The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Michael: If your aim is to make a profit for the year, then make a profit for the year. Doesn’t matter about sales velocity. That’s not really relevant in strict business terms. It’s just an Amazon obsession that they love to make you obsessed with.
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[00:01:03] Michael: Ladles and jelly spoons. Welcome back to the e-Commerce Leaders Hot Takes with our expert panel here on two sides of the Atlantic and both sides of the United States. I guess we got people in the West coast, east coast, and the whatever. We only have really, we don’t have East coast difference here at C Small, so we have, Jason Miles and Kyle Hayma over the West coast.
[00:01:22] We’ve got Chris Green on the east coast of the US a. And I’m over here in London, England, which is still standing. We have like our third prime minister in seven weeks here, so it’s gonna be nice to talk about something that doesn’t involve UK politics. Today we’re gonna talk purely eCommerce focus.
[00:01:36] What should you do to prepare for a great q4? We’ve pretty much a third of the way into Q4 at the time of speaking, so I guess we’re gonna have to talk about whatever we’re gonna do is gonna have to be something you can implement pretty quickly. So gent, there’s plunge into this key topic. Always a question.
[00:01:51] At this time of the year, he wants to kick off.
[00:01:52] Chris: It depends what you’re selling, right? Do you have physical products? Do you have lead times? Are you print on demand? Are you selling digital? Are all of those things are gonna give you a very different kind of strategy For q4, I’m definitely more on the information, digital print on demand side.
[00:02:07] But I can remember the days of selling physical products. Like you had to have enough products in the warehouse, and with fba there’s lead times, and if you’re buying from China, lead times just to get to us, then to the FBA warehouse, then for Amazon to process it in a and finally make it available.
[00:02:22] For sale. And that’s what sellers really need to manage. And not just that time, but then the quantities. I think every single year, maybe you guys can correct me on this. Every single year, the sales expectations for Amazon’s Q4 are, have been exceeded like every year in the past 10 years, and maybe every year ever.
[00:02:38] But it’s always, I think Amazon finally put it in seller Central like alerts, like inventory replenishment alerts, and they say Straight up, send us more stuff than you think you need to send us. It’s that bet where sellers are just running outta. Because if their stuff’s not in stock, nobody can buy it and Amazon’s gonna take you off of the search results.
[00:02:56] So it, it’s a game, And it can be a tough game to play if people are working with like limited budgets and access to capital. Think how much money do we put down on inventory? What if it doesn’t sell? And those are questions that honestly, I’m glad I don’t have to answer because they’re, they could make or break your year.
[00:03:15] All of a sudden you can buy way too much or you buy way too late in your entire year, can be messed up. But it’s not to say that print on demand is perfect. They can certainly run out of the raw materials. They run out of, t-shirts before. Usually black T-shirts sell out first. So if your Q4 is heavily dependent on black t.
[00:03:29] There is a possibility of things selling out. I don’t think they’re gonna run out of paper. The thing that would slow down print on demand books would probably be just capacity. They get way too many orders where they can’t get them out the door. Amazon will stop taking orders on products just because of the customer experience.
[00:03:44] But that is very rare. I think that happened once during Covid, and I think that was more related to, not having the labor in the warehouse to process it more than just the absolute. Amount of orders coming in, but people buy books. It’s an easy thing to buy last minute, Kindle books and and of course paperback books to go with it.
[00:04:01] But man, this question is loaded depending on what you’re selling.
[00:04:06] Michael: Yeah, that’s a great point. I just wanna make the simple point that it’s, if you are selling physical products and you’re importing from China, it’s way too late to worry q4. I have people approach me normally who don’t, haven’t sold on Amazon before, to be fair.
[00:04:17] But occasionally if people you have, I’m like, Which universe are you in? You need to put your Q4 orders in. August latest. Normally, the people that I work with in the Mass Mind normally are thinking in January and ordering in sort of March, April for q4. , that’s a ship that has literally sailed, I think for most people if you’re ordering from China.
