Selling old church gear
When we upgrade, the old gear goes up for sale. The assistant helps with the listing and the price, and keeps an eye on it. We still handle every offer ourselves.
The problem
When we replace a piece of gear, the old one ends up sitting in a closet. Writing a listing, settling on a price and answering buyers all take time, so it keeps getting pushed back.
What it does
After we upgrade, the assistant looks up the old unit in our gear inventory, helps write the listing and suggests a price based on what similar units are selling for. Once the listing is live, it watches the marketplace emails. If an item sits too long it suggests a price drop, and it tells us when an offer or a buyer question comes in. We decide on every offer ourselves. This is an early report: right now we have one item listed, an audio server we replaced during an upgrade, and we've already lowered its price once.
Setup
- Keep a gear inventory, with model and serial numbers, so the assistant knows exactly what the old unit is.
- When something is replaced, tell the assistant it's going up for sale.
- Have it draft the listing title, description and condition notes, and suggest a price with comparable sales.
- Review the listing and post it yourself on a used-gear marketplace.
- Let the assistant watch the marketplace emails for offers, buyer questions and how long the item has been listed.
- When it recommends a price drop, you decide and you make the change.
Guardrails
- A person approves every listing and every price before it goes up.
- Offers are never accepted or declined automatically. We turned down the marketplace's auto-decline setting and answer every offer ourselves.
- The assistant suggests price drops but doesn't make them.
- Sale money goes to the church, and the sale is recorded with the right fund.
Time saved
We're still tracking this honestly, so there's no number here yet.
Questions pastors ask
- Does the assistant talk to buyers?
- No. It tells us when a question or offer comes in, and we reply.
- Why not let the marketplace auto-decline low offers?
- We'd rather see every offer. A low offer sometimes starts a conversation that ends in a fair sale.
- What if the gear is still useful to someone?
- Ask first whether a sister church or ministry could use it before you sell it.