Sermondo is a global directory platform on which Amazon sellers find service providers they need in order to manage and grow their Amazon business – all around the world. Sellers can search, compare and rate companies from over 20 service categories, making it the easiest and most transparent way of choosing the right service providers to work with.
Sermondo is presented by Kristina.
List of features covered in this video:
00:25 What is Sermondo and how does it help Amazon sellers?
03:04 Interface overview
03:42 Photography section
08:30 Adding a Job list feature
10:18 Private Label overview
13:05 Contact Sermondo
13:44 Pricing structure
Transcript – Walk-through of Sermondo
[00:00] Augustas: Welcome back to Demo Mondays. This is the video series where we talk to different Amazon seller software providers, but this time we will show you Sermondo, which is the directory for Amazon Seller Services.
[00:19] Augustas: And Sermondo is presented by Kristina.
[00:21] Augustas: Hello, Kristina.
[00:23] Kristina: Hi Augustas, great to be here.
[00:25] Augustas: So please tell us what is Sermondo and how does it help Amazon sellers?
[00:31] Kristina: So in one sentence, sermondo is a global directory platform for service providers that specialize in providing services to Amazon sellers all around the world. And it helps Amazon sellers by creating a transparent and very broad overview of all the service providers that are in space.
[00:53] Augustas: So it’s designed for a lot of different sellers, beginners and the established sellers. Right?
[01:01] Kristina: Exactly. It doesn’t matter if you’re a small private label brand or a bigger brand, it doesn’t matter if you’re a seller or a vendor. There are some services that everyone needs, such as product photographer, for example, frightful waters or fulfillment centers. So it’s basically for every type of Amazon seller.
[01:19] Augustas: Could you tell us a story? How was it created and why do you think it’s useful?
[01:25] Kristina: So Tobias who is the founder of Sermondo was an Amazon seller himself for a couple of years here in Germany and he was pretty successfully selling on Amazon and he had struggled finding the right companies to work with. For example, one time he contracted a fulfillment center, here in Germany they promised him to deliver his goods within 2-3 working days. And then in the end it took him 3-4 weeks. And I think every Amazon seller knows how devastating it is. If you run out of inventory and you can’t sell your products anymore, it affects your ranking, it affects your seller performance. So his sales went down, he lost thousands of euros in sales, and that’s when he thought, why can I find a good fulfillment center somewhere online, because where he got the recommendation was in one of the Facebook groups. I’m pretty sure a lot of you engage in those Facebook groups. But the problem there is if you ask for a recommendation, a lot of times the people that recommend you companies are financially involved with them or even work there, sometimes even the founders recommend themselves. So it’s not really transparent. So we really wanted to create a system where you get an independent reviews from other sellers and then can base your decision whom to work with on facts rather than some people that get some benefits out of the recommendations.
[02:49] Augustas: Perfect. So let’s jump into the user interface and see how does it work and I think this video is also useful for service providers who want to see how they can probably submit the application to Sermondo as well. Right?
[03:04] Kristina: Yeah, definitely. Basically everyone can be featured on our website. I will share my screen with you. So this is the main interface, this is everything you will see when you type in Sermondo.com , so you come to the website, you can directly see what our website is about. It’s about finding the best service providers for your Amazon business. And here we have a life search, which I will demonstrate later and the 6 categories at the moment. So let’s say you’re looking for a product photographer.
[03:42] Kristina: Then you can scroll down and you see all the categories that we feature on our website. You basically feature any service provider you may need in order to grow your business. It doesn’t matter if it’s a logistics company or graphic designers are photographers such in our case. So let’s just jump right in and the photography section. Then you will have this amazing feature where you can see a huge map on which you can see where the service providers are located. For example, if you want your products to be photographed somewhere in the U.S, you can directly see, here are a couple you can see in which states they’re in. So it might be better to choose a service provider that is close to you in some cases, because then you don’t have to ship your products all around the world. So let’s say you live here in Houston and I can see there’s a photography studio called Alexander modeling and has five stars. I just click on it and then I go to the listing.
[04:49] Kristina: And the listing is built as you can see the name of the company, their overall rating and their description. And the description of the service providers include which kind of services they offer. Sometimes they include the most frequent questions that they get asked. Like here, how does the process typically work. And they can add gallery pictures where they can really prove that they are good and what they’re doing. So you can see their recent work, which they did for other clients, they also offer videography. So they included a youtube video to their channel. So you can also check that out and see if you like it. Here’s the location again, here are the social links. So they’re only on Facebook and a contact form. So if you say, Oh yeah, I’m really interested in that, and they offer exactly the services that I need, there’s no need that you try to find out how to contact them.
[05:50] Kristina: You don’t have to research the email address for 5 minutes. You just click on the content form, enter your name, your email address and what you want to ask them and then you click send and it lands directly in their inbox. Then I want to show you what you can do so you can leave a review if you use their services before it switches to this section here. Then you can see previous reviews from other sellers that seem to be pretty satisfied with the service one even included her product photos that were taken by Alexander modeling. Then you can share the listing if you want to, if you’re still happy with it that you want to share with your friends. You can definitely do that. You can also bookmark the listing, but this only applies to sellers that are locked in. So that registered a free user account, which takes 20 seconds to create and then you can bookmark the listing and then you have them in your profile on bookmark listings.
