As a 15 year seller on Amazon who has sold over $20 million there, I wouldn't even consider MYSELF an Amazon expert in all areas of the platform. What recruiters need to understand is the enormous complexity of Amazon. They literally need to approach it as if their Amazon account is a free-standing website but it also held to an INSANELY high level of scrutiny and is ALWAYS in some known or, even worse, unknown, jeopardy from Amazon or competitors trying to sabotage you.
Question: If you were looking for someone to launch your website, would you expect to find a single person who can do ALL of the tasks related to that achievement? Would you assign a single person the website creation coding, the Adwords PPC and SEO, the page structure and design, all of the creative and content creation, all of the competitive analysis and brand positioning, all of the customer service, all of the plugin in of third party services, website security, on and on? Of course you wouldn't.
AND YET, I see job postings every day looking for Amazon Account Managers that expect them to do that very thing. As someone conducting a job search right now, it's a great opportunity to possibly educate.
So, I will help all the recruiters out and tell you who you need to find to ACTUALLY be a National Account Manager for Amazon:
1. Someone who has had extensive, hands on experience selling on the platform for many, many years. You cannot expect to just hire and just teach Amazon to a newbie - that is asking for disaster and your IDEAL candidate is a current or former seller who has hit 7 or 8 figures on the platform
2. Someone who has great communication skills, know their way around finance and spreadsheets, understands landed costs, P/L, turn rates, inventory and competitive analysis, and is comfortable with enterprise level software solutions - even better if the software is ecommerce-based.
3. Someone who also has some management experience and has run a small or midsize team, preferably in the ecommerce space
4. Someone who understands the in's and out's of Amazon Digital Marketing but is aware that this function is critical and will need to hire, manage, and own a specialist person or company that solely handles Amazon PPC and related Digital Marketing functions.
5. Someone who can hire and train a customer service rep who can handle day-to-day customer interfacing. There can be a LOT and Amazon is staring at you with both eyes at every.single.customer.interaction - remember who Amazon cares about the most (hint: it isn't you).
6. Ideally, someone who has good experience with Branding in general but if the SKU count is heavy just remember that Amazon Branding is also critical and there will be another need to hire, manage, and own a specialist person or company to help with graphics, content, video, etc.
By the way, yes, I AM the Amazon National Manager Unicorn that you're looking for. Resume is in BIO.
Thanks Asha Bhalsod for triggering me lol!
I saw a job advert today: " National Account Manager - Amazon" 🤷♀️
I then read through the job description and saw the details of the job
1. Build and execute an Amazon strategy
2. Manage Content
3. Manage Advertising etc etc etc...
Managing Amazon entails a unique skill set, ranging from strategic thinking to analytics to comprehend and navigate the intricacies of the Amazon algorithm. It's not simply about overseeing national accounts; it's about mastering the dynamics of one of the world's largest e-commerce platforms.
To hiring managers: Please consider the specialised nature of managing Amazon before recruiting for this role.
To recruiters: please stop using this job title - it doesn't exist! #Amazon #Recruitment