If it sounds too good to be true, then it likely is. Trust your intuition; it’s woven into your biology and has been used since the beginning of time.
If an agency has a sales team, their job is to close deals. If they have a sales team, they will have a list of customer objections. If they have a sales team, they will be incentivized. If they have a sales team and don’t meet their quotas, they will be fired at some point.
Remember, you are selling every day. You are looking for the highest conversion rate, the right copy that captures the Amazon buyer’s imagination, trying to evoke a positive feeling into an emotional purchase.
The difference lies in the individual’s or the company’s moral philosophy. Your goal is to determine where that philosophy stands and if it aligns with yours.
If all they are telling you is yes on everything, and they don’t push back when something is incorrect, unrealistic, or make claims they cannot substantiate—then you have your answers.
Just like your listing on Amazon, if you make claims that you cannot back up, you will receive a violation warning or your listing may be suppressed.
If they are pressuring you in your decision-making, using scarcity, or pushing unnecessary packages on you to make up the shortfall, then you have your answers.
Software
There is a wide variety of options available. None will resolve your customer objections, nor can any be left to operate unchecked.
Your success with the software largely depends on your willingness to learn as much as possible about it. The same applies to your agency; they cannot resolve your customer objections either.
However, they can assist you in testing for these objections if you are using third-party platforms, helping you to take the feedback and develop an optimization plan, but PPC alone does not address the objections in isolation.
Software does not inherently jeopardize your accounts, but cold starts, as mentioned earlier, can. When you onboard new software, you must understand that you are starting from ground zero with no campaign history. Some businesses never recover, as there are many factors involved. It is crucial for you to invest time and carefully manage the transition to maximize results.
Most successful software companies distinguish themselves through their marketing and sales teams
Many technical founders, while capable of building excellent software, lack sales skills.
Historical examples like Wozniak and Jobs, then Gates and Allen, illustrate this divide. Investors in startups often prefer teams that include both a sales-oriented person and a technical founder.
While it’s possible to build a sales team around a technically talented leader, transforming a salesperson into a technical leader within 18 months is highly improbable.
In our industry, innovative features like Reverse ASIN (James Harbal) are initially developed by someone, then enhanced and monetized by others, sometimes growing into multi-million-dollar enterprises by marketing and sales experts that found them.
Larger software companies possess enterprise-level skill sets
As mentioned earlier, software done at scale involves substantial costs, which is why pricing often involves percentages.
High-quality engineering, processing power, and skilled sales teams are expensive. Add education, training, and external content, and some companies experience millions in monthly burn.
Key business focuses outside of developing world-class software include managing churn rate, burn rate, and customer acquisition costs. A highly incentivized, efficient sales team is essential.
Your task is to determine what best meets your business needs, which can be challenging, confusing, and time-consuming. You must navigate sales calls, demos, incentives, packages, and contractual commitments.
It’s in the software company’s interest to keep you onboard as long as possible to benefit their lifetime value (LTV) and reduce churn—no different from any other business.
Everyone will claim their software is the best in its class, as they should – just as you might promote your own products.
However, if you look closely, most software offerings have similar feature sets that do not drastically differentiate them from others. While some may support platforms like Amazon and Walmart in one, from an apples-to-apples perspective, the differences are often not as significant as they might appear.
There is no lucky software; some sellers will try lots of things and find that it all starts working for them which is brilliant. However, a closer look into the switching, and you will find it is not the software, but a change in strategy that got the results.
Software will not fix a product problem or Chinese pricing
Remember, software is developed to handle the grunt work and simplify your life; it doesn’t source or create the products you launch. The decisions about what products to develop and introduce are entirely up to you.
It won’t also fix the fact that there are Chinese sellers quite happy to work off a 5% margin; it really comes down to their choice, on their business.
Some sellers get really frustrated here, and I have a lot of empathy for them because I want them to win. However, like you, everyone gets to run their own business as they see fit. But you have no control over someone else’s business and a software company (or an agency) cannot change this.
Managed vs. Unmanaged
Determining the best solution depends on your resources and needs. It’s essential to consider the available talent pool.
Do you have a customer service representative or a PPC manager with the necessary experience? This will be crucial as you need to define what exactly you require.
Before signing any contract, ensure that you meet your account manager first, especially if you’re considering paid management or if it’s offered as a bonus to secure you on long-term contracts.
Here are some probing questions to ask:
These questions provide valuable data to help you determine if this is the best management solution for you, gauge the rough skill and experience of the account manager, and understand how much support they can dedicate to you.
