As a successful Amazon seller, you have probably gotten your hands dirty with the actual work countless times. While it’s great to be a very hands-on boss, some tedious, non-core tasks can take your focus away from doing income-generating activities.
So if you’re doing everything but still feel like your growth is slow, then it’s time to hire an Amazon virtual assistant. Being able to delegate tasks to a VA is a significant part of any leadership role. Without it, you’re accomplishing work that an assistant could be doing for you.
If you’re ready to stop doing all the work yourself and want to know the top Amazon FBA tasks you can pass off to an eCommerce virtual assistant, let us walk you through:
- What is an Amazon Virtual Assistant?
- What are the Benefits of Hiring a Remote Assistant?
- Top Tasks You Should Outsource to an Amazon VA
- How to Hire a Remote Assistant for your Amazon FBA
- How to Help your VAs Succeed in their Role
In this Amazon Virtual Assistants guide, we’ll take a look at:
What is an Amazon Virtual Assistant?
An Amazon seller virtual assistant is a remote worker who can help you manage your Amazon inventory and handle a wide variety of tasks, ranging from administrative, marketing, social media and bookkeeping. Business owners can use them for different purposes depending on skills and experience; hence, we also have generalist VAs and specialist VAs.
Generalist VAs
A jack-of-all-trades, this type of virtual assistant usually has considerable skills and interests that allow them to cater to different clients and do all kinds of administrative duties.
Generalist VAs are comparable to administrative assistants in office-based settings. For instance, both assistants may manage your calendars and meetings, create documents, carry out data entry tasks, respond to your emails, among other support business functions. The only difference is that virtual assistants carry out administrative duties over the internet instead of working in an actual office environment.
Specialist VAs
A master of one, a specialist virtual assistant is often an expert in a specific field. Some may have a college degree and may have received advanced training, which explains their higher hourly rates than their generalist counterparts. For example, someone who has a degree in multimedia arts can work as a graphic design VA for a web design company. Other specialists include copywriters, accountants, web developers, and digital marketers.
So if you need particular tasks like creating content for your website, you will need to shell out more money. Hiring a specialist virtual assistant instead of training a generalist for specific tasks can often be worth the extra cost.
Overall, deciding whether to hire a generalist or a specialist for your Amazon business depends on the types of tasks you want to delegate. Generalists are ideal for low-level administrative duties, while specialists are perfect for specific jobs requiring a higher level of knowledge, skills, and training.
What are the Benefits of Hiring a Remote Assistant?
Every year, US companies outsource almost 300,000 jobs. Along with Fortune 500 companies, 24% of all small businesses hire remote workers to improve productivity. This study suggests that many business leaders see outsourcing as an effective way of dealing with time-consuming business support functions. But that isn’t the sole reason virtual assistants are very popular today.
Increase Efficiency
According to IDC, a premier global market intelligence firm, businesses lose 20% to 30% revenue annually due to inefficiencies. These inefficiencies are often a result of not having proper systems in place, which keep you and your employees from accomplishing valuable tasks.
Inefficiency happens when you spend more money than you need to achieve the same result. For example, you tend to let excess inventory sit in your Amazon warehouse for months, and it costs you extra storage fees the longer it stays there, so you’re essentially generating less revenue on that inventory every month it sits. All of this happens because either you’re too busy to take notice, or you don’t have a system that allows you to effectively deal with it.
Reduce Operational Costs
You don’t need to provide your Amazon seller virtual assistant with a workspace, office furniture, internet plan, equipment, among other expenses involved in keeping a full-time employee. Replacing a full-time, in-person employee with a VA can reduce your operating costs by up to a year. This research suggests that it can be three times cheaper to hire a remote assistant than an employee.
Free Up Time for Scaling Your Business
Time is gold, and once it’s gone, it’s gone. If you’re a solopreneur, you likely spend your days carrying out basic low-level tasks that can overwhelm you over time. By delegating your daily admin activities to an Amazon virtual assistant, you’ll have the opportunity to focus on working out some initiatives that actually drive business growth or even pursue new things that excite you and motivate you to keep going.
Trainable to Use an Inventory Management Software
Many sellers can find inventory management overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be that way forever.
According to KPMG research, using an automation software program saves businesses 40% to 75%. Researchers also estimate that companies are missing out on 50% of automation opportunities. By finding these automation opportunities and implementing them into your processes, you can potentially reduce your team’s time in half. Therefore, investing in an automation software program benefits your business by reducing cost and your team size by automating the repetitive tasks they don’t particularly enjoy doing.