[00:04:33] But what I say you can work on at this particular point in the cycle, you’re just about in time. To rank your products before it comes insanely expensive. Quite a few people seem to reserve their, and again, I was talking physical products because I don’t have the experience of print on the demand books or be very interested to hear from you authors, Chris and Jason, that you know how this works in that world.
[00:04:51] But with the physical products, it gets extraordinarily expensive to try and rank, products. As the, the year progresses and even now, it’s gonna be more expensive than it would’ve been back in September, October, but this is the last chance. If you try and rank your products and spend all your money on ads when everyone else is spending on ads in, mid-November, December, that’s a kind of silly thing to do.
[00:05:08] What you need to be doing then is making your profit for the year, which means you want to have already ranked your products as far as they’re going to rank and be making your profits. So just a heads up about, it’s just about enough time to do that, but do not pull the advertising. At the point when it is the hardest to go in market share, which is when the market’s had its busiest.
[00:05:26] It’s the main thing I would say about that one. Jason, Kyle, what are your thoughts on this one?
[00:05:31] Kyle: Sure. I’ll give you, I’ll give you a don’t and a maybe.
[00:05:34] Michael: How about that? ? Sounds good Here. Here’s what you should
[00:05:38] Kyle: be doing. You should be. Focusing on optimizing all of your listings if you’re an Amazon seller right now, because you do want to take maximum advantage of the traffic, and most importantly, the buying ferocity that does occur.
[00:05:52] It really starts to ramp around Black Friday, Cyber Monday. So there’s still time, yes, we’re in q4, but there is still absolutely time for you to do some of these optimizations into Michael’s point to work on some of your ranking to get that position. So I would say absolutely do that. My don’t will be trying to launch a brand new product during Q4 with a caveat.
[00:06:13] With a caveat, I’ll say. You can launch a new product during q4, but just have realistic expectations of what you’re gonna accomplish with it. I’ve seen people like, Yeah, I’m just gonna launch this brand new product and I’m gonna crush it in q4. And I’m like, I don’t know if you are gonna crush it.
[00:06:28] You might be the, the snowflake, but more often than not, your product’s just gonna get. But what you can do, if you do have a new product and you want to get it out there, Q4 can be a great opportunity for you to get, some sales velocity going, some reviews going to really get good understanding of product market fit because you.
[00:06:50] Michael: Hey, we seem to lost Kyle. Mid flow there. Ah, okay. Don’t
[00:06:54] Kyle: know what happened. We don’t go into Q4 expecting to launch a product and have it be just this Medi York success. So have realistic patients about that. And then my maybe will be around, your promotions and advertising. Should you just be, go all in on q4, ramp up your advertising, do every single promotion Amazon is, telling you to do, and that’s where the maybe comes in.
[00:07:19] It’s gonna be dependent upon your margins. It’s gonna depend on your category that you’re in, how much market share you already have, and so I think you need to be mindful of your margins. This should be, to Michael’s point, a great opportunity for you to make your profit for the. But if you’re out there trying to slash your prices and trying to be super aggressive because that’s what everyone’s telling you to do, or you’re trying to spend a whole lot more on advertising, be mindful of where your metrics are in the b in the fourth quarter, especially B, back Friday, Cyber Monday, the holiday buying season, all the way through, Christmas.
[00:07:54] And just see where your conversion rates are at. Make sure your margins are still staying intact and then you can adjust your advertising accordingly. Turning it up or down, or being more aggressive. So I would say it’s a, maybe in terms of how you play that, but it’s definitely, you have to take a more nuanced approach if you really wanna make
[00:08:09] Michael: money.
[00:08:11] Yeah, I agree with that. I just want a quick response on that. I would say, it always amazes me that people are capable of building, mid six figure business, which is like the minimum that we have in the Mastermind in London, and still being extraordinarily unclear about why they’re doing stuff.
[00:08:24] We had a very complicated discussion, which ended up becoming very simple the other week in the mastermind, which is like, how do I drive off Amazon traffic, which is like a new. In other words to, to anyone outside the Amazon bubble. Jason, that’s what you call traffic, right? We call it off Amazon traffic in the Amazon bubble.
