Obviously, sellers are not so easily willing to offer their goods at a price lower than they set. However, understanding what Best Offer entails and how it can benefit sellers is crucial in maximizing sales and fostering successful transactions.
How Does Best Offer Work?
Best Offer is a free-to-use feature that provides an effective way to engage potential customers and increase profits on eBay without any additional costs or time investment. Usually, sellers include the Best Offer to all fixed-price listings to allow buyers to initiate a conversation that could lead to a sale.
Upon creating an eBay listing, sellers can activate the Best Offer feature, which is available for both auction-style and fixed-price (“Buy It Now”) listings. If you accept a buyer’s offer before receiving other bids, that buyer will win the item. In fixed-price listings, enabling “Best Offer” invites potential buyers to initiate negotiations starting from the listed price. Importantly, even with ongoing negotiations, other buyers can still purchase the item at its full price.
Shipping costs and other terms and conditions remain as listed, the Best Offer only refers to the item price.
As a seller, you have four options for responding to a buyer’s offer:
- Accept the Best Offer lower than the asking price.
- Make a counteroffer.
- Decline the offer.
- Not respond to the offer and let it expire. It occurs either once the listing is completed or after a period of 24 hours, whichever comes first (not the recommended strategy).
In order to motivate prospective buyers to complete a purchase, you may also send offers to them.
When setting Best Offer, it’s essential to consider your production expenses, expected profit, and the current market conditions.
How to Accept a Best Offer
Buyers interested in a product with the “Best Offer” option can click the “Make offer” button on the listing page. They’ll then enter the price they’re willing to pay for the item. After sending an offer, the seller is notified via the eBay messaging. You have 24 hours to accept it. Just click the “Accept offer” button.
Note: When a buyer makes an offer or a counteroffer, they commit to buy the item if the offer is accepted. The buyer must pay immediately, or you can accept offers from all buyers without immediate payment (see Buyer Payment Requirements on eBay).
How to Make a Counteroffer
A counteroffer from a buyer is considered to be one of the most effective strategies on eBay. If you receive an initial offer that is too low, you can send a counteroffer or explain why you cannot accept it. To submit a counteroffer on eBay, simply select the “Make a counteroffer” button located within the message. When making a counteroffer, ensure that it is priced lower than the “Buy It Now” price but higher than the received offer. The counteroffer is also valid for 1 day.
Note: You can set limits for automated acceptance or rejection of Best Offers. Buyers don’t know your limit. However, when responding to a Best Offer, the price you offer should be lower than the “Buy It Now” price but higher than the received Best Offer.
Best Offer Benefits
As a seller, you may wish to sell your stock quickly and don’t want to lower the price. Exactly the Best Offer on eBay can get you several benefits, improving your selling experience and potentially increasing conversions. Here are some of the main benefits for sellers:
— Understanding what price your average customer is willing to pay for your products.
— Faster inventory turnover, which gives the seller a competitive edge in the marketplace with business profits.
— Pricing flexibility that allows a seller to update prices based on market demand and create more flexible pricing strategies.
— Encouraging sales of products that might otherwise remain unsold with a fixed price.
— Increased of listings visibility. Buyers actively seek reasonable offers, which leads to increasing interest in listings with valuable offers compared to fixed-price products.
Therefore, Best Offer on eBay provides sellers opportunities to increase sales, effectively manage inventory, engage with buyers, and potentially increase profitability through negotiation ability and pricing flexibility. It gives a more dynamic and successful sales process.
Effective Strategies for Using a Best Offer
Before you add Best Offer to your product listings or send offers to interested buyers, it’s important to understand how Best Offer works best for your business goals. Here are some useful strategies to help you make the most of eBay’s Best Offer:
- Sending Offers to Interested Customers. Take the initiative and send discount offers to potential buyers interested in your products. This feature is targeted at people who have watched your products or added them to the shopping cart but have not yet made a purchase. But you can send only one offer per listing, so buyers aren’t overwhelmed by multiple offers from different sellers.