Top Tasks You Should Outsource to an Amazon VA
For this section, I gathered some of the most seasoned Amazon sellers to help me list top FBA tasks you should delegate to a qualified Amazon virtual assistant. And here are they:
1. Inventory Management
Amazon FBA has over 75 systems and processes that you can utilize to optimize your business. If you’re using multiple methods, though, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the demand of daily inventory management.
This is where an Amazon FBA VA comes in handy. They can help you keep track of your inventory levels across your warehouses, orders, deliveries, and sales coming from your Amazon stores. But VAs get overwhelmed too sometimes, especially when your business starts to grow at a rapid pace. At this point, it’s best to consider automating some repetitive basic tasks like entering and organizing data in a spreadsheet with an inventory management solution like SoStocked. Using a software program can help increase team productivity.
2. Order Fulfillment
Order fulfillment involves receiving, processing, and shipping orders to your customers. It’s a laborious process that requires you to go through multiple steps depending on which type of order fulfillment you choose. Amazon does offer several choices, such as:
- Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA). Amazon pretty much handles everything, from picking up the goods, packing, shipping, and updating the customer regarding their order.
- Self-fulfillment. You sell, store, ship out items, as well as handle product exchanges or returns.
- 3rd-Party Fulfillment. You purchase and stock the inventory while selling the products yourself. But the task of picking up the item and shipping it to the customer is typically handled by your chosen 3rd-party logistics partner (3PL).
- Drop-Shipping. Your chosen manufacturer handles inventory, labeling, shipping, and delivery.
3. Product Returns or Exchanges
A customer may request a product return for different reasons. It could be that the product is defective, arrived damaged, or they just simply changed their mind. A customer-oriented Amazon virtual assistant should know how to deal with these concerns properly, including issuing partial refunds whenever necessary.
4. Reimbursement Cases
Amazon FBA has a reimbursement policy for items lost or damaged at a facility operated by or on behalf of Amazon. However, filing a reimbursement claim can involve multiple steps that vary by where in the fulfillment process your item is damaged or lost. So, it can be a bit tedious to do it all on your own. A VA for Amazon FBA can ensure that any lost or damaged item that is eligible under Amazon’s reimbursement policy is reimbursed to your business by raising concerns and creating a case to Amazon’s support team to get your case investigated and resolved.
5. Customer Support
Customer support is where generalist VAs shine. It is one of the most vital aspects of a successful Amazon business, but it can also be one of the most time-consuming tasks. Virtual support agents can handle various contact points, such as ManyChat, VoIP phone systems, business email, SMS, among other modes of communication. Using a VA for your customer support can help to improve your quality of service and customer satisfaction.
6. Product Research
Finding and putting together a list of products to sell on Amazon requires product research. Aside from that, you’ll also need to procure samples to test and compare similar products from different manufacturers. Once you choose the right product, you’ll have to work out the pricing and shipping terms with the manufacturer and handle invoicing. Sounds like a lot, right?
An Amazon virtual assistant can do most of these functions so you can focus on other things. They can also perform online research to provide you with valuable insights into the latest trends, your competitors’ new best-selling items, negative reviews studies to ascertain product improvements and other practices you can apply to improve your strategy.
7. Product Sourcing and Logistics
An Amazon virtual assistant can help you find and source raw materials, packaging, and specific products from local or international suppliers. Those with experience in outsourced manufacturing can even help negotiate terms with manufacturers, suppliers, and logistics companies in China and other locations on your behalf. They may be able to arrange factory visits, too, specifically specialist VAs who have a good network in your target country.
8. Listing Creation
Amazon product listings take a lot of time, and it’s a task that you should outsource. To have a good product listing, it must have a title, description, bullet points, set of images, and a few reviews.
There are also specific listing optimization practices to keep in mind to make it Amazon-friendly. For example, each of your products should have a primary photo with 1,000 or higher pixel dimensions. It’s also best to incorporate your primary keywords into your product title and bullet points to increase the chances of your product indexing and ranking well on Amazon.
