Say What? On Sales, Amazon, Twitter, & Dollar General
Brands sometimes want a quick answer to growing and generating more revenue. Unlike Dollar General, most brands in retail take time to grow. James "Saywhatsales" Buckley explains why these misaligned expectations in retail lead to having a false sense of hope, which creates confusion, has you playing the chance game, and ultimately why "hope is not a strategy." The energy on Mr. Buckley is off the charts. He's got dope knowledge on sales, interacting with people, and is genuinely fun to be around. This episode rocks.
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Michael Maher 00:00
Welcome to The Longer Game where we don't just talk about retail, we talk about the future of retail and everybody likes the future because it's not real it doesn't actually exist. It's only now there is only now just like Bruce Lee, I believe said there is no try only do and I tell my daughter that and she gets it. There is no future there's only now and I believe Kanye West also said that my presence is your present something kiss my ass. I'm not exactly sure how to go back and look at that line. But anyway, today on the show I have my friend James "Saywhatsales" Buckley from so of Sell Better by JB Sales. That's a long ass title. Why don't you explain to people what you actually do? Mr. Buckley?
James Buckley 00:45
Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for having me on the show. Michael, I appreciate your time. Big fan. And you and I have been friends a while this is a real treat for me. So I am with sell better by JB sales. And basically what we do is we provide sales training for frontline sales reps, STRS account executives, Customer Success reps, and people that are full cycle sales, we help them sell better consistently. So this is continuous learning and development on my side of the fence. So we provide a subscription service where people can come and learn the best ways to be SDR, the best ways to be an account executive, the best ways to be customer success. And then at the same time, the other side of the fence is that we have real trainers that come out Leslie Douglas, Shelley Gupta, Michael Singer, they come out and actually train your team. So it's like in-person live training that will change everything about the way your sellers think. So we have two ways to deliver. And those are the best ways possible for us to be providing continuous learning and development for our sellers.
Michael Maher 01:44
So that was great. And I believe I know some of those acronyms like SDR and stuff like that. But for the people that are at a retail focus and might be acronym challenged, I guess we'll say.
James Buckley 01:55
I'll break it down. So SDR stands for sales development representative. Typically, these are people that do cold calls, they do cold emails, they do outreach, right, sometimes you'll hear this as a BDR, Business Development Representative,
Michael Maher 02:08
Yeah.
James Buckley 02:08
Or sales representative, right? Usually, this is top-of-the-funnel stuff. So basically get attention from people that have no intention of giving me any today, and then create interest enough for them to take the next step, which is a deeper, longer conversation about whatever I sell the account executive, the AE, those are the people that actually close. So STRS set meetings with account executives and prospects, those prospects meet the account executives, the account executives provide amazing customer experiences. In theory.
Michael Maher 02:10
Yeah, or they should be.
James Buckley 02:41
Or they ship the bed and however you might want to. Either way, the customer decides based on that experience, whether or not they're going to move forward and purchase. Once they purchase, CS or customer success is responsible for training, onboarding, maintaining that account so that they renew at the end of their contract, and upsells and cross-sells and adoption. This is all the product of customer success. So those are the three teams. And those teams are laid out by what some people would refer to as the Software Bible, Predictable Revenue. That's the model that many software companies use to build their companies and their teams.
Michael Maher 03:18
That's actually a, so that's a great insight because a lot of the people that I talked to in retail and specifically in the Amazon community because it is all online, our SaaS companies they've got advertising software's customer to follow up feedback, automation, tracking products, keyword research, all this stuff. There's a ton of SaaS company so Software as aSales. Software as a Service.
James Buckley 03:43
Software as a Service is what SaaS stands for.