The amount of the offer must be at least 5% less than the “Buy It Now” price for items up to $200, 3% for items from $200 to $1,000, and 2% for items over $1,000.
- Sending Coupons to the Customers. eBay allows sellers to create and distribute coupons to potential buyers or previous customers. The coupon can be applied to any item included in the coupon promotion. Coupons increase customer loyalty and stimulate purchases.
- Automatically Send Offers. This strategy allows sellers to tailor offers based on the buyer’s needs or interests, increasing the likelihood of a sale by solving specific buyer problems or preferences. If you have more than 30 interested buyers for your item, eBay sends the first 30 offers. The platform sends up to 30 offers every 48 hours until all potential buyers receive an offer.
- Multi-quantity listings. If you have two or more similar products in one listing, you can make an offer for all, some, or just one product. Buyers interested in purchasing multiple items can negotiate a better price using the Best Offer.
Implementing these strategies allows sellers to actively engage with potential buyers, customize offers, and encourage purchases using the Best Offer on eBay. Effective use of these options can increase sales opportunities and improve the overall experience with buyers on the platform.
Tips for Making a Successful Best Offer
- Calculation of Production Costs and Sales Price: Before making a Best Offer, it’s important to clearly calculate your production costs and fees for selling on eBay. Your profit is first and foremost. The price of the final product includes 1) the cost of materials, 2) the cost of the facility, 3) the cost of labor if you manufacture, 4) any costs of purchasing the product from a third party, etc.
- Reasonable Offers: Make an offer that is a fair discount from the listed price. Extremely low offers may be perceived as unrealistic and concerning. Be flexible with the pricing and take fair offers seriously. Offer competitive and attractive prices to encourage customers to purchase.
- Item Research: Before making an offer, research the market values of the item. Understanding the typical price range helps you make a reasonable and compelling offer.
- Automatic Best Offer Setup: For time-saving, set up automatic messages of offers to potential buyers. In the automation settings, you can 1) enable/disable the automatic sending of offers, 2) set the automatic offer amount, 3) enable/disable counteroffers, and 4) change your message.
- Offer for Time-Sensitive Items: Consider offering lower prices for products nearing their expiration date or seasonal items in high demand at certain times of the year. It helps you manage your inventory efficiently.
- Negotiation and Compromise: Stay in touch with your customers and respond quickly and competently. Be patient and open to negotiations with clients. If you cannot accept the buyer’s offer, provide a clear explanation of why. Or suggest a compromise proposal: an offer that is a bit higher than the buyer’s first offer but still reasonable.
Final Thoughts
Product categories for Best Offer
The Best Offer feature on eBay can be utilized for a wide range of products. Nevertheless, if you have an auction-style listing, the Best Offer option is not available in the following categories: mobile phones, cars, real estate, tablets, and tickets.
eBay Best Offer Management with M2E Sales Channels
Managing Best Offer is a big deal for sellers, and M2E Cloud makes it much easier. With the M2E Sales Channel, you can conveniently accept/decline eBay offers based on product prices.
You only need to sign up for Sales Channels and connect it to your eBay store. Then you can reply to buyers manually from the eBay website or use the automatic Accept and Decline options:
- Accept Offers of at Least (% of Price) — set the price at which (or over which) the offer will be automatically accepted.
- Decline Offers Less than (% of Price) — set the price at which (or above which) the offer will be automatically rejected.
Please note when you use “% of Price“ to set up an auto-response, the “Accept” and “Decline” values will be calculated as:
- “Accept Offers“ must be greater than or equal to the “Buy It Now Price” * percentage value.
- “Decline Offers“ must be less than or equal to the “Buy It Now Price” * percentage value.
Summary
To summarize, with the benefit of eBay’s Best Offer, you can significantly improve your conversion rate by completing sales faster, sending targeted offers to interested buyers, and saving time with automatic settings. Choose the Best Offer strategy for your business and enjoy its benefits right now.
