listener Survey
eBay Seller News Announcements
eBay for Business Facebook
Community Chat with eBay Staff
eBay Seller Center
eBay Help
eBay Local Seller Events
Seller Hub
eBay Events

Brian: Hello, I'm Brian.

Griff: Hi, I'm Griff and this is the eBay for Business Podcast. Your source for the information and inspiration to help you start and manage and grow your business on the world's most powerful marketplace. This happens to be episode 271. Well, hello Brian.

Brian: Hello Griff. How are you doing?

Griff: I am okay. I know we do this every week and I am sure it bores the audience to tears today. Turned out to be a super busy day.

Brian: It did. The whole week has been busy.

Griff: Yeah. More so than I like. I'm a little harried.

Brian: Well busy is better than the alternative.

Griff: No, it isn't.

Brian: Well you're right, it's not.

Griff: I like to keep occupied.

Brian: But not harried.

Griff: Not harried. No. We had a big recording session this morning for the end of the year, which I'm excited about. And then we were dealing with an issue.

Brian: Did you do recordings for the end of the year?

Griff: Yeah, I did one for the end of the year. Why?

Brian: Oh cool.

Griff: Well what's the matter?

Brian: Nothing. I'm excited to hear it.

Griff: We decided to put that one in the can now, so I can have more time at the end of the year. But yeah, so we're gonna have an episode on December 19th and then the next week will be a week off the week of the holidays.

Brian: You deserve a week off Griff.

Griff: Yeah. I realize. Look at the calendar. I never take any time off there.

Brian: You don't.

Griff: It crazy.

Brian: It's good to take time off.

Griff: Yeah. So I'm planning on it. Other than that, I guess one big busy day I guess is Okay. Lots of questions about a particular topic that's floating around. I don't know if you saw it.

Brian: I did.

Griff: It actually doesn't affect anyone.

Brian: It doesn't. Not anyone in the United States at least.

Griff: Exactly. So what are they talking about?

Brian: Well, should we give them any kind of hint? I feel like we've really left them hanging. It's just, it's not a state secret.

Griff: No, it's not. There's a program that was announced a while back actually that's called eBay Export and it's for mostly southeast Asian sellers who want to sell into the US market. They're not based in the US but they want to either sell into the market or drop ship into the market. And we created a program for them. And the thing that I think was confusing is that those sellers, some of those sellers got an email, the sellers mostly in Southeast Asia saying, this program is now available. Here's the requirements. And one of the requirements is a rather stricter set of seller performance. And I think this caused some sellers to panic and think, oh, this is going to apply to us. And there was some misinformation around the internet that said yes, it's going to apply to all. No it's not. If you're not located in Southeast Asia, you have nothing to worry about. So if you've heard about this or you've heard a rumor or you read something, this does not impact you.

Brian: Someone posted, I think the email that we sent out.

Griff: That's probably what sent people into a little bit of a panic.

Brian: In the thread in the eBay community. One of our more experienced sellers who posts often provided a really good response with a link to the program saying, Hey, this has been around for a while. He was on top of it and I thought, boy, it's too bad the person who did like some of the social media stuff hadn't read this guy's reply.

Griff: Yeah. Basically the upshot is if you've heard about this eBay Export Program and you're located in with the US, it has nothing to do with you. It doesn't apply to you. That's it. Yes. Hey Brian, do you find this time of year to be stressful?

Brian: Um, a bit. I do a bit.

Griff: Yes. So you're just like millions of other consumer shoppers.

Brian: I think it's because it feels like there's all these extra things that we have to do and whether it's planning for a holiday or meeting friends for dinner or something, there's just extra stuff that seems to get thrown in this time of year along with all the regular stuff you do. What about you Griff. Do you get stressed?

Griff: I used to. I used to get stressed way back before I stopped making any big plans for the holidays, which was quite a few years ago. Now, every holiday season for me at least, is quiet and peaceful. Just like the song Silent Night.

Brian: I was gonna say that you are going right to the heart of the holiday season.

Griff: That's just the way I like it, by the way. So please don't feel sorry for me. I enjoy every year just widely not doing anything or going anywhere, but that's just me. You think about the world in general, most folks do in fact experience some level of stress during this well hectic end of the year season. You know, especially sellers because they're usually determined to make this last month of the year in the black on the books. And that's stressful. And also for buyers because they're frantically searching for the perfect gifts for each of the people on their lists and blah blah blah. And it goes on and on and tears before bedtime and hair being pulled out. This week. eBay growth advisor, Casey Yardley, will be here to talk about how you can reduce the holiday madness and stress both yours and your buyers during this the most stressful time of the year.

Brian: Do we have any questions this week?

Griff: We do. In fact, we have three, and I know you're chomping at the bit to get to them, but first I have to check with you. I have a feeling there isn't, but is there any news, Brian?

Brian: No news none. I thought we were gonna have an announcement this week, but we didn't.