Michael Maher 03:48
It's not like she's got a nice SaaS or he's got a nice SaaS,
James Buckley 03:52
Actually, I have a shirt that says nice SaaS,
Michael Maher 03:54
Oh okay, that I need to find one of those and turn it around so people see it, I don't know. If you want to look at Amazon as its own ecosystem because it really is. Amazon has this huge bubble and for anyone who's just listening, just imagine like the Earth, okay, so there's this huge bubble that is Amazon, it's this whole ecosystem. And the sellers are like a Mount Kilimanjaro, like a little speck, that's really fueling the whole entire earth. Maybe we say rainforest is a better idea, I don't know. But it's like this bubble on top of this much larger bubble that helps sell, you know, $310 billion worth of sales here in the US last year. And then on that bubble, that is the sellers. There's a conjoined bubble between the set sellers and Amazon and that's where a service agency works, like myself. That's where the SaaS companies work and live, that's where all those companies live. And they help to bring those two things together. And what's funny is it works. There, those service agencies are able to help brands to be more successful in that area. And I love how you broke it down into SDR, BDR AE, typically when I'm looking to prospect I'm looking to connect with for my target audience or my ICP, my ideal client profile I'm looking for, you know, for a smaller company might be a CEO, a founder, it could be a CMO. It depending upon the size of the company, though, and how much leeway someone has, I really kind of need CEO buy in because they can, they can always squash the deal if they want to. Or if they don't like something, and they've got ultimate control. And they don't make you trust that person, they can kind of, you know, pull that back. And that can be hurtful to the product. And I've seen it happen before where I just was eager to get the sale on and didn't think about that.
James Buckley 05:59
Well, sometimes they have existing relationships, too. I can't tell you how many deals Yes, we have gotten to the table and you're like this far away from getting it over the finish line. And then suddenly, there's this curveball that comes your way?
Michael Maher 06:12
Oh, I know so and so *inaudible*.
James Buckley 06:13
And she's our CRO knows this other person at your competitor. And you know, they want to talk to them first before we move forward. And then you're right back to square one. And it's usually you can tie this back to the salesperson not closing the loop early enough.
Michael Maher 06:28
Okay, in the end that the sales cycle doesn't necessarily have to be I mean, I guess you probably know what an average sales cycle looks like. It depends on,
James Buckley 06:40
It's different depending on your average contract value, it's different depending on the longer.
Michael Maher 06:46
Typically longer the greater value. Is that what you're?
James Buckley 06:49
Well, yeah, I mean, the greater the value. Think about it like this, if you're working, if your ideal client's hat is small, meaning they have 10 to 20 employees, there's probably one, maybe two decision makers at the table there. Yeah, but if you're working in enterprise deal with a company like Salesforce, or GE, or, you know, any giant organization out there that doesn't need to that has like brand recognition, and they have 1000s of employees, there are hundreds of people that are,
Michael Maher 07:16
Yeah.
James Buckley 07:17
involved in making that decision. So you can expect a longer sales cycle because you need to buy in from all the stakeholders. The Challenger sale is a great book that I always recommend for sellers, and it states that there's an average of like, 6.5 decision-makers at every organization.
Michael Maher 07:34
Oh, wow.
James Buckley 07:35
6.5
Michael Maher 07:35
That's a lot.
James Buckley 07:36
If that is now, that might be true for small and medium businesses. But I guarantee you that at an enterprise organization, at the corporate level, there are 50, 60 upwards of 100 decision makers involved in some instances.
Michael Maher 07:50
And that's incredibly more *inaudible*,
James Buckley 07:52
seeing numbers on things.
Michael Maher 07:53
Okay, well, okay, so I can appreciate that. But one of the people that I would want to connect with is a business development person, the VP of Business Development because they're looking for new opportunities to grow the business, Amazon is an opportunity for them to, you know, increase sales channel and the future of retail, for my eyes, and the way that the show talks about The Longer Game talks about retails being Omni channel for anyone who doesn't know, it's really just selling across multiple channels, there's so many opportunities to connect with the consumer. And by the way, I love how it's being phrased as customer success. And not I know, customer success is still kind of like account management, you're still, you're building a relationship with the client.
James Buckley 08:38
It used to be.
Michael Maher 08:39
Okay, and but I was gonna say I like the term customer success. And on our team, you say, the Customer Experience Manager, because they're managing the experience with the consumer, it's not just customer service, customer service is calling and saying, hey, I want this thing fixed. And then just blocking you and hanging up the phone. Like that's what the idea that people have about customer service. But we're really working on experience for creating a better experience for people with these products, how they interact with the products, what they see when they open up the box, all that stuff makes a big difference. And it can create more brand loyalty, or it can create less or nothing, which is ultimately less anyway.
James Buckley 09:21
I wonder sometimes when we talk about customer experience, I wonder sometimes how much customer experience leads to shelfware problems. So I talked about shelfware people buy products that end up sitting on a shelf and collecting dust and they don't use them.
Michael Maher 09:38
Yeah.
James Buckley 09:39
And I think sometimes people buy services that are exactly the same. Right? We buy this service, we pay this money and we expect results but then I never reach out to the person I bought it from. I never tried to adopt it into my flows, my process, right and if you're not willing to change no matter what you buy, it's probably,
Michael Maher 09:56
Yeah.
