Hire Technicians NOT Marketers for Amazon #6

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Welcome to the My Amazon guy podcast. This is your host, Stephen Pope. And today I'm gonna be talking about hiring for Amazon specifically why you need to hire technicians instead of marketers. So I'm a marketer by trade. In my first podcast, they give a lengthy experience story about my decade of experience selling online specifically any commerce and that kind of journey. Ah, I would consider myself a marketer who understands tech, but I would not say I am a technician now. I run an eight person agency called My Amazon Guy, and there's a lot involved in running a company, everything from finance, operations and marketing. But by the fall, I would say I'm a marketer, So I'm coming into this hitting against my own background, just for perspective. I feel like Amazon is a game of selling. Um, it's It's like a game of finding. Where's Waldo? So you need a technician to go out and find Waldo, and each page in that book is a different setting to try and find Waldo. Sometimes there's lots of red and blue and white, and maybe he's in a volcano one time and maybe another time. He's at Disneyland. Whatever might be. You get the idea. If you've seen a where's Waldo book? That's Amazon. Ah, Marketer is better at running the same play book over and over again. Like they don't turn the page. Marketers are really good at driving traffic and improving conversion rates. That's that is their playbook. A technician can troubleshoot anything. You can throw any problem at them and say, Hey, go solve this. Your Amazon company is gonna be way more successful if they hire technicians. And so just to get, you know, a little, uh, you know, vernacular in here, I'm gonna I'm gonna read off the definition of a marketer and a technician, according to Google here. So, marketer, ah, person or company that advertises air promotes something fully agreed that definition technician Ah, person skilled in the technique of an artwork craft. And in this case, our art aircraft is selling on Amazon. So they're skilled, um, and and they know how to go through some of those things. So I am gonna grant you that a marketer is gonna be better at a handful of things. They're gonna be better at content production, communication, taking a sales call shooting promotional videos, creating promotions and coupons, knowing when to do them and probably project management. So I'm gonna grant you that a marketer is gonna be better at those things. But in my opinion, it's way easier to hire for what I just outlined. As a marketer, I think it's way easier to find a talent pool who could go build content production. And quite frankly, it's probably easier to outsource that kind of stuff anyway. A technician is not an easy higher, and it's not. Ah, an easy outsourced higher either. So let's talk about where's Waldo? And I'm gonna give you dozens of examples of why I have had way more success hiring technicians than I've had hiring marketers. So I've got a team of eight, and, um, you know, maybe first I should talk about like how I find talent. So here's a couple of websites to think about when you're out trying to hire talent. So first of all, my favorite is better team dot com. That website ah integrates with every platform from indeed toe linked in and everything in between, and it basically is a very wide pool of talent. So my only only downside is it's kind of local talent. So in my opinion, you don't need to have somebody physically on premise. I think that if you're looking for talent and you can make a remote higher, you're better off. And most of the private label er's out there. The side hustlers who are listening to this, you know they don't have a physical location Anyway. Corporations, though, are are mired in must have talent inside the building. And they really need to get away from that they need. They need to make smarter hires. You're gonna have a more cost effective, higher go higher. Somebody in the boonies who's gonna be loyal to you because they can't find another remote job and and they're gonna be better talent because they can't find a better job. That pays better anyway, So you're gonna get a more affordable higher, hire somebody remote and do that. So my favorites better team dot com. So I have had success in hiring off that linked in eyes is probably too expensive in reality. But I have had a great hire off lengthen and ah, that was a really good hire that was very, very technical They even taught themselves how to build websites while working for me. Very great. Um, no places you can look about is ah, local community church referrals past cos you've worked at, um and and although I haven't cracked this one, I'm a big believer that you could get a talent pool in in the, uh, you know, use a baseball metaphor in the box, so to speak or on deck your local community college. So I haven't got that wanna work because most of the community colleges are like, Hey, go use this portal on post your job there. And quite frankly, the adoption rates of that's not worth your time. Um, and I forget the name of that portal. Most colleges, they're using it these days. But, man, you know, my view counts on that was, like, 10 tops out for two months. 10 views. Forget that's not even worth posting. But you go post on better team dot com, and I'm telling you, within 90 days you'll have 1000 applications. You could you could make your higher within a week with that number of applications coming in. All right, so let's so so I do believe you confined technicians. So what I recommend is hire somebody with a bachelor's degree in i t. I don't even care what I t background they have. Doesn't matter if they build websites. Doesn't matter if they can coat. It's irrelevant. You're looking for somebody who can troubleshoot complicated situations and that they're good working by themselves. That's attack. That's a tactical technician, by definition and their background very easy to spot them in the wild now, harder to hire for them. Harder to talk through an interview with him. Um, but here's some examples of why I think Amazons A Where's Waldo? Have you ever dealt with brand registry before? Nuff said. I didn't have to go into detail that even just uttering the phrase brand registry like makes my skin crawl because it is so frickin buggy. If you ever change the brand name on a listing, you know what I'm talking about. Have you ever had trouble applying a plus content? And