Let’s say you’ve been selling on an eCommerce platform for a while. You’ve long figured out your startup capital, identified your target audience, developed a great product, and networked with the right suppliers. After selling for a while, you’ve decided you want to grow the business.
One crucial element that many entrepreneurs forgo is resources, particularly manpower. It is more than possible to run an online business alone but it is going to be much harder to scale and grow if you’re solo. A small team can serve as your business support system, keeping up with demand and assisting leads (people interested in what you sell).
Here are five eye-opening reasons why you need an effective team to launch your eCommerce business to greater heights:
1. Time to focus on your eCommerce store and product development
As your own boss, you need to be the captain of your ship. Focus on managing the technical stuff that brings the highest impact to your profits and survival. Take charge of these roles:
- Product management. Oversee purchasing, manage partnerships with suppliers, and identify your core best-selling product.
- Content management. Research industry trends such as what sells best in a recession or during sales festivals and select trending keywords for your product descriptions.
- Graphic designing. Visualize and craft the overall look of your store. With a few simple elegant and sophisticated posters, you are set to go.
- Sales and digital marketing. Made easy with readily available Seller Tools on a mobile-friendly seller dashboard with clever features such as Sponsored Search and Sponsored Affiliate.
The latter connects to the power of modern marketing such as influencers.
2. Efficiency to drive results
In a startup, each person performs more than one role to streamline operations in line with a lean business model. Practicing divide and conquer within your budget can grow your business. Hire people for these roles:
- Customer service and social media. These two skills have the power to hook shoppers and transform them into buying customers. Have a shared device with access to your eCommerce store chat, WhatsApp, LINE, or WeChat business contact for immediate response during working hours. A designated person can handle social media enquiries up until the evenings. Activate chatbot functions for off hours.
- Inventory management, order processing, and fulfillment. These tasks are highly administrative yet require alertness and empathy. If you don’t have a person to stock check and drop off packages at delivery centers, try Fulfilled by Lazada
3. Up-to-date product listings
Ever gone through the unpleasant encounter of happily checking out your desired products off an eCommerce store, only to have the seller inform you that specific colors or models are unavailable? The seller may have offered an unappealing alternative or even canceled your order – to your dismay.
An assistant to stock check can avoid this by ensuring that the SKU or “items left in stock” on your product pages are accurate and up-to-date. As a result, customer satisfaction levels are kept high and you get to maximize your sales potential by quickly restocking popular items.
4. Better Decision-Making and Continuous Improvement
Kaizen means that everyone is responsible for a business’ continuous improvement and should strive to innovate constantly. Even Toyota attained success with this concept. You can make better decisions just by having a team that comes from diverse backgrounds, cultures, ages, experiences, and expertise.
Train your team to be unafraid to speak their ideas, but also build trust among team members by developing a culture of respect. With access to a variety of viewpoints and ideas, every area of your business has potential to innovate and evolve.
5. Greater Resilience
A team will serve you well to bring your ship through the tides of today’s fast-paced and ever-changing business environment. Trained well, an agile and flexible team can make your business adaptable to new challenges and opportunities.
Adding to that, you can stay ahead of competition and navigate seasons of high and low demand alike. During high sales periods, sufficient staff allows you to capture more sales, avoid missed orders, and reduce mistakes while low sales periods can be turned around with collective creative solutions.