Top Ways To Maximize Your Amazon Business in 2024 with Expert Rebecca Thomas

Prepare to elevate your Amazon acumen as we bring you a treasure trove of insights from Rebecca Thomas, the savvy VP of Operations at Upper Echelon Products. Discover the transformative strategies that can amplify your cart value and learn about the anticipated, more granular Amazon reporting tools on the horizon. Our conversation with Rebecca traverses the dynamic landscape of Amazon's seller programs, illuminating the Seller Initiated Packaging (SIP) program's potential to optimize customer satisfaction and seller efficiency. With her guidance, you'll grasp how to adeptly manage customer returns and master the art of optimizing refund tools to maintain the health of your account.

Embark on a journey into the core of Amazon's inventory reimbursement process with us. We'll show you the ropes on how to ensure your business isn't leaking revenue due to lost or damaged goods within Amazon's logistical labyrinth. Rebecca reveals the intricacies behind the FBA fees and the critical need for a comprehensive reimbursement strategy that safeguards your bottom line. Moreover, our discussion uncovers the untapped financial possibilities many sellers overlook; Rebecca demonstrates how an effective in-house system trumps multiple external providers and how services like ExecuSeller can revolutionize your approach to financial audits.

Closing the loop on what it takes to thrive in the e-commerce world, Rebecca imparts the blend of audacity and strategic foresight needed for entrepreneurial success. Embrace the wisdom of 'yes and right' to navigate your business ventures with confidence, and consider the positive impact of fear as a motivating force. For those seeking to refine their e-commerce endeavors, Rebecca's deep well of expertise offers a reservoir of invaluable insights to draw from. Her stories and professional triumphs shared in this episode are sure to inspire and propel you towards maximizing your Amazon business's potential.

How can the guests contact?  website, email, social?

https://execuseller.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-thomas101/

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The Digital Revolution Podcast
Welcome to The Digital Revolution Podcast, where marketing experts share their expertise.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your host serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast. On today's episode, we have the pleasure of speaking with Rebecca Thomas, who is the VP of Operations at Upper Echelon Products. Rebecca has been in the e-commerce industry for over a decade and is an expert in navigating the Amazon landscape. Over the last year, I have been lucky enough to be in a private mastermind with Rebecca and she has been an absolute wealth of knowledge when it comes to Amazon strategy, marketing and operational efficiencies. On today's episode, we are going to be discussing the Amazon landscape as well as the importance of a reliable refund tool when selling on Amazon. Welcome to the show, rebecca.

Speaker 3: 1:02

Awesome. Thanks, david, and happy to be here, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 1:04

so, to start things off, can you share with our listeners a little bit about your background and your path to becoming an expert in selling on Amazon?

Speaker 3: 1:12

Yeah, absolutely so. I first started back in 2015, actually with the now, who is a top 100 seller on Amazon. At the time we launched with just one product, right, just kind of get into the weeds there. I had started more on the customer service side, so responding to buyer seller messages, making sure all those C stats were nice and high. And then, as I kind of progressed through, my role here proceeded to get more involved in terms of marketing, pdp, product detail page, brand awareness. Even our transparency side moved into logistics for a little bit, so understanding kind of inbound, outbound shipments thereof, fba, fbm as well as rolling into now more operational role. Specifically we tied to business operations and under my jurisdiction would be anything related to our account team, so any of our listing details, account health, etc. As well as our reimbursements offering as well.

Speaker 4: 2:05

Awesome. Well, welcome to the show, rebecca. We're excited to have you on and definitely excited to dig into some golden nuggets here to share with the audience. And so you've been selling on Amazon for a very long time, and so every year, amazon decided you know, everything is changing. It always changes in e-commerce, and so Amazon is no different, and so can you speak to maybe some of the some of the major changes that you're seeing in 2024 and like how can sellers adapt?

Speaker 3: 2:30

Yeah, absolutely. So I know one of the things as of today and you know, even this last couple of days that I've seen is even tying into virtual bundles. Interesting enough, there I am seeing some A-B testing going on in terms of the placement of where those virtual bundles live. So if you're on your mobile app which is where most customers are going to find us, right If you're on your mobile app, you're going to see the title, you're going to see the variations start coming through, but then right underneath the variations is now the placement of your bundles and that's right above your buy box. So it's kind of a nicer workflow and I hope that I started to see a little more lift there when it comes to all things virtual bundles, because I'd say in a current scenario they're a little hard to find on the customer side. But have a lot of opportunity there, right?

Speaker 4: 3:09

For sure, and also it's always good for a cart value. We use virtual bundles to try to, you know, incentivize more products in one purchase and so having it sounds like they. I haven't noticed it myself, but it sounds like they moved it up quite a bit. And on the yeah, they did.

