Seller Recruitment Can Make or Break Your Marketplace

A marketplace is only as good as the products being sold on it. That is why identifying and recruiting the right sellers is a critical component to your success.

One of the key factors in successful marketplaces is a large product offering. At launch, you should have sellers who are ready to go. But it doesn’t end there. In order to continue to grow, you should always be identifying and recruiting new sellers.

Attract a Crowd of Sellers

Seller recruitment isn’t easy. With worldwide marketplaces booming, sellers face a lot of options when it comes to where they sell, so building the right recruitment message is key.

Before joining your marketplace, a seller might ask:

How much traffic does your site receive?
How many customers do you have?
How much will it cost to participate in the marketplace?
How will my brands and products be found on the site?

Pitching your value propositions to sellers is as important as pitching value propositions to your end customers.

Vet the Right Sellers

Once you’ve identified what you have to offer sellers, you are ready to recruit. Because hosting a wide product range is important, you’ll need to add as many sellers as possible. This doesn’t mean you accept any seller, however. You should be looking for sellers who fit your company’s marketplace goals.

You might keep an eye out for sellers who offer adjacent categories to your current offerings. Perhaps they offer services that can support current products. Identifying a seller’s niche in your marketplace can ensure a successful recruitment model.

Nail a Recruitment Strategy

Your recruitment strategy may differ depending on how far along your marketplace is.

In the early stages of a marketplace, quantity is key. Focus on attracting as many sellers as possible and less on the types of products. This helps develop critical mass.

As your marketplace grows, you can put more emphasis on the types of products you add. If you can find sellers with large product offerings—even better.

Streamline the Onboarding Process

Once you’ve established your recruitment strategy, streamline your onboarding process. This means having a good training curriculum in place when a seller is recruited to the site.

Be sure to offer thorough and easy-to-digest supporting documentation to help suppliers easily set up shop on your website. This may require you to appoint a small team to oversee onboarding software.

Here’s a template of an onboarding checklist once a new supplier joins your website:

Welcome the supplier
Educate the supplier on your marketplace model
Offer access to the user portal
Provide portal training materials
Collect required documentation
Require acceptance of terms of service
Onboard products
Set up a shipping strategy
Verify the completed setup of the seller’s account
Activate the seller’s shop on your website

Build an Onboarding Team

Each supplier has a specific timeline and agenda, which can stall the onboarding journey. And, since your marketplace business is a relatively new venture, onboarded sellers may approach you with questions and concerns.

While losing some newly-onboarded sellers may be inevitable, there are times that these losses are caused by lapses in communication, poor response time, and inadequate understanding of your program. It’s important to establish a strong onboarding team with the knowledge, responsiveness, and flexibility to address these concerns.

At MarketPush, we know how to build a successful onboarding process and response team that can help eliminate entirely preventable seller losses. Our team helps you automate your marketplace, so sellers can easily self-serve for simpler concerns and connect with your onboarding team for more complicated tasks.

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If You Build It, They Will Come

Seller recruitment takes work, but as they say, “If you build it, they will come.”

At MarketPush, we know that a marketplace is only as successful as the number of sellers and SKUs available to its customers – that’s why seller recruiting and onboarding is included in our full-service SaaS marketplace platform. See below for an example of the success we bring to our clients through offering an end-to-end solution that remains unmatched.

Have more questions? Get in touch with a MarketPush expert to see a marketplace in action or discuss how to help your company embrace the future of e-commerce. Email us at sales@marketpush.com.