James Buckley 09:56
Not going to improve your business and from a retail perspective changes are inevitable.
Michael Maher 10:03
Yeah. Yes.
James Buckley 10:03
Retail specifically, and I'm talking to everyone out there that does retail right now. Run full sprint towards change, and try different things to improve your sales. And they don't all have to be in store. We were talking before we kick this off, about this balance that you're seeing as being prominent, especially generationally between in-store and online purchases. Grocery was the one that we brought up. That's like, super changing, right?
Michael Maher 10:31
Yeah. I mean, during the pandemic, people had no choice because of either laws saying you have to stay inside, or only one person from your home can go out or I mean, I don't It's not like it was China, and people were getting taken in handcuffs that I know of. I haven't been everywhere in the US. So I can't say that, you know, totally valid. But yeah, people were essentially forced to buy things online, and realized, oh okay, this is maybe more convenient than I expected. I have, you know, anecdotally people, someone that I brought on the show, and her grandma started using Amazon Prime, or became a Prime member instead of using Amazon, during the pandemic, and she loves it, and she hasn't come back. So I mean, there's, there's adoption force based on your environment. Maybe *inaudible.
James Buckley 10:58
Yeah. So there's an entire generation of octogenarians and 70-year-olds and 60-year-olds that have sworn for decades, that they will never adopt smart technology.
Michael Maher 11:33
Yeah. And they've got the smartphone in their hand.
James Buckley 11:35
Fast forward to 2020, March, and after these people are having FaceTime calls with their families for the first time. They're adopting technologies that they never,
Michael Maher 11:45
They want to see their families.
James Buckley 11:46
They never, yeah, exactly. And they never thought that they would ever be those people. And this is something that I think is happening in business too. We're starting to see entire locations, retail locations, shut down, and moved to online, we're starting to see retail locations that only have examples of things, especially clothing apparel, right?
Michael Maher 12:09
Yeah.
James Buckley 12:09
It only has an example. It's a kiosk, and it has an example. It's not your size, but that's okay, if you like it, here, let's order it online. And we'll send it to you. And if you don't like it, you can always send it back.
Michael Maher 12:21
And you can get it in a day you can get it in two days.
James Buckley 12:24
Get it in two days get how much do you want to pay? How soon do you need it? Right? This is like, the way of *inaudible*.
Michael Maher 12:28
That's literally how I imagined the model of retail going like even big companies like Walmart, as people and as they go towards their own marketplace growth, people are going to start to adopt that model more. And I truly believe they can start utilizing their stores more as fulfillment centers, and maybe take up, you know, a third of the space where people can just view things and they say, Okay, you want this great scan at we'll have it to you later today, or it'll be shipped to you tomorrow like you said, you know, how much do you want to pay whatever the case might be, or we want to express or, Hey, this will get to you in a week. Are you okay with that, and people are more adopted that model? And to your point about going, you know, increasing adoption and across demographics in store is still where the majority of the purchases are being made. But e-commerce took a huge jump in the pandemic hit. Now is slowed down. And what I've seen grow based on the research I've done recently, because I'm building something great. Can't tell you about it right now. But just wait, it's gonna be awesome.
James Buckley 13:32
And that part of it is the part of it that I think retail has to catch on to is that change equals growth and progress. And if they're not changing with the generations and or adapting to be able to suit all generations, we have a breakdown in the way that our business pipeline moves, our growth,
Michael Maher 13:50
Yeah.
James Buckley 13:50
Pipeline moves, because I want to be able to say, here's what we offer. How would you like it? That part of it is the new wave. I remember the old wave I worked very briefly for about a year as a manager at Dollar General. If you know anything about the Dollar General, you know that this is 100% location based. You cannot go I don't, can you go to Dollar general.com and order.com stuff. Can you order online at the Dollar General? That's a good question. I guess. First of all,
Michael Maher 13:57
Yeah. I'm looking right now I have no idea.
James Buckley 14:21
Let's talk a little bit about how these locations spring up because in my area I live in East Tennessee. These locations spring up overnight. It's almost as if a cream comes in with an already,
Michael Maher 14:30
Yeah.
James Buckley 14:30
Built store and just drops it on this concrete pad and then everyone starts shopping there the next day. It's the strangest thing I've ever seen. They come up out of nowhere.
Michael Maher 14:39
Yeah.
James Buckley 14:40
But one thing that I don't think they do well is online.