Griff: Really Did I know about this announcement?

Brian: Well, it was um, mainly around the 1099k change that the IRS made that they're going to defer enforcement of the new rule at $600 for 2024, just like they did in 2023.

Griff: That's good news.

Brian: That came out, I think it was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving that they announced it. So we'll have, maybe by the time this hits there'll be something out about it.

Griff: Yeah. But in the meantime it is already known.

Brian: It is the IRS posted.

Griff: Well that is good news. Let's meet Casey.

Griff: Every year around this time we like to go through here at the podcast a kind of checklist about what's important when you're selling, especially this time of the year, so that you can get the absolute best experience and success when you're selling. And we talk a lot about promotions and we talk about the right inventory and how to source and how to price. But one of the main topics we like to talk about is customer service. Customer service being really important this time of year because well, buyers are stressed, they get more stressed as the holidays come up and that stress translates to stress for sellers. It's just a real big mess of stress. We want to make sure that we can provide the advice and tips you need in order to reduce that stress. Well we say we actually, we have a special guest this week, somebody from the eBay team. His name is Casey Yardley, welcome to the show.

Casey: Hey Griff, thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here on the podcast.

Griff: I know a little bit about you already, but I was hoping you could tell our audience what your role is at eBay.

Casey: So I'm a Growth Advisor here at eBay. My primary focus is to kind of straddle the space between the business world, like growth in that way, but also the customer service realm, which includes slower education and seeking out opportunities for growth. And that realm is usually with help first and then secondary finding ways to grow.

Griff: I love that term Growth Advisor. What does that mean?

Casey: It's essentially like a way to, to accelerate and help people really find the opportunities on their accounts. Let's just say you've been selling for some time and you're like, Hey, I'm plateaued, I'm stagnated, our sales are decreasing. I can step in and say, Hey, like let's take a look at your account. We'll do some reviews with data that we have internally. But also I always like to look at things from the point of the seller actually firsthand. Like what tools are you using? What tools are you not using? Let's look at your listings. How long have some of them been active? You can see all of these things within the seller hub. And oftentimes because we as sellers, right, we're so busy trying to one, create listings, two ship items out the door and three, try and running everything else in between. There are pieces of eBay we often forget that exist. And so as a Growth Advisor, I get to help be a little bit of like a, a guide and a consultant in reminding you what tools exist and helping you find a way that you know, makes sense for your business on where to grow, where to kind of get off the plateau or the kind of like the downward trend. We look at ways for you just to get where you want to be.

Griff: So you're one guy. You can't possibly be making yourself available to tens and thousands of sellers who might want to take advantage of your expertise. How does that work?

Casey: I wish that I could. Growth Advisors specifically. We have a cohort of sellers we typically work with that range from a base of like 50,000 a year in sales beyond that you're doing on average. But then luckily for me, like you said, I'm one person. I have a team of about 20 some odd folks that I work with on a regular basis who also do partnerships. And what's nice, because we're all different people, we have different interests and specialties, I don't have to know everything there is to know about automotive. There's a guy on my team who loves automotive and who can speak the jargon and understands what you're talking about. If you were to talk to me about John Deere tractors, I could probably talk to you about it for years after growing up on a farm. But now as an adult my passions lie in media and collectibles. But the guys over here would know trucks and doing things and car parts and stuff. They can talk to you about those things and I don't have to pretend I know something I don't. It's nice.

Griff: That's good to know. So a team of 20, that's a lot of cats to herd.

Casey: That's a good way to put it. Yeah. Especially because different categories, different sellers require different things even though we have a base description of what a growth advisor does at times individual categories and types of sellers need individual treatment care and and growth plans. And so cats to herd is a good way to put it because you show up to a meeting sometimes with the plan of we're gonna do talk about fulfillment, shipping and inventory And seller might say, unfortunately we set up a promotion for this and this was supposed to be this and we need to figure out how to fix or change things so that nothing stays broken or we don't, you know, lose money on things. So it can be always interesting and different.

Griff: Now how long have you been a Growth Advisor?

Casey: This has gone on to be my second year actually as a Growth Advisor. But the entire time I've actually been here at eBay, I've only ever worked with sellers. So that's kind of the cool thing in all my other positions here. When I joined as a customer service representative, I was merchant support, so seller focused and my specialty within that was promotions manager and how to run the store. That was all I I've known. So when people talk about different sections of eBay on the backend that exist, I couldn't tell you about that at all. So selling's been my forte here,

Griff: Join the club. I don't know everything people think I do, I don't..

Casey: We're good at BS-ing that we know a lot of things or I usually do the thing, I don't know if you do this, but I know a guy, right? Or I know someone who can, who can help us and I usually reach out to them fast.

