Rolando Rosas 5:38
Thanks Dave for for sharing that, you know, something else I failed to mention about global tech when we started this whole thing is that it came out of the.com bubble bursting. And so I started that in my kitchen. And I was really at the lowest point in my life, when that happened, you know, I was like, Go, like a lot of people. And you know, there’s a lot of people going through this right now as well. And that’s why I want to mention this is that you could be at your lowest point, and not even realize that the best thing that’s going to happen to you is around the corner. And I would have never imagined I wouldn’t have believed that 21 years ago, that being let go was probably the best thing that could have happened to me and couldn’t have uttered those words back then there was no way for me to know, yeah, it’s gonna be like this for the next 20 years. But it really was. And that allowed me too then kind of look around because I couldn’t get a job day if I really couldn’t, there was so many telecom people around looking for job. And one day couple of boxes sitting my closet turned into what would begin global tech worldwide journey. And luckily had a client that said, Yeah, I’ve got stuff and not only did they want what I had, but they said yesterday, you don’t have enough, we want more. And then that’s when the light bulb went off. I think there’s a business here because I was just looking to get rid of this stuff, though, right? So you never know when the best opportunity of your lifetime is around the corner. I just wanted to share that for anybody who’s at that low point in your life. Have hope dream and try to work your hardest to make those things come true. Dave, let’s jump right into it. And when we’re talking about this episode, but But you know, before we jump into it, there’s somebody that I we got to acknowledge, give some big props. I want to give a big props to Helen Polise who was on our last podcast. And you know, we ran out of time with her. And she said no, we got to do part two and it almost sounded like we got to do a three parter with her. But if you don’t know who Helen Polise he is he is a huge success on Tik Tok. She gave us a massive tips on how to how to approach talking into a camera for example, like, you know, she she said no talk, like if you’re talking to somebody sitting right next to the camera, or one person that to me was like, right eye-opening. So big props to Helen. Helen. Part two, I’m looking forward to it can’t wait.
Dave Kelly 8:01
Okay. And she’s also she also does she has a podcast with her daughter called Yours truly, which I just subscribed to earlier today. So it’s a duet. We’ve got a mother-daughter team. They have a full season of podcasts out there and they’re starting to do some more. So very cool. And I wish you guys the best of luck with those endeavors.
Rolando Rosas 8:22
Absolutely. Hell and we’re rooting for you and your daughter. Thank you very much for coming on. We have learned a lot and I can’t wait for the next round. All right. So like I said earlier, check out part one if you haven’t, otherwise, we’re gonna jump right into it. Dave, let’s talk about let’s talk about what we we came here for, for those that are reselling. If you’re reselling doing retail arbitrage, you’re going to want to listen up here. One of the things is we’re getting putting this together. I thought really long and hard Dave about when it comes to selling or reselling on Amazon, if you’re selling other brands, you’re selling name brands, it is very hard to do and be a seven or eight-figure seller but if you’re doing some of these things that we’re doing, and we’re going to share with you I think you can get there you know one of the things that to me when I look back on our journey of selling on Amazon and reselling is that you have to be a little different you have to think a little bit outside the box. And so you have to look at it is as what can you bring to Amazon that is unique. And that other folks that are selling so if you’re selling you know just throw brand name out there just selling bows, for example or some other name brand on Amazon. If you are selling against hundreds of other sellers. And the difference between you and the other seller is only a price where you know you have the buy box. You can lose that Buy Box tonight in the next hour. All they need to do is drop it a couple of pennies below what you You’re selling it or they’re putting into FBA, which also, for some reason when you FBA, and you’re not if you’re not selling FBA, you’re going to have to sell at a much lower price than the seller that is on the buy box at FBA. Amazon has some weird rules, or not all of it, but I know that that’s the case. So one of the things that I really want to talk about Dave is, you know that that difference maker, if you are going to succeed on Amazon, the first thing you have to command is that product or category that you’re planning on offering, you got to know where some of the holes are. And that for us was what really helped us get our mojo on Amazon. Because Amazon is not like selling on any other platform, it’s not it, it really is not has his own rules, the way people engage the customers. Knowing the market gaps for that product can really propel you further when it comes to selling a product. And that’s what allowed us to establish a different differentiator, I’ll give you an example. So in our industry, a lot of times products are sold separately. Everything is tend, it tends to be sold separately. But customers prefer things to come all together. As you know, if you’ve bought a cell phone in the last 10 years, there aren’t any more power adapters in nearly all they just come with a cable. So if you’re selling a cell phone, and iPhone don’t matter what brand, most of them don’t have it. But if you put it in the box, or you sold it to the customer with the charger, a lot of folks want that they don’t want to click around all over the place looking for a charger that’s given me the whole damn thing in that’s kind of the approach that we started looking at what are the where, what things were missing, the customers buy separately, or are the manufacturer not doing that, you know, would be kick ass solution if sold together or complementary. Because I guarantee you, Dave, most sellers that are just reselling whether they’re doing retail arbitrage, or they’re just reselling a brand name, they are not taking that approach when they’re selling on Amazon, right.
Dave Kelly 12:19
And as resellers, it is somewhat of a level playing field in respect to cost of the product. So if we were to take a look at the brands that we sell, if we were to take a look at our competitors, more or less, I mean, I know that there is obviously an exception to the rule, but we’re all buying it at around the same cost. So if everyone is at the same price, and if you don’t want to compete at being the lowest price and shame on the folks, I mean, I could never quite understand that just lowballing everybody else. Where’s the value in that? You know, but we have seen that, and a lot of those types of resellers are, they’re no longer here, can’t say can’t survive at five points over cost. You know, you’re not really bringing much to a client. So the holes that we identified was ility. Dave Yeah. And did you say vulnerability? profitability.
Rolando Rosas 13:14
If you’re selling five, five points over cost? You’re not making much money, and you probably are not going to survive long on the platform on that.
Dave Kelly 13:24
Yeah, exactly. And if you happen to find a few pallets of product that you got at clearance prices, you know, so you could still maintain your margins. And you could still sell at a lower price. Like you said, that’s that’s not the long term, that’s not going to keep you in long term because that supply of low cost products might certainly dry up. So you had to get creative with the holes.
Rolando Rosas 13:47
Absolutely. And so and the other thing that I’ve seen, you know, we’ve we’ve been on Amazon for quite some time is that going the extra mile when it comes to planning out your catalog, pays dividends, because it takes a lot of effort. If let’s say you’re putting in like the cellphone example, you’re putting the accessories to get that executed. It sounds simple, simple strategy, right. But to execute that, and make sure the product is at FBA, which is the way to go. If you’re selling this as just purely drop shipping it from your warehouse via Amazon, and then to the customer, you’re not going to get nearly as many sales as if you put that into the FBA program. And that’s would be one of the first things I would say you want to do. So to execute on that you either have to have that warehouse yourself where they’re doing it or if you’re doing it yourself. And then if you’re scaling up, and you find some success doing that, then you may need a partner in the way of a warehouse or what we call three PL provider that can do that for you if you don’t have your own warehouse in so executing on that at scale will take some skill, because it involves you getting the product plus the accessory or accessories, bundling it in a packaging that looks presentable, nice, that doesn’t fall apart when it goes to Amazon that doesn’t fall apart when Amazon puts it puts it in its own boxes and delivers it. So all of that execution deters much of the competition when we’re talking about selling on Amazon. So that’s why, for us, it’s been one of those keys to being on the platform. And then you know, we we switch it up, we test an experiment, what works better than other things? What’s the best way to get product delivered? So that takes up the least amount of space? Because trying to think about that profitability? Question is, Can I do this make money? Can I be profitable, because they’re all along the way, whether it’s the extra step that put the extra accessories in the box, and then have the extra fees because you have a little bit slightly larger box, maybe you have a slightly higher price point. All of these things are things to consider as you’re executing these things, because they’re all could be friction points for your team, as you’re trying to do this.