Speaker 3: 3:25

And you know, just in general I'd say, as we know they send you, you can kind of set up an email right to get that product bundle sales report so you can kind of find that one to one ratio of what ACEs are in there and the sales volume thereof. But you know, it's having it more front and transparent. I'm hoping that later down their pipeline the Amazon is going to give it more proof reporting, because if you miss that URL you don't have that data anymore, and neither do they, unfortunately. So I'm hoping that they to see a lot more lift and traction with those virtual bundles, because that's even a good pipeline.

Speaker 3: 3:55

For you know, what physical bundles do you want to do down the road? Right, it's a good way to start testing out. Hey, I have these two products. I think they go well together. Let me, you know, have some real estate and see you know how the customers feel about having that increase of ad to cart right and just overall order value. You know, I'm hoping that with this placement and hopefully you know some improved reporting from Amazon side, that you're able to say, hey, you know, bundling is now worthy to be upgraded from virtual to physical.

Speaker 2: 4:22

Absolutely. I think that's a really good point. We rolled out virtual bundles probably a year or two ago and they mostly just clog up our manage inventory tab, so it's going to be helpful to. I'm fairly involved in inventory and, like that, it managed inventory to look nice, nice and tidy and virtual bundles really don't help with that. So, yeah, really looking forward to seeing how that helps out sellers on the Amazon side of things. So one thing that I've and, as I mentioned in the intro, have had the pleasure of being in a private mastermind with you One thing I've always really admired is you have your finger on the pulse of like big changes on Amazon, and so I'm curious what are their newsletters that you're subscribing to? Is there? Where are you seeing all of this information to stay as current as you are?

Speaker 3: 5:08

Yeah. So that's a great question and I would say that you know, I personally really love LinkedIn and when you have the right connections and the right people that you're discussing with and you're liking their posts and you know having those interactions, you're getting a plethora of knowledge, I might even say. On LinkedIn, you will see and find Amazon customer success managers there. Follow them, connect with them right, because they're trying to also, you know, represent themselves, represent Amazon with all these news and updates. I know a couple of times now I've seen where, for example, there was an update in terms of the ability to reduce customer returns. I don't know if you've seen that yet, no, but I want to talk about it.

Speaker 3: 5:49

Well, okay, we'll get more in the weeds on that here in a minute, but it's being able to say, hey, this is a beta or a launch that is coming, but I don't see it on my side yet. So then I'm able to run over to our account manager, run over to CSU seller support, right, be able to say, hey, when can I get this, how can I get this on my account right, and kind of get that information at an expedited rate.

Speaker 2: 6:09

That's really helpful and that's something like, without a doubt, every mastermind we've had. You're always bringing new information to the table. That's super helpful to all of the people on the call and so, yeah, so you mentioned returns pro tip as it relates to returns and I think that's going to be especially important in 2024, as we are now going to be penalized turn rates, and so can you talk about, maybe, what the landscape is going to look like for returns and what your pro tip is.

Speaker 3: 6:36

Yeah, absolutely. So. We know there's going to be a new returns processing fee that kicks in June 2024. Based on our conversations and what limited information Amazon's providing as of today, it's just letting us know that there's a certain benchmark of which your GL category right is being in your asin is running against that benchmark. Now, what's very Amazon of the land? We love them, but what's very Amazon is that they're not releasing those benchmarks until May.

Speaker 3: 7:03

So, as a seller, I'm sitting here being like I would love to be able to know what that benchmark is now, start making those corrective actions Maybe it's on the product detail page, maybe it's the physical product but be able to take all of that feedback, know what that benchmark is, know what the fee is going to incur now and not until May. I feel like May to June is just not enough ramp time to get that fixed. So something that I started digging around and luckily we are, you know, a SaaS seller and so I do have leverage in terms of having a representative be able to pull some more, I'd say, detailed reports for us. What I would highly suggest and what I've noticed is that there's a report that gets sent out monthly when you write SaaS client class, saas seller. It is the customer insight report.

Speaker 3: 7:48

I don't know if you've heard of this report before, but it does start kind of pulling not only your star ratings but it also pulls your return rates. Now what's fascinating within this report? There's a certain tab your PQI prioritization is what they call it. Right, real fancy. But on this report flags your GL flags your current star rating, the benchmark of that and also your current return rate and the benchmark as well.

Speaker 3: 8:16

So if you go back and historically pull every customer insights report you have, pull the benchmarks, pull the data, you're able to get a good line item of hey, here's maybe some main GLs of concern, right, thus, which ASINs or products you want to target and you're already being given that benchmark. You're going to see that it's fluctuating month to month, but you're able to get at least some let's say, some red flag reports right, some certain signals of like, hey, maybe you should start here. So the official formal benchmarks aren't going to be announced until May, but you do have some seeds. If you can get that customer insights report, then you've got some good seeds to run against.

Speaker 2: 8:52

Outstanding, outstanding, and you heard it here first and I think that's you're absolutely right where they're going to enforce this in June and they're going to let you know in May, which really doesn't give a ton of time for people to react. And so four sellers that do follow this advice and say they want to decrease their returns, which I think is just good business hygiene generally. What would be some things that the seller could look to reduce their returns?

