Managing your wholesale Amazon business can seem very tricky at times. In fact, it could feel like complete chaos and we know just as well as anyone how that feels. There are a few things you can begin to implement from day one to ensure your very own sanity moving forward.
I’ve found there is a small set of tools and resources that help you reduce making bad decisions and protects you from potential disaster. Those tools revolve around cloud-based solutions, some automation and using computing to help you make more informed decisions that drive your business forward.
Let’s dive in.
Google Drive and Dropbox
Although Google Drive and Dropbox are completely different tools, I group them into the same category of cloud backup and some redundancy. It should now be common practice to save literally nothing on your local computer/hard drive. Why? Because things go bad sometimes and computers die. But, by working 98% off online stored documents, you protect yourself and your business from losing those documents and grant yourself a bit more freedom away from your main computer. So if you’re traveling you could for all purposes work from say an iPad.
This is a major benefit for me and if you only do one thing with this article, please let this be the one.
Tracking Your Shipments In One Place
As you grow your wholesale business you’ll be placing a large number of orders and you’ll really need to stay on top of every single one as shipments can go missing or go overlooked by either you or your warehouse. Having a central location to view and track all of your current shipments will make administrative/logistical issues minimal.
When looking for a solution you’ll want to focus on the following criteria:
– Ease of adding new shipments to track
– Multiple carrier support (as not all suppliers will use UPS)
– Push Notifications so you can react in near-real-time to movement on your inventory
Ultimately, the goal is to have an application or tool that we can check in on our logistics and move on, not spending more time than we really need to on tracking shipments.
Apps like Deliveries or Parcel can easily do this job for you.
Pipeline Management
When I first started my wholesale business, I used Gmail 100% for my pipeline management/CRM. Don’t do this. In no way is Gmail set up to help you run a six or seven figure wholesale business. In fact, most systems aren’t set up or focused in that way as selling on Amazon is still relatively a new industry requiring specialized tools and applications.
This is exactly why we created Vendrive in the first place. We needed a better way of managing our supplier leads and current accounts, while also have a better way of knowing what the next steps were with every current supplier in our pipeline. Your growth becomes pretty easy once you know exactly what needs to be done.
Keeping your pipeline full is the single importance of your Amazon business.
Restocking Software
If you’re ever given an option to let a machine do some work for you, especially if it’s data, do it. Using a software like Restock Pro enables you to order the perfect amount of inventory per SKU and know exactly when to place your order. By doing so, you never order too much inventory and you never run out of inventory.
When I first got started, I pretty much just guessed my order volume. Now, I just let Restock Pro do the heavy lifting for me based on my sales data (Restock Pro connects directly to your Amazon Seller account) and just tells me what I need to know and when I need to know it.
Making this your default restocking process will dramatically cut down on the time it takes you to place restock orders every few weeks and completely maximize how to spend your capital on inventory.
If you put all of these tools together life becomes really streamlined. By letting programs do pretty much all of your heavy lifting when it comes to data and making data-driven decisions, your business will push forward much faster and in a simpler way.
About The Author: Dillon Carter
Hi, with James, we're building Amazon tools that we wish we had when starting our own companies. We love tech, coffee, building systems and all things Amazon.
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