Dave Kelly 16:12
And what do they say if it’s, if it’s easy, everyone would be doing it. So there’s, you know, there’s some laziness that we see out there on Amazon, for sure.
Rolando Rosas 16:25
Because people like our guest, Helen, she told us that story about passive income, passive income, right and do not buy the story of passive income when it comes to Amazon, the most successful sellers, the seven and eight figure and nine-figure sellers that are on the platform, and those that have sold their companies outright after being successful. They didn’t get there from being passive about their business, not one. And we’ve talked a lot of successful sellers. Dave and I haven’t run across one yet that’s told me you know, I’m and I love spending my days on Cayman Islands. And having margaritas that may be a vacation. Okay, cool. vacation mode. Totally legit. But when it comes to the daily operation of the business, I don’t haven’t met one yet. Maybe they exist. Maybe it exists. But the majority of these folks that are killing it and crushing it are not sitting at some at St. Barts being served beautiful cocktails, or mocktails.
Dave Kelly 17:23
Yeah, I’ve always wondered, you know, when I hear stories like that, it’s like, well, I know the expectations of the clients, you know, and when I think about just on a customer service level with communication, we have to get back to clients within a certain period of time, or else that hurts our Seller Rating. And potentially, they could lock our account for doing that. So when I hear about passive income, you know, I think about the attention that we give to the clients every day, every day, there’s messages, they need tracking, they don’t know whether packages, something had happened, it still requires a lot of human touch to it. So it’s, it can’t really be a passive type thing, because we’re obligated to communicate back to clients when they’re when they have questions or concerns or comments, whatever it might be.
Rolando Rosas 18:11
And that’s exactly what Helen had mentioned to us. That was the the she said she sold out of the umbrellas. And then she was like, well, wow, we could we could do this right? We could sell this stuff and and come to find out that you do need a support team you knew and you need follow up, you do need to have contact with Amazon which fourth? Amazon Come on, man. Okay, get support better. That’s all I’m gonna say about that. But all of these back end operational logistics things that will throw a loop in your game plan. If you are not prepared for those, those could be almost diabolical in in derailing your efforts of selling on Amazon. And so, So Helen, I appreciate you sharing that story. Because there are a lot of folks that have tried and decided to throw in the towel, because it does take a mastery and we’re going to jump into mastery a little bit later on of the platform and mastering some of these different concepts that are absolutely part of of getting further along in Amazon. You know, Dave, the other thing I’m i It’s weird. We were talking about this earlier, is that if you’re selling a product doesn’t matter what product you came from working with some of these manufacturers that we end up working with, right and right, it offers a window into the psychology of the reps that work at the manufacturer. And I think we should share that with our audience because understanding the motivation of those folks that are on the other side of the table, the reps, the account managers for these manufacturers, gives us an understanding into how to best use that leverage as a reseller.
Dave Kelly 19:57
So, I’ve worked for some of these brands So we’re currently partnered up with today. And you know, as the as account managers and salespeople, we all have lofty quotas, you know, year over year, growth has always been pretty aggressive. And when I was sitting in those seats I can remember all the time. So we’re a channel organization. So we work in support of our resellers and distributors, one reseller of courses Global Teck. So your competitors at the time, within within the sales role, we would have people that will contact us, that’s what need these low dollar items, they needed a some ear cushions, they needed a $15 cable, they needed windscreens for microphones and things like that. And that was the hardest thing to sell. It was the hardest thing to have a reseller sell to the customer. resellers didn’t want to sell these very low dollar items, you know, took a lot of effort to sell five $15, you know, little tiny accessory, but the clients have this commercial product, and they need this little piece to make your work. And we ended up I remember having conversations with some of my co workers. And we said, one of us needs to open up a company that just sells accessories. Because every day, multiple reps would get phone calls from clients, and they needed these items, that we ended up finding ourselves having 1520 minute conversations with people to go find the piece, like physically find it, find an envelope, find a label, address it, stick it all together and put it in the now. And when you’re carrying a five plus million dollar quota and 20 minutes of your time just got robbed and happening multiple times a week. I mean, the idea was we need to either find a partner that is willing to work with clients like this for low dollar items, or someone should do it themselves. And you know, at that time we never had, we didn’t have a solution. Even the brands didn’t, you know, the manufacturer didn’t have a solution to that problem, or it’s set up for these types of sales really.
Rolando Rosas 22:19
And it sounds like you weren’t even incentivized your incentive structures were weren’t like, so why should I sell a $15 item I get paid for it?
Dave Kelly 22:27
Right? Well, you wouldn’t get paid for it that that $15 item would certainly whittle away your $5 million.
Rolando Rosas 22:37
It’s gonna make, it’s gonna make a TV.
Dave Kelly 22:40
dent into it. And it was indirect sales. So we’re working with channel partners, and we’re trying to build relationships and rapport with our channel partners. And we liked to bring qualified leads, you know, if I could bring you a qualified lead in your territory.
Rolando Rosas 22:56
Bring me a lead with a school that wants 100 units of you know, a $200 item, then one that wants a $1 or $2.
Dave Kelly 23:04
You know, even if it’s 15 or 20 headsets that are two $300 headsets that’s qualified, that’s a nice lead. But imagine if you were if you got a phone call, three, four times a week for me, well, Andrew, I got a lead for you. For a couple of year cushions. Greatly guys, can I don’t have time, I really wish I don’t. But you turn that you turn this into an opportunity. And I it was one of the reasons I was so attracted to the global tech business when we first started working together because you were already doing what I said, somebody needs to exploit this somebody really needs to take charge. And it’s resulted in a lot of activity for for a global tech, it’s, you can tell the story about the private label and things but.