Speaker 3: 9:52

Absolutely. So I'm going to talk you through it. If you log into Seller Central, okay, and you go to growth growth opportunities right, we've seen that page before If you scroll down that left hand side, they actually have a new section called reduced cost and reduced customer returns specifically. So when you start pulling at that again, growth growth ops scroll down that left hand side you're going to see a new reduced customer returns line item there In there. When you start clicking on it it's going to show you what customers I've been asking you on your ASIN most frequently and most recently.

Speaker 3: 10:22

So, for example, let's say you're selling a product and it comes in multiple components, right? Maybe that's not very clear to the customer. So a lot of customers are typing in hey, what all parts come with this? You know, like, what's included, what's not included. So you're going to get that information now saying 25 customers and the last 30 days or X amount of days I've been asking to understand number of components, right? So then you're able to say that's an easy win. Let me go to my product detail page and make sure that's clear. Maybe have like an exploded diagram of what else in your packaging or add to your bullet point or description or your EBC. You can add a million ways, but just to kind of tie together the customer's expectation and their curiosity into your ability to reduce that return.

Speaker 2: 11:04

Absolutely. I think that's really really good feedback and for people that are setting up their own listings, you know, from my perspective, it's like I've made this as clear as possible for you. However, like we're experiencing that on one of our brands, where we've got return rates like north of 8%, which really adds up, and so, yeah, it's, I think I really like that and that's it.

Speaker 3: 11:25

Yeah, and even tagging on to the you know the 8% right In a future state Amazon's going to tell us what that benchmark is. You know, maybe the benchmarks 9%. So you're actually sitting really pretty. You know it's like until until that May report comes through, we're not going to necessarily know in advance. Again, I do say pull out that customer insights report. You're going to have at least some essence of concern that you can start with some GLs you can start with, just to kind of let the whistle right Get it's a little bit more. You know, come May, especially come June, we'll actually hit with those fees. It's a little too late, in my opinion, to get that in May. So, starting ahead of time with what you know customer insights returns and going through that growth ops to reduce customer returns, getting that feedback, is going to be a great place to start.

Speaker 2: 12:09

Absolutely.

Speaker 4: 12:10

Absolutely yeah for sure. So, rebecca, program that's I think I believe it's in beta is probably going to get released later on this year, called SIP, and I believe you've tested it. You know about it. Can you share what that program is and how can Amazon sellers save money by using this program?

Speaker 3: 12:25

Yeah, absolutely, that's a great question. So to clarify, the beta of this was actually called CyOc back in the day ship in own container. So just know that CyOc and SIP are used interchangeably on Amazon side. It's the exact same thing. So if you hear me kind of switching between those two acronyms you know Amazon loves acronyms then just know that it's the same thing, right? So during the We'll dive into SIP. So SIP is officially launched. You can open up the portal on your site. It's in seller central and they have a good run to show and to be able to provide you which ASINs are already eligible. They do have the ability on their end to know if your product is eligible or not, and some of them are enrolled automatically. Right, that's a win for them, and yeah. So Amazon does do a little bit of a lift there in terms of saying, hey, this is obviously eligible for automatic enrollment, let's go ahead and plug it in, you're going to get your discount.

Speaker 3: 13:17

What's really great about SIP when it comes to a customer facing, is that they're more transparent now when the customer goes to purchase the product. Years ago, right, there used to be something that was called frustration free packaging. It's honestly more frustrating than frustration free. They were being honest, right, because a lot of customers would come through and not know that it was shipped in its own product packaging, right. And so they're like, oh my God, this was a gift. And now it just showed up on the front step and they know exactly what it is. In a new scenario with SIP, they make it a lot more transparent and it even says very clearly this product ships in its own packaging, right, the manufacturer's packaging so the customer can elect, if they want to, to put it in a box, right, or say, hey, this is a gift, please put it in a box. They're able to do that. But I love that they've made it more transparent on the customer's side.

Speaker 3: 14:05

Coming back to the seller's side of SIP, again, there's a portal, a SIP enrollment portal. You can just type it in your search bar. It'll start popping up for you. It's going to give you a list of eligible products as well as the enrolled products, so anything that's already in your enrolled tab. That's easy peasy. You'll see that discount coming through accordingly. Pending on the weight and dims of your product is going to fluctuate what that discount is and the significance thereof right Now when it comes to the products that are being flagged as eligible, can literally copy and paste up to 100 ASINs in there and it'll tell you if it's eligible or ineligible.

Speaker 3: 14:40

Ineligible is going to be kind of like your dangerous goods, for example, right, something maybe that's really fragile. They know it's a lot of class, right, some of them. You can do a more of a lab testing to prove that it's. You know, ista6. I think that's the full acronym, uptrop. That's worthy, right. I was like don't call me on it, but I think that's what it's called Just to make sure that the product itself is sound enough to handle being shipped in its own product packaging, especially on much larger accounts.