Michael Maher 14:42
So you can buy but they say some things just say in store only they do have a shopping cart.
James Buckley 14:48
They do have a shopping cart then okay.
Michael Maher 14:49
I don't know how much they're actually doing in *inaudible*.
James Buckley 14:52
So I believe that even retail stores like the Dollar General are going to move towards the Walmart model. If you're not familiar with how Walmart does online. Shopping these days I shop at Walmart here in Tennessee. When you go in there you see lots of employees with carts that have all these buggies on them, these crates on them. And those crates have papers, those papers are orders. People have gone through and placed their Walmart grocery order. And the pickers as they call them, go through the store and grab all the things that person ordered. And then the person will show up at their at their parking lot and have to park in a specific space.
Michael Maher 15:03
Yeah. Yup.
James Buckley 15:28
And then they go on the app and they say I'm here at the grocery store people come out even put it in their car for them.
Michael Maher 15:35
Yeah.
James Buckley 15:35
You've never even had to leave your vehicle.
Michael Maher 15:37
And what's crazy is that was around years before a health pandemic hit. Kroger has capitalized on it, Walmart *inaudible*.
James Buckley 15:46
It became a norm.
Michael Maher 15:49
And certain places like Instacart which are super grocery focused but are expanding categories. They're allowing you to get stuff delivered to your door same with Amazon and Whole Foods getting stuff delivered to your door prime now. Prime grocery became our primary I think Prime grocery became Prime our prime now became Prime version *inaudible*.
James Buckley 16:10
Publix did it too. And they used to have guys come to your door with your groceries and they had little floaties that they would put on their shoes. So they didn't track mud in your door. Yeah *inaudible*.
Michael Maher 16:20
That's actually very considerate. I have a good story. But I might tell you that at another time. My mother-in-law, I don't think she care. I think she thinks it's funny. But anyway, I think the buying, speaking to your point about buying a service that is shelfware. There are many software companies, many SaaS companies, I can say, from the Amazon space that sells you their solution, like they're an agency. But it literally is just a software that you turn on. That doesn't build strategy for you. So you can't just eat unless they're a full service agency. And they're saying, Hey, here's our strategy. And we're gonna utilize our tool that we've created to help you and that's part of the selling. Well, then great, like, that's awesome. But many people say yeah, well, we someone sold us on this software. And it didn't really do much for us. And I'm like, Well, yeah, of course, it didn't do anything, because all you did was just put your products in this conveyor belt that just moved around, but it didn't necessarily move it to the front of the store. It didn't like, you're just putting it in a cycle of something, but you're not necessarily putting in a cycle where it's gonna get to the front, get visibility *inaudible*.
James Buckley 16:28
You're playing the chance game is what you're playing, right?
Michael Maher 17:34
You're hoping you're gonna get lucky.
James Buckley 17:41
There's no real strategy there, it's just hope.
Michael Maher 17:43
Hope, and while hope does float, it does not actually make sales. I'm saying that based on the movie. I don't know *inaudible*.
James Buckley 17:49
So Roderick Jefferson is a sales enablement mentor that I've looked up to for a very long time. And Roderick,
Michael Maher 17:56
I've talked to him only briefly online, but he was a very nice gentleman.
James Buckley 17:59
Roderick is very knowledgeable, extremely well versed, like a wealth of information. And one of the hashtags he uses for his hope is not a strategy.
Michael Maher 18:09
Yes, that's where I've seen, okay, yeah, thank you.
James Buckley 18:12
I believe that is 100% true. And too many of us go into business, especially retail with false senses of hope. We are betting our success on chance
Michael Maher 18:25
How many people go buy, oh go ahead, go ahead.
James Buckley 18:27
That is not a strategy that is going to yield the results that you're after it's going to yield frustration, it's going to yield confusion, it's gonna yield a lot of process problems that you probably don't need, if you plan better. And you understand so I used to work for a company called Crossmark out of Florida, I don't know if you're familiar Crossmark.
Michael Maher 18:47
Im not.
James Buckley 18:48
So Crossmark would go in and remove all of the items off the shelves at Publix. And then they would put new planograms together. So they give you the layout of what it should look like. And then you would go and you would take all the out of date foods and stuff and you know, get rid of those, you know, and then you would put all of the things back on the shelves, according to the new planogram. This was like, based on sales. So the best selling things went at about eye level. Yeah, right. The worst selling things went way down at the ankles.
Michael Maher 19:20
We're talking about *inaudible*.