Rolando Rosas 23:56
Well you know, it’s understand get back to what we’re talking about understanding the market in the gaps, you know, customers, were buying things, again, everything sold separately, there’s probably other industries where a lot more stuff comes everything in one, right. But given that there’s a lot of items sold separately at the bottom of each thing that’s sold. You know, the the customer and again, I’ll just go back to even to Helen or even Nick has told us that like listening to what the customers are saying, what what are they saying on the comments like, oh, I bought this and I had to go get this other thing, huh? You see two or three or four like that you’re like, huh, right. Why aren’t they doing this? And today, Dave, even today, these same manufacturers still sell that even though they know customers want everything all in one. There is a logistical challenge to making it happen. And so when you overcome that, no matter what industry you’re selling a product for, and you can overcome that logistical challenge of deliver During product A, B and C in one box to a customer, you have happier customers, and repeat customers. And repeat customers are profitable customers, because now you don’t have to spend the ads. You don’t necessarily have to, you know, go back and, you know, trying to find the new prospect cost money. Now, even if you’re a reseller, and we’re gonna get into ads in a moment, but the fact that there’s a there’s a gap, there was a gap there also was a headache. I think a pain point that I don’t know if it was you, or somebody else had shared earlier with me about this being a pain point, like, you know, we’re not set up to sell these accessories. And they take up so much time relative to our quota. You know, it’s one of those things where if you’re reselling, building allies at that company is one of the things you absolutely want to do. And it’s hard to do. Because if you’re just starting out, and you’re not on the radar screen, because your sales are too low, it just, that may not happen. But even introducing yourself, say, you know, who’s the rep in my territory and getting to know who they are reach out to them on LinkedIn, and say, hey, you know, I’m getting, I’m getting ready to do XYZ, I know that you’re the territory manager for this area, would love to have a coffee with you, that can open the door to something else down the line. And when an opportunity presents itself, like you’re talking about Dave, who is that territory manager gonna reach out to you because you’ve built some trust with, right? And over time, overtime, not only have you built trust, if you then show them the money, right? Wow, I am seeing that you are growing, I see that you’re selling more this year than you sold last year, now you’re on the radar screen of that territory manager, and they will reach out to you because you will not be invisible at that point.
Dave Kelly 26:48
Yeah. And I think for us, what we’ve been able to what we’ve been able to do with some of our partnerships, is they see us, they see us online, they see us in the social media space, and we have a strategy, I believe we have a strategy, unlike many of the unlike a lot of the competitors that are out there, when you have an ally in the space, and they see you as a unique partner, it’s ways where you can, you know, we’ve been able to successfully get some marketing dollars, you know, from some of these brands, because they’re like, Well, these guys are doing things that are much different, you know, we can get, we can get technology, we can get products from any of our vendors at any time, you know, for making videos. But you can then take that to the next level. Once you’ve built some relationships, like you can actually get some MDF funds to do specific marketing types of campaigns to kind of stir up the marketplace and help create demand. And you can also do that for specific products that the manufacturer is trying to sell.
Rolando Rosas 27:51
Yeah. And you remind me of one of the manufacturers, actually a couple of them now, as they’re launching the product or developing it, they will call us to get our feedback. And that’s when you know you’ve really captured people’s attention at at that organization. Because one of the thing is, as a hardware manufacturer, no matter what type of hardware, you always want customer feedback so that you know you’re on the right track or the wrong track. And at that point where they’re reaching out to you and saying, Hey, I’m sending you a beta unit or an alpha unit, because we think you guys bring a unique perspective to what we’re doing. You know, you’ve got the trust of, of the right people, whether that’s through an engineering team or sales team, or even their marketing team for that matter. So building allies is something that can take time, but it pays dividends. Because what happens, Dave, some of those folks like yourself, they start off at one company, move to the next one, and you know who they call, Hey, Rolando, I’m over here at XYZ. I know we worked together really good when I was over at that other company, and what are you doing with this product? Is that on your radar screen, and that’s happened over and over and over again, because you’ve built that rapport and that trust, and people know, you’ve demonstrated a way to sell the product. And as a rep, like you’re taking Dave, you got a quota. Who do I need to talk to right now so I can help meet that quota.
Dave Kelly 29:21
You know, I, what I think was interesting about Global Teck worldwide is when you got your start, you came from one of these brands. And then you went off on your own you knew who the competition was. You already knew who they were. Yeah. You’re an athlete by nature. You love competition. You got into this because you knew that you could say crush them. But that is the it’s nice to jump into an arena. Like I mean, same thing with me. I was always working with different manufacturers. Now. I joined you here and that reason Our level and we come in with confidence because we know these guys, we already know their strategies, you know, and they haven’t even changed the strategies. But we know the competition, we know the landscape, we know where they’re kind of falling short, you know, I was telling a story earlier, there’s a partner of ours, who successful reseller in our space, they’re not online, they, you know, it’s not a social media play, close relationships. But they, they have to contact every order. Every customer that places an order that doesn’t include this adapter. They felt they pick up the phone, and they call that customer back to just to make sure that that wasn’t something that they overlooked. And when they told me that story, I said, How often are you doing that, and she’s like, 20 times a day and they’re talkers. They’re a competitor of ours, too. I know that I know how much time they’re spending just catching up shooting shit, you know, with clients, at the pick up the phone because of an adapter. If they don’t do that, they’ll have to spend more time on the back end. But they haven’t been able to find some automated way to include not just the adapter, but the right adapter for the application, their answer to their answer to that challenge is pick up the phone call them. And it’s a good, I’m glad they’re doing it. Because they’re competitive hours. And we don’t have to play that game.
Rolando Rosas 31:36
Yeah, using technology to your advantage. And that’s that’s been, you know, I use this story. I’ve told the story before, you know, one of the ways that we could have grown was to say, you know, we’re going to have our own warehouse, or we’re going to, you know, put a lot of manpower in that in the business or, you know, I can’t be everywhere, I’d love to go travel to every customer and every state, but physically, it’s a toll. And that was that’s the way that most business was being done. You know, I gotta go on site. And, you know, sell this to a customer. I thought, well, you know, what, if customers could see my I could see the products we offer on his way before Amazon. Now this was in the early days in 2002. And what if they could see the product, and they could buy it themselves. And there really was no Add to Cart, it was like, call us with this ID number. So we know what you want, and or vaccine vaccine your order. But the same holds true today. Customers are very savvy, and they have tools at their fingertips. So they can get at what they want in a way that makes sense to them. And it’s our job to figure out are we delivering to the customer what they want. And the moment you take your eye off the ball on that is the moment you start losing. And our one of our previous guests, Nick Gezzar who worked at Amazon mentioned that they actually use the word customer obsession. And as you grow, I would even say that that has to be part of the mix, is that you want to keep your ratings on Amazon Amazon rates every seller from like zero point who whoever would be zero crappy job all the way to 100. And you can easily check that by going to there’s a link on every product page that can link you to the seller, selling the product. And it will show you what they’re rated zero 1040 5090 100 For whatever reason, Amazon doesn’t show their own reading, because they do sell on behalf of brands, but they don’t show up at I would love to know what that number is. But you can actually see that in for us. We’ve maintained somewhere in the 90s most of our, our journey on Amazon. And it’s a really difficult thing to do Dave and you. You oversee the team that works with customers, and in our obsession as well over making sure a customer has what they want. They don’t some crap happens all the time. Right? There’s, there’s no perfect world and in making sure okay, hey, can we not have this happen again? Right, you know, we had a goof up on the label that the warehouse and the digital in that stuff happens. Okay, we put a process in place to make sure that doesn’t happen ever again. Because we don’t want nasty emails to come through and angry customers.