Griff: And lucky for us, we do know a guy, I think I've said it before that I rely heavily on a gentleman on the product team named David Bernstein who's really, really knowledgeable about everything across products. So if I have a question, which I always do, he helps me find the right answer. That's really important and that's what life is like at eBay. I think people don't realize that so much of what we do in order to support sellers. My role in the podcast, your role as a Growth Advisor is we rely on everyone in the company to help support and provide the answers that sellers need. They want to know what's going on with this particular tool. Well I have no idea. I've gotta go find out before I send you an answer. In your time as Growth Advisor over the last two years and with your experience beforehand with merchant support, I'm assuming, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you run across common themes or common obstacles that sellers face when growing their business. Is this true?

Casey: Oh, a hundred percent.

Griff: What are the top three or the top two or the top one? I'll settle for anything.

Casey: I think one of the first things that usually happens is when somebody says, Hey, I have decided to grow and I list everything like I listed 50 to a hundred to 200 new items in a very short amount of time and suddenly I couldn't meet my handling time and now my metrics are gonna change, my seller level is gonna go down. Or suddenly I have too many questions or too many cases open And the performance side of things can suffer really quickly for a lot of folks. And this doesn't matter if you're a one man show in a garage or in your house or if you're a large company, like that theme is so similar because the growth trend there is painful for people at times. And so that can be the first one. The second one actually that I I could talk about would be the tools, the knowledge of the tools. You come onto eBay and you're like all I know like I've watched some people online and like this is not to discount any method of growth, but I've watched some people online and they've told me I just have to list items and they'll move list items they'll move. But I am getting a lot of stagnant sale inventory that's just sitting in my dead pile and the inventory is growing and I don't know what to do about it. And so you sit down and you say cool, well there's this tool called Promotions Manager and within it you can run a sale or actually like look at all the buyers you've had over the past 12 months. You could send them out a dedicated coupon to see if you can get them as a repeat buyer or even the newsletter feature. Just talking to people about a variety of tools that they're like holy cow, I didn't know all this existed. And that tends to be the same across the board, whether it's a one man show or a huge company. People don't know everything just like you and I and so as they they want to learn and grow, sometimes there are gaps in the knowledge base and that usually comes down to just conversations, help pages and sometimes even a call over Zoom with an interactive experience.

Griff: Yeah, I hear that a lot. Is there a third theme?

Casey: A third theme? Could probably be in all honesty, the threat of my original time coming in here to eBay was the customer service part of things. I'm having a hard time communicating with buyers or I don't understand why eBay had to step in when I didn't reply back to a concern within a couple of days. 'cause I was trying to do like research on the backend and get in touch with the shipper and I just didn't respond at a time and now they've escalated the claim and buyers getting money back like what's going on? Those type of customer service concerns that I guess bridge the part between when the seller providing customer service into the involvement of eBay's customer service and policies in there. I think that would be a third theme a lot of times.

Griff: Looking back or talking about specifically that third theme which is the customer service. I'm assuming you hear from a lot of sellers after the fact, so the damage has kind of already been done. How do you handle that? I mean eBay doesn't automatically go in and erase a bunch of stuff that's affecting a seller's metric and sometimes they're not aware of it until they've actually slipped below standard. I'm sure you've seen that. I hear about sellers doing that all the time in emails to the podcast. But what do you do to handle that or make it effective or remedy it for the seller? What's available?

Casey: Yeah, usually that comes down to obviously there are special cases, right? Where we, we say we look back at the scenario, okay like I wanna talk about this one 'cause it happens like somebody had like a death in the family or like a real urgent situation come up and the last thing you're thinking about is your eBay business. And so you get four orders and depending on the quantity of items you sell that could drop you below standard if you know you didn't ship it out on time, a buyer open a claim escalated against you because you're taking care of life. And so something like that we look at in a unique space. But let's just say you as a seller reached out and you're like, hey Casey, or hey you know eBay, I fell below standard, I don't understand how this happened. And so first off, I always try to do an education, look at it, hey let's go, can you go here with me? For instance, I'm on the phone and not like an a visual standpoint. I'm like hey can you go to your your Seller Hub? Let's go over here to performance, let's look at your, your metrics right here and like talk to me about these experiences And people can tell you the stories of what happened nine out of10 times or like they'll be utterly surprised like oh I didn't even know that eBay was doing this. And so you get into the role of having those conversations of the why. I always like to start with why in the conversation like tell me about the story about this and then why did this happen? This is why it counts against you. But let's just say all of a sudden you're like,, but can these be appealed? Can these be removed? These were an accident. A lot of times I can't step in and just remove them for people even though I wish I could. I believe everyone and I trust everyone. I think that people are good. Which I think is a common theme of eBay. Like we built things off trust but sadly if we removed everything that everyone said was an accident, it would be a wild rodeo out there. So sometimes you have to tell people like hey you're on a year long evaluation. The way to avoid this for you to get out of below standard would be like let's look at selling more items. So the way we have to sell items would be to make sure one you meet your handling time to ship out. So do we need to adjust the amount of days in which you're shipping them out so you can make sure to get them out of time. Two, when a buyer reaches out to you, you reply back when they say, Hey my item arrived damage, you reply back, you ask for photos, you ask for kind of what's going on there. eBay will give you the guide of what to do to not be in trouble, which I love. Right now I have an item not received case going on on my own personal account actually. And it literally said hey the buyer hasn't received an item, it was supposed to be received on November 6th and now it's November 9th, can you help them out? And I spent two hours today on the phone with USPS honestly just trying to figure out, it was lost between Texas and Louisiana. Can you tell me anything about it? No, but we can open a claim and then I messaged a buyer let them know that details, eBay will tell you the time, the dates, the stamps, when you need to meet. And so I tell people when these things come up, just meet those kind of timelines that we've asked you. If for instance people can be very hurt and very frustrated, it's an honest thing. I'd be hurt and frustrated if these things happen to me even though I'm trying to be the best seller I can and fall below standard, you sometimes have to be like hey, like I can't remove these defects for you. But what I can do is I have once a month calls with five or six people who've been in this situation in the past who just want a quick coaching like 30, 40 minutes on the call where I say hey like tell me about the odd ends and the experiences you've had over the last month. And what's been nice is some of these people after the second call they're like oh actually because we've had these conversations twice now and you've reviewed things with me, my experience on the site is improving because I understand how the tools work. Like I said, I wish I could just remove everything for everyone and get them off. But sometimes it literally is just a process of time before we can get you back to above standard and then working to being a Top Rated Seller again if that's what you want.