Speaker 3: 15:07

Very valuable to be able to ship in your own product packaging and leverage SIP. I know I have one line of sight in terms of clientele, that they're saving a good 250K annually because they're in SIP. I know that there's another I want to say on a different account, when we were looking in terms of what's eligible but not enrolled yet was like another 186K, right. So, depending on, again, the size of your catalog, whether it's large and you get a flashy dollar, but even if you're a small seller, it's worth it, right, your margins, everything, your cost of goods. You're going to want to make sure that you're profitable, and so being able to leverage this new offering is going to be great. Most of them, you'll be able to do a self-test, and so that's just, and they give you really clear instructions on how to do that. And then some of them, you have to do a more formal lab testing, and that would be anything that's more of that fragile category.

Speaker 2: 15:57

I want to make sure I understand this correctly. So we have some products that are in their own box. When Amazon ships them to the end customer, they will take our box and they'll put it inside of a new box. What enrolling in this program will do? Instead of taking a box and putting it in a box, they're just going to ship our container, our own packaging, and, as a result, we should be able to save on FBA fees.

Speaker 3: 16:16

Is that right? Yep, yep, and you'll see that discount come in. I know if you're in your managed inventory view, you know you have that kind of fees drop down that you can see what else coming in and out. You'll see a discount for SIP.

Speaker 2: 16:27

So obviously we would need to you know previously if we were putting a box inside of another box, the durability of the cardboard or whatever it was in was not as important because we knew it had this outer shell. And so, if we're working with our manufacturer, what would be some things that we could do? If we have something that's SIP-eligible, what could be some things that we could do in order to help, you know, take the SIP-eligible product and actually enroll in the program and actually start getting those discounts.

Speaker 3: 16:55

Yeah, absolutely. So that's a great question. So, in a nutshell, first stop SIP portal, right? So that's going to be your basic scrape of your catalog to identify if it's eligible or not. Let's say it's eligible and you want to proceed? More throughout the workflow we'll say, yeah, so the first thing you're going to do is then say, okay, we have an eligible ASIN.

Speaker 3: 17:13

Now I need to know from the portal and I'll tell you if it's worthy of a self-test versus a true lab, ista6, like drop test, right? So those are kind of like the two funnels there and they give a very clear like this is what we expect. We need to explode a photo of everything. We need to pre the post photos of this drop test, all six sides. It's labeled correctly 123456. So they give you a good run of show in terms of, hey, rigid or flexible packaging. Here's how our numbering needs to work.

Speaker 3: 17:44

This is the drop test protocol that we can images, that we need of that through the self testing and then upload that through the portal and they review it and approve it, or if there's some sort of issue then then they'd let you know. I know from our experience. I've not had any declination, usually on your end. If you start dropping it and you see that it's not working, you're not going to submit it, right. So that's fine and super easy to do in terms of the self testing. And then, if you are needing to take that extra lift of a true ISTA6, like lab, like third party drop test, anyone that you're working with should know how to do that already, right. But again you can kind of say, hey, this is what they provide us for self testing. We just need you to run it more formally, provide the report that it passed, and that's where you can upload into the portal.

Speaker 2: 18:28

Last question on the SIP program what have you seen in terms of discounts on these FBA fees?

Speaker 3: 18:33

So let me, let me pull up. I know they had like a generic kind of a what to expect ratio. I know from our line of sight. Let me pull up here. Yeah, it definitely ties in with your FBA, like package dims and weights, because that's kind of where it's start gate is, because you know it costs the money to put a box in a box, especially your box in a box, right, yeah, and then it just has more, you know waste and things that comes into that as well. In general, it needs to be under, I think, believe it's like 50 pounds or so, which you know if you're sending anything FBA that's that heavy.

Speaker 3: 19:06

I can't imagine what that would look like. See if I'm pulling it up from our side in terms of like average weight here or not weight, but average discount On average on a larger seller catalog, we're seeing a fully baked like even up to like 36 cents on average. If I just take an aggregate of everything I might say typically we're seeing on like more of our higher sellers, close to like 18 cents a discount unit and depending on your velocity, but even then like, even if you're a smaller seller, why would you not take advantage of everything? You know I would say any seller should one leverage anything that is going to defend your brand right. Brand registry, maybe, transparency, if you're having any type of you know counterfeit issues, right.

Speaker 3: 19:49

Definitely taking advantage of any of the growth opportunity recommendations coming through. Definitely dig into that. Any of the customer insights that come through NCX reports are going to be very valuable, especially with account health support. I love that they expanded it to be all sellers and I love that. It's an easy win, right, and it's also environmentally friendly. You know, kind of leaning into their climate pledge friendly and ability to have a lot more control in terms of waste.

