Starting an Amazon business without a clear long-term plan can be one of the triggers of why your business does not develop the way you’d like. Most of the time, sellers don’t have business plans simply because they’re lacking the necessary knowledge of how important it is and, finally, do not know how to prepare one. This time Amazon business expert Jérôme de Guigné from e-COMAS.com will explain how having a sustainable business plan is impacts your long-term business goals.
e-Comas’s team of experts run multiple accounts on Amazon to give the keys to faster and greater success. If you are frustrated with Amazon and aren’t getting the results you expected, this team of consultants offers personal and business coaching, online training on various topics, including brand registration, account strategy, advertising, go-to-market, pricing strategy and many more. Besides that, e-Comas provides fulfillment services as well.
Having a plan for Amazon business: Why so important?
When you want to build a brand and distribution, first you make a commercial plan, then you need to continue with planning other parts of your business as the process goes on. Jérôme found out that a lot of big companies have started out on Amazon without any specific plan. The problem is, if you don’t such a plan, you don’t know what’s your business implication is in terms of pricing, distributors, and so on. Then you’ll quickly realize how many troubles it can cause.
Talking from his own experience, Jérôme says they often get calls from clients claiming they don’t know what’s happening with their businesses. A lot of big companies that start selling on Amazon have an international team to handle so it’s crucial to have strong management that can plan and control every step. Before you start selling on Amazon, think of a strategy you are going to implement and make sure you have a clear roadmap. Jérôme points out that the more traditional the company is, the more complicated it might be to go on Amazon, so you might want to keep that in mind.
Having a proper business plan can also help you with finding what gaps do you have in your business – do your team members or departments communicate with each other, is your management always up to date? When you decide to step into Amazon, those things reveal themselves and show you if you are ready to make it.
Set clear goals first
When starting out on Amazon, a lot of people focus on decreasing their prices. In this case, Jérôme advises putting a higher price, generating value and then slightly decrease the price. Otherwise, you don’t have enough to invest in other business parts, like marketing or advertising. So ask yourself – are you sure of what you want to achieve on Amazon? Only when you get the answer, you can create the business model and make sure it’s sustainable in the long term.
If the situation happens where clients reach out to Jérôme without clear goals, first thing they do together is going through different kinds of accounts, how the pricing mechanism on Amazon works and so on just to get a general idea and make sure they are on the same page. Only then they’d start discussing the operational part. The smaller the company, the easier it is to set up a plan since it takes less time to make decisions. As the process goes on, their clients always can reach them if the plan does not seem to be working.
Jérôme and e-Comas team are experienced in working with different clients from all around the world – Japan, Europe, the USA, UK. He says working with the US clients it’s easiest since it’s a very huge marketplace, whereas working with European clients can get much more challenging because of cultural differences and different attitudes.
However, either you are the US or European based seller, Jérôme shares one important tip – your pricing strategy will make the biggest impact. So make sure your business model works, go as high as possible with your pricing and reserve money to invest in quality content, advertising and other aspects of your business. Make sure you also provide value to your clients – what else can be more important than a happy client?
You can get in touch with Jérôme on LinkedIn or go directly to e-Comas website and drop a message there!
About Jérôme:
With 20 years of sales and international distribution experience in Europe, Asia, and North America, Jérôme comes with a lot of experience in brand management and distribution. He experienced the challenges of handling and expanding a brand from a no-name to a market leader – growing online sales without hurting but improving offline sales, making it a successful mix for the company.
