When to Use Best Offer

Making the Most of Best Offer in Reselling

For resellers managing online inventory, knowing when and how to use Best Offer can be the difference between items that stagnate and items that steadily move. The strategy around enabling offers should never be random. Instead, it should be anchored in measurable rules: which items are slowing down, how much flexibility you have in margin, and what baseline profitability looks like. Understanding these factors helps maximize sell-through while protecting revenue.

Why Use Best Offer?

Best Offer is a lever you can pull when items underperform. Not every SKU or listing needs it. Certain products sell regularly at full price—giving away unnecessary margin in these cases just undermines profit. But on slower-moving products, offering buyers the chance to negotiate often captures buyers who are on the fence, reducing aging inventory costs and keeping turnover flowing.

Identify the Right Candidates

One of the first steps is recognizing which listings qualify for Best Offer. In nearly every marketplace that supports it, buyers are more willing to negotiate on items that don’t feel scarce. Signs that qualify a listing:

• High inventory age: If your reports show items sitting unsold for 60+ days without a price change.

• Excess stock: Backlog of identical SKUs eating up prime storage space.

• Seasonal miss: Items tied to a past holiday window often won’t sell again at list price until next year.

• Category-specific slows: Product types like collectibles, accessories, or secondary electronics tend to negotiate more frequently than necessities.

Establish Auto-Accept and Decline Rules

Resellers should never review every single offer manually. The real efficiency happens when you establish auto-accept floors and auto-decline thresholds. Here’s an approach that scales:

• Auto-accept price: The lowest amount you’d be content selling for, given your cost basis and desired ROI. Example: on a $100 item bought for $40, you might set auto-accept at $80 to ensure margin.

• Auto-decline price: The number below which it’s not worth negotiating. Anything beneath triggers immediate decline. Example: for that same $100 item, auto-decline might be set at $60, avoiding pointless offers.

This lets qualified offers pass through without slowing operations, while weak offers are filtered away.

Consistency Through Centralized Rules

Consistency is key. If a buyer compares multiple listings from your storefront and realizes they’re getting uneven treatment, you risk eroding credibility. Instead, aim for a central rule set applied evenly across all qualified slow movers. This doesn’t mean every item has identical margins, but that the logic is repeatable:

1. Identify items stagnant beyond a set age threshold (such as 60 days unsold).

2. Apply a margin-based formula to determine floors. For instance, always protect 30% gross profit margin after fees.

3. Enable Best Offer with auto-accept and auto-decline aligned with that calculation.

Tools like Gavelbase allow resellers to centralize these rules across marketplaces, ensuring uniformity instead of case-by-case settings that risk inconsistency. This is especially helpful when juggling hundreds of listings across multiple channels.

Balancing Buyer Psychology

While data should guide most decisions, understanding buyer psychology sharpens your edge. Buyers who submit offers are already signaling high intent—they want the item. A quick counteroffer near your auto-accept price often closes the deal. By anchoring to consistent floors, you can offer counteroffers confidently without over-negotiating or second-guessing.

Practical Workflow

Consider the following streamlined workflow to ensure you apply Best Offer effectively and without overhead:

• Step 1: Run inventory age reports weekly.

• Step 2: Flag listings that hit your defined stale threshold.

• Step 3: Apply auto-accept and auto-decline rules derived from margin formulas.

• Step 4: Monitor weekly conversions. If offers are too low and consistent, adjust minimums upward or reevaluate acquisition costs.

• Step 5: Archive results to ensure future rules get more accurate.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Even with all the benefits, misuse of Best Offer can sink value. Be aware of these pitfalls:

• Over-applying: Don’t put Best Offer on items that have strong demand at full price. You’ll unnecessarily shrink profit.

• Emotional pricing: Never counter based on guesswork. Your formula should lead, not instinct.

• Inconsistent rules: Half-applied rules confuse both yourself and buyers, ultimately reducing trust.

• Neglecting time savings: Manually reviewing every offer wastes resources. Automation matters.

Conclusion

Best Offer, when used strategically, is one of the most effective reselling tools for working through stale or slow-moving inventory. By selectively enabling it, setting smart auto-accept and auto-decline floors, and applying a consistent ruleset across all qualifying items, you convert dead weight into cash flow without diluting overall market credibility. Remember—the process is not about chasing every offer, but about controlling the framework in which you accept them. Done correctly, you turn negotiation into a predictable, rule-driven advantage.