Speaker 4: 20:14

Yeah, absolutely, the sustainability piece kind of fits. You know it resonates with a lot of people. So, yeah, I agree, like why not take advantage of that? You know the money falls directly to the bottom line. We're all sellers, which you know. Amazon does not throw us bones very often and so when you get one, take it, I think. Are there any cons to doing the SIP program, like what are? I know it's new, but other than like getting a damaged product? I don't, I can't think of really any. What are your thoughts for Becca?

Speaker 3: 20:39

So the only line item that I throw out here is if you're also enrolled in transparency Only, because if you're doing your shipping product packaging, let's say you use a poly bag for your product, right, and on your poly bag you have your barcode per usual, whether it's Amazon's F&SKU or it's your own manufacturing UPC, right. But if you're enrolled in transparency, you also have your T-code. So let's say you're sending that in its own, you know, poly bag unit. You send it to the customer. The customer obviously pulls the product out, they start playing with it, they throw away the poly bag, that's throwing away your T-code, and they only have the product. So then they're returning that product. Amazon's going to receive that product but then not really know what to do with it because it doesn't have a T-code anymore. That can't put it back in your inventory. So it's just something to take note of in terms of your customer returns line item right and just seeing if it's. You know, right now we're trying to look and track.

Speaker 3: 21:33

Okay, so now that this program is happening it's enabled customer returns are coming back, you know, depending on your refurbishment settings in your seller account right. One of them is grade and resell right, one of them is their refurbishments in general. But if Amazon doesn't have a T-code and they won't add a T-code, that's not a part of their grade and resell or refurbishments offering. Right, they're going to send that unit right back to you so it can be completely sellable units, and by your you know, let's say your 3PL receives it and they're able to repackage it. You know, send it back in Amazon, no harm, no foul. But just something to be cognizant of is saying, hey, customer's going to throw away the poly bag with your T-code. You're going to be left with the product. Ideally, the product is still sellable. So just being able to track that kind of customer returns, just to see what's going on there, right, that's a good point.

Speaker 4: 22:20

If you are using transparency, you might have an issue with those returns.

Speaker 3: 22:24

Yeah, but I would again the cost benefit to it, I would still do it.

Speaker 4: 22:29

I agree. I think that the return refinery would be kind of a small piece compared to the overall savings on a fulfillment fees. Absolutely right.

Speaker 3: 22:38

So it's just something to be cognizant of. You know, I would suggest is having your 3PL or whatever provider is able to do that kind of repackaging for you for anything that is still sellable, right? Just having them already have some T-codes on hand and that's easy. Just send that puppy right back in.

Speaker 2: 22:52

Alright, so let's turn to part two of this conversation, which is on refunds. First, can you introduce what is a refund tool and why are they important?

Speaker 3: 23:02

Yeah, so refund tool also knows reimbursements, right? So let's just, like you said, let's just define reimbursement. I think of it in two funnels. Okay, there's two opportunities here. One of them is pertaining to your inventory, the other is pertaining to your fees. So, just because we were just now talking about return rates, like customer returns, right, there's this fee opportunity. That's usually a 90 day window, that, shouldn't there be issues with your fees? This is your FBA fees, right? This is your canceled shipment fee. Okay, this is your returns fees, right?

Speaker 3: 23:33

There's certain nuances here that have a 90 day window of eligible timeframe of which you can seek a reimbursement. On the other hand, commonly referred to as reimbursements is mostly the inventory, right, because that's going to be your heavy hitter. We live and breathe inventory. That makes sense, right? You're sending things into Amazon. Amazon is now flooding them through their fulfillment centers. The fulfillment centers are sending it to the customer, customer sending it back to the fulfillment centers and then they're sending it back to you, right? So there's a lot of touch points in there, from point A to point Z. We'll call it right. Within these touch points, amazon, as good as they are, is going to lose track of your inventory. So on average, every 10 units you send in, they're going to lose like one to three. There's a lot going on there and so and they have a lot, they have a lot of scoots, they have a lot of fulfillment centers. They're really trying to ensure that they're doing a great job and overall they are doing a good job. But there's inventory within these touch points that are being messed. So a reimbursement process is one, identifying those events, two, bringing it to Amazon's attention the way that they like to be written to right.

Speaker 3: 24:42

We all know seller support. We all know seller support, we love them. But a lot of the times you're going to get your automated response right. We're like did you read the question? There's some case management here in conversation with seller support to say, hey, knock on the Amazon's door, you get lost. Let's say we'll just stick with the three units, right, gonna need you to find those? Or reimburse the support, right.

Speaker 3: 25:03

So there's two results that can happen. One can be Amazon saying hey, kevin or Ken, david, thanks for bringing it by attention, we found them. No harm, no foul. You shake hands, move on the other opportunities. They have financial dollar amount associated with that inventory. So if you're looking, you know, annually we tend to have sellers fall anywhere between 1% to 3% of their gross revenue is coming from reimbursement.

