406 : Kiri Masters – Developing a team that’s focused on Consumer Direct Marketing

eCommerce Momentum Podcast

Wouldn’t it be nice to get an answer to a question right when you need it? How many times have you had a question, asked someone on the web and dropped the idea, issue or problem because you waited too long for an answer? Did you even get an answer? Kiri has an approach to have a silent member join your team: The Marketplace Institute. The Institute offers tons of “How to’s” and best practices but an Amazon hotline is the real key to helping you advance at the moment you need to behind their success. Great informative episode on what brands are doing, what teams brands are building and how you can build one to.

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Kiri: [00:00] It’s industrial products and machinery and medical supplies and supplies for dental offices, like people buy everything on Amazon. And so I think the original question was, oh yeah, Amazon doesn’t work for me. Well, you know, I certainly think that there are some products that won’t work on Amazon, which, which we turn away. And that is very high end products like Tiffany jewelry.

Cool voice guy: [00:30] Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling. Today. Here’s your host Stephen Peterson.

Stephen: [00:44] Hey, wanted to take a second and talk about Gaye Lisby and Gary Ray’s Amazon seller tribe and their daily lists that are put out, um, and incredible stories that you can read if you go out and check out a amazing freedom.com forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. I know that’s a lot to put in there. Amazing freedom.com forward slash momentum dash Arbitron and you’re going to get 14 day free trial, no money risk, no, no challenges. You don’t want it when you’re done, you get out. But imagine getting list. I’m as grateful as like to call it mailbox money. I love that term, mailbox money. It’s where you can work from your house, buy things online, have them deliver to you and then sell them on various marketplaces. But imagine you can have somebody else do that for you. So you want to buy time, you want to control, uh, what they’re buying.

Stephen: [01:40] Well, you take these lists and you can join multiple lists if you’re interested. And then you can segregate them for the merchandise you want and send them to them. They can make purchases for you on your behalf. Have it delivered to you or delivered to them for prep. Boom, sent into these market places and you could sell. How about that? Wouldn’t it be awesome? I spoke at their conference and there were so many million dollar sellers just using online arbitrage. It’s still available. And again, 14 days. The only way you’re going to get 14 day free trial. So if you come through my link, um, it is an affiliate link. Uh, they do pay me, so I don’t want to mislead you in any way. Um, I would appreciate it, but I’d like to see you try the 14 days. I’ve had so many people that have joined have so much success.

Stephen: [02:23] It’s very exciting to me and you know, quite humbling to me, um, that they trust me to recommend this group and I 100% recommend this group. I’ve seen the results. These are great people that will also teach you to fish. This isn’t just a, hey, here’s the list. You’re on your own. No, this is, hey, here’s why that wasn’t a good deal. Or here, hey, there’s another opportunity and you get to join their groups. And it’s just a phenomenal group of people. Um, just great, great, uh, leaders in that group and these lists are phenomenal. So again, it’s amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, hyphen arbitrage, amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. Use that get two weeks free. Try it. You don’t like it, drop out, but give it a shot if you want to add that to your business. Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast.

Stephen: [03:13] This is episode four oh six Kiri Masters. Um, very cool story because Kira, he does not deal with sellers like us. US meaning me and most listeners. Um, she generally deals with brands and not just any brands or significant brands. And it’s so interesting to hear her perspective on, um, what happens going through a brand and what they go through, you know, and, and at the end we get into some of the details, but you want to keep this in mind that, that one of the big takeaways that those big brands are like steering a shipping or giant cruise ships. It takes forever for them to turn, um, your ability to quickly, um, and accurately and on a dime change and adapt, um, gives you an advantage and you absolutely should take care of. Yeah, they have bigger cashflows, but that doesn’t mean anything if they can’t get an agreement on what to do, you have that opportunity and she really helps walk you through it.

Stephen: [04:11] Um, very cool. She really, uh, walks through a lot of details about how to do certain things and I think it’s just smart advice. Her, her tip about getting unstuck is, is great. Um, all in all, and she has a podcast which I like. Uh, anybody who has does a podcast, e-commerce brain trust podcast and where you can learn more about these things. And I just think there’s a lot of value. Smart Lady. I’m just a great, great person to talk with. It’s getting into the podcast and welcome back to the e-commerce by minute podcast. I’m excited about today’s guest. Um, a different kind of guest. Somebody who I normally wouldn’t talk to other than her PR agent was very, very persistent. I will give her that. Um, however, I normally wouldn’t talk to her because it’s not necessarily relevant to my audience, which are generally newer sellers.

Stephen: [04:53] Uh, who, you know, probably started selling books or started selling on Ebay and started growing maybe selling retail arbitrage, online arbitrage wholesale private label working their way through, but they haven’t hit the 10 million plus scale that normally, um, my guest would be speaking to because she runs a digital agency called bobsled marketing and they represent brands, um, in the 10 million plus range key. Remasters welcome, Carrie. Thank you so much. It’s great to be here. I did represent that well, right? I represented you well. Okay. Just want to make sure I’m clear on that. I think that was great. Thank you. But what I like is that we’re going to turn the conversation to something more relevant to those who listen. And Steve, me, um, about, uh, one of the kind of new ventures that carries into is helping companies create their own Amazon while you call it an all star Amazon team. I like that. I mean, that’s really what would it look like for a small startup versus a larger company because you say in our pre-call that not everybody can afford a spectacular agency like yours. Right? And so this is kind of a, like, it’s called an institute, right? So it’s, is it kind of a, like a, a whole, uh, a course and, uh, outline that a companies would use to, to build their team?

