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Review of Selling Manager Pro

Posted October 2003.

When eBay recently released its new Selling Manager Pro facility, I gave it a quick look and figured it was a "no-brainer" to at least sign up for it. Since I had been using Seller's Assistant Pro for years, and was already paying for it, Selling Manager Pro was actually free (it does cost $15.95 a month, but if you use both, you only pay for one).

Anyway, over the years I've tried various auction manager products, and none worked for me. Many were really light in regards to working with dutch auctions, which is an important part of our eBay sales strategy. And many of them charge a fee for every winning bid. Now I don't know about you, but it's getting to the point where you have to draw the line somewhere. Ebay gets a listing fee, then 5.25% of the bid. Then PayPal gets their chunk, even on the shipping charge. I just couldn't see giving another bit to somebody else. And that's saying nothing about what the tax man takes!

So I figured I'd check out Selling Manager Pro and see if it could really do anything for me. The answer turned out to be a resounding yes! Without taking anything out of my bank account, here's what it's doing for me so far:

1. feedback -- Our normal routine has been to leave feedback immediately, when the payment clears. However, it hasn't worked out so quick sometimes on our dutch auctions. The way we handle things is that my wife gets the end of auction paperwork with all the email addresses. She marks off the payers, as they pay. When they're all paid, or about 30 days after the auction ends, she gives me the auction listing back. At that time I leave feedback for the payers, and file a NPB (non paying bidder) alert for the ones who didn't pay. The system works well, but it means delayed feedback for the quick payers if there is as few as one non-payer.

Now, with Selling Manager Pro, I log in a couple times a day, and there's a summary that tells me who paid (by PayPal, which is the most common payment method for us). There's also a link to those that paid already and are waiting for feedback. I click on the link, mark them all to leave feedback, and let Selling Manager Pro do the feedback for me (it even lets you preload up to 10 different feedback comments, and assigns them randomly, so if somebody pays for multiple auctions at once, they don't get the same feedback comment on all lines). There's a tremendous time savings, probably 15 minutes a day, which doesn't seem like a lot, but 1.5 - 2 hours a week means maybe 80 hours a year, which gives me 2 weeks back to my life! Not only that, but a lot of buyers won't leave feedback unless the seller leaves it first, and it makes it easy for me to oblige.

2. Email reminders -- The next thing that has already given me profit, and this time in cold hard cash, is the email reminder feature of Selling Manager Pro. One of the alerts on the SMP summary screen is the number of items not paid after 10 days. I can just click on that link, and send a reminder notification to all those people (that I haven't reminded already). I always wanted to do that, but the time to do it was always way too high. With our old method, after 30 days or so, I'd file a NPB alert. Some would pay, and many who had just plain lost track of the auction win would email me a bit angry, asking why I didn't remind them instead of turning them in to eBay? Good point. Now I can do that, the buyer is happy, I get my money sooner (after 10 days instead of after 30), and it takes almost no time at all to do something that would have been difficult to do previously (that's why I didn't do it).

3. Feedback reminder -- Since I just started with SMP, I haven't done this yet, but will. One of the screens shows all sold items. I can sort the results by those I've left feedback for, and those that have left feedback for me. Once both of the feedbacks are marked (feedback left and feedback received), that means the transaction has been paid for, and feedback has been exchanged. For those, I simply archive the record. For those that I have left feedback for, but no feedback has been left for me, I plan on giving about 2 weeks after shipment, and then I can email the winner to make sure everything arrived safely, to see if there are any complaints or questions, and if everything is as hoped, ask for feedback in return. I'm sure it will improve our feedback score, which is very important to us.

4. SMP also gives very useful reports about the number of sales per month and dollar volume, so we can now track to see how we're doing. I didn't have that information before, I'm sure it can alert me when things are slow, and maybe take some action to improve sales.

5. Although we already were using Selling Assistant Pro, those that don't have a listing tool will find Selling Manager Pro listing templates and other facilities a great way to speed up the listing process. Since I haven't used the new SMP templates yet, I can't comment on them yet, but will in the future once I start using them.

All in all, I have to give Selling Manager Pro a 5-star rating. I went into it figuring I'd check it out since it was free, but had been too disappointed in the past with the other auction management software to really expect much. I was very pleasantly surprised, and recommend this tool to anyone that has at least a semi-serious eBay selling account. I expect it will put at least a few auction management software companies out of business.

Dennis Becker, MDM Sports, www.auction-tips-and-techniques.com