I’ve been trying to sell my son’s moped for 18 months now.
Why the delay?
A combination of my lack of motivation, paired with a significant lack of understanding of the second-hand moped market.
I started off by putting ads out at a sales price I considered eminently reasonable.
The prospective buyers did not agree. Zero enquiries.
So I waited till the next university holidays to arrive so I could put the task back on my son’s list.
He had a half-hearted go and didn’t get anywhere.
And repeat.
On it went, for month and after month after month.
But I’ve had enough now. I want to be able to get into my garage, to be able to find things and not to have to squeeze past the moped every time.
So last week I put it on AutoTrader, for half the price I originally listed for.
The silence was still deafening, so I went down again, to a quarter of what I paid for it four years ago.
Bam, three phonecalls within 24 hours, which presented a different problem – the battery was flat, and I had no idea how to use the charger, and even once I’d worked that out, I had no idea how to actually start the thing and show a prospective buyer that it worked.
I’m very sure that neither of those things is especially challenging.
But when life is full of other things far more important, from keeping the business and house running smoothly to planning my holidays (yes, they’re that important!), my appetite to spend time learning about mopeds and their chargers purely in order to rid myself of one isn’t exactly insatiable.
And it reminds me of marketing.
You might be motoring along, absolutely fine, with your main marketing channels bringing home the bacon, and without you having to think much about them.
But then the leads start to dry up, and you need to start looking into those marketing channels and understanding why they’re not working as well as they used to.
Cue a mountain of facts, figures and jargon – impressions, CPCs, search position, engagements, the list just goes on and on.
In the vast majority of case, I’ve learnt that it’s better to pay someone else who actually understands that stuff, rather than spend hours of my precious time doing something I don’t enjoy, and doesn’t come naturally.
If it can be outsourced, outsource it, and focus on the things that only you have expertise for. That’s where business growth happens.
And the moped project?
It’s been delegated back to my son, with a financial incentive to have the moped out of the garage by the time he goes back to uni after Christmas – otherwise he is paying ME the sales price in compensation!