Griff: Does it always take one year of evaluation?

Casey: No. So there's a difference if you have, I believe, and forgive me if I'm wrong, I believe it's about 400 transactions that you do within a year and you go on a three month look back and so instead of a one year look back, right? So it's 12 months rolling, 12 months every month something falls off, it becomes three months. So it becomes the evaluation just before this month's evaluation and that kind of three month rollback and review.

Griff: Do you think we could be doing a better job at eBay of making sellers aware before the fact of where their status is and where they're heading? Because a lot of times when I talk to sellers they say I had no idea and I'm thinking did you not get an email? Do you not check your metrics? I think we actually do alert sellers about their status being in jeopardy and perhaps they're just missing that.

Casey: We do actually. I think we do overall a very good job of informing people of what's going on because like you put me on the spot so I'm gonna be Casey-101 versus you know probably eBay-101 right here. But the reality of it is we try to inform people as it goes like hey this claim has been open, if you don't take care of it, it could count negatively against your seller performance. And we tell people that in the email but usually if you think about that email as like a a thirds broken end, a thirds like the first thing you're concerned about is one the subject, this claim has been escalated , this claim has been opened. And then second you kind of care about the middle ground, you just wanna click the blue box and go see what's going on. And the third information is nine out of 10 people probably missed that I would say because it's just what are we most focused on. Okay, how can I take action? How can I resolve this? But I think what could be interesting and I know if you have the Seller Hub, you have a store subscription and you have the tasks box, it does actually tell you to review your seller performance or check into that and with those boxes you can actually shift and adjust where your seller performance sits. So for mine on my personal account, I actually have the task list and then my seller performance and the second box in the middle box and third is actually my like sales. For me that's how I've set it up and you can customize that for yourself. But I think definitely one thing we could do, and this is me being the webinar guy that I am and wanting to educate people would actually be like in my webinars at the beginning like hey if you haven't this month go check out your seller metrics and just kind of see where you're at and if things are not good in one way or another, how can you adjust your business?

Griff: I wish that I could find a way to communicate that to everyone on your app. Like get a little pinging like that's like a nice little checkbox and you get notified, have you checked your seller metrics recently and there's like a smiley face or a frowny face and if you click the frowning face it takes you to that page. I don't know but something would be good. I think too, like just being honest with you Griff. I forget parts of the seller hub all the time that exist even though I know they're there but like they could be less relevant to me when I learned about it as they are to me today. I rely on my peers on my team a lot to fill in gaps. So like if I have to teach a webinar or host a panel at times I bring in a second just to make sure that I haven't missed anything and if if I need they chime in and it's so helpful for me at least.

Griff: What do you sell on eBay if I may be so bold ask?

Casey: You wouldn't guess it based off of where I live. I live on a farm in the middle of nowhere and and do eBay stuff but I love IKEA stuff primarily. And so I actually will go and anyone who wants to take this, I'll compete with you at IKEA as is section any day, but I go to the AS IS section of Ikea and I will buy products that they are removing out of their circulation that maybe didn't sell as well for for them as they would've hoped. And they have multiple quantities of 'em. I usually will pick up 10 to 20 of them depending on my perception and kind of review on the app. I have no further data than anyone else does on like what's selling or what's not selling. I will literally go and I'll be at IKEA and I'll search for like shoe horns or I'll search for photos of family, like the same family on them, like that. And then I purchase a lot of that kinda stuff. But then I also do a lot in the collectible space, probably not as much as some but old cassette tapes and you know like music from that era. I live in a very rural part of Utah where people still have great collections of cassette tapes that they're finally getting rid of because it can be a few decades behind on technology at times. But i will take 'em all like, like people are like I know this is a lot like it's five bucks for this collection of 60 and I'm like I'll give you a 10 because I feel like that's deserving and then I'll go try and sell some of 'em around 10 to 15 bucks a piece. So that can be a real interesting experience to do so. But yeah, that's what I sell.