Dave Kelly 34:23
You know, there’s a, there’s a lot of transparency when you’re on when you’re selling on Amazon. I think you would call it sharp elbows. So our competitor, and we have competitors that are out there. I’m sure they’re checking us out hate competition and check us out too. And you’re not leveling up to us. You’re not in that 90% And there’s more transparency that’s coming out on Amazon, but you know, I find it I find it comical where some of these multinational brands themselves are below a 70% customer satisfaction rating.
Rolando Rosas 35:05
Well, I think like Nick told us, the former Amazon guy that we had on here a few weeks ago, he said, you know, for a lot of companies, it’s a sideshow, and ecommerce being ecommerce being a sideshow. So they don’t have the dedicated they don’t dedicate the resources that they would, or large account like a Walmart and Amazon is in that respect, and can be for especially multinational brands. And having come from that world, myself working at Altria, I can vouch that, yeah, we had a team of people over in Bentonville that would, all they would do is service that customer. So Amazon does require the resources. And Dave, one of the other things that no, if we’re talking about Amazon, I want to jump into the next aspect here. And that is the Amazon game, it is totally different than anything else. Anything else that you could do as a business. And you really need to dive in all in to really get that seven, eight figure and beyond. Because Amazon has its own rules, its own way, it’s got a unique set of clients when they shop on Amazon, both the business side of client as well as the consumer side. And understanding how all these levers work, because Amazon is like nothing else. So I would like and I’d like an Amazon to the game of Monopoly, but the digital version of that. In an apple, you have many pieces on the board. Even when you land on those pieces, you pay, you know, the whoever you’re competing against, and so on Amazon, it is a game of digital real estate, the more of the board, the more of the digital board you cover, the more money you can potentially make. So for example, so if you’re on page one, how can I get as high as possible on page one, not just organically, but with ads. And then can do I have other complementary products that can also be part of page one, when a customer is searching for my for the type of product that I sell, the more products that you have that are relevant for that keyword that can cover page one, the more likely you’re going to succeed because as Nick had mentioned to us 90%, Dave 90%, a staggering 90% of the time, people only stay on page one. So that 10% That action that happens beyond Page One is a tiny, tiny fraction. And with more and more ads covering up page one, it makes it harder to reach page one, solely on organic placement. So you have to be able to have that as your goal. If page one is not your goal, you’re not going to enjoy the success that you would have as like folks that are on page one, in the same goes for the digital real estate that’s on your listing. But on your listing, there’s every distraction, so the product page that has your product, that is a distraction, there’s ads above, there’s ads on the side, there’s ads, on the other side, there’s ads in the middle, there’s ads everywhere trying to pull your attention, cuz other customers reviewed similar products like yours. And that’s so the goal here on the product page, again, is understanding that’s the game. Okay, Amazon’s about that game, digital real estate, how can I cover as much page with more information about my product that I’m selling, rather than being squeezed into a really small section of just the images and description and so forth, a plus content, video, virtual bundles, there’s a lot of other things that you could do to stretch that page out. So it’s more of you versus more of your competitive ads. So that is the first key, I want you to understand. Amazon is all about digital real estate. Now, if we were just for a moment, Dave, let’s just depart for a second. If you’re brand and you’re listening to this, you can also take advantage of this digital real estate but you want allies. If you have allies, in the way of authorized partners that are on the platform selling on your behalf. Now you’re able to maybe blanket page one and two. So you’ve covered way more real estate than let’s say a competitive brand, that it’s already that’s already doing that that understands that. And that’s one of those keys if you’re a brand new you’re listening to this and you’re looking at maybe having authorized resellers. You have to really think about it well because programs for resellers by manufacturers and we’ve talked to a lot of many factors, they don’t always work out well, because the authorized program doesn’t incorporate some of the nuances that come with selling on Amazon. And some times those programs go south really quick. And we’ve been around long enough with some of these manufacturers to know that some programs have come and gone multiple times. Because of this, because of the way Amazon is and the way the Amazon game that works. So that’s, that’s what I want to say about that. David, anything you wanted to add about the digital real estate on on Amazon?
Dave Kelly 40:35
Can you imagine playing Monopoly? And every time you played it, the rules changed? Slightly. It changed slightly for the house.
Rolando Rosas 40:49
What? What are you talking about? Dave’s no such thing? What?
Dave Kelly 40:53
Yeah, well, that’s, you know, I agree with you. And, you know, you’ve taught me a lot about Amazon, it really is a game of like, they’re preying on buyers ADD, they put shiny, shiny objects all around, they want you to get lost. Before I was an Amazon seller with you, I was when I would shop onto Amazon, I didn’t understand I was I was just distracted, hey, squirrel, kind of moving around and always clicking. And I would kind of forget that I was originally looking for a great speakerphone to use on Microsoft Teams, you know, and I would just kind of get lost. And I wouldn’t even realize why I was suddenly looking at, you know, it’s vintage video games, it doesn’t matter. But the rules for the monopoly, those rules have not changed. They’ve given it a facelift over the years, they’ve tried to make bring it into the, you know, into this new world. But Amazon, those rules are constantly changing. If your ear is not to the ground, if you’re not paying attention to the changes, you are going to get lost. I think about at the height of the pandemic, we used to have weekly meetings. And it turned into every 24 hours every 22 hours, every 20 hours we have to meet because it was just daily changes. So not only is it a virtual game of monopoly in virtual real estate on page one, but those rules are forever changing.
Rolando Rosas 42:27
Yeah, there’s there is no, I mean, if you would have listened to a podcast from before the pandemic on what to do on Amazon, you’d have found yourself today probably in trouble, you could incentivize people to give you reviews, that is a major, major No, no, you cannot do that. You used to be able to get away with having inserts that said, you know, if you’re happy, give us a five star. If you’re not give us a call. And now Amazon does not like that. That’s a major major No, no, you used to be able to send communications directly to the customer in the way of calling them D, they gave you the phone number, right as you can call them, hey, customer XYZ. Here, it looks like you’re unhappy, and you give us a bad review. If I helped you, would you change that to a five star review? That’s also a major No, no. And you can’t really do that anymore. You used to be able to do that via email. So Amazon kept restricting. And then eventually they’re like, No, we don’t want you to communicate with customers. And that’s kind of changed recently. They’ve, they’ve put some caveats on how to do that. But things evolve very fast. So that, you know, you’re right, Dave, almost every week, we are getting some new notification about modifying something old, something, you can’t do something that’s now required. And it requires you to have your ear to the ground and be in the trenches, so to speak on what’s going on.
Dave Kelly 43:58
Yeah, 100% you know, and calling customers or I forgot that we used to get their actual telephone numbers back in the day. So if there was an issue with a product or a shipping address, whatever it might be, we don’t think we’re ever calling to try to get a review updated or things like that generally was a product you know, something with just a just to check on something like a shipping address. Now that’s kind of a common thing.
Rolando Rosas 44:25
That was the most common shipping address come through would not be the correct one or wouldn’t be validated in the shipping system.