[00:08:37] But anyway, yeah, it’s called and known as paid advertising. But anyway, but what emerged from this was nothing like that complicated. It was just like, Oh, I’ve got way too much stock. Because he was, he’d stocked up and then he’d had listing suspended for three months for various reasons, and I has way over stock to which the response was, Okay, you are either gonna have a load of cash tied up and you’re gradually sell the money, the stock through it at.
[00:08:57] But your cash flow will be bad, or you have good cash flow and you don’t make a profit. And so often people miss the bigger picture. Simple. What am I trying to achieve here? Question. So I would just double down on what Kyle’s saying. If your aim is to make a profit for the year, then make a profit for the year.
[00:09:12] Doesn’t matter about sales velocity. That’s not really a. Relevant in strict business terms. It’s just an Amazon obsession that they love to make you obsessed with. If you have excess stock, then it can be a great time to move that, in which case do not delude yourself that you’ll necessarily do it highly profitably.
[00:09:27] The reason you’ve got excess stock is probably cuz you over ordered relative to demand for that product, right? So all I would say is be exceptionally clear about what you’re trying to achieve. It may be profit, it may be turning stock into cash. Either’s perfectly. The disaster is to go in and just do what the momentum of the market and what Amazon wants you to do.
[00:09:45] Cause all Amazon wants you to do is sell more stuff at a lower price. And a lot of people do that, and it’s often just utterly unnecessary to run any deals on a really well selling product. A lot of my best, clients, the smartest ones, are their best selling products. They put their price up, they don’t spend much on ads, and they don’t do deals because they don’t need to.
[00:10:04] Guess what? It’s a selling product for a reason. Anyway, end of sermon. Jason, your thoughts from the non-Amazon perspective. Clearly, Q4 is obviously important, not just in the Amazon bubble. Take us outta the bubble man. Oh
[00:10:15] Jason: yeah, I love this time of year. It’s so fun to think about the year ending and where we’re at revenue wise and how things have gone, and then also planning already for 2023 in this case, or, the future year.
[00:10:26] I think this is a huge opportunity moment in the year for off Amazon sellers and Black Friday Cyber Monday has been such, ritualized behavior. So many, buyers that their expectation is that any website, regardless of whether it’s Amazon or whatever, is gonna have some kind of special promotional, deal that weekend, from the, really, the week before Fri the Black Friday, all the way through the following week, it’s become this.
[00:10:53] The buying season. In essence, it’s like when the, when the big deals pop and you too can make a big deal pop on your Shopify site. And I love working with people in that regard. I think it’s the perfect time right now, or we’re a month away from it roughly to really engineer a. What you might call your best weekend ever or your, your best promotional campaign ever.
[00:11:15] And what we always like to do is go back and say, What did we do last year? How did it perform? Why did it perform the way it did? And what could we learn for from it from this year? It’s a creative exercise in co-mingling. your inventory on hand that might be slow moving with things that are on hand that are really, desired by your customers.
[00:11:36] And it’s a creative exercise in price points and bundling and promotional, effort leading up to a great outcome. And so I, I’m just always hugely optimistic right now that there is in every business a beautiful, Black Friday to decide Monday that can be created if it’s if it’s done, creatively ahead of time.
[00:11:59] And really, people spend time and energy on it. I think it’s a great time. It’s a great time of year, regard. Whether you sell an Amazon or don’t, I think your Shopify site can really be a tremendous asset to you this time of year and you can really make hay with it, through this weekend.
[00:12:13] Black Friday is Cyber Monday and Beyond.
[00:12:17] Michael: Yeah, like it. So one thing I would say about that, that I really like is that because you got a broader canvas to paint on, as it were, in the Shopify or direct to consumer world generally, you, I’m Jason, you’re the master of this. You have a much more sophisticated, approach to how to use your catalog and the idea of mingling, imaging that’s slow moving with faster moving imagery.