they're like, Hey, your items not associate it to your brand. That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about that takes sometimes weeks for us. As an agency, professional experts to fix, not easy work probably on the more complicated side. The other most complicated thing is parentage. Now, parentage is the connection of variations. You got child products and parent products, and so just think of like a T shirt on multiple sizes and colors. So that is the most complicated technical work that we do within an Amazon catalog. Because you have to upload in Excel sheet. And in that excel sheet, you connect all the data and you map the attributes, etcetera. Somebody who has a technical background is way more likely to embrace reading the code on the requirements of that template and up, up, up, loading it correctly. And by the way, any time you upload that excel template to Amazon, do not forget. Set partial update in that update column where you will override your data, especially if you're not doing a full data upload. Number One mistake. I have a list of of rules while working at Aunt my Amazon guy and number one on that list. The cardinal number one rule is make sure you set partial update any time you do a load, because if you don't you're gonna wipe out some data and data wiping will cause cells loss in strand inventory. Speaking of stranded inventory, there's another Waldo you. Any time an item strands, it can happen for a variety of different reasons. It could be a detail page removal, maybe. Ah, Amazon says you got shark cartilage in your beauty product. You're like, what? What the heck? What's shark cartilage? O r. Or Hey, uh, ever had an item removed because of pesticides? Yeah, I saw tweezers, but, uh, I had to go pass a test to pass pesticides test because there was a key word that was some Some algorithm or or ah, robot picked up and say, Hey, you can't sell pesticides on Amazon without passing our gating tests. Ridiculous stuff like that. Those with Waldo's You gotta have a technician to go. Soft detail page removals are painstaking. You have to send e mails and cases and yet articulate things a very particular way and say, Hey, reinstate my listing for X Y Z reasons might be because you had a prohibited substance. Or maybe you mentioned a key word that they're not happy with. Or maybe you have a trademark infringement and you can't use that phrase within your copy. All right. So switching subjects a little bit logistics. So I dare you if you've got a marketer on your staff who's never worked in Amazon before. You're interviewing them and say they're built on lt l shipment before they're gonna look at you with a deer in the blank staring eyes were like, What are you talking about now mind You know, technicians gonna have that lto background either. But the difference is, is the technician will be like, Hey, that's another jigsaw puzzle. I'm curious. Let go figure that one out to a marketer, though it's gonna be overwhelming for them. And I know this because I'm a marketer and doing things with my hands and troubleshooting things like that. It's painstaking. For me, it's very difficult for my head to wrap around it now. I'm a great troubleshooter for a marketer background, but I shine in doing marketing things, growing traffic, improving conversion rates, thinking about consumers and what their backgrounds are and how to sell more products that more people more often for more money, That's me. That's a marketer. But now, if you told you know that tack technician to go out to the warehouse and build a pallet. Hey, we're gonna stock out on this. The warehouses behind go help him catch up. They're gonna have a way better attitude, too. Uh, I think most likely liquidation. So a marketer may have some experience liquidation, but a tactician or a technician? They're gonna be like, Hey, I wonder how I can quickly move this inventory. What are my options? And they're gonna think, Well, I could go call a bunch of liquidators. That's probably what the market is gonna want to d'oh the technician on. Maybe the marketer will think, Hey, maybe we'll do a price reduction. I think the technician, though, will be like, What if we altered the code to do something where we get more visitors from X y z reasons or whatever and they you know? And here's an example. I listen to a podcast the other day, Uh, might have been the amazing seller. Might have been helium tens podcasts. I don't remember which. Ah, and they were talking about how if you run a social media promo code of 50% off form, or you can get access to some Amazon traffic that comes from Amazon's affiliate pages. I didn't know that. Ah, that was news to me. So technicians were gonna troubleshooting creative in new ways and they're gonna come up with stuff like that. I think algorithm changes. So Amazon search algorithm has changed two times, maybe three times in the past year alone. Ah, they claim they don't index a plus contents, and a marketer's gonna probably accept that at face value. A technician is gonna be like, Let's test it. Let's see what happens when you put some Spanish behind this photo's all text and see if it indexes. And guess what? That's exactly what we did. And Amazons. Big fat liar. Totally indexes. And I know that a plus content indexes because we've tested, we put Spanish behind it. That's what technicians going to d'oh! And when you're looking for Waldo, you gotta try off the wall. Things you haven't done before. Um, ad management. Typically, it's a pretty standard marketer aspect has become way more technical because now you're it's more equation based, its managing a costs and tacos. You know, a marketer probably will go out and and higher for a technician to run it, and then they'll give him the criteria and they figure out what to do and say, Hey, draw budgets and traffic up and down Their market is gonna be way better at budget management. In my opinion, they're more prone to BP en el focused profit and loss focused. But a technician is going to be better at hitting the A cost goal. The advertising coughed of spend goal. You tell them Hey, here's the line in the sand. Can't go above 35%. Whatever might be technicians gonna hit that Because it's a technical component, the marketer will be like, Well, you know, I just want to get my traffic numbers. And if I don't hit my traffic, then I can't hit my top line sales. And you know, it's okay if I go 40% of costs attack nations gonna know. I'm gonna find a way to