3 Ways Your Sellers are Costing You Sales on Amazon

As a manufacturer or wholesaler, the more retailers stocking your product the better, right?

Well no, not on Amazon. Let me show you three ways multiple sellers on your Amazon listings hurts your brand and your sales.

Race to the Bottom/MAP Breaking

It seems all those sellers lining up to sell your brand is a dream come true, until they start cutting prices to win sales off each other and breaking MAP in the process. This starts a race to the bottom devaluing your hard earned brand and hurting your bricks and mortar channels. In effect your brand is devouring itself from within.

Shoppers in bricks and mortar stores are increasingly using Amazon on their mobile phones to compare products before purchasing. If your sellers are breaking MAP, if your product or brand is presented poorly or if your product has poor reviews, you’re pushing your customers into the hands of competitors whose Amazon presence makes them appear more trustworthy.

Having lots of rogue sellers can be hard to manage and control, sometimes it’s difficult just figuring out who these sellers are. Having one trusted expert seller will give you back control over your Amazon presence and pricing.

Not Enough Profit to Care

Maximizing sales on Amazon is like keeping lots of plates spinning at the same time. There are over 25 different moving parts on a listing that need constant review and optimization to stay ahead of the competition. This takes considerable time, resources, and expertise.

Let’s say your product sells 1,000 units a month on Amazon, if you have 10 sellers they’re averaging 100 units each. If their profit margin is $10/unit, that leaves them $1,000 a month for managing the listing, paying for advertising, answering your customer queries, managing your bad reviews, and keeping upskilled whilst still making a profit. As you can see, there’s just not enough fat for sellers to commit the necessary resources to properly administer your Amazon presence. And besides, what seller wants to invest in a listing where 90% of any benefit goes to the 9 other sellers who are already scalping them on price?

This leaves you with sellers who just order your product, stick it on Amazon and hope it will sell. They’re not adding any value to your brand or listings which means you’re not growing your sales as fast as you should be. They just don’t have the bandwidth or motivation. Having one trusted expert seller means there’s now enough profit to properly administer and invest in your Amazon presence and they’ve got a 100% incentive to do so.

Inconsistent Customer Service

The third area to discuss is customer service. This takes several forms, answering customer questions, managing customer reviews, and servicing customers when things go wrong.

As stated above, whilst it may technically be in the sellers’ interest to do these things, if they are only getting 10% or less of the benefits and they’re not making a lot of profit in the first place, there’s little incentive to bother.

Also only the seller who sold the product can respond to the customer issue. So even if another seller wanted to make things right, if it wasn’t them who sold the product there’s not much they can do. If you have multiple sellers you need to get them all up to the same level of customer service you want your brand known for. Shoppers are judging your brand by how well you treat your customers on Amazon. If you have a seller who’s not following your brand values when responding to a customers need, this is very public on Amazon and is affecting your shoppers in bricks and mortar stores too.

Given Amazon’s powerful public reach, it's critical for brands to control their presence there. Having multiple sellers makes this difficult to do, limits your sales growth and reduces the incentive for sellers to invest in your Amazon presence.

Having one expert selling partner who works with you to manage all your Amazon needs is a key factor for success on today’s Amazon marketplace. Contact us if you’d like to learn more about how to better control your Amazon presence to increase your sales or if you’re interested in a FREE LISTING AUDIT showing you how your listing’s currently performing on Amazon.