Speaker 3: 25:24

Does our ability yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's and it's just, it's a great acknowledgement of saying, hey, amazon, I know you have automated cases happening. You're doing some level of lift of telling me when you, when you've lost track of my inventory or perhaps damaged my inventory. But again, they're doing a lot of stuff and we know our catalog the best, we know our inventory the best. We are ride or die with our information, right. So our ability to follow behind, hand in hand with a seller, and say, hey, I am tracking your inventory. The minute Amazon loses something, I'll bring it to their attention. Again, two results they find it we can all go about our day high five, or you're going to give me some money back.

Speaker 4: 26:03

I guess one follow up question there and those are pretty staggering numbers, like one to three, and I guess something that I've always thought about was you know it's it's all of these things that Amazon they're not upfront with sellers about. Like I saw a statistic somewhere. There was something like over 200 different types of you know reimbursements if you will lost, inventory, fba fees, changing, transfers, losing, and so yeah, it's almost like the onus is on the seller to go after Amazon for that money. That's that's due. So it's almost like running a reimbursements tool is is a needed, it's a necessity. I think, rebecca, you had mentioned that it can be up to one to three percent of a seller's revenue is being reimbursed back from Amazon. Yeah, that's kind of crazy that the onus is on the seller. Is that is that kind of like an accepted practice, or are there still a lot of third party sellers not running reimbursements tool?

Speaker 3: 26:52

Yeah, and I would say that it's. There's two parts to it. In terms of the edit right, say one thing right Out of every 100 units, it's one to three units, so then continue multiplying that out right. One to three percent of gross revenue is tend to be reimbursable, and inventory allows you to go over the last 18 months, so it's a longer window of time, which is really beneficial as well. Now, what's interesting getting more and more into the weeds here and even having line of sight to other sellers that are part of our account is allowing to have a line of sight even to their current coverage. Every provider that comes through are going to be good at certain things, but not all things. But even going back to what I was discussing in terms of case management, you know I'd say that there are certain providers that have really good data coming in and out but then punt the case work over to a VA, which is they're mostly just copy pasting what they're told but don't really know the true nuance of how to provide more documentation or refer to the inventory ledger report. Here's what I'm seeing, so on and so forth. Right To really show and drive home that discrepancy In a nutshell, I'd say that most providers are really only covering about five, maybe six types of reimbursement of eligible events.

Speaker 3: 28:04

Right, and it's mostly inventory. The newer hot topic is more of that fees Avenue that I was mentioning earlier. That's a lot more nuanced and is harder to calculate. In masks it takes a lot more of a lift and understanding of how fees are even running in and out of your accounts, how Amazon is pulling that information. All in all, it's something that we really strive for with. The ZecuSeller is saying, hey, we cover 15 plus reimbursement types, whether the lane is inventory or the lane is fees, and each seller has such a different story, kind of under the hood, that we're able to optimize what is going to be the best ROI for this account. There are certain case types that you're never going to see on someone's account and then there are certain case types that you're going to see all day. But again, each seller is just so nuanced in terms of what categories are they selling, how did they do their packaging right? Are they in SIP? There's various lines there that you're really meaning to know each seller a lot more intimately.

Speaker 2: 29:03

So you mentioned ZecuSeller and I think can you explain the background or how that came to be, Because I think it's a really good story.

Speaker 3: 29:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So long story short. I had mentioned, you know, even though I started back in the buyer, seller messages kind of customer-facing side right, worked my way through Amazon and all the avenues and landed on reimbursements Working for, you know, a top 100 Amazon seller. There's obviously a lot of inventory flying around and so we were at the time leveraging a reimbursement provider, but we felt like there was more juice to be squeezed. So then we tacked on another provider and then another one, and then a fourth one. So we had to. At one point, I know, we had four, maybe even five providers working on our account at once and all of these providers were obviously taking their various commissions. Right, they're cut of that as they should. I mean, they're doing work and they're bringing money in. So, yeah, that's going to happen. But at the end of the day we were like that's a lot of commission that we're forking out to these providers to have to mix and match. How is there not a one-stop shop that covers everything and it really works to know our account so well that they know where there is money to be had, where these events are to be had right? So over the years, you know, took a lot of pride in bringing this in-house. Learning from the current landscape makes kind of you know, putting our Frankenstein together a reimbursement offering, just in-house to start, and we saw a lot of fruitful work there. Right, we were able to not only keep the commission, because it was internal, but now we're able to say this is a one-stop shop that will recover everything that we possibly can, whether it's inventory or fee-related, because we're having such success there, obviously we're bragging about it.

Speaker 3: 30:43

And so our friend Lee started knocking on our door and said, hey, why don't you come look at that my account? You know, just take a peek. You know, get me an audit. How are they doing? It's so weird.