[06:51] Kristina: So if you narrow it down to 3 product photographers, you can again look at them in the end and then decide, here’s the link to the website. If you’re the owner of the listing, if someone else put up your company and you’re like, I didn’t do that. You can also claim the listing. This is more for the service provider part and you can also report it. So if they include hateful texts or inappropriate pictures, you can report the listing and then we will take care of that. So if you want to go back, you can either just click back or you type in here photography and you will be back on that side. And I’ve featured that I personally really like is that you can combine the category search with the live search. So if you’re already in photography and you’re looking for lifestyle photos you put in lifestyle here and that it narrows it down to the listings where product photographers also mentioned that they offer lifestyle photography. And if you already have a certain service provider in mind and you just want to see how others think their services are, let’s say, I don’t really want to advertise some certain service providers yet, I just use it for exemplary reasons. So for example, I read somewhere about speedy pro and I’m like, I wonder how are their services, then you can just go straight to the listing and then reviews from other sellers.
[08:30] Kristina: Yeah. And what we also offer, this is a very cool feature that we recently launched. If you say, okay, I really don’t want to have to hassle of browsing through the listings myself and compare everything. And then it takes so much time. You can also just add a job list in here. This is also again only applicable to Amazon sellers that registered an account before, which again takes 20 seconds. So adding a job listing means that, let’s stick to the photography example. You’re looking for a product photography. So you choose a category, you give that a title, maybe 3 basic, 2 lifestyle photos because this is what you need for your listing. And then you just type in your requirements. You can also maybe tease your product a little bit. So already tell a little about from which category it is.
[09:35] Kristina: So as much information as you give when posting your job listing, and the more likely it is that you get really 100% matching applications from service providers. So then you try to prove that you’re not a robot. Sometimes there’s this little capture which I always fail at and then you can submit it and then automatically that will be an email sent to all product photographers listed on Sermondo with your job listing. And if they can meet your requirements, they will apply to you directly and tell you their rates, their prices, everything you need to know. And then you will hopefully get a good deal.
[10:18] Kristina: Apart from that, we really try to educate our users. So that’s why we decided to also include a blog on our website. We have several categories, for example let’s go to private label where you can find blog posts that are addressed to private label sellers. You can also stick to the general overview. We publish guides on regular, on how you can really find a perfect service providers for your business. For example, if you’re looking for, let’s say a fulfillment center, we published a guide on how you can tell if a fulfillment center is really good, how the process looks like of working with the fulfillment center, which questions you should ask when you go to work with them. So we really try to give support here. And we also did something unique. We recently launched a podcast that’s called Sermondo talks, where service providers that elicit on our website are interviewed by me.
[11:31] Kristina: I will ask them questions about the company but also about their personal lives so the Amazon sellers can get to know them better so they know who’s behind the firm. For example, we did an interview with Kevin King where as questions about this course, if you’re not sure which course you want to buy, this is a great way of finding out if his course is suitable for you or not. And you can also learn a little bit about Kevin King as a person and if that’s the guy that you want to give money to. So yes, and the main benefit of course, as I said before for Amazon sellers is really that you have this transparency, especially when you plan on selling into other markets, not only your homework, it makes it incredibly easy to find service providers in the market that you’re aiming to sell your products in.
[12:23] Kristina: And for example, if you’re a German seller, you want to sell to the U.S Market and you just need locals for your SEO or your PPC campaigns, then there’s no easier way to find them than going on Sermondo and just browsing through the math. And of course there’s also huge benefits for service providers because the service providers get the chance to present their services to Amazon sellers. Worldwide, they get social proof. They can gain reviews by Amazon sellers that use their services so they can really build trust with the audience and get exposure for the company and what they offer. That’s basically what Sermondo is.
[13:05] Augustas: Can you please tell us how sevice providers can contact you if they have some questions, maybe they also have some doubts about their listing. How can they present themselves in a better way and so on.
[13:18] Kristina: Simply issue a message to kristina@sermondo.com or you can also find me on linkedin. I’m always happy to help. And if you go for a listing and you’re not sure whether it will perform well or not, you can also always reach out, I’m more than happy to help with listing optimization on sermondo.com
[13:38] Augustas: Can you please tell us if there is any fee involved if someone wants to present their listing on your website?
[13:44] Kristina: So our pricing structure looks like this for Amazon sellers. Sermondo is completely free of charge. They don’t have to subscribe to anything. There are no commission fees on any deals that are made through Sermondo for service providers that want to be featured on Sermondo. There is a small subscription fee involved for the standard listing, which is a little below $10 a month. But for us it doesn’t matter if you get one lead per month or a hundred leads per month through Sermondo, it will always just be those $9.97. So we don’t want to grab a piece of your cake. We don’t charge commission fees or any other fees. This is really the only thing that you need to pay per month.
[14:29] Augustas: It acts more like a filter to to attract serious business owners probably.
[14:36] Kristina: Yes it does. So we don’t have any fake listings on our website, and every listing that goes up is also checked by me if the information is correct and everything.
[14:50] Augustas: Perfect. Thank very much, people will find links to Sermondo below this video and good luck in your business and let’s make Sermondo grow. Bye Bye.
[14:58] Kristina: Thank you, Augustas. Bye Bye.