[00:12:37] It’s surprisingly uncommonly implemented it in Amazon world probably because you, if you want to sell ’em together as a bundle, you’d have to. Take inventory out of the FBA warehouse and fiddle with if it’s in fba. But if you have a chance to do that, particularly if you’re using a third party logistics center or you source from within the country, you’re selling it in.
[00:12:54] In other words, it’s not all just an FBA warehouse that’s a really underused and just, it’s really obvious, but it’s just underused. I don’t see people eating enough. So that makes a huge amount of sense to me. And then again, also having a more holistic approach to creating. Not just piggybacking on the Black Friday, Cyber Monday sort of noise, but creating your own version of that, having a very, for your particular business.
[00:13:15] Serious promotional effort. Again, within Amazon, we have more limited cameras and less control. , But we can still make efforts with that. And most sophisticated, modern Amazon sellers now will have their own email list and their own social media. Yeah. Whether well used or not is one thing, but I don’t think there’s enough of that holistic thinking, so I think that’s great corrective to just rely on Amazon.
[00:13:34] I think it’s great.
[00:13:35] Jason: Let me just tack on one little bit there. As you mention. , if you sell on Amazon, they have more control. A good first principle would be to ask the question, what control do they have, that you would prefer to have on your Shopify site? And even if you have a Shopify site that’s minimal kind of value to you, answer that question well, what control do you have?
[00:13:55] You have control over. When you can do things, timing, you have control over the messaging, the creative bundling. You have control over your pricing. You have control over how you do the promotion. A lot of smart marketers do their own. Prime day deals in whenever they want. They make up their own day, make up their own, they can launch their Black Friday, Cyber Monday the week before and scoop the market.
[00:14:20] There’s so many things you can do when you have more creative control and to not do those things is a trap. It’s use the tools you have to, serve your customers and and do a good job on your selling,
[00:14:30] Kyle: yeah.
[00:14:33] Michael: I just got one more point, which I think is really important that you’ve touched on, which I think we need to double down on.
[00:14:38] Combining, what a couple of us have been saying, I think first of all, you’ve gotta recognize that actually a big percentage of your sales don’t happen in q4. They don’t just happen in November to December. They happen in about a week and a half, two weeks, either side of, around the Black Friday side, Monday kind of area.
[00:14:52] And I’ve seen those statistics from, some of the clients have talked about it and I. If that’s a pattern you’ve seen in your own business or you’ve seen with other people, if you’re newer to business in your category, then I think it’s important to consciously engineer that because if you don’t, you’ll be leaving, a lot of your profit for the entire season, the entire year on the table.
[00:15:10] Because what will happen is people go out and spend like crazy people. In that particular focus period. And then, sure, you’ll get the people buying books just before Christmas cuz they forgot to buy stuff. That’ll probably be me. But, there won’t be so much money left in people’s pockets, I think. And so I think it’s important to recognize how compressed that profit window can be, depending on how seasonal your business.
[00:15:30] To your point, Chris, for a lot of people it’s not like that at all. But a lot of people’s businesses are that extreme and you gotta work with that rather than, letting it.
[00:15:45] Kyle: We
[00:15:46] Michael: losing Any other thoughts that we have to get off our chest?
[00:15:48] Chris: I think I’ll I’ll make a hot take bold prediction. I think Black Friday and Cyber Monday is in potentially on decline, personally, and I think that like some stores are actually saying, Look, we’re not even gonna do the Thanksgiving you. Thursday Friday stuff anymore. I think more people are getting tired of the stress and the anxiety and the, they wanna go out and they wanna buy something as a loss leader, right?
[00:16:12] They wanna go out and buy something where the store loses $200 and they want to go home instead of do all their Christmas shopping. And it’s gonna be people who traditionally do it. But I think the trend is, especially with Prime Day to prime. Every year. Like there, there are ways to get deals outside of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
[00:16:29] There’s Cyber Monday too, right? They’ll just, Hey, every Monday between Thanksgiving and Christmas, let’s do a cyber Monday. Like, why are we just limiting these things? And I think a lot of customers are just gonna be completely worn out by being oversold to over marketed too, to where if they can just relax and step back and get what they want at a fair price.
