MAKE BIGGER COMMISSIONS
Ryan helps auction companies look like marketing experts by clarifying their message, communicating that message well, and measuring its effectiveness.

138: 5 Design Attributes of Premium Auction Advertising

The irony is that Bonhams showed more restraint for expensive items than we often do with much lesser lots. Maybe it’s not ironic, since most of us sell utilitarian items instead of luxury goods. Regardless, while it’s impractical for most auctioneers to put these principles in action to the degree Bonhams did, we can all move in these directions for advertising that competes in the marketplace—not just in the auction industry.

137: 5 Ways to Generate More End User Bidding

The difference between wholesale and retail prices should be enough incentive to investigate changes to our workflow, terms, and marketing. Your path to consumer-driven prices might be on very different paths than these five options. That’s okay. What’s important is that we’re interacting with the marketplace, evaluating our processes based on the feedback we gather, and then making changes to our practices to adapt.

136: 5 Things Missing From Most Auction Proposals

I hate taking auctioneer’s misdirected money. I typically don’t up-sell. In fact, my clients will tell you that I often advise against extraneous media. That said, I regularly accept paychecks to build ineffective proposals. It’s true. Sure, they will represent aesthetic upgrades from their old materials; but the final product doesn’t always have my confidence

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135: The Magic Formula for More Efficient Advertising

You can have hundreds of people click to your website from your email blast or thousands from social media. If the only people who show up at your auction are the ones who saw the sign, though, that traffic is empty. If your YouTube video went viral or your phones have been ringing off the hook from a press release that’s hit all of the local news, but most of your bidders all brought your direct mail piece to the auction, then the buzz didn’t bring you buyers.

134: The Other Way to Get More Sellers: Convert the Unbelievers

The hardest part, though, is making changes in our company culture, business practices, and auction terms to remedy those stigmas and barriers. You might lose some of your faithful. You will definitely lose time and money—at least in the beginning. You might be criticized by your peers. At the same time, you might build an organization that becomes a model that others study for their own growth strategies.

133: An Advertising Lesson from a Dead Skydiver

The auction industry has a similar stigma to that of the sport of parachuting. Both are seen as risky business to the uninitiated and inexperienced.

132: 4 Common Mistakes of In-house Mailing Lists

I’ve bumped into multiple auction companies that tout their decades-old prospect list or the quantity of people on their in-house list. It’s an odd boast, since those lists are filled with budget-sucking ghosts. The age of a list isn’t inherently bad, but it can contribute to the following four issues most auctioneers face with their in-house database.