9. FBA Shipment Plans
Creating an FBA shipment plan involves several tedious steps that you’d rather not spend time on. So let a VA do all the work. For example, once your inventory is ready for shipment to Amazon, the next step is to create a shipping plan, which includes details about:
- The list of products you want to send to Amazon FBA
- The quantity of each product
- Carton or pallet measurements
- Preferred shipping method and logistics partner details
- Whether or not you want Amazon or your team to prepare and label your inventory
10. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Ads
PPC and ads are digital marketing methods for building brand awareness and boosting sales. A virtual assistant can assist you with:
- Keyword research
- Setting up ad campaigns
- Creating Amazon buyer personas
- Campaign analysis
11. Coupons and Promotions
Coupons, reward points, and special offers are just some of the main selling points of any Amazon business. They can provide a significant boost in traffic and sales, but managing discounts can be time-consuming. You might even need to hire a specialist whose expertise lies in coupon marketing to pull off your discount strategy.
12. A-Z Seller Central Management
An Amazon virtual assistant can keep your FBA account compliant with Amazon rules and standards laid out in Amazon’s Seller Central Account metrics. Why is compliance necessary? Because many sellers know that Amazon has a one-ban policy and is strict about enforcing it at all times. One mistake, and your business could be in a lot of trouble.
An experienced FBA assistant can help to ensure accurate inventory management and shipments, fast order fulfillment, timely returns and refunds, Amazon-friendly product listings, personable customer support, and so on.
13. Social Media Management
Love engaging your online community with insightful social media posts, but don’t have the time to format and schedule your posts? That’s why remote assistants are there!
A social media VA specialist can manage your Facebook business page, organize live stories and events, and answer customer inquiries through Messenger. They can also moderate your online community to remain informative, encourage engagement and to keep peace and order, as well as to attend to upset customers who are about an inch away from leaving a bad review on your Facebook or Amazon page.
14. Review Procurement
Positive customer reviews are excellent social proof (and ranking juice) for your product. Of course, customers are naturally drawn to a listing with plenty of reviews over a listing without them. If your previous customers haven’t written any product reviews yet, ask a VA to collect those reviews by going to Amazon Seller Central and clicking the Request a Review button which provides a 100% safe, Amazon-approved way to ask for customer reviews. It also helps to ensure that your Amazon product pages regularly receive a good number of positive reviews.
How to Hire a Remote Assistant for Amazon FBA
Once you’ve figured out what kind of VA you need for the FBA tasks you want to outsource, choose between using a recruitment service/agency and hiring yourself.
There’s no shortage of recruitment agencies out there, but you have to spend money on their services. If taking some cash out of your pocket isn’t an option at the moment, consider posting job ads to online job boards and gig marketplaces such as Upwork or OnlineJobs.ph. Many platforms don’t cost a thing unless you want to get your job advertisement on top of the platform’s news feed or get easy access to elite talent. Once proposals start coming in, review them thoroughly and invite the shortlisted candidates for a Skype or Zoom interview with you. Finally, give your chosen candidate a trial test to see if they’re suitable for the position.
Help Your VAs Succeed in Their Role
As with anything, having a virtual assistant comes with its own set of pros and cons. It’s normal to go through a rough patch in the early stages of transitioning from being a one-person team to delegating some or all of your administrative tasks to someone else. Some of the most common challenges in working with VAs include:
- Time difference. If your VA lives on the other side of the planet, chances are, there’s a 12 to 13-hour time difference between you. The challenge comes in VAs trying to adjust their body clock to a different time zone, which could impact their performance if they aren’t flexible enough to these changes. One solution is to agree on a work schedule where their working hours overlap with yours.
- Communication. Communication influences how VAs perform. If there’s poor communication, VAs are likely to make mistakes. How you and your VA communicate and how often are some of the most important things to consider when establishing standard communication practices.
- Productivity. Virtual workers can be more productive than in-office employees. However, they tend to work longer hours, and work-life balance isn’t often a priority. Make it easy for your VAs to manage their time using productivity tools and consider holding weekly meetings to discuss projects they’re working on and their work performance.
Scale Your Business with Amazon Virtual Assistants
As an entrepreneur, the last thing you want is to get stuck doing all the work that doesn’t precisely generate revenue for you. An Amazon virtual assistant simplifies your FBA processes by helping to manage your Amazon FBA account and associated tasks efficiently, so you can redirect your energy and focus toward income-generating activities.
To hire the most suitable Amazon VA for your business, look at the candidate’s relevant skill-set, experience, and expertise. Give them a test run to determine if what they say in their resume is real.
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