Griff: When you sell things from Ikea, do you go online or do you go to a store to source them?

Casey: I will go to a physical location usually. So there's one just a few minutes away from where the office is in Utah and I go there quite a bit but then I will go online because I follow this is kind of the nerdy-ness in my love of Ikea in me. I follow their corporate communications and get an email from that. But then you also get an email from their main, just kind of like their marketing thing like last chance items and I'll literally like look through each last chance item that meets the specifications I need. 'cause I try not to sell anything too big 'cause I'm not like I'm not a professional shipper, right? Like I don't want to have to bring in a forklift or two to move stuff out of a truck. But I try to sell everything that's between one and five pounds and anything that can fit in a certain dimension of box.

Griff: You mentioned webinars and I thought it might be wise to talk about that because some of our audience are probably shaking their head saying what are they talking about? Can you give us a little insight into your involvement in eBay webinars and maybe some of your plans for the coming year?

Casey: Webinars are just kind of what's nice. It's essentially a forum where I lead a conversation about a specific topic and usually you can see my face and kind of me clicking on things. I might be wearing an eBay shirt one day and a Christmas tree ornament the next day. You never know. But I get in there and I really try to show people visually the tools and products and services that they might not be fully aware of. And I'll talk about a little bit more on the business development side of things we've brought up and talked about like growth and scaling and and things like that. A lot of the sellers typically that are within my cohort, some have account managers or people who just come in and out of the business so they don't know eBay and they have to run third party tools and sites and so they're just there to learn and other times it's anyone who's been here for a long time, they're like I need a refresher and a growth opportunity or something to take back to maybe my community group that I'm a part of. And so I'll pick a topic. So let's just say I want to talk about Promotions Manager, but specifically I want to talk about why you should be using order discount and let's just say volume pricing and the difference between those two. I don't know Griff, I've seen you I think three times this year at different events and scenarios where we've been talking to sellers one-on-one and one person at one of these events was like I put volume pricing on all my items but like people are only buying multiples of one and I'm confused at why they keep buying the same item multiple times. And I ended up telling this person, are you assuming, and I just said this, are you assuming from your space that volume pricing means like buy more items, put more items in the cart and you get a volume discount that way for your whole store? Yes. And I was like, well hold on, you don't have the wrong idea. That's for a single item, right? Volume pricing on eBay. But for that you'll need an order discount or for instance a shipping discount. And we like talked about the differences in those promotions and we go there and so on these webinars, that's the same type of ideas. You're getting more of a tailored experience that hopefully has sustenance and heart to it and not just I'm cold and on the phone and I'm calling him because I have an issue and I'm grumpy and eBay representative is kind of unsure of where I really wanna grow or what I want to see. Hopefully the webinar meets that piece. Does that make sense?

Griff: It does make sense. I and I actually enjoy webinars. They became very popular about three or four years ago with the onset of the pandemic as a way for communities to get together and learn from each other. On Zoom in particular, what's your plans for 2024? I know that we've been talking about webinars you've been leading and I am assuming that those are just for the cohort of sellers that you've been dealing with as Growth advisor. Do you have a plan for expanding this?

Casey: Yeah, so next year my goal is actually to do a mix of just cohort specific but broader eBay Open experiences for folks. Because right now we do things over Zoom, right? The webinars are over Zoom and a thousand people can join at once And sometimes these webinars I've been doing are very specific to like two, 300 people typically. And so my goal is is to take and say cool, these people are part of our cohort first off, but second off who could also benefit from this. And inviting them and targeting them and saying, Hey come to this thing, these are completely free. And so next year my goal is actually to do 25 webinars for anyone to join anyone who's an eBay seller. Whether you sell 50 items a year or 5,000 items a year or 50,000 items a year, I would like everyone to come in and be able to be more informed, educated and supported. Because I think one of the biggest things that I hear from sellers when I go to events or when I'm have been consulting with them in the past as a Growth Advisor is, I just wish eBay did more of blank. And then you know, you refer 'em back to, hey, here's community ebay.com, there's tons of this, here's this podcast I had actually recommended your podcast to a seller. And he was like, I had no idea this existed. And he's, oh I'm 23 episodes in actually. And I was like, that's great. He's like, I just love learning and this is like a good format for me. The information is good and it's human. And that's what it's there for to provide a human experience for you. And so people just want to be heard and they want an experience that's more tailored. And so I'm hoping that by opening up that series of webinars, that we can continue to do that and expand that reach.

