Succeeding on Amazon takes a lot of different parts working together perfectly. The problem is, most sellers don’t even know what all of these parts are.
And Amazon doesn’t exactly make it easy for us. Amazon Seller Central is comprehensive, but confusing. To really find out the health and status of your store can be a nightmare. And, since it’s always changing, you’ll have to do it again and again.
Thankfully, we can boil it down into a single word: numbers.
If you know the RIGHT numbers, and understand how to keep track of them in real-time, you’ll have a blueprint for how to make your store a best-seller, too.
So in today’s article, I’m going to break the most important FBA metrics that every best-selling brand watches like a hawk. I’m also going to show you how you can use them together to grow your sales starting today.
Sales Data
Sales is the most important metric Amazon uses to determine where to rank your product. So by knowing the ins and outs of this data, you see your store like Amazon sees it.
1) Real-time Sales
Real-time data is crucial to understanding buyer trends. With real-time data, you’ll notice every single time you have a spike or a lull. You can then reverse engineer it to figure out exactly why. For example, you may find out that your products are bought on a holiday that you didn’t expect before. Or, you could find that sales fall on weekends. This crucial data helps you get inside the minds of your customers, which you can use to improve every aspect of your business, but especially your Amazon listing.
2) Margins and Profit
Did you know that most Amazon sellers don’t know their true profit? As crazy as that might sound, it’s true. That’s because with all the fees and misunderstood costs that come with FBA, it can be hard to determine EXACTLY how much money is profit. Yet you need to know this.
Because if you think your profit is higher than it really is, you’ll make unwise business choices. You may order too much inventory. And when all is said and done, you’ll check your business bank account, and find far less than you expected.
Figuring out these metrics on Amazon can be very difficult. If you would like to use software that does it all for you… in real-time… in an app you can take with you wherever you go…check
out Tracker M by AMZ Tracker.
Logistics
Logistics are the backbone of your FBA business. And it’s the key to always having the perfect amount of inventory in stock. This is crucial, because if you go out of stock even once, it can lower your BSR, which can take months to recover.
1) Exact Stock-Out Numbers
Sales and stock data is another crucial number that can be misleading. For example, let’s say you run out of inventory at the end of the month. So you look at your total number of sales. You sold 150 products. That means 5 sales per every day of the month, right?
Well… maybe.
It could also mean you had 150 products total, that sold out in 20 days. That means you’re selling 7-8 products per day. If you buy new inventory thinking you’ll only sell 5 per day, you’re once again going to sell out before the end of the month.
2) Unsold Inventory
The longer your inventory stays in Amazon’s warehouse, the more it costs you in fees and opportunity cost. For this reason, you want to keep an eye on exactly when your inventory arrives, and how long it takes to sell.
The longer inventory has been on Amazon, the more you should work to get rid of it. This could mean dropping prices or offering it on deal sites.
3) Lead Time
The lead time is how long it takes for your inventory to get from your supplier to your store. This is key to running a smooth operation. When you have these numbers dialed in, you can find the FBA sweet spot – where you never have TOO much inventory in stock, but you always have enough so you don’t sell out.
Closing Thoughts
It will take some time to get these numbers perfect. In some cases, like with sales data, software like Tracker M can make the complicated process incredibly easy.
With other data, like inventory and lead time, you’ll need to experiment and figure out exactly what works for your situation. But please, make it a priority to dial in these numbers now. The biggest difference between FBA sellers who succeed and those who fail is in these numbers.
The best-selling brands have them down pat. They know exactly when to order inventory… even for holidays and Q4. Because of this they are never losing money to excess warehouse fees. They know exactly how much they can pay for advertisements. And there are never any surprises. You can get there too.