[00:16:45] Easily, that’s gonna be the trend forward of, the Christmas season where people are, it’s not gonna be 800 gifts under a tree anymore. It’s gonna be family time and experiences, and maybe one kind of, large gift kind of thing. I see a trend going towards that, and I base that on not a lot of actual data, more, more anecdotal.
[00:17:02] So take it with a grain of salt. .
[00:17:04] Michael: Yeah. Interesting. I would say in a sense, in an over advertised saturated world online, which I don’t see going, back backwards from that, if you make. Every single day a quotes special sales day, then it just becomes a more intensive, advertised every day, doesn’t it?
[00:17:19] So in a way, we could probably end up where you’re talking about Chris with, by either relaxing and calming down about it and spending less money on advertising, or everyone going nuts, doing deals all the time and spending a lot of money on advertising. The latter is what I see a lot of on Amazon. So it’s the point I was making earlier, I think.
[00:17:33] Yeah, you’re right. You can often just relax and go, Look, people want our stuff, put your prices up. It’s q. But you don’t have to go crazy. And what I, what drives me a bit nuts is when my people see people automatically doing all the deals they can, lightning deals, promos, coupon codes, just to get sales because it, they often just don’t need to do that.
[00:17:54] They’re just drinking the Kool-Aid from Amazon. Here. End today’s second lecture. Any wrap up? Final thoughts, guys? On, on q4? Given that we’re a third of the way into it, it’s gotta be more in the marketing than a sourcing side for physical products. , you guys are in the digital product space. I have a lot of mb and there’s a lot of curiosity I can say from the guys that I’ve got that are a hundred percent physical products at the moment.
[00:18:14] Chris and and Jason, what are your, what is different in Q4 with, that kind of product?
[00:18:19] Jason: It depends on what. Specifically you’re talking about, if it’s a direct, published, info book, ebook guide, resource product of some variety, then launch it. When you wanna launch it, use it strategically with your Black Friday, Cyber Monday deals.
[00:18:33] Put it out there. If you’re trying to compete for shelf space in Barnes and Noble, or do a high priced campaign launch in support of a book, then normal market conditions exist and you’re gonna have a hard time competing, as Kyle mentioned, in terms of just, the competitiveness of the time of season for advertising, that kind of thing.
[00:18:52] I, so I, I think it depends on what you’re doing, but if you’re a product seller on Amazon and you’ve always wanted to write a how-to guide or. knock it out in the next three weeks. Like it is done. Like why? Why not just go on vacation, go to an Airbnb, write the darn thing, go on 99 Designs have a beautiful cover made.
[00:19:11] I’m doing a campaign right now, 99 Designs. The covers are just insanely awesome. I’m getting back for my next book and you can have it out there and ready to go. That could be a signature product that you launch on Black Friday to Cyber Monday and put it in a bundle with your other products. And, You could, you too could be a digital marketer in no time at all.
[00:19:31] It’s not difficult to do those steps. There’s so much training, so much, resource, and expertise out there. And, so I would just encourage anyone who has that desire to just, do it and, and get it done. And you could launch it on, Black Friday, December Monday weekend.
[00:19:48] Michael: Yeah, I tell you what the single most valuable thing about that, idea might simply, that it’s a random date that you’re holding yourself to actually get it done by , just playing. It probably doesn’t matter that it’s Black Friday or Summer Monday, but it’s just a date to ama, right? . Chris, what are your thoughts on that from the sort of more digital good perspective?
[00:20:04] Chris: You definitely can take advantage of the increased traffic around q4. Like people are gonna be going to Amazon. So if you have a product on Amazon, especially if it’s a, physical book, I mean it’s print on demand or even just a digital version doing the Kindle option. Take advantage. I traditionally make most of my books free, from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, just to get the download numbers.
[00:20:20] I do it for marketing so I can say, Hey, 18,000 people downloaded my book, it must be awesome, so you should go buy it, kind of thing. But I think people, I think more sellers could be using. KDP for print on demand books and digital, as a backup. So if you go there, your Shopify site and you’re sold out, say, Hey, I, I’m sorry I’m sold out.