Dave Kelly 44:33
I will tell you so we do customer satisfaction reviews. So we all of our calls are recorded and I was listening to some calls from our team out to customers. And when our team reaches out to customers to verify and address just something as simple as verifying an address. They appreciate it the customer is like I’ve never had anyone as an Amazon seller. or, or Amazon because sometimes they don’t realize their sellers. They think everything’s just coming from Jeff Bezos himself. But I hear this like, Wow, guys, like, thank you so much for calling because it’s important that I get this product for my team. And if we didn’t follow up with that, you know, we wouldn’t have caught it, it would have come back to our warehouse would have been a customer satisfaction issue, it could have resulted in a low score low rating. But when I’m listening to these calls, the customers appreciate it through and through, they appreciate it. But if we say the wrong thing, we will be held accountable for that, because the calls are being recorded by me. And I’m sure they have some sort of AI that’s listening to it, scanning it for keywords flowing through the system.
Rolando Rosas 45:46
Yeah. So So today, if you’re so for those folks that are not familiar with that, is that every order that will get sent to through the system through Amazon, when you place an order, and you hit Add to Cart and you go through, Amazon provides the address, along with a virtual telephone number that can reach the customer, not a real one, and it disappears after I think 30 days, that information is gone. So you don’t have even the ability to do that via telephone. So go ahead, Dave, I just wanted to provide color around that.
Dave Kelly 46:16
So when you’re calling people on those telephone lines, it’s it’s being viewed, it’s being monitored by Amazon. So just make sure that you’re playing by the rules of the game.
Rolando Rosas 46:30
Indeed, that that is correct. So that’s, you know, the game has changed. No more calling them direct, because they’re afraid you’re going to take them off the platform, and encourage them to sell on your own website, when I’m sure they have some cause and reason for that. But you know, we’d love it when people buy on Amazon, it just makes our life easier, as well as there’s, you know. Speaking of making your life easier, Dave, you know, the other thing that I think, for advanced sellers, again, this episodes for those advanced sellers is understanding that Amazon not is not just a monopoly, a digital monopoly, but there’s a playground, in order to play the the Monopoly game, like what we’re talking about, you have to go through this playground, I call it a playground of sorts. And to get into that playground, step number one, if you haven’t done this today, make sure you are signed up for Amazon’s Brand Registry. So you have a trademark no matter what it is. And that is what you use. on Amazon, you register that trademark, and that unlocks the kingdom that allows you to just walk in the door into the playground that Amazon has with a bunch of toys that are not available. So now if you’re a reseller, you’re like, Well, how do I do with that, Dave, you know, me, and I’m reselling bows and iPhones and all the rest. And you can have a way to do this. But you need to go and get your own brand trademark in order to be able to get into this playground because brand registry unlocks a bunch of keys that you will not have when you’re not registered, or part of this brand registry program. So now you can play with the big girls and the big boys that are in the playground.
Dave Kelly 48:19
So is that just a matter of having your your brand trademarked?
Rolando Rosas 48:22
Absolutely getting your brand trademarked will give you access. So there’s a there’s a whole process on doing that. And once you go through the process, and you’re approved on a through the brand registry folks, which are the folks that approve this the trademark, they will validate that it’s an actual real trademark with a patent office. And then once once you come out on in, they have something called the Amazon accelerator program. So whether if you have a lawyer or somebody else, or you don’t, you can go through the Amazon accelerator process in order to get that through Amazon for the brand registry. But once you have brand registry, you have the you have access to analytics, you have access to a whole suite of tools that weren’t available, so that you can see which products are poppin which keywords are the best? What Amazon recommends products, you know, for you to you know, have more of, and a bunch of other things, you’d be able to put a plus content on your own pages. Let me back up by saying that the thing with selling your own your own brand, which is kind of what we ended up pivoting to it it allowed us to do things that we normally couldn’t do. So again, the brand registry piece, we realized that there’s a gap in the accessories side of things. So we made our own. We went out and got them designed. We had them manufactured for us. And it really changed the game on how we sold on Amazon because it allowed us to compete in a way that All the other resellers we’re not competing. All the other resellers are basically selling the brand name, as is against standalone separate, we’re able to, you know, complement those sales. So even our own competitors, Dave will buy our own products with the products they sell. So although we’re selling to customers and businesses, some of those businesses, our own competitors, and they’ll end up buying those accessories to sell alongside their own product, and sometimes, which is comical to me, Amazon will recommend our accessories alongside in the frequently bought together piece, yep, with some of those other items. So it’s, it’s kind of a way to get your name your brand tied in to other products that you are reselling, or other competitors, or even the brand themselves that happens to where our accessories get frequently bought together with a listing from the manufacturer themselves. So once you get to a point where you can, you’re comfortable and you know, where the gaps in the market at that’s when you start making this move this private label move to what can I add here that’s missing, that we can make money on. But you only know that once you’re on the platform, and you’ve been selling for a while, because now you know, these are the best products. These are the slow ones. And these are the most likely where we’re going to have the most success.
Dave Kelly 51:27
You know, you know you’re doing something right. When your competitor is sourcing products from you, this happened to us many times, many times, so we think we have we think we’ve established a hole in the marketplace with some accessory pieces. We private label some of these accessories, we put them in bags that have our branding all over it now we love. We love kicking ass and we love that we love the competition, we welcome the competition. And you know, it’s a small enough world, if our competitors are watching this, you know exactly who I’m talking to listen, it’s just business. But there is nothing better than cashing a check
Speaker 1 52:17
that your competitor sent to you. That’s
Dave Kelly 52:22
great. That’s a great feeling. Taking your competitors money, there’s also nothing. What does it do, it also validates that what we think we’re doing right? That we are doing that, right? If we weren’t, they wouldn’t be sourcing it from us. And then the third piece that is just so satisfying is picturing your picture your competition, buying product from you, and having having to take it out of custom packaging that has your branding all over it multiple times, because they can’t send it to their customer with our branding on it. So as much as you know, I sometimes want to stop those orders. You’ve kind of taught you like Dave, what’s what would you rather do not take money from your competition or take money from your competition? So for those of you that have competed against us, and you’ve sourced from us, thank you, we appreciate it, we have to do more business with us.
Rolando Rosas 53:23
Oh, I love it. And failing in that happens, Dave, because you understand the gaps. Again, these are head hidden opportunities, if I were to call it that, these are gaps in the market in the product category that you’re in, in the industry, where you just like there’s a hard product to get. And it’s been that way for a long time. Or these are the this is the only game in town. These These, these two or three sellers are these two or three brands. And you understand that if you were a number three or number two guy that you eventually moved yourself into the number two position on page one, you could wow the sales would begin that comes with time that comes with that knowledge that comes also with understanding how these big mammoth multinationals operate. There’s gaps in all of them. And over the years, we you know, oh wow, what if we did that? And you take calculated risks, I would say dip your toe in that water. Go slow at first, take that calculated risk. See how it goes? Because once we started that track, we found Oh yeah, let’s go and launch another one. And another one and another one. And some have come out better than others. And and now you know we’re not the only game in town that selling this so it makes you become sharper over time because success on Amazon is emulated and copied many times over. And when when you start experiencing success in your volume starts growing, your sales starts growing, guaranteed, you’re gonna be on the radar screen for the manufacturers in a good way for the competition in a bad way. And so you can avoid that once you start growing. So you got to always be curious, like, you know, Dave, you’re talking about our accessories. But I don’t know if folks realize in the packaging for the accessories, we went green on our panel, and we’re like, alright, so everybody’s selling accessories. Now, big deal. What if we went with green packaging, sustainable compostable packaging, nobody’s doing that in our service.