Griff: Before we continue. I appreciate getting us another listener. It is also dismaying to hear that somebody doesn't know about the podcast and I think we need to be doing a better job at marketing it, but there it is. I'm not a marketer, I'm just a host. Well so you said you're gonna do about 25 of these and again these will be open to anyone. That's gonna be fun. We are gonna want to promote these on the podcast so we'll need to stay in touch so we have your schedule and we can mention them at on every episode.

Casey: Oh, I would love that. I would love to actually just make sure that people are aware of 'em and they know where to find them and sign up for them. And literally, like I said, I'm not asking you to pay money for them. The only thing I ask is come sit down for the 35, 40 minutes you can listen to it like you would anything else. Or if you want to see the visual part of it, just do it. But at the end, when I am like, Hey, here's a survey, please fill it out so that I can know what to work on and improve. That's the only thing I'm asking for. That's my payment is knowing did I do a bad job or a good job and how can you feel more supported by me in eBay?

Griff: And actually as an eBay employee, you couldn't charge for them, right?

Casey: Yeah, no, literally. Well everyone always asks like, oh is this a paid service? When I reach out as a growth advisor sometimes like when somebody's account is recommended to me by someone from the category of the business unit And I say no, this is just a free service. And they're like, really? And I'm like, yeah. And they assume that someone would want to make money off this. I'm like, well if you do well and you grow your business, obviously one eBay gets kind of the fees from that and they grow and that's kind of what we get back. But mostly we just want you to be supported and upfront and people are like, get outta town. Like they never believe me. It's kind of funny.

Griff: Well Casey, it's been a real pleasure. Thanks so much for stopping by and we'll keep in touch during the coming year.

Casey: Wonderful. I look forward to it and thank you so much for having me and I hope that all you sellers have a good holiday season ahead of you.

Griff: Casey Yardley is Growth Advisor and Webinar Lead here at eBay. He uh, works out of our Salt Lake City office. We'll keep in touch with Casey and as the 2024 year rolls on, we'll make sure we're promoting his webinars as they are scheduled.

Brian: You got questions?

Griff: We've got answers. We always have answers. Even when we don't have answers, we have answers. Sweet Brian, we only have three questions but they're pretty good ones. I think they're worth using. So would you read the first one as usual?

Brian: Gladly. And this first one was sent to podcast@ebay.com by eBay seller John who writes, hi Griff and Brian, my name is John Queen. My seller ID is John QQ and my store name is Queen Collectibles and Treasures. eBay has made great strides in printing, shipping labels in recent years, but something happened recently that had me cursing at the eBay god. Uh oh. While sending shipping labels to my thermal printer one morning my computer froze up and after rebooting I could not for the life of me find the eBay generated PDF file that contains the shipping labels. I had to go to the shipping labels tab and tediously print out each of the 78 labels one by one by one. Ooh, I can see why he was cursing at the gods, the obey gods.

Griff: Why wasn't he cursing at the laptop gods?

Brian: There's got to be an easier way to reprint all shipping labels in bulk. What is the solution or where can I find the PDF file on my computer? At minimum, I think eBay should have a reprint labels option in the bulk shipping labels area to accommodate unexpected computer or printer issues. John Queen from Florida. It sounds like John selected print instead of download when he generated the labels. In that case the label PDF file isn't saved. John, in the future to avoid this, you might want to consider downloading the PDF before printing it as opposed to printing straight from the PDF window.

Griff: Yeah, there is always the chance by the way that depending on how you had to reboot the browser may have cached the page somewhere. Although it would be really hard to find. There is a way of course to reprint the labels in bulk, but it may involve having to repurchase them again and you still might have to avoid the previous label purchases I think singularly. So it's still a bunch of work.

Brian: Yeah, and for me, when I do it, I download them and then there's the little download thing, I have a Mac and you know there's, you can kind of open up all your downloads. I immediately click on it and I save it to a folder.

Griff: Yeah, if I'm doing single labels I don't, but if I have like five or six kudos to you John with 78 labels to print. I could only dream of that. But if I have like five or more labels, I do what you do, I download that file before I do anything just so I have a copy of it in case something does go wrong from that eBay sale and maybe get a new laptop. I don't know possible. This next question was sent to podcast@ebay.com by a seller who didn't provide a name but they did provide their business name Quality Stuff Company who asks Hi Podcast Team. I hope your Thanksgiving was filling my store name is Quality Stuff Co. And I've got a question about notes that come in on our eBay international shipping orders. I had a customer leave this note on the order. Hello, I need strong double boxes packing China post will rude throw it and that's in capitals. Rude throw it, you can wrap item more thick with safe and use polystyrene board or bubble double boxes as needed and damaged item will rejection to receive. Thank you so much. Safe is first. Now unfortunately this is probably, this is the Chinese buyer and his English is probably hard language for him so excuse our quoting but that's what was written. The seller quality stuff then says I would hate for the postal workers to rude throw the package and break the item. So my question to you guys is does the EIS Team get these notes from the buyer and will they be mindful of the rude throw? Interesting question I've read on some forums, that the team sometimes repackages items to make them smaller and save on shipping, but I couldn't find any corroborating evidence on the FAQ. So I'm not sure if that is true or not. It's amazing how many times users will confidently state something as true when after a little digging I find out it's not no comment, will my package be safe from the "rude throw". This is signed Quality Stuff Company

Brian: I think rude throw might be a new feature that the postal service is gonna offer.