James Buckley 19:20
Crossmark would do this? I mean, this was like we'd get there two in the morning. And we had to be done by 7:30am before they closed or before they open.
Michael Maher 19:21
Yeah.
James Buckley 19:21
Right. So it was quite the rush. There was about 150 of us in one location, just ripping everything off the stores, putting it all in crates, moving it all out putting the new shelves in order, getting it all back on the shelves, and it was quite the ordeal. Without online services, this is much more constant. Yeah, because quarterly it's always being redone based on sales. Online. None of those factors exist that workforce is not needed.
Michael Maher 19:57
Well, Tech's sort of that the online community is seeing a shift in what's going on at eye level. But it's all done in the moment. And it's done based on sales history and sales velocity.
James Buckley 20:13
So eye level looks a little different than in the online world.
Michael Maher 20:16
Eye level is page one. I mean, most people, specifically for Amazon, I've heard anywhere from 70 to 90% of people don't go past page one. And guess what on a sales call that crushes because the odds are in my favor that person will say, Yep, I don't go past page one. Because majority of people don't go past page one. And to make it even more difficult for people. If you're not leveraging, there was a period where I did not embrace change with my business when I was running an e-commerce business. And one of the things I did not embrace was Amazon's Prime shipping. And that was a big mistake, I thought, Oh, they just they want more, they want more money. And I was not thinking about it straight. And if I had adopted prime sooner and put more products in prime and really gotten competitive, maybe my business would still be going I didn't want it to still be going I'm not so much better off in this service, side of things. I believe I'm fulfilling my purpose, and I'm doing a better job. But you know, embracing Prime was a necessity. And now the 147 million Prime members that are here in the US that are on their mobile phones, because 70% of people are shopping mobile on Amazon that are on the app or on the website, all they do is just click prime, there's a little prime button, Amazon just put that little small filter there, it looks like it's not that big of a deal. If you're not utilizing Amazon's fulfillment system, guess what? Product disappears, what happened to it, it's not prime eligible. So someone that's got a prime membership and wants it now, doesn't matter whether they need it now or not, they want it now. And Amazon has trained them to want it now. So much so that when the pandemic hit, there were delays in shipments naturally, because of factories being shut down or delaying products being shipped, China was delayed on sending things over. There are a multitude of things that happen. But some consultants that I would talk with are like, Man, I didn't get my order within two days. And I was like, Man, I'm so frustrated. And then I'm like, oh, like, I realized we're in the middle of a pandemic, there's a lot of other things going on. But it was just crazy how I'm conditioned to with prime, think I want it in two days, or now one day or sometimes get it by seven to 7 am to 11 am tomorrow, that is a motivator for people when you see I can get something in my hands in seven to eight hours. If it's like midnight. That's crazy. And that motivates people to make quick purchase decisions which people are doing and making really quick purchase decisions. But I think overall, people, back to your point about hope isn't a strategy 100%. If you are hoping that things are going to work out, but there's no real action or there's no change in momentum that year. There's no change in direction even of what you're doing. You just continue to do the same thing and hoping it's going to be different. Like that's not anything. That's just.
James Buckley 23:24
I think part of what you're talking about is in ignorance though, because most people experience Amazon and retail in general, as a swipe right experience. When we buy online, we were on the buyer side of the equation.
Michael Maher 23:40
Yeah.
James Buckley 23:40
So to us, it was super easy to buy this. Yep, I did a quick search, I found one that I like I swiped right, I double clicked so my credit card would go through. And then it showed up at my door couple days later. When we on the selling side, there is a lot happening on the back end, that nobody sees on the buyer side. Yeah. So because that's true, our belief. And this was my belief, too, for a very long time until I met you and many other people that work in this space. My belief was all I need is inventory and a picture and I can put this online on Amazon and make money.
Michael Maher 23:58
So much, so much. And that used to be the case a decade ago. Not so much the case anymore.
James Buckley 24:22
Well, so I think that many sellers, especially sellers that remember what it was like a decade ago, we default there.
Michael Maher 24:31
Yes.
James Buckley 24:32
We still believe that's the case. Because we set on the other side of the fence.
Michael Maher 24:36
And I've seen brands, dig their heels in and say this is how we're going to do it. And I just say, well, then it's not going to end up being successful.
James Buckley 24:45
It's not going to work.