Dave Kelly 55:36
So in respect to our green packaging, sustainable packaging, I was surprised to learn how individuals are talking about their reduction of carbon footprint and commuting into work. So if if folks are trying to reduce their carbon footprint, and they find a brand on Amazon, that is endorsing that with sustainable packaging, you know, that might be you know, another reason it’s value to them to do business with, to do business with with us that we’re doing that, that started to do that. Sorry, that was a that was a roundabout way to get right back to where we are.
Rolando Rosas 56:18
Well, you know, also that Dave, that the Amazon again, did, it’s all about digital estate. So if you have a green package, and it’s certified green, and we have some already that that already have the green packaging, or sustainable, I can’t remember the exact badge that bad shows up on the product listing itself and on the search. So again, it’s all about how can I take up just even a little bit more space. So now Amazon gives you a little bit more space in that search result, if you have green packaging. And so it’s it’s great for the environment. But the benefit of that is that you can also begin occupy more digital real estate. And for us, this was a distinguishing feature, on top of the fact that we were pro environment here, right. So that’s another example of of taking just something to the next level. Okay. We’re not the only game in town doing this anymore. How can we differentiate packaging? And I know of some folks like Norman Farrar, big props to Norman Farrar, he’s got his own podcast as well. He talks about how packaging can make huge, huge difference. And in the grand scheme of things, it’s a low cost way to increase your margin so your product can see more premium, or in the case of what we’re doing more green and sustainable. If you can do that, do it. It’s not fast. It’s not quick. It took us a while to really find the sources and all this other stuff, and work out the logistics. But once it’s done, it’s done. Then it’s just rinse, wash, repeat, or wash, rinse, repeat. Wash, rinse, repeat. So that’s that’s what I wanted to say about hidden opportunities. Look for them, they can pay off, double down on them. If you see them take off. They have anything else you wanted to add on hidden opportunity. All right, now let’s go into the last chapter here. Mastery of the Amazon game. This is for the wizards. Right, John? Hmm. So what are we talking about here with mastery of this game? Look, I’ve been selling online for 21 years. And Amazon by far is one of the most challenging things that I could have ever done in my life. No, we didn’t start off on Amazon. About a year number 10 or so we got into it. And really at the time, Dave, I remember that most of the manufacturers that we were reselling, were not on the platform. They looked at it as like poop, who who wants to sell their art because most of what we sell is in the business space. There are no real business customers on Amazon. And that was as far from the truth as possible. And today, as we record this, more businesses are on Amazon purchasing, procuring than ever before. And that’s also been shared with us from folks that work at Amazon and past a former Amazonians. And so as you are trying to master the game, the for us, this is now our own team. Building a team is important. There are folks that are successful with having a team of two or three, usually because they have their own private label. If you’re a brand and you’re listening to this and you’re like well I can build it. Why am I not successful with two or three the totally different story when you’re selling one p into Amazon, or your multinational brand? You know, I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a very well known cosmetic a brand that everybody would recognize I can’t reveal their name. But this multinational brand, had a lawyer and two other people that worked on the Amazon sales, so to speak toward the Amazon platform where there’s where their products are sold. And they were having a lot of problems with on authorized en hijackers. And I told them, for the level of sales for the exposure and for the in for the way the brand is the number of different product lines they have, it’s going to be very difficult for two people on one lawyer to keep up lawyer may because there’s send them cases that require them. But the other two folks that are on there and logistics, the the advertising the the the unauthorized, the hijackers that you said they’ve the constant change that is on Amazon today, this is allowed mama tomorrow, if not, then we’re going to allow it again, but only in the new way. And then there’s a new type of agreement, or your category has been changed. So these things are now required. All of that if you don’t have somebody that is on top of just the communication side, it will become totally difficult if you’re just checking in once a month, on what’s happening on Amazon, where you have a team that’s in the logistics, in the technology side of it of streamlining how you operate on Amazon, in the customer support side, in the marketing side, on the social media side, legal as well, all of these pieces become important to having success on the Amazon, if you’re going to do this long term, if you’re just looking for a couple years, and trying to bounce and are doing as a side hobby, don’t worry about it. You know, go with your go with you go with your flow, you know, a couple of a couple of years and out or just using as a side hustle. But if you are in this for the long game, seven, eight figures or beyond, start thinking about a team. And that is the scariest thing, Dave, when you have to hire that first employee, no matter where they’re located now, because of remote work you can hire are virtually from around the world. So that’s the most scary thing. But once you have that first and then go number 234. And you start building out your team of people, you start seeing some amazing things happening.
Dave Kelly 1:02:23
Right 100%. And what we have for our teams are very specific roles and responsibilities related around Amazon. We don’t have to people doing everything, thank goodness, thank goodness, I don’t think we’d have over a 90% customer satisfaction rating. If that were the case, we have a team of people doing the different aspects. So that the customer is taken care of, we’re playing by the rules were successful, we’re on page one or buying our ads. And it always blows me away that these partners that we work with, that are also selling on Amazon will have an account manager that has 19 other accounts plus Amazon. And that I won’t call out anyone by name, but Rolando. If we think about some of the relationships that we’ve had in the past that have had Amazon as one of their many roles and responsibilities. They’ve quit those organizations.
Rolando Rosas 1:03:33
Yep, yep, yep. Successfully, then.
Dave Kelly 1:03:36
So live DJ, these people want to bring value to the organizations that they work with. And if they are stretched too thin, they’re gonna walk and we’ve seen that.
Rolando Rosas 1:03:46
Three right now,it’s very easy to get overwhelmed Dave in on Amazon, even before us. There’s some fires that happen. And if you’re the only person responsible for putting out that fire, because sometimes, you know, internally here, it’s two or three people getting together collectively, you know, to figure something out, especially if it’s something more major or more involved. It makes it a little easier instead of like, you are the sole person responsible for responding, you know, the plan of action, you know, getting the follow up done on and then following through, especially gotta submit a case on something with Amazon because they’ve closed the case. So here we go. If you are sorry, give me a pro tip. Here comes a Pro tip. Pro tip, advanced selling on Amazon requires that you have a streamlined workflow. Keeping that together is difficult, but with the right technology that can be much easier. I’d highly recommend that if you are are, you know, scaling up, and you want to keep your support cases and your project management together, use software like Clickup, or something like that notion. There’s many other out there. But that’s going to help you stay on top of cases at Amazon. I know, we use ClickUp. And we had an episode where we talked a lot of details about this. So go check that episode out where we talk about technology stack and how to take advantage of that. But essentially, project-managed software like ClickUp can help you stay on top of these cases, because once you start selling like crazy, Dave, you’re opening up tickets every single day. I know that’s the case for us. Some good tickets, some bad some sideways, some are, you know, problems that happened, because Amazon changed something and all of a sudden, nobody got notified, or there’s no nothing in the community. Nobody put any record of it anywhere in you know, you got to keeping track of all these tickets. If you don’t have a system in place, like a ClickUp will become very messy. We did spreadsheets for the longest time. Eventually, I became too burdensome and messy to keep track of email, totally the wrong place to keep track of Amazon cases, you want something that’s built for something like that, click up does a really good job, especially because you can actually get virtual emails. So you can include in your support cases, that virtual email and every time there’s a piece of communication, it goes back into the project management under that task, you can look at it, you can date it, you can see what the communication was like because it is terrible on email. And they’ve The one thing I don’t like, is that happens way too often. Some cases will get closed without a proper resolution doesn’t happen all the time. But it happens enough where if you did not know the case was closed, and you go back a couple of days later, you’re like, Well, it’s been past 48 hours now I got to reopen the whole thing and hopefully get somebody that will understand what I’m talking about.