Speaker 3: 30:52

So we started, you know, looking under the hood at other seller accounts, like let me see what they're covering versus not covering. You know, kind of being very transparent of the health status of their current provider. A lot of those conversations, I'd say all of them really rolled into them saying, well, why don't you work on my account, right? And so then we started, you know, just offering it on our friend Lee's account, working with them, and then word of mouth kept going and then we proceeded to get more referrals where it's like you know, so-and-so referred, so-and-so like check them out right, and now we have this kind of snowball effect in a current state that we're saying, hey, let's open this up right.

Speaker 3: 31:28

So you know, we had a landing page. You could book call with me at any time, just happy to start the conversation with. Let's run an audit on your account. I'll tell you very clearly what's being covered or not covered, give you a good summary of the last 18 months of your account, both what's being automated by Amazon and being done by cases, which is where we would plug in. I'll tell you exactly what I see today, what I would start submitting cases on today, should we work with you, and then the I'd say the real benefit as well is pointing out what's missed and no longer eligible. Then you kind of know ooh, that's where the mark was being best right.

Speaker 3: 32:04

Because I will say, in auditing accounts and kind of getting a good landscape and have a good under-great understanding, rather, how certain providers are pulling their data, it's interesting some of the financial amounts that they're being associated with those events. What I mean by that is I'm seeing instances where they're like holding 100% of the average sale price is what you're going to get back and I'm like that's not Amazon's rule, right? It's 30% of your average sale price, right? So there's certain nuances there that I'm like interesting. So I know when we do our audits, we're being very transparent and almost low-balling ourselves, right, just because we don't want to steer anyone outside of what we know to be truth. Make a very transparent. Hey, here's a number of events that we see, so you can quantify that. Here's the financial amount tied to these events, so you know exactly what that is. Here's what's being missed, and if you work with us, that won't be missed anymore.

Speaker 2: 32:55

I'd like to speak to this from a consumer perspective, because when we were choosing refund tools, this was something that a trap that we fell into was. We'd go with provider A they would market we run 20 tests, and then provider B would say we run 25 tests, and we'd say, okay, provider B must be better because they run five more tests than provider A, and I think you made a really good point. That does not mean, yes, they may run those tests. That does not mean that they're successfully getting reimbursements on an additional five categories. And the other thing that we have experienced is where we'll see, when you go to sign up, that you have $50,000 of just cash that you're about to get your hands on if you sign up with us, and when you do and you do get those initial reimbursements, it ends up being much less.

Speaker 2: 33:41

We personally have had an account audit done on ExecuCeller and Rebecca. I worked with you and you did find a lot of meat left on the bone from some of our other providers, and so I can personally testify to the accuracy and of the reports from working with you. So if someone's listening and they're interested in getting in touch with you to have you take a look at their account. What would be the best way to do that?

Speaker 3: 34:02

Yeah, just go to execucellercom. Think of the words executive, seller, smash together right. So execucellercom, it has my Calendly link on there. You can see when I'm free. Just book a call. It's a quick 15 to 30 minute call, whatever you have time for. Hell. I could talk about reimbursements for hours, you know. So just don't get me started, right.

Speaker 3: 34:20

But happy to just have a call just to get to know you as seller, what your brand is, what your priorities are. Because again, I have some sellers that say, hey, my team already does a really good job on, let's say, lost and bound, right, they know what's coming in. So certain providers say, hey, we cover all or nothing. Well, that's not very helpful. So what we tend to do is say, great, we love that your team was covering that. We'll set a delay, right, we'll work on anything that they've not picked up, let's say, in a 90 day window, right. So we're happy to have those conversations to say, work with you. To know if someone's already covered in house, great, we'll figure out our line item. To say, when you need that extra support, we'll be there for you, we'll make sure things are rolling off in terms of the eligible window, but at the same time, we'll let you know as well what's not being covered at all, right.

Speaker 3: 35:05

So I know one of the big things I want to flag and, just a pro tip, a couple of things. One if you have a reimbursement provider working on your account and you have never been asked to sign a packing list, or you have never been asked to provide a POD BOL, so proof of delivery or bill lading, you're missing out that I can tell you right now. If you've never been asked to sign that and you're like what are these initials? I have a reimbursement provider. That's a red flag. Let's have a call, right, just to see what's going on there. And then that goes back to that additional documentation, right, that Amazon requests, and we're seeing them request that more and more. Another thing that I'd say in terms of pro tips is pertaining to your FBA fees. So currently there are only actually a small handful of providers that work with FBA fees. Again, it's very nuanced and really it's broken down into two different steps.

Speaker 3: 35:55

Step one of two is getting the correct remeasurement. No matter the size of your account, you can only have 20 remeasurements a month. Now I'm going to say that, again, doesn't matter the size of your account. You only have 20 remeasurements a month. You could have 10, you could have 2000 ASUS, but only 20 a month. So in a automated system what we're seeing is that it's a first come, first serve. That's not very beneficial. Maybe I want to go ahead and incur a little bit of incorrect fees on a slower selling ASIN, because I had this big boy coming up that sells hundreds of units a day and I need that prioritized. I don't want to use all of my remeasurements on the small, slower sellers. I want to leverage them where I need them in terms of my ROI right Priorities.