Michael Maher 24:46
And I want to see you succeed. I don't know if this is going to is this is a relationship we want to continue to invest in I've had to let a client go before because they weren't the best client in general and they were not very nice to our team. Same, but they just kept saying that we don't need to change this. We don't need to change this. And I said, Well, there's a reason why sales have gone down, you know, 80% or 75%, over the past four years. Because *inaudible*.
James Buckley 25:14
Yeah, the status words that any company looking to grow is, we've always done this way.
Michael Maher 25:21
Yeah. And I'm like, great, keep doing it that way, and you will not succeed. But it wasn't for me, I'm like, You have a great brand. And you're legitimately running it into the ground because of pride. Because you're saying we don't need to change this?
James Buckley 25:33
Well, they're either running it into the ground, or they have a great brand, but they don't know how to use it. They don't know how to monetize it.
Michael Maher 25:40
But they but in having a great brand, and not knowing how to monetize it, they're letting it be covered up by the dirt that all the other people that are digging ditches faster, and you know, building up the Dollar Generals that appear like that super quick, they're letting that dirt so to cover them up, and then they get pushed to the back and push to the back and they become less visible. So that planogram that you're talking about is essentially happening on a marketplace like Amazon in almost real time. And if you go out of stock, guess what? Your product doesn't show up anymore. There's no coming back soon. I mean, there's a way that you can do that. But there's no real coming back soon, product, you get out of stock, and someone else feels that shelf. And here's what's even crazier, when you get back in stock, you now have, because the search algorithm is basing where you're placed on your previous sales history and sales velocity, where you've lost sales history compared to everybody else, your sales velocity is down compared to everybody else, you don't go back in that same placement, you have to earn that. And a lot of times you have to run discounted promotions, increased money on advertising, not necessarily getting more clicks, but spending more on those clicks to get back into that position that you wanted to get in. So there's a lot of it is the same, but it's different players. The people that are that you said are not needed. Yeah, they're kind of not needed. But the people who built the search algorithm that were part of the planogram, those are the people that are needed. So it looks different. And that's I think, like with any industry that changes, you look at the Industrial Revolution, or the Industrial era, when things went from, you know, horse and buggy to eventually to a car, or human hands to a machine. And there's a lot of crazy stuff that happened then, but everyone said, Okay, we're all gonna be out of jobs. But guess what people have to build this machines, and people have to come up with ways to make those machines efficient and build them and put them in a warehouse. And then people have to still run and operate the machines, there's just different skill sets that are required, when farming went from being manual to being more machine operated, there were new skill sets that needed to happen maybe on the back end. And there were less jobs on the front end, but it probably took, you know, a decade for all that to pan out. So like now people are talking about robotics and automation are going to be replaced and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I think people are a little nutso in saying that because there's still people have to develop code, people still have to learn about robotics, and help develop the subject matter and do experiments, there will be other jobs that can be created. Now people who go in and maintain the machines, even though the machines are doing the packing and picking up something like an Amazon warehouse. Those people don't move anymore. From my understanding, they literally typing in I need like an FJ711654. And a machine goes under it's like it's like a skid holder, I can't think of a different way.
James Buckley 28:51
I know what you mean, I worked logistics for a while I skid holder, I know what I mean.
Michael Maher 28:54
So but without the handle, and it literally it's like robotic, it goes and picks up this stack of products this high that there might be 20 different products on there. And the other sizes, or even that same product might be on like 10 other things of those little, you know, stacks and they bring them to the person that's picking and packing, put it in something and then it gets put on the line. So their people are still doing stuff. But in a lot of warehouses, machines are going out and doing some of those work. So there's still a need and Amazon's hiring an even greater workforce. Why? Because e-commerce has grown so they need more people to hire and more machines to hire at the same time.
James Buckley 29:35
So it's all great for products, right? I hear a lot about products and that's amazing. What I'm looking forward to is services eventually, like bleeding their way into the Amazon world. So I imagine this to be like, you know, going to amazon.com and or Amazon Prime and being like pest control. And then it's like more kins packages laid out for you. And you can select which one you want. I imagined it to be like sales training. And it's like here are 100 sales trainers that you could reach out to, to talk about how they can help your team, right? So I'm interested in the future of Amazon selling service-wise, because that's the piece that's missing.
Michael Maher 30:20
Yeah.
James Buckley 30:20
There's not a lot of services on Amazon, it's almost always product because shipping is involved.