[00:20:37] I would love to give you a copy of my Kindle book. And, if you guys have been following, along some of the promotional options that you have, you can, it’ll basically cost you 99 cents, even if you’re selling it 9 99 to 1799 and a hundred dollars Kindle. You can give it away to a customer with a unique redemption link for as low as 99 cents since you are the author.
[00:20:57] And use that as a, Hey, a holdover, hey, this stuff is not in stock. I’d love to give you this and then follow up with you when I’m back in stock for a product so that people have something they can give if they just print it out on as getting, like it said, the Amazon gift card. It could be your Kindle book, redemption.
[00:21:12] And of course, if they’ve already signed up for that, you can offer ’em a discount on the actual book or coupon when stuff comes back in stock. But using digital products, whether it’s, Katie p book, or something else as a sub. For when your Q4 products are out of stock. I think that’s a move that a lot of people are just overlooking.
[00:21:28] They’re like, No outta stock. You can’t buy it. It’s yeah, you’re outta stock. You can’t buy it, but buy this instead. Buy this low pricing. Let me give you something so I can follow up with you. Let me give you a printout so you can hand this, put this in a cart as a gift. Most people don’t do that.
[00:21:41] They don’t differentiate, They don’t do the extra steps, right? We’re sold out. Go buy something else kind of thing. It’s a little harder, takes a little bit of creativity, but I think the sellers that do. I have a lot of ways to differentiate themselves from their
[00:21:52] Michael: competition. Cool. Like it, and apart from the else, because nobody else is tending to do that, it differentiates you automatically.
[00:22:00] So that’s a very elegant solution. Great. Final thoughts guys. Let’s have a rapid fire round of your number one tip for Q4 preparation at this stage of the game for people. I know it is like how long is a piece of string, Depends what you’re selling, but , let’s go.
[00:22:13] Kyle: Final tip. Have a plan.
[00:22:15] Execute the plan. Just don’t go and be random. So have a plan, even if it takes, even if you don’t have a plan right now for your q4. Create one today, create one in the next couple of days, and then just execute on it. And that’s gonna be better than just trying
[00:22:32] Jason: to wing it. I would say, be as.
[00:22:37] Creative as humanly possible for you. Weaving together your products that are both interesting and not interesting in creative packages and bundles to incent people to purchase widely and largely, Yeah,
[00:22:53] Chris: I would say people need to learn just like you. You said how Have a plan, execute a plan. If it doesn’t work, guess what?
[00:22:59] Q4 2023 is coming in 2024. I see that happen so frequently where people forget that Q4 is coming again and again. Honestly, it gets boring and repetitive if you think about it. But what doesn’t work this year? Try something else next year. Learn as much as you can. Amazon does the exact same thing.
[00:23:13] That’s why they send out all these, metrics and all these things to help sellers get as much inventory in, into the warehouse that they need. So learn from it and be willing to try new things. And if something’s not working, stop doing it.
[00:23:26] Michael: Piece cake. I meant to that. The only thing I’ll add to that is, I had a business coach.
[00:23:30] She said, for every action should have an equal and opposite measurement. And I think that without obsessing about it, you should at least make sure you track your numbers and just capture them, even if you are mostly focused on operations and getting things out the door. During q4 and then in q1. To your point, Jason, it’s a good reflection point in your year.
[00:23:47] And if you haven’t got such a Q4 intensive product, it may be the natural reflection point anyway and, sit down and analyze the numbers. So if you haven’t captured the numbers, you won’t have anything to analyze. And then to your point, Chris, you can’t. Correct course, the funneling q4. So great stuff guys.
[00:24:00] Thank you so much, for your thoughts and hopefully tons of actionable thoughts there as well. I think really packed it in if you liked what you’re hearing. Folks, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on any podcast app near you. Apple Podcasts and Spotify being the main ones. And, big thank you to our panels ever.
[00:24:14] Jason, Kyle Hamer, Chris Green, I’ve been Michael Vey. Thanks for listening to the e-Commerce leader
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