In-House Summer Selling Challenge Kicks Off!

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from Rebecca:

As the temperature starts heating up here in Chico, CA, so does the in-office competition for a friendly eBay sales challenge. It all started when Robert Green, our in-house “spokes model” (or communications manager, whatever you want to call him), successfully sold a few items on eBay this month. I was biding my time and hadn’t sold anything yet in June.

Mid-May to mid-June is a really busy time of year for me, with Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, graduations and several other important days all falling close together. So I rarely post eBay listings during these weeks.

But when Mr. Green started taunting me about how many sales he had already in June—a whopping four, woohoo!—I couldn’t just sit back and take his trash talk. It’s ironic how I use the word “trash,” considering what he sold: Used shoes and old phones. Hehe. He even went so far as to write the “score” on my whiteboard: “Robert 4, Rebecca 1.”

And this was after I generously lent him my shipping boxes, bubble wrap, adhesive labels, shipping scale, packing tape, etc. The nerve!

Foolish, foolish man. What can I say? I came back with a vengeance. The current score? Robert 4, Rebecca 8. I have hundreds of things I could list right now, but I don’t want to scar him for life. Or do I?

As my custom license plate frame says: “I don’t get mad, I get even.” Stay tuned to see how our “friendly” competition evolves. We’re doing this until the end of July. We’ll see who the winner is at the end of all of this. Get ready, Mr. Green.

from Robert:

So I just sat down to read Rebecca’s post, as I always do before we publish something to the Auctiva Blog. Had it not been written by her, I might have taken some of that personally. But those of us who’ve had the pleasure of working with Rebecca for some time now have learned to take her sense of humor with a grain of salt.

In truth, Rebecca is among the nicest and most generous people I’ve ever met, or worked with. Since her first day here, I was impressed with her utter willingness to help anyone who asks to learn to sell on eBay. Over the years, she’s accumulated a lot of knowledge and a few prized tricks of the trade, but none of these are off limits. Just ask and she’ll help, though she won’t do it for you.

Rebecca is an invaluable part of the Auctiva team. She’s an advocate for the user, constantly suggesting improvements or new features that often do get rolled into the software. She stays very busy around here, using our products, helping to design and document new features, monitoring the market, responding to users’ posts in our forums, co-hosting Webinars and so much more. The only trouble? There’s not always a lot of time left to focus on selling.

So sure, I might tease her a bit about her mounds of merchandise flooding two cubicles here (and who knows how many closets and garages at home), especially when we get to week two of a month and she’s yet to post anything to eBay.

So after I finally got some of my “Someday I’ll put this on eBay” items listed and sold last month, I might have mentioned I was the company’s leading seller for June. Well that didn’t last. Before I knew it, there was talk about a contest and the aforementioned whiteboard was updated almost daily as Rebecca’s sales dwarfed mine. Of course, I hadn’t accepted the challenge. But I think I will now.

It’s early July, and I’m ready. Sure she has hundreds of items to sell, but she won’t likely have time to list too many of them. Plus, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve. I propose we track both total items sold in July as well as total selling price. We’ll keep you all updated on at least a weekly basis as this contest proceeds.

In the meantime, I’m curious to hear from you. What motivates you to sell? When do you feel a lull in enthusiasm and energy? What snaps you out of it?

Editor’s note: Rebecca and Robert will be updating this post every week during their Summer Selling Challenge to let you know how they’re doing. They’ll go back and forth to let you know what their strategies are and how they plan to win. Stay tuned.