Michael Maher 30:25
Right. And the one thing that is I'm like, my lights are flickering. And I like you can I can tell there's a storm in the background. I'm like, Okay, this is getting really interesting that right here, something's going on. Anyway, you're right. But there are some services, but it's like local professionals who set up a treadmill or set up a place that they can go and they can sell their services. Me as a service provider for an Amazon brand. There's a specific place where I can have my services, they're not sold, but they're just put up there, I've been approved to be a part of their network, Cartology is up there. And if people want to contact us, they can get in touch. But having relationships with someone who's a part of, say, the new seller success team, that's probably going to work better for me than just being up on a website. But I do believe that service piece is something that's missing, where Amazon has put a lot of effort and focus is the b2b side of things. So they have an Amazon business. And what I believe they've imagined would happen is, as people start to adopt ecommerce more purchasing departments at places can get a PO and can potentially get a discount of the pens that they buy. Now on amazon.com. Because there's special business pricing, that if you got a tax ID, you get to be tax exempt, or whatever the case might be. Because you're not using it for retail, you're just whatever. So that's something they've invested a lot of money and time into. I don't know how much that's going to pay off. I've seen there for some businesses that b2b could be great. The b2c or the DTC app, whatever you want to call it, that's really where it's winning right now. What is winning right now? I think services could be could be even larger than that. Because services help run things. I mean, services make things happen. Products are just products they do and or they don't. But services *inaudible*. I feel the next evolution of Amazon has to be some level of service added to the mix. And I imagine people being like, you know, hey, congrats on all your success. I've been seeing all the updates you've been putting out on social. I'm curious, how did you get where you're at? So I oh, on Amazon, I went and I got this service. And it's helped me to get here. I've been using it for the last year. I resubscribe every year, it's really helpful. Like that kind of thing you don't hear very often you hear a lot about products that people buy on Amazon. Oh, where'd you get that dress? I got on Amazon. Right? Oh, nice shoes. Where'd you pick those up? I bought over *inaudible*.
James Buckley 31:07
Yeah.
Michael Maher 32:57
Where did you get that dress by the way?
James Buckley 32:59
I did get it on Amazon as a matter.
Michael Maher 33:03
Mine too. And I just want you guys to let that image sink in real quick. I think, you know, I'm actually curious now, because I don't think that's something that Amazon would go after. I feel like.
James Buckley 33:16
*inaudible*
Michael Maher 33:16
I don't know, because they've been so product focused. They've invested billions of dollars in their logistics network. And I don't know how they would leverage that with the services side of things. I think it could be something that they do eventually add. I'm just trying to think in my head. Is this something based on what I know about Amazon that they would want to go and pursue.
James Buckley 33:36
What I think is 20, let's say 20 years ago, if you just said Amazon will eventually get into the streaming space and,
Michael Maher 33:47
Yeah.
James Buckley 33:47
Start providing movies to people.
Michael Maher 33:49
They will produce content, yeah.
James Buckley 33:50
Producing their own content, everyone would have been like, Nah, that'll never happen. They sell books.
Michael Maher 33:54
That's a really good point. So maybe there's like, there's been some projects that have come out some friends of mine who work at Amazon, or have worked on something called a buy with prime. So it's something that just got released. And it's not Amazon pay websites that are on Shopify, or WooCommerce, wherever your host at Big commerce, Magento, there's a ton of platforms.
James Buckley 34:20
I look at that 15%. And I say, well, nobody works for free. And that is 100%. True. Yeah.
Michael Maher 34:20
You can have your Amazon account and login and pay with your Amazon information. So you don't have to give it to you know, a credit card company or anywhere else. It's already security, just login with Amazon. Well now companies that have products that are fulfilled by Amazon, so they're selling on Amazon, you can now have Prime shipping be available on your item on your website. You've someone just logged into their account and on your site with Amazon and says buy with prime and it's as simple as you know, adding to cart and then buying now and then you get directed back to the website once you're done and honestly I think for merchants, it's going to be cheaper, and they'll get more conversions. Because the cost of shipping that they're gonna have to pay, I think is going to be a lot less than they would pay when utilizing Amazon. So people see fees and like, oh, Amazon takes 15%, a referral fee, like, ouch, that's a lot. And I think, Okay, well, you have that your own website, you have to build the site, you have to continue to keep it updated in the code fresh, you have to do UI tests, you're split testing, you're looking at paid for analytics, and someone to help you with analytics, you have to pay for people to list product, you have to pay for people to drive traffic to like, by the time we get up there. 15%, I think doesn't really even sound that bad. And you can definitely be profitable on Amazon. It's *inaudible*. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's exactly how it should be looked at. But that old mindset is why I'm used to, you know, someone only take in 2% or 3%, like a credit card company. And you know, what really gets me, there's not a lot of things that really, truly irked me. But even small businesses that accept credit cards, they start to pass those fees on to someone, they're saying, Hey, you're choosing to use a credit card, which is a common form of payment, there's a 3% processing fee that goes with that. They're now taking their costs and saying, Hey, you should pay for that, hey, you know, the delivery cost for someone to deliver doughnuts to,
James Buckley 36:29
Sellers that don't take American Express because the cost of using is taking American Express payment is higher than other cards. Yeah.
