The Best Internet SELLER THE NORTHERN PEARL www.thenorthernpearl.com

Lesson 3 Balance Your Orders  Be Present  Always Deliver Early 

Balance Your Orders  There are a million ways to do this but I’ll share my personal method for staying on top of orders and ensuring that all of my work is delivered before the deadline without any stress to manage the work load. Spreadsheets, word documents, daily planners, and photographic memories work great – personally, I use a planner. I purchased a basic weekly spiral planner and have dedicated it to my Fiverr orders. In order to designate between my blog promotion calendar and my other orders, I split each day into two halves with blog work on the left and everything else on the right. The process of ‘balancing my orders,’ somewhat like a checkbook, consists of me going through my to-do list for orders, starting at the top, and confirming that the orders there are marked down in my book. Then, as I get to new orders, I work through them from closet delivery date to the farthest and assign them a due-date place in my book. I draw an open square on the left side (to be filled in when the order is delivered) and write the customer’s username and a brief one or two word description of the order. The orders are written into my book on the day that I ideally will complete them so I try to pace myself by what I see coming up in my personal life, how many orders I already have sitting in my queue, and what has yet to be ‘balanced’.

Balance Your Orders  I re-balance my book every day or two and it gives me an opportunity to double check that I haven’t missed any orders, address any issues with order information, thank the buyer for their purchase, and look ahead to what I have coming up to do. A quick box fill-in visually clarifies what is complete or incomplete and give me the oh-so-rewarding opportunity to mark an order off in my book. No matter what method you choose, it’s important that it’s visible, easy to change, and consistent. I always, personally, recommend keeping an external system because manually transferring the data results in less errors than if I copy and paste or type over into another document.

Be Present Freelance sites like Fiverr are bringing freelance work to the foreground and they offer businesses a new, innovative way to receive products and services. Businesses are eagerly buying into the market shift but they often don’t know what to expect and you’ll always run into newbies. It’s important that you’re seen as being present and available for all of your customer needs. This concept shows up in tip #10 as I encourage you to respond to new orders as quickly as possible to set the buyer at ease and resolve any issues. More importantly, perhaps, you need to be responsive, clear, and quick with your messages. Buyer inquiries through message systems show interest and intrigue but they’re usually not sold on your services or they plan to follow through if some questions are answered to their satisfaction. I would estimate that 80% of the message inquiries that I receive in my inbox turn into direct sales – 10% decide that my services don’t exactly fit what they’re looking for and the remaining 10% of buyers disappear and don’t follow through for whatever reason. Here are several tactics that I employ in my messages to maintain a high sales conversion: 

Be Present ☞ I keep my response times low and aim for an average of 1-2 hours. The Fiverr system doesn’t get more particular than that, but those numbers are what you should aim for. Buyers want to hear back from you as quickly as possible and in the time that you’re not clarifying and encouraging a sale they can be asking around with different buyers or even completing the task themselves.  ☞ In order to respond at hyper speed, I utilize the Fiverr app and always have my phone on me. Of course, I know when to put work away and it’s not always the top priority but having the notifications on your phone, at the very least, allow you to see if there are urgent messages to attend to. The first thing I do in the morning, crazy or not, is check up on my overnight account activity and respond to messages. 

Be Present ☞ Although it shouldn’t be a part of the freelancing gig, you will inevitably come across buyers who are completely unable to navigate the site and use the technology. I once had a buyer create a new account when they ‘logged in’ the second time and then could not find my delivered order because, of course, it was delivered to their old account. Be patient with these people and, above all, don’t let them even begin to think that the error is coming from you and not their misuse of the site. The buyer that I referenced accused me of not completing the delivery and trying to swindle the poor old man out of $5. Your prompt, courteous presence should be a reminder to your buyers that you’re on their side and want to resolve any issues that may occur, even if they’re a little ridiculous. At some point though, there’s nothing you can do and that’s the time when you pass them off to customer service and slowly slip away. Knowing the site layout is also important so that you can provide clear instructions about how to go through the ordering process, send order requirements, and add the necessary gigs to the order. Often, if someone doesn’t know how to do it they just won’t even bother and then you’re out of a sale. 

Always Deliver Early  The classic freelance tip is ‘under-sell and over-deliver!” I agree with this part of this logic. Your customers should always be pleasantly surprised with your deliveries as you go above and beyond to fulfill their needs and requests, though complete over-delivering can actually breed a sense of buyer-entitlement in the marketplace that doesn’t help anyone in the long run. I’ll discuss this in greater detail in tip #15. Delivery periods, in particular, should be set to a reasonable limit that provides you with enough time to complete all work without question.  Then, add one day to the delivery period so that you can always ensure an ‘early delivery’. For example, if I know that I can finish all of my average writing work in six or fewer days with my schedule and workload, I set the delivery period is set to seven days. My buyers always appreciate prompt, timely, and notoriously early deliveries and I know that if something were to happen and set me behind schedule I would have a bumper day to complete everything and never go past the late delivery. In fact, I’ve never delivered an order late unless a buyer fails to get the order information to me past the delivery deadline and does not have a strict timeline. Not only is it possible to always deliver on time, but it’s important. Late deliveries immediately turn 5 star work into negative reviews and customers won’t return.