Speaker 3: 36:38

The initial step there is just the remeasurement itself. Let's say you coordinate with Amazon. They say, hey, you're right, we had the wrong fees, we've corrected your fees. Now the second leg, which is where a lot of people are missing, is submitting for the reimbursement, oddly enough. So it's like they'll do the first leg of the remeasurement and they're like cool and they move on, but they're not taking that second leg to come back, provide the list of impacted orders with the wrong fee, to seek the reimbursement.

Speaker 3: 37:04

I know I had a client, even about a month ago, come through, ran it on his account. He's like, yeah, yeah, if he's recovered. I've seen him cut cases. They were only cutting for the remeasurement. So I came back and was like you got $21,000 of reimbursements or O2 because of those incorrect fees. And he was like go get it. I said, say less. Really, there's again. There's more nuances there that are to be had.

Speaker 3: 37:26

A lot of providers, even when it comes to FBA fees, are pulling Amazons. So think about that. There's an FBA fee that I can see like, let's say, an error. But if the system is pulling from Amazon and then I'm going back to Amazon saying that they did it incorrectly, what's the leverage for them to change the measurement? What's the leverage for them to change their fees? So I know for us what we do, which is unique to us.

Speaker 3: 37:49

As we say, I don't care what Amazon has.

Speaker 3: 37:52

I want you, david, to give me your package, dims and weights.

Speaker 3: 37:55

That's what I'm going to run in my system and until you tell me you've changed packaging, that's the truth that I'm running against, and so anything that's outside of that FBA fee, that's what I'm going to Amazon. I can send them photos. Have some people that send me photos of their products being measured. I have some people that just give me their package dims and weights. That's fine. We leverage that and it's allowing our success rate to be really high. Overall, for all reimbursement texts that we cover, industry standard, I'd say, is floating around 85, 90%. I see some providers quote even a little bit higher, maybe like 93 or so, but in 2023, when I pulled our average win rate, well, in all of our accounts over the year of 2023, it was at 98%, and part of that again, is just a testament to our case managers. We know what Amazon wants and we are happy to give, like any seller right. We're happy to give what Amazon wants in terms of that additional documentation and just ensuring that they're that we're speaking the same language.

Speaker 4: 38:54

So I know we're coming up on time. Are there any other topics we want to cover? David or Rebecca, before we get into the fire round.

Speaker 3: 39:01

I'm not ready for the fire round, but let me pull it up.

Speaker 4: 39:03

You can do it. So, rebecca, every guest we have in the show, we run them through the ringer and it's called the fire round. It's a four questions. They're rapid fire. Are you ready?

Speaker 3: 39:12

I will. I will do my best.

Speaker 4: 39:14

What is your favorite book?

Speaker 3: 39:15

I'm actually going to pivot this question and I'm going to echo what I said at the beginning of this LinkedIn you got to go to LinkedIn. Okay, that is a plethora of knowledge. If you're following the right people in this sphere, right in this seller sphere, you can get a lot of good information right. Hit up every LinkedIn Awesome.

Speaker 4: 39:33

I've got that note right here. What are your hobbies?

Speaker 3: 39:35

So fun fact, I'm actually also a personal trainer and a yoga instructor. I've done that for a better part of a decade. No, even this week the office was like can you teach us yoga tomorrow morning? And I was like sure you know, you got to be able to breathe through some of these Amazon changes, right?

Speaker 4: 39:52

Absolutely. You have to have an outlet for stress, and that's awesome. Next one what is the one thing that you do not miss about working for the man or for corporate America?

Speaker 3: 40:02

There we go. I would say the one thing I do not miss is being siloed, right? I love cross-departmental communication, collaboration, problem solving. You know multiple heads are better than one, so our ability to go knock on a logistics store or reimbursements or account team and like, put our heads together to understand the full scope of the actual problem, that's say that needs to be solved way easier, opposed to being very siloed per department. You're not allowed to talk to your manager, right?

Speaker 4: 40:31

Absolutely. I totally agree. All right, you made it through the last one. What do you think sets apart successful e-commerce entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail or never get started?

Speaker 3: 40:41

So I would say a couple of things. One of my go-to statements that my team hears me say all the time is yes and right, and what I mean by that is yes, you can do something short term and you can move and plan to plan for long term. Right, don't let yourself being a little scared hold you back. If you're not a little scared, you're probably not doing it right, to be honest. Right, we'll lean into it.

Speaker 2: 41:01

Rebecca, I want to thank you for being a guest on the firing man podcast. This has been an absolute blast chatting with you and to all of our listeners. If you're interested in connecting with Rebecca and having executive seller run an audit on your account, please see the link in the show notes. Rebecca, thank you so much and looking forward to staying in touch.

Speaker 3: 41:20

Awesome. Thanks, david, thanks Ken. Really appreciate being on today.