Kiri: [06:16] Yeah. So I thought about a course, but as you, as you and everyone listening to the show knows, you can’t sit down, learn about Amazon for two weeks in a course and then know exactly what to do to your life. Well, it’ll change the day after. Exactly. It changes all the time. Not all of that information is relevant because in the Amazon ecosystem, we’ve got brands selling to Amazon on a wholesale basis as well as resellers as well as sell is selling on using FBA and seller fulfilled prime and [inaudible] like this. There’s so many different ways to um, to work with Amazon. And so sitting down and learning about the whole system is not necessarily helpful and a better way of actually learning, um, about such a complicated system and exactly what you should be doing is more of the blocking and tackling approach of, of, uh, finding help when you need it.

Kiri: [07:13] And I think that that’s a way that a lot of sellers and vendors currently learn today is googling, um, uh, what is seller fulfilled prime? Is that a good fit for me? And learning about things as they go because it’s really your drinking from the fire hose with Amazon, you need information that’s relevant at that point in time. So instead of creating a course, the main foundation of the marketplace institute is a knowledge base which has all the searchable content, which is driven from processes that we’ve developed at bobsled marketing over the last five years. Working with these larger brands, um, checklists, debriefs of different programs, and one of it, they’re a good idea for you. Um, so that’s one piece. That’s the knowledge base. The second piece is PMR masterminds and a lot of, um, whether you’re an e-commerce director at a really big brand or, or your, uh, or you’re an entrepreneur on your own, everyone wants to learn from their peers and understand what’s working well in other companies similar to them.

Kiri: [08:19] So that’s facilitated peer masterminds that we’re going to set up. And then the final piece of the marketplace institute that people love to hear about is the first and only Amazon helpline where you can schedule a call with an Amazon expert, 10 20 minute call about a specific topic and get, you know, a director person, a real person who knows what they’re talking about. Oh yes. So that, that’s what, when I, when I was researching this and talking with brand, um, e-commerce managers and directors at brands, that’s what they kept saying is there’s no health plans. This no Amazon health plan. I thought, well, I’m going to make the Amazon health plan that that’s what people want. So, um, yes, I’m, I’m really pleased to be able to offer the marketplace institute, which is, you know, to much smaller companies as well as the larger companies that we’ve historically worked with at bobsled marketing.

Stephen: [09:15] I, uh, there’s a couple of them and unpack that. Um, there’s [inaudible] there’s a lot there. Um, yeah. I mean I do love the idea of actually having somebody who will answer a specific question cause that’s one of the biggest challenges. Most of it’s intuitive and you’re going along and then all of a sudden it’s like, Huh, I can interpret that two or three ways. All right. Now that’s when you start down the rabbit hole and if you go and use Google or youtube, you’re going to get 50 different answers to that same thing. So the thing that you thought were two or three or now 150 and you’re like, what do I do? And so to have an expert that’s been through it, I think that’s, that’s a great idea. And I think it’s way, way past you needed. Um, the other thing that I was thinking about as you were talking is I’m thinking that you’re s you’re taking experience from these larger companies and then broke it down because I assume this is Steve’s assumption whose worked, I’ve been in, I’ve been a CFO and a bunch of companies, so I’ve, I’ve kinda been involved in this stuff.

Stephen: [10:11] We would expand as we’re expanding, we’re growing, we’re, we’re building out this team. And then once you hit, you know, when the team starts to work in all the processes, my job to come in and was to squeeze out the profits from that right and squeeze down the processes. And I’m pretty good at that unfortunately. And that usually meant eliminating positions and things like that. But it’s the truth. And so what you’re saying is that, hey, here’s what the team really will end up looking like, here’s the blueprint of what it’s going to look like and so therefore you can fill it in and it gets rid of that fluff. Right. Is that, is that fair when I’m saying it that way, that is that, am I correct what I’m saying? There’s a couple of,

Speaker 4: [10:50] well

Kiri: [10:50] yeah, I think there’s a couple of reasons why you’d want to have your internal, an internal team that’s handling Amazon. It’s not often it is related to cost and it’s just like, well if we can get rid of an agency or consultant, then we should consider that and, and some of it is driven by cost, but sometimes it’s also just driven by efficiency within the company and the fact that you want to keep your institutional knowledge in house. And for us as an, as an agency up at bobsled there, we try and be as full service as possible and really manage all aspects of the Amazon channel for our clients. But there’s some things that we just don’t have visibility into. Like, we don’t always have item level profitability information and be able to make a call on what our ad budgets should be for that particular Asen.

Kiri: [11:39] So we have to go back to the client, say, what’s the ad budget for this? Whereas if we’re an internal part of the internal team, we might already have that item level p and l and understand what we should be spending on ads for that particular product. Um, we don’t always know what’s in the product pipeline. We have to come up to speed on who’s their target customer, what do they care about. And so there’s some, you know, when you’re, whenever you’re outsourcing, there are some inefficiency in trying to get that agency or consultant or you know, contractor up to speed with what your company’s all about and how to do certain things. So sometimes companies, and I’m even talking about 5,000, $500 million companies, they often work with an agency, but they also want to have some portion of that handled in house as well because of that efficiency. Um, in just keeping that knowledge internal...