Prepare for Success on Amazon

Part 4 of 5 – This is the fourth part of a multi-step guide on how to create a successful strategy on Amazon. In this section, we’ll go through how to build a team and what tools you might need. This segment contains crucial information for anyone looking to achieve success on Amazon.

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How to Work as a Team to Succeed on Amazon

There are as many answers to this question as there are successful companies. I’ve already emphasized in previous posts that the team, especially decision-makers, must have a solid understanding of Amazon's system. But there’s much more that operational teams need to grasp, especially international teams selling in multiple regions on Amazon, or teams with the ambition to do so in the future. Teams must be able to work together towards common goals, understand past decisions, and make choices that benefit overall sales, not just a specific team.

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Every company has different needs, but these are the most common roles that need to be covered. Either in-house or with the help of consultants, agencies, and/or freelancers. Often, one person covers multiple roles, but the larger the company, the more specialized the roles become.

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Manager

A manager's role has two primary tasks. First and foremost, the manager must be able to assemble and lead a team. This person should also be the one developing strategy and goals. The larger the team, the more input this person usually gets from team members. It should be someone with a solid knowledge of Amazon’s system and experience in selling on the platform.

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Admin

An admin’s role is to have an overarching understanding of everything happening on Amazon's platform. This includes everything from ads to support issues. If someone else on the team needs help with something or needs specific data, the admin should be able to assist. This person also usually oversees finances, such as sales volumes, costs, and margins.

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Copywriter (SEO)

All products need product descriptions, and someone has to write them, ensuring they’re also SEO-optimized for Amazon. It’s not uncommon for this role to be brought in as needed since language and SEO must be tailored to each country the company sells in.

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Advertising Manager

As you know by now, ads are an incredibly important tool on Amazon. This role is also often handled by someone outside the company. The person in charge should have a solid understanding of the overall goals, optimization strategies, and data management. You can read more about Amazon advertising here.

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Support

Every company needs someone responsible for support. Amazon has a system that handles much of the support required, but product-specific and brand-specific questions and complaints must be handled by the seller. This is a very important role that is often underestimated. Don’t forget that Amazon customers leave reviews on their purchased products, and customer service often influences these ratings.

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Inventory Manager

To sell products, there obviously need to be products ready to ship to customers. Amazon also has several rules regarding packaging and inventory levels that must be followed. The inventory manager must be responsible for this and plan shipping quantities together with the admin.

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Researcher

This role is a bit more vague than the others mentioned, but still important. Someone needs to research which products are likely to sell well, what comments customers leave on the products, what market trends are expected, etc. The primary market analysis is especially crucial as it forms the foundation for setting expectations and goals. The larger the company and the more aggressive the strategies, the greater the need for this role with recurring tasks and commitments.

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Image and Design Manager

In addition to text, product pages contain images, and often graphics and videos as well. These have an extremely significant impact on conversion rates and are a big piece of the overall strategy. On Amazon, there are also other design choices to be made, such as the layout of product pages and similar aspects. This role is particularly important for companies that want to highlight their brand’s feel through Amazon’s various elements.

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Prepare for Success - Set Up Systems for Collaboration

Considering there are so many different tasks to manage on Amazon and that the various decisions your company makes affect each other's results, it’s wise to set up systems for how you work within the company. If you’re running the business alone, it’s obviously simpler, but even then, it’s good to set up similar systems. This will make it easier for you to keep track of everything. Similarly, if you bring more people into your team in the future, you’ll already have everything in place. Below, I’ve listed some of the tools I recommend for working with teams, but of course, it’s a matter of preference, and there are many alternatives to these tools.

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Notion

At SellWave, we use Notion to document our own internal workflows and notes from projects and assignments. Let’s say an Amazon account we manage encounters a problem we haven’t seen before. We solve the problem and note down how we did it for future similar issues. If it’s something we need to handle more often, like ad optimization or shipping registration, we write more detailed guides for this in Notion. Notion is an incredibly modular system, and many of the tools I mention below also have Notion alternatives. In other words, you can go far with Notion. Plus, it’s free for small teams, and you can sign up here.

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Monday

Monday is a very useful Project Management tool. It makes it easy for you and your team to keep track of various projects, goals, and much more. At SellWave, we use it for all the different Amazon accounts we manage. We also use it to keep track of hiring processes and similar tasks. It’s suitable for all teams working with Amazon, but perhaps especially for larger teams selling in multiple regions or with many products. If you’re a smaller team, I’d advise using Notion for this as well. Monday’s price starts at $40/month.

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Google Drive

Perhaps not as uncommon a tool as the ones above, but just as important. With Drive, you can easily create all the documents you need with product data, product descriptions, sales figures, images, etc. It’s easy to set up a good and clear structure, and your entire team gets access to whatever they need, wherever they are. A tip is to use the Desktop app to easily work with all files without your web browser. You can find Google Drive here.

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Slack

A great tool for quick and efficient communication. Slack is a chat tool that allows small and large teams to collaborate. You can create many different chat rooms, which is perfect when you have multiple teams or smaller projects running simultaneously. Additionally, you can easily integrate Notion, Monday, and Google Drive with Slack. Slack has a free version that’s more than enough for smaller teams. You can sign up for Slack here.

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Collaboration Between Different Regions

Often when I talk to large companies selling on Amazon, they describe issues with how Amazon's system dictates how they can list products. At the same time, they say their different teams have no contact and certainly don’t collaborate. The problem is precisely that the teams don’t collaborate. On Amazon’s platform, what you do on Amazon.com (USA) can affect how product pages function or appear on Amazon.de (Germany). This is just one of several examples of why teams must collaborate (or manage Amazon through a global team).

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It’s simply not enough for a project manager or manager to be in contact with all teams; they must also be able to communicate with each other. The more transparency, the better.

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In summary, there are many aspects to consider when aiming for success on Amazon. Therefore, it’s essential to decide on the roles, tools, and systems that should exist and be used within your company’s team(s). That’s all for now! In the next installment, we’ll tie everything together on how to create a successful strategy on Amazon.

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