Selling on Amazon for Retailers with Will Tjernlund

Selling on Amazon for retailers with Will Tjernlund of Goat Consulting
Selling on Amazon for retailers is what you specialise in. What is the biggest learning from running your Amazon Agency (Goat Consulting)?
Selling on Amazon for retailers can be a little confusing. Every retailer thinks they have a unique Amazon story. And they think they can’t solve the issues of Selling on Amazon.

But more and more, retailers have the same issues selling on Amazon as each other.
What are the typical issues when Selling on Amazon for retailers?
“We’ve been selling x product for y years.”

“We are the Apple of our niche. We have a great product.

"We sell on the 3 stores. "

On Selling on Amazon issues for retailers:

the photos don’t line up
People selling below MAP pricing
What do we do? (General confusion)

Retailers don’t know the difference between Seller Central and Vendor Central

They don’t know how to raise a case with Amazon.
Getting organised when selling on Amazon for retailers:
It seems like retailers have 100 SKUs on Amazon, each with unique problems.

In reality, you can organise the problems into 4 buckets.

Then it can take 3 days to solve an issue that was bugging the retailers for years.

Eg a photo issue on every single listing.

You need to speak Amazon’s language. It’s not a big deal.
For retailers selling on Amazon, why get an agency involved?
It's like laying tiles in a bathroom. You can lay 1, 2 or 3; but you aren’t going to want to do 50 or 100 tiles yourself.

Goat consulting thrives by sorting out chaos, not micromanaging.

They can’t really improve on well-optimised listings and good sales.
Solopreneurs micro-managing
A lot of them watch “hustle” porn - hurry up and wait!

They feel there is nothing to do when going home from work.

They are constantly looking for hacks. Instead of just launching more SKUs.
Over optimising a listing can be detrimental to ranking
Will’s company doesn’t want to mess with a good listing which is working well.

6 months’ PPC optimization can make a difference but it takes time and data to improve on an already good listing.

Sometimes it takes time to figure out negative keywords.

So you need more budget and more time to figure out the perfect Keywords.

In an ideal world, ACoS would equal profit margin - running at breakeven would get based data and best ranking.

Especially if they are consumables.
Taking a longer view
Who cares if we’re not profitable for 6 months if this listing will be ranked for the next 6 years?

There are Amazon listings that are 15 years old!

Especially if you’re ranking for a kitchen gadget like a whisk.
When selling on Amazon for retailers, what are the best Cashflow management practices?
Some of these costs are just a rounding error to big companies!

One of the companies Will consults with just got 38 containers of ONE SKU!

Will doesn’t get into inventory management - these guys have that down pat.
Ideal clients
Who are the companies that struggle to move onto Amazon?
Those retailers whose systems are not digitised yet struggle with selling on Amazon.

If they can just send a dropbox link, it’s easy.

At the other extreme, one company can’t even figure out the password!
Are there characteristics of poor clients?
Sometimes culture or just sour person!

Sometimes there is a startup with funding trying to be “the new paper towel brand” trying to pay 300% ACoS and make the P & L work!
How you analyse a client - common sense
First and foremost - check for no conflict of interest with existing clients.

Can’t segment teams up and not talk about clients.

Go to website straight away - check “lead bot”

Does URL match the URL they say
Look them up on Linked IN
Look on SellerCentral

Do they have EBC (Enhanced Brand Content)?
Photos - do they use all 9? Are they good?
Competing for buy box?
Reviews?
Seller account?
Seller feedback?