10K Collective e-Commerce Podcast

10K Collective e-Commerce Podcast


How to create processes for Amazon sellers

September 19, 2019

Understanding how to grow a process system can create great opportunities to scale your business in the wider scheme of things.

Reed’s Background
Two decades in the oil patch - processes.

Reed’s first business pursuit was a quality inspection consultant to oil companies on both quality assurance and quality control (which are both different). They are distinct and misunderstood.

Was also tasked with the investigation of deadly industry failures on how grow a process system.

They all went back to one thing which is they failed to follow processes.

Or people followed the procedures correctly but there was a critical error in the processes. A critical task often lacked a checklist.

In the wider scheme of things, rules had to be followed. The only way that could happen was extreme systemisation.

Checklist vs. Procedures vs. Processes - what is the difference? Reed uses them interchangeably. It’s all about building a system.

It all leads to doing things efficiently.
Reed’s Amazon business
In 2014 Reed was looking for a way to get out of the oil patch.

Took lots of courses and found himself in the oil patch with nothing to do so built his business.

Launched first Private Label brand - took off immediately - but ran into issues.

Grew brand in 10 months to $2M in sales but had no processes! So it was a mess.

Ended up hiring a team of smart people to create SOPs. Now the company has well over 700 processes.

Cost about $100,000 to create and refine those processes.

The company came out with a world-class e-commerce business.

Now they can delegate mundane and competitive tasks with minimum expense and time.
Why processes are critical
Downsides can be huge:

Frustrated staff
Missed deadlines
Missed opportunities
Non-compliance with TOS
Amazon Account Suspension!
Ultimately it’s a cost
Also, there is a cost to your personal time

Upsides

It allowed Reed to branch out from pure e-commerce selling
Has allowed him to help 100s of Amazon sellers to launch businesses
It must have a solid foundation
Reed could develop software programmes based on spreadsheets - four software companies
Ceiling vs. Potential

 

There’s a $1m ceiling classically without a set of clear processes.

The second you have the system in place, it opens things up.

You can’t grow past $1m without processes.

If you want to outsource, you have to have processes in place. So you can hire people.

Most conversations with Amazon sellers show that the same issue crops up each time:

“What is truly holding your business back?”

The answer is: most of their time is taken up exclusively by mundane tasks.

The rest of the business world is not waiting for you to grow.
“Ecomprocess”
Earlier in 2018, they started this.

took all processes - had over 700 processes and they are selling them.

99% of amazon daily procedures never change!

Reed has well over 700 Processes, broken into small chunks.