Griff: Well you know, it's a new feature on this podcast. We'll be using that phrase a lot but we'll be doing it respectfully.

Brian: We will be.

Griff: So just to clear this up before we get onto this, the international shipping team does not get the buyer notes. They don't read the the buyer notes, they don't see them and the team doesn't as a rule repackage items unless the packaging is so insufficient and so not safe. That safe transit of the item isn't guaranteed. Um, it's the same that they did with the global shipping program but no they do not repackage items as a rule of thumb. And your question about will postal workers be mindful of the rude throw. Quality, how should we know we aren't there when the postal workers might decide to use a package as a football? Who knows? Although we are sure this doesn't happen, but rarely you can best protect your item by making certain it's packed securely before shipping it.

Brian: And one other thing to note, you're not required to acquiesce to a buyer's request for double duty packaging if said packaging will result in a shipping price higher than what you posted or the buyer paid.

Griff: Like for free shipping, right?

Brian: Yep. Or for free shipping. What you originally estimated for the shipping cost. What I would do in a case where a buyer makes a request for double boxing, extra padding, et cetera, is just reassure the buyer that you always pack shipments securely. I mean that should be standard.

Griff: And you're free to oblige this sort of request but you're also free to decline it. I would always say if you do decline it, decline it politely and not even decline it. I would just offer a reassurance saying, Hey don't worry, I always pack securely and if something does happen, even if I've packed it really securely, EIS will take care of it. Don't worry about it. And so although we're absolutely certain that you quality already pack all of your items like a pro, I mean your name is quality, right? So it has to be that there's never any guarantee that even the most securely packed item won't be damaged in transit either by an unexpected accident like what happened to me 15 years ago when a forklift drove over my antique rare Italian candlesticks or negligence like a Chinese postal worker being bored and getting his friends together for a team of friendly basketball with your package. So yeah, it happens. What are you gonna do. Our last question for this week is from somebody who's been on the podcast more than once and is also an eBay seller. You know her name's Anna Packer.

Brian: I know Anna.

Griff: In fact you just met with her today.

Brian: I did. She took some time out of her busy day to um, help talk to some of our new employees along with a couple other sellers about selling on eBay and why she's on eBay and what she sells and what we can do better.

Griff: It's our program for .new employee orientation. It's called Becoming eBay

Brian: Great program and it's great to have when the sellers are on and I feel privileged whenever I get to host the sellers.

Griff: I used to host it, it was fun. So Anna asked this question and I think this was a interesting question. Maybe, maybe not, maybe you'll find it not interesting. Hey Brian and Griff as connoisseurs of eBay swag at merch, I want to know each of your answers to this question. If you could revive one eBay branded item from your entire time at eBay, what would it be and why? Thanks for serving sellers every week on the podcast Anna and ps. If you wanna send me a podcast mug, I know just who I want to give it to. Anna Packer. What do you think?

Brian: So it's kind of hard actually really.

Griff: Because there's been so much.

Brian: And not just that it's like there's the practical kind of thing and there's certain things that I really like, kind of thought was cool so I'll talk about that. And it was very practical so I used it almost every day. In fact, I used it every day. It was from our eBay Canada site and I went up to the Toronto office when I was in the Toronto office. I got a an eBay Canada backpack I used until it wore out for my computer and everything. So it was cool because I was in the US but I had the Canadian thing so it felt like I was kind of special but everyone knew I wasn't that special. The other one that I would maybe revive, it's not so practical, but I thought it was a really cool gift, was we got a poker set in a metal case and all of the chips had eBay on them and occasionally you'll see this metal poker chips on eBay, but it had a silver metal case and the chips were like in the eBay colors with stars around them with the eBay local in the middle. And it was, I thought it was really well done.

Griff: Do you know where that case was sold?

Brian: I don't.

Griff: Think. Poker chips.

Brian: Vegas.

Griff: It was eBay Live in Vegas in 2006.

Brian: Our annual in-person event in Vegas. That's right.

Griff: I had, I bought a, a few of them and think I sold one earlier this year. The last one I had.

Brian: I gave mine away.

Griff: Well that's better to give it away, isn't it?

Brian: Well I thought it was gonna go somewhere in inside the company and then it turned out they decided not to use it. So what about you Griff?

