This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, hello, what's up everybody? Welcome to another week. It's the beginning of a new week, April 4th. Wait a second, did I say April? It's actually May 4th.
A whole month has passed in the vortex of the time known as coronavirus land, COVID-19, whatever you want to call this season. And obviously other things are happening as well, but you know, in the grand context of life, this one issue continues to just, you know, cover so many other things, or at least touch so many other things. So no pretending like it doesn't exist, but at the same time, as I've mentioned before, we can use this time to invest in ourselves, plan for our future project, start a project now, if you are working remotely, if you are unemployed or underemployed, I know we have a number of folks like that out there in our community. So I am thinking of you, and my objective is to give you tools and resources, practical examples, et cetera, just some practical support to help you prepare to create more security for yourself, no matter what your situation is. So this is a classroom episode, do these once a week, every week since the beginning of 2020.
Today, we're gonna talk about when someone places an order, this is a good thing, when someone places an order on your website or through whatever medium in which you take orders, what happens next? That's what this episode's all about, whether you're selling a physical or digital product, providing a service or something totally different, you need a plan for fulfillment. So first of all, when someone places an order, there is much celebration. You're excited, you're like, oh my gosh, somebody out there gave me money, but they didn't just give it to you, they have paid for something, presumably. So presumably, there's some amount of work that you have to do.
Now, in a future episode, we'll look at workflows in more detail. I featured this in a side hustle book as well. But for now, let's just consider some really basic steps you might need to take. Like what if this is the first time you're doing this, you've learned about making an offer, you've published that offer, now someone purchases, what are those basic steps that you need to take? Well, this is important because a clear process reassures buyers that they made the right decision.
You wanna communicate the message, hey buyer, hey new client, hey new customer, you're in good hands. This was a wise decision that you just made. That's also important because if you invest time and energy on the front end, like figuring out this process, thinking through product delivery, you can save a lot more time and be more efficient in the long run. And for many years, I was terrible about this, to be very honest with you. I finally forced myself to not launch anything unless I had a clear plan for follow-up delivery and execution.
My strength was all I'm thinking about the offer, did not really consider what happened next, which led to a lot of stress and unnecessary difficulty afterwards. So let's consider how this might work for you. I'll give you two examples, one for a product and the other for a service. So your product, let's say you're selling Bluetooth enabled cat toys that can be controlled remotely. Now, first of all, I wanna buy one of those, so send me an invoice.
But let's talk about your next steps after you do that. Okay, so you've sent me an invoice. Now you want your order confirmation to go to the buyer. And it's important for it to be immediate. If someone places an order on your website, they should get an order confirmation by email pretty much right away.
There might be some additional follow-up that comes later, but that immediate email confirmation is always good. And then you wanna do whatever you need to prepare to ship the product. So from there, you could have a couple of different options depending on how you're doing it. If you're using a fulfillment agency, then you'll send them the customer details. They're the ones who do the shipping, but most likely you need to send them the customer details.
You might have a system set up that automatically does that, which is ideal, but if not, of course you need to send that to them. And then if you're doing it yourself, which most people will be doing in the beginning at least, then you get it off the shelf, you package it up, you slap a label on it, whatever it is that you need to do. And finally you do whatever else has to happen to get that product out. So however you're doing the shipping, you get it ready to actually be shipped. Then you might need to, as part of this process for physical products, you might need to update your inventory because if you're running low on these popular cat toys, you might have to take them off your website.
You might have to add an out of stock notice. You might have to say, oh, it's gonna be four weeks before we can ship any of these marvelous inventions, whatever the case may be. Now the process can end there. I mean, those are the basic steps. Someone has placed an order, they have transferred their money, they have got an order confirmation, you have prepared to ship the product, you have shipped the product.
The process can end there, but for best results, it's usually good to follow up with the customer throughout this process. Multiple touch points are good. I actually think it is better to overdo it rather than underdo it when it comes to confirmations and updates on something someone has ordered. So send them an email when it's been shipped. Send them another email a week later to check in and ask if everything's okay.
Then assuming all is well, assuming everything is okay, ask for a review or referral. This kind of frequent communication is not unwelcome usually when someone has placed an order because they've already kind of raised their hand and said, yes, I want what you're offering. It's a little bit different than somebody who's just expressed some interest or who's kind of checking it out. This person is already committed. So they actually do want to hear from you.
So all those things are for a product. Let us talk about service. What about a service? What is that like? Well, with a service, there are a couple of key differences.
When the order comes in, you should still send that immediate email. But from there, your process may vary. And the steps you need to take are based on the answer to the question, what is everything that needs to happen for my new customer to receive what they paid for? So for example, do they need to schedule an appointment with you? Do you need to reach out to them aside from that confirmation to set something up?
Is there anybody else who needs to be involved in this process? Are there any other systems? Then of course, you go from scheduling or whatever that initial part is to providing the actual service, the consultation, the car wash, the computer upgrading, whatever it is. And the second half is pretty much the same as with the product. You want to add multiple touch points throughout.
You want to check in later. And assuming all is well, ask for a referral or a review. In a moment, I'll give you your assignment for the week along with the best email confirmation I have ever seen. I'll actually share the text of that email confirmation with you. First, I'd like to thank our sponsor for making all of this series completely free to you.
So thanks, sponsor. We appreciate that. [Music]
So before we wrap up, as promised, I'm going to share with you my favorite email confirmation of all time. I think a lot of people have actually built on this and modified it and taken this concept in different directions. I know I have in different ways, but the origin of it comes from Derek Sivers, who is the former owner of CD Baby.
Now, I don't know if you remember, but in the early days of the internet, some people may remember, people still actually bought compact discs known as CDs. And Derek Sivers built this business called CDBaby.com, which was competing with much larger music distribution companies. He did really well, built that business and sold it. And actually, I believe gave the majority of the proceeds to his employees. So pretty cool story there, but this email confirmation that I'll read to you here, he wrote it when he was looking at the early systems of the business.
And he saw that the company had an email confirmation that was basically, hey, we got your order, it's going to be shipped soon. So it was accurate, but just really boring. So he set out to write this thing and he just kind of kept going. I don't know if I'll be able to read the whole thing. It's quite long, but I'll give you the highlights here.
So here's the email you would receive whenever you placed an order from this business. Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing. Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold line box that money can buy. We all had a wonderful celebration and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town waved bon voyage to your package on its way to you in our private CD Baby jet.
I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as customer of the year. We're all exhausted, but can't wait for you to come back to cdbaby.com. Isn't that a great message?
So I think the lesson there is don't hesitate to add a personal touch like that. You may not want to go so over the top, but the point is any kind of personal touch can be fun. Also reading that ad made me wonder what's happened to cdbaby.com? So I went to look and they're still actually up and running. Of course they have modified a bit to focus on streaming services and other things like that now.
So just a fun example for you there. Last but not least, you also want to think what comes next in the sales process. Because if you've done everything right, there might be some logical extension to offer your happy customer something else. So think about that. And your assignment for the week is to understand how you will fulfill an order.
Whether for a product or a service, for something you're actually doing, or just for something you're considering, think about it before you get lots of orders and you'll be better poised to celebrate when you do. You can read notes for this in every classroom episode this year at sidehustleschool.com/classroom. And notes for this one specifically are at sidehustleschool.com/1221220. Thank you so much. Be sure you're subscribed.
Much more is on the way. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