Dave Kelly 1:07:09
it’s nice to have someone on your team that’s dedicated to managing those cases off.
Rolando Rosas 1:07:15
That’s another pro tip within itself, I gotta tell you, if you’re an advanced seller, you want to have somebody on your team that their sole responsibility. And this is the case for us, I can tell you because this is what we do. We have somebody on our team, that is her sole job is to manage these tickets because as again, you grow Mo Money Mo Problems who said that was that was that Biggie or was that Puffy?
Rolando Rosas 1:07:41
I got to use that button. Finally, more money, more problems. And that’s so true in every category, Dave, that no matter if I talk to a seller that’s been wildly successful, and toys and, and supplements in electronics, the more you sell, the more you’re going to find that there’s issues you’re going to have to deal with. And so having a team in place, somebody that’s dedicated to the tickets and support issues on Amazon will serve you really well having that well documented as well. You’re gonna have times where if you don’t have stuff documented, Amazon’s gonna throw you a fire bomb in your lap. Everything’s gonna go on fire. And you don’t have things documented to back what you’re wet backup what you’re doing, because that happens. Sometimes the manufacturer want to rub you out, or a competitor wants to rub you up. If you don’t have a good documentation system, for what your activities are invoices and a whole bunch of other things and maybe your own communications and Amazon. You don’t have a lot of leg to stand on. And that also what I would also say is that make sure you have somebody that can counsel you legally on issues on Amazon because they will come up as you start selling more. firebombs get thrown your way by competitors by even the manufacturers a new rep comes in a new management team comes in ownership has a whole new view on Amazon. And if you don’t have your own stuff together, you don’t have documents on what you’ve been promised by either the manufacturer or things that you have in place. It’s just going to make it very difficult and then having that legal. Yeah, bad boy, and having the legal advice from a well-seasoned Amazon attorney goes a really long way when things when the bad boy hits the fan. It does happen when the bad boy hits the fan. It’s scary sometimes. Dave when you get some of these notifications because Amazon’s own bots went crazy. And it’s happened to many sellers, where I’m reminded of an example where Purina One was a if you had Purina and the word one in your title, then in your in the food category or pet food, your listings got blocked, was it or one. So it was using the word, one one in the title. And so Steven Pope who came on our podcast vouched for that, he said, because he’s an agency, he has, I don’t know, three, four or 500 clients, I don’t know remember the exact number. He said, he had several clients that had this problem, the bots went crazy. And so having the wherewithal to understand what to do when that happens in your listings go down because I didn’t do any there. The word one could be used in many instances. But Purina one who knows what happened with the bots that they went crazy. And many other things like that happen. Having somebody in your corner giving you the right legal advice on how to respond to that is something that is super valuable to him and has worked well for us, because things happen. And without the right advice. You just sometimes you want to crawl in a hole and be like, geez, I’m gonna throw in the towel. With the right advice you understand, you know what, this does not look right. This kind of committee or, you know, your rights as a seller or XYZ, or a brand can and can’t do the following to you. And if you don’t have that information at your fingertips or a phone call that you can make this somebody that understands that nuances that understands the BSA, the Amazon business agreement, then you don’t know you can get taken advantage of over and over and over again.
Dave Kelly 1:11:43
Yeah, sometimes sometimes, people will send out nasty grams from their attorneys. Just hoping the person just gets intimidated and scared on the other side and closes up shop. So legal legal advice is such an important part to being successful on Amazon.
Rolando Rosas 1:12:00
No doubt, no doubt. So I want to give big props to CJ. And over in the folks over at Amazon Seller Lawyer, you guys have done a bang up job. That’s what we use. If you want to go check them out, check out CJ give them a call, give him a call, he’ll help you out. If not, there’s probably several others you can find on the internet. But that’s just the guy we use, because he’s really good. The other piece, you know, Dave, mastery on Amazon also requires understanding that your competitors, we’re talking a little bit about this, but the competitors will copy you. So what do you do when that happens? You know, you have to stay sharp, you have to keep your eye on the ball, you have to follow the trends, things aren’t gonna stay the same. You know, when we started, a lot of the products that we were sold were sold mostly for phones that were on the desk. That’s totally changed. The products now that we that are sold to customers primarily are the wireless versions, for mobile. And for the wireless version for using it with a computer, totally different environment, it’s virtually the same ish kind of product, the trends have changed. And if you’re not on top of these type of customer preferences and trends, you can get left behind. And so that’s why I say get information from five years ago about the podcast telling you how to sell on Amazon is probably very dated, and staying current. And staying on top of the trends and preferences in your Amazon today gives you more information as long as you’re brand registered, gives you more information than they used to years ago about customer patterns on the products you sell. They tell you these are the keywords that are working. These are the keywords for your top products. This is your share of sales for a particular keyword. This is how many sales can be attributed to the ads that you’ve run all of these things put together. And I want to also give another shout-out to read to Java who came on the show and told us a lot about taking data from different places, which is I think the next frontier, taking data. So brand registry, brand analytics, Amazon ads, SEO, taking all of that data together to get patterns to get information on where the way you can place your bet your where you can place your bets. And that’s where I think the data is going. I hope we get to a point where the analytics can tell you this is the correlation between this and that. And this is the pattern that we’ve seen between the set of products and this price point. And then here’s your profitability that’s that’s going to come out if you play this right and I think that’s that’s gonna be I can’t wait for when that can happen, then you can kind of cobble that together. But if you could do it in AI in a matter of seconds, you can make decisions like this. And that’s really what you want on Amazon, you want to be able to make calculated smart decisions faster than your competition, because by the time they react, you’re already on version four of what you’re doing. They’re reacting to your version 1.2.
Dave Kelly 1:15:26
That’s true. Hey, Rolando, let me let me get your take on something here. So we were talking about how competitors can see you out there on the marketplace. What’s your take on this new thing that was rolled out by Amazon, late last month, late September 2023 with sales trends on particular products or listings, not an exact number, but it would say, we started, we started with our recent guests, Nick, we’re looking at tide. And we saw a few different listings, and one of them said 20,000 sold in the last 30 days. Yeah, what? It’s not, it hasn’t trickled down into the products that we’re selling yet. I’m assuming it will eventually.
Rolando Rosas 1:16:21
Yeah, there’s probably testing and non categories, different categories.
