Kelvin

How to sell outside your city, how to do payment on delivery

Do you know you can sell outside your city? You are loosing sales just because your potential customer that contacted you is not located in your city. This is not a good thing.

You can render payment on delivery to anywhere in Nigeria. No matter the  size of the item you are selling.

Sometimes, immediately a customer finds out you are not located in the same city as them, they loose interest in buying that item from you. What you should do, immediately they tell you ‘sorry, you are too far from me’, quickly mention that you can do payment on delivery before they end the conversation, tell them you can send the item to them without them paying one Naira.

Even if you have not been doing payment on delivery before, start doing it from today, if you can sell to one or two client outside your city, it means your business has expanded beyond your city, they may likely bring their friends and family to buy from you from their city if your item satisfied them enough, and if your price is friendly.

HOW TO RUN PAYMENT ON DELIVERY
 

1) Ask the potential customer their location, then Look for a park that travels to the route of that your potential customer, talk to the driver that will take the item to the customer. 

Let the driver know that you don't know the person you are sending this item to and the person has not paid for the item. Let the driver know that you are running payment on delivery on the item. Make a strong agreement with the driver so he will not make mistakes. Tell the driver not to release the item to the customer till you have received the payment. Tell the driver you will be the one to instruct him wether to give the item to the customer or not. Warn the driver to not release the item to the customer, unless you call him and tell him to do so. When the customer has made payment to you, and you have received the payment, you can then tell the driver to release the item to the customer.

What if it's an item that needs to be tested, like Electronics, Home theater system, TV etc? 

If the potential customer insist the item must be tested before he will pay the driver, no issue, you can decide to do it like this:

Before you package the item in your shop, you can make a video and send to the customer calling the customer's name on the video or mentioning todays date on the video or you can make a video call with the potential customer. 

Video the item you are selling to tell the customer letting them know it's in a perfect working condition, while you are making the video, ensure you video the Model number and the Serial number of that item.

Mention on the video to the customer that the reason why you are capturing the Model number and Serial number of the item is because, there will not be any opportunity for the driver to be testing the item for him/her when the item gets to him/her. 

Base on this,  so when the item gets to the customer all he/she has to do is check the model number or serial number of the item he/she wants to pay for. Once the Model and Serial number is confirmed, then they can pay for the item and the business is done. Let the customer know that no two item will have the same Model number and Serial number on earth. In all these, be straight forward and sincere in whatever you do.

Before you should ever decide to send a potential client your item.

1) Ask the customer when would they want you to send the item so they can receive it conveniently.

After the potential customer has giving you a date, do not just send the item, make sure the customer is the one disturbing you with calls or messages asking you again and again “when will I receive my item?” This is to make sure you are not dealing with an unserious buyer. You may even purposely delay sending the item to see if the customer is really serious about purchasing that item from you.

Tell the driver to meet them in an open place and never to go their houses or office to deliver any item.

Who will pay for delivery?

You can include the delivery fee to the item you are selling and tell the client delivery is free. Most customers prefer you don't ask them to pay for delivery. But since you may not know the exact amount the delivery fee will cost, you can just do the following.

You may let the customer know that, you woun't know how much the cost of transporting the item to him will cost till you get to the park.

If you wouldn't like to include delivery fee to the cost of the item, let the customer know that he/she is to pay for delivery when the item gets to them. The customer will pay the driver for his delivery service when the customer receive the item and not to you. The customer pays to you directly for your item, and pays the driver directly for his delivery service.

Make sure you use a driver in a well known park.

You can also use GIG logistics, if their fee is not expensive.
 

Also, try to do after sales service for your old client, help them solve any issues they may face, even if you are not to pay for the expenses in whatever issue they may face.

For buyers, If what you are looking for is something that got to be in another city or state, you can still get it very securely following the  information above.
 

If you have an idea to add to this post, you can drop it on the comment section 👇👇