get that down to 35% and they're gonna know the hack it until they figure it out. Um, all right, so what happens if you have a problem or a task and you can't get something done? What do you D'oh! Well, a technician is gonna go in there and say I'm gonna ticket this. I'm gonna research research, test test test and probably throwing another five tickets today. Running your Amazon business. If you're not filing a ticket every single day on Amazon, you're probably not running it correctly. There are many, many things you tow file tickets for, whether it's setting a vanity. You were all for your brand store, whether it's clawing back refunds because Amazon screwed you over on the check in and I lost one of your palates, whatever it might be. And by the way, let me give you a quick plug. Here's a great tool called My refund Guy will put a link in the description. And if you don't have a service in place that automatically Klaus Bach claws back money from Amazon because they owe you thousands of dollars. Ah, that you need to go claw back. This is a great automated tool. It's a 25% commission based service, no upfront costs. So if you don't have anything to claw back, there's no cost. But if you d'oh will fight tooth and nail ticket, buy ticket until we get all that money clawed back for him. So my refund guy dot com Ah, a bee testing. Let's talk about that mess. So ah, Grant, you marketers gonna be conceptually familiar with the concept of a B testing. But if you if you ask the market or give me a list of everything you can a B tests and you ask the technician, give me a list of everything you can maybe test. I bet you the technician will come with a bigger list and probably some better things to test. So things that you could task her A B tests in a plus. Content, for example, could be color photo lifestyle versus product based photography. You could be testing lots of copy versus a little bit of copy. Ah, and you could test the modules. I bet the technician will come up with way more module or considerations, and they're gonna say, Hey, why don't we order this differently? Because that's how a technician thinks. Marketers not gonna think ordering will matter. They're just gonna think content. Good. Um so things are constantly changing on Amazon, and you gotta be up with the times, lots and lots of things. You have to be constantly looking out for whether it's an algorithm update. or on Monday I cover this in my Monday podcast where I talked about how they just announced fee changes for multi channel fulfillment. They also just announced fee reductions and changes to destroying him and story of removing it. A lot of things to keep up with and a technician is gonna be like, Okay, here's how we pivot. And the market is going to like, uh, Maur change. I just want to I just want to get my traffic this this month. So that's kind of conceptually how would I differentiate between the two? All right. Launching new marketplaces if you haven't launched eBay yet. Go launch eBay. Go launch Wal Mart. If you got a product that's good for house, get it up on house. If you've got a product that could do good on Etsy, go launch it on Etsy. And by the way, I've seen some random corporate products on etc. They still sell. I mean, it's not gonna be a multi $1000 you know, marketplace for you, but if it's gift E, check it out. Not too much trouble to map your inventory. Map your products across all these different marketplaces reporting. Ah, technicians. Very good with plugging and playing numbers. Here's your report for this week. Plug and play Now I will grant you. A marketer will probably interpret the data better. They will say, Hey, traffics up. And I think it's because of X Y Z reason a technician probably won't be as good at that aspect. They probably will be good. If you say Hey, traffics up, I want you to go troubleshoot this or hey, traffic's down. Go figure out Why. I think if you ask them the question, we'll go look at it. I don't think they're coming with the question on their own. They don't I wouldn't necessarily say they're great at reading reports per se unless it's part of the job description, so it might be a little weaker in that area. Europe that taxes customs imports, these air all jigsaw puzzles to go solve their all Waldo's to go find really difficult stuff. Let's throw a couple more in here and then we'll wrap it up. So converting inventory to Emma Fan to or f b A. Flipping it back and forth very technical component. And here's a great tip. By the way, if you have f B A inventory. Go duplicate your skews. So you've got a copy of them on the same Mason. You're not making new ace and listings. You're just putting this, say, Mason on to skews and have one Scooby Merchant fulfill and the other B f b a. And why would I do this? Because if you're FDA stocks out, your merchant of filled kicks in. Now, mind you, if you're doing FBI correctly, got a 60 day supply at all times, and you don't have to worry about stock outs. But ah, but a great technical, scalable solution just in case. Maybe you're in that Christmas season and Q four coming up, uh, later this year and your FBI stocks out because you thought we were going to sell 500 units, but then you sold 600. Well, good thing you had that MFN on because you're still gonna get some sales. Great thing to have in place. Ah, finally. Ah, lot of actually, I guess I have a few more to go through here. So last pass. People who are technical are more likely to be using technical tools like last pass because they have to have all their Loggins for all these portals they log into they're gonna be from or familiar with communication channels. Whether it's Google hangout Skype slack, they're gonna be more comfortable with hybrid solutions. Whether you have vendor central or Seller Solution Seller Central, um, they're gonna be able to figure out how to program multi channel fulfillment orders. And they're gonna be better at setting up technology, whatever it ISS. So that's my That's my Ah, my podcast today on trying to hit on hiring for technicians instead of hiring for for marketers. And I hope you enjoyed it. Please go tell three people about our podcasts. We just yesterday got up on apple podcasts, and today we're now part of Google podcasts subscribed to us on multiple locations, and we hope you do so. Feel free to leave us some comments, reviews. Let us know what you'd like us to cover on one of these podcasts. Be happy to do so. This is Steven Cope with my Amazon guy