Michael Maher 36:29
us in the morning. So you can have them, there's an extra charge for that because it costs to deliver and in my head *inaudible*. And just the thing that drives me nuts is why are you pushing consumers away? Like, There's, it's not like, some places will say no, we don't take card and my mother and I'll say, No, we don't take card, but we take cash or check
James Buckley 36:59
The check who's writing checks? if you're still out there writing checks, like I don't know.
Michael Maher 37:03
And who has a check on them? Who's writing them? And do you really know this person well enough to accept that? *inaudible*
James Buckley 37:10
Accept the check, right?
Michael Maher 37:12
That's crazy. All right. Well, I might run out of power here. And so I think this is probably a good play. We didn't even talk about some stuff that I wanted to talk to you. So I think there may be as a part two coming we'll see,
James Buckley 37:20
I'm in!
Michael Maher 37:21
You heard it here first. He's in you can see my lights flickering. This is crazy. JB! Mr. James “SayWhatSales” Buckley? Where can people find you? If they want to know more about who you are? Could they find you say, buying a dress on Amazon? Could they find you at $1 General, freshly shopping the next day when it's opened up, where people can?
James Buckley 37:45
You can find me in the club with a bottle full above, no.
Michael Maher 37:50
Ohh, what you mean?
James Buckley 37:52
So you can find me at SayWhatSales and it's all one word on Instagram, on TikTok and on Twitter. That's where I've been spending a lot of my time. I am rapidly approaching my connection limit on LinkedIn. So you can reach out to me there. Hopefully I don't have to turn people away. But I am approaching that limit. I want to thank you for bringing me on the show, I am in for round two. There's so much about retail that we wanted to cover that we weren't able to cover. And that's just because we have great conversation.
Michael Maher 38:20
I'm following. That's true. I'm following you now on Instagram and SayWhatSales. We need to talk about Twitter separately too because one of my friends who's into like web tree stuff has said Oh, Twitter's where it's at. And I'm like, I don't know,
James Buckley 38:32
*inaudible* his words at.
Michael Maher 38:32
I don't ever get on Twitter. So now I'm kind of like I've used to call Twitter hater. But now I'm like, okay, maybe we actually need to consider *inaudible*.
James Buckley 38:39
I'm happy to talk Twitter and retail and social selling in the retail world. We should have that conversation next time.
Michael Maher 38:45
Okay, and I'm going to send you a letter in the mail about getting on Twitter.
James Buckley 38:50
Sounds great.
Michael Maher 38:50
Just because it's you know, anti, it's the exact opposite of what you can do.
James Buckley 38:54
You're gonna send me a letter about getting on Twitter.
Michael Maher 38:57
Hey, Mr. Buckley, please tell me how do I create this handle? I actually have some handles I just haven't used them in a while but hey, this has been another episode of The Longer Game there is a now a guaranteed Part Two that's going to be coming up with James “SayWhatSales” Buckley because there's so much conversation to have. And there is just too much to talk about. So I'm thankful for him coming on. I get at him on Instagram, LinkedIn. I've seen his content on LinkedIn is very high quality. I'm now following him on Instagram and his pictures great is main image just rapid reference accompanies like, you know like it's no big deal like it's every day and might as well just be a tattoo. But he's a great guy and I highly recommend if you need help with sales please reach out to him. I know he's definitely given me some words of wisdom which I'm appreciative for.
James Buckley 39:51
Thank you my friend.
Michael Maher 39:52
Yeah, you're welcome. But this is you know, this is where we talked about retail the future of retail. Is that retail is very fractured people are making for Just decisions based off of social media off of Amazon, off of the brand's website offer reviews, there's so many things that they're factoring in. And so you have to be in multiple places to really, really grow your brand. So that's it people the end of the show is here. And like we end most shows I just say that's it. We're done. See you later. Bye.