Griff: Well, Anna and Brian, I had to think about this a lot because I've seen so much branded merchandise. I have one of the first bits of branded merchandise, which were those at the time, what was new? The eBay logo, which were a limited series of these lightweight baseball jackets

Brian: And like a Letterman jacket?

Griff: No, the Letterman jackets were the bigger, thicker ones.

Brian: Okay.

Griff: These were just a lightweight sort of, I think they were cotton baseball jackets that had your name on them and there were only a few made because there were only a few people on the team at the time. And I remember when Meg Whitman came on board in January of 1998, she wanted one of these jackets desperately and it was over, you know, there was only that run and I think it was Pierre that said. there's no more you, you missed out, you should have made a decision earlier or something. So that's probably the one I think about. And I have that jacket still somewhere. I didn't give it away. I think the thing that I would want to see brought back, my favorite advertising campaign that we did and we did a lot of them was the IT campaign. I loved that campaign. I thought it was clever, it was funny, it was a little wacky sometimes, but we all had those little fuzzy three dimensional, ITs, I may have left one there in those boxes of stuff.

Brian: There is one in the podcast room.

Griff: But there were several of these for the advertising campaign. There were TV commercials with this. There were several made out of different types of material. Those are the fuzzy pink ones. There were wooden ones, there were other types. I would love to see that campaign brought back and I would love to see that swag, the IT campaign. And what it was was you can find IT on eBay, whatever you're thinking about, you can find it on eBay. And I just thought it was a great campaign.

Brian: It was a great campaign.

Griff: So I'd love to see the campaign and the swag associated with it. Sort of retrofitted and relaunched, you know, kind of like the way they relaunched Frazier but better. So, Anna, I hope that answers your question. That was a really fun question. Thank you for sending it in.

Brian: It was, you mentioned there's been so much swag over the years, but like the number of shirts and things between T-shirts and bowling shirts.

Griff: Is there a bunch of shirts there in the uh, studio that I left or did I give them to Savers?

Brian: I think you gave 'em to Savers. There aren't a lot of shirts here.

Griff: It's as it should be. This stuff shouldn't sit in boxes. This stuff should go to people who really would love to collect it or want it, want to display it, want to wear it. While I was moving, I'm looking at all these boxes and I said this is the last place this stuff should be is in a bunch of stupid boxes where no one can see it. It needs to go back out in the world where people can enjoy it. Whether that's a seller or an employee, I don't care who it is.

Brian: Do you have a favorite piece of eBay swag that you treasure or crave over all others? Let us know. Call us on (888)723-4630.

Griff: You can call that hotline anytime of the day to leave your question, comment or anything else that's on your mind. If it's intriguing, we just might put it on the air.

Brian: If you're not a call on the phone person, you can email us podcast@ebay.com. That's podcast@ebay.com.

Griff: And now your Three Point weekly podcast checklist.

Brian: Check the Announcement Board at ebay.com/announcements for up-to-Date seller news every day.

Griff: Check your stress, relax every day for as many times as needed. Take a moment, close your eyes, let your muscles unclench and breathe. Clear your head at least once a day and that can help prepare you for the next few crazy weeks before the end of the holiday selling season. Whether it's selling or your family.

Brian: I feel calmer already. Need to review anything in this episode?. It's easy. Check the transcripts for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to find the links we referenced during the episode.

Griff: And Brian, on our next episode, I'm so excited because we're gonna meet the man behind the eBay seller id the Estate Kings also known around the internet as the Kings of eBay. This guy's amazing. His name is Brian, he's an all around entrepreneur, huge eBay booster, and I recorded him earlier last week. Just loved the interview and I'm so excited that we're gonna put it on the air.

Brian: That's fantastic. I'm looking forward to listening to that one. We'd like to again thank our guest this week, eBay Growth Advisor, Casey Yardley.

Griff: The eBay for Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.

[greenerrefurbs]

I own a SAAS company outside of Greener Refurbs LLC for the past 10 years - we offer individual consulting for our clients. That has dramatically impacted our users experience on another level. I think ebay could really benefit from offering *consulting* for established sellers that have been vetted via proper documentation etc. You'd have more successful use cases and less miscommunication through the web. 

We've witnessed a lot of it on Youtube and other outlets - there's so many incredible people on here who really want to provide value.

But what makes it difficult is the connection between ebay and it's sellers. It puts them in a state of wonder.

-Guillermo

[greenerrefurbs]

Individualized support would be a game changer 🙂

[greenerrefurbs]

We host webinars ourselves for several years - would love to jump on a call and offer some advice.

Ebay could benefit from bringing all sellers to an open webinar.

[podcast_team]

@greenerrefurbs 

Interesting suggestion but there are some complex liability reasons why such a program would not be possible. 

We do host seller webinar events and there's our annual eBay Open event. The seller event schedule (including webinars) for 2024 hasn't been posted yet.

See eBay Open 2023 at eBay eBay Seller Events