Dave Kelly 1:16:25
What’s your take on that?
Rolando Rosas 1:16:27
I think it’s interesting that they’re coming really close to telling you this product sold 100 units in the last hour. Right? That trying to trying to be careful to not give too much. But this is more information than we’ve ever had, as a seller on our reseller on the platform. And as a consumer, if you’re just putting the consumer side that kind of gives you some validation, some street cred, Oh, yeah. It’s like what Expedia used to do, where, you know, 100 people have looked at this booking, you know, in the last hour, or something like that, or 10 people booked in the last minute or whatever, you know, this flight is trying to give you validation that you’re going to make a good decision, because others have already done that. And so I don’t know where it’s gonna go. They could possibly say, you know, just the amount of sales, that data would be even more interesting, because Because flights are in some of these big booking.com and Expedia, they do some of this. So could they do it? Absolutely. They have the numbers to do it. They have the data to do it. I think it’s going to make things interesting for those inquisitive and curious sellers, resellers on the platform, that one understand, does this product really sell? And then what do I do about it? So what if it sells, can I find a way to creatively either compete against it, you can compete on price, or you bring unique proposition to the table where their product may be $10. In your 11 bucks, we’ve done this Dave, we sell a product, we sell an accessory that is double, double the price that you would find it elsewhere online. And that product keeps selling more every month in the hundreds, hundreds, somebody there think we’re up to 1000 units, somewhere there a month on this particular product. And it’s not the cheapest one, anywhere on Amazon. It’s not the cheapest product of the competitive type product, right? It’s not cheaper than what you’d find it on Google. But the fact that we’ve optimized the landing page, the product page, we’ve optimized the the look and feel of the product, we provide a ton of value with the videos, we’ve provided a bunch of really nice A plus content, which is the imagery on the product page. We’ve optimized for the search of it. All of these things lend itself to credibility, trust, all of the positive reviews that have come through it are very high Seller Rating in the 90s in the upper 90s. All of these things are certification, or minority owned certification, small business own certification, all of these are green packaging. All of these things work together. So that when somebody sees huh, this over here is 25. This other ones this other sellers only got one review of the similar product. That one review. No, they got 900 reviews. This one’s got one review, or zero reviews. Ouch. So when you look at that some people in the mind and that’s what I’ve learned. Some people will always buy the cheapest No matter what, I’ll take a chance. So only 12 bucks versus 25, I don’t care. But that’s not the entire market. And I guarantee you, Dave, if you go into another industry, whether it supplements, whether it’s food, whether it’s clothing, you’re gonna find people that are looking for that high, high in terms of price and comfort and trust, even though they’re paying a little bit more versus low price, and similar, but that level of trust hasn’t been built, because they don’t have the reviews, their product page doesn’t look very good. It looks like they only have one image, I’m surprised when I find products. And as a consumer on Amazon, one image, maybe two images, I want to know when to see it from different angles, do you have a video how to use it. And there’s still a lot of folks that are selling on Amazon, you want to up your game, you want to get more conversions, throw more images that are good quality, throw some video on that product page, guarantee, you’re going to convert a lot more than folks that have one or two images on their product page. So why do I say this? Yes, I think it’s going to be interesting. For those curious sellers that can use that information. Right?
Rolando Rosas 1:21:14
There’s it there. It’s there for the taking. It is valuable to us. Like we can look at our competitors and be like, Wow, they’re killing it. We’re not what are we doing wrong? Right? What do we need to do? Oh, look at that product page. Look at that they got a video Dave on how to use it. They actually answered some questions, you know, cuz customers can submit questions. That’s the other thing you can see. We don’t have any customer questions on ours. We haven’t answered any of the questions on ours. We’re too busy, we can’t answer your questions anymore. All of that, again, it can work in both directions, our competitors can do the same as when those product listings are enabled. And you can see the I’ve seen both sales velocity as well as a number of views, like this has been viewed 10,000 times in the last week or something like that. So I’m a little neutral, because it can it’s a double-edged sword. But for for the way we roll, it should be a positive because it just gives us better clarity on where we’re going.
Dave Kelly 1:22:24
Yeah, I agree. And not not really looking for validation so much from other resellers in our space. But when those numbers start coming up, I have this I have the sneaky suspicion that our competitor is going to be looking at us with a microscope trying to figure it out. Because we know how hard we work. We know how not hard our competitors are working. People copy us people copy whatever it happens.
Rolando Rosas 1:22:56
Smart, smart working rather than hard-working smart working.
Dave Kelly 1:23:01
So we’re working, very smart to be successful on Amazon. We have our mentors, but we’re not looking at our competitors for validation, I guess I would say we were happy with what we’re doing. And our competitors are probably looking at us more than we’re looking at them.
Rolando Rosas 1:23:27
Let them keep looking, we’re gonna guess that we’re gonna be on version four when they’re copying version 1.2. And that’s staying curious, Dave, staying curious. And I’ve heard this from three different guests that have been on the show that are super, super successful. They’ve all used that C word curious. Like, huh, that data you’re talking about? Why is it that that product sells 10,000 units in a month? Right, we’ve only sold two. Let’s check it out. And but it requires work. It requires having a team in place in a process. I know we call it the audit process where we go back regularly and take a look at what’s working. What’s not. We’ve heard that from another first, Nick, what was also mentioned that the other day on Amazon, you need to go back, take a look at the catalog. Where do you have holes, you don’t know if you don’t look. And this is why having a team is so critical. It’s difficult for you as one or two people to master everything and then execute on all these things because they do require lots of attention, human thinking like oh, what the number says this, let’s go get it. Here’s what we got to do. Here’s how we got to fix that. And so execution on the plan is the hardest part, putting the plan in place to do that. Somebody can give you some guidance, then going out and executing and putting a system in place so that this could be: wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat. There’s the magic sauce right They’re dope, Dave, I think we’ve given folks a lot to digest today, when it comes to advanced selling mastery of Amazon hidden secrets, or hidden opportunities, the Amazon game, and what makes you different, these are the things that are going to get you to seven, eight, and beyond. Or if you’re looking to sell your business, your Amazon business, this is what it’s going to take to excel and be in that small elite club of sellers that sell over 1 million here, there’s a small percentage, it’s only like two or 3% of all sellers on Amazon achieve a million dollars in sales or more. It’s just the way it is. The numbers are, it’s very hard to achieve that on the platform. So if you’ve been nerding out with us this entire time, and you’re still hanging in here to the end, you know, I want to I want to invite you to check out some other episodes where Dave and I talked about the technology stack that we were talking about earlier, where we go through different pieces of technology, and how those different technologies can help your business. And if you need assistance with picking out a warehouse, 3PL provider, integrating technology or streamlining your operations workflow, I invite you to give us a call or check us out. We’ll be glad to chat with you and let you know what would work for your operation if you’re trying to get to that next level. And, I just also want to put in a plug for our last guest Nick Gezzar, formerly of Amazon, he had a lot of good secrets and nuggets and talked about his time at Amazon and what it was like and what he saw worked well for sellers that are succeeding so I invite you to go check those episodes out. And Dave and I will see you the next time.
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