Closing the Amazon Skills Shortage Gap

Paul Sonneveld 
I'm your host, Paul Sonneveld and today we're going to learn how to close the Amazon skills shortage gap. And to help us do this, I have invited Asha to join us and share her expertise and perspectives. Now, let me first introduce you to her. Asha is the founder of Etopia Consultancy, a results-driven Amazon strategy consultancy, offering e-commerce expertise to global brands.

Now, Asha knows Amazon intimately. She's worked at Amazon and now manages the marketplace from the other side of the table. Due to this distinct disposition, she has the ability to strategically navigate Amazon for consumer brands. She loves dissecting Amazon as a sales and marketing platform, whilst highlighting what that truly means for a business goes without saying that she brings a lot of experience to the conversation today. Thank you so much for being on this show today, Asha.

Asha Bhalsod
Thank you for having me. 

Paul Sonneveld
So today we're talking about the skill shortage gap, or at least that's what we've called it. That obviously implies there is a gap. And, let me just start off with where does this shortage come from? Why is there a gap and why is it so difficult to find talent in the Amazon space?

Asha Bhalsod 
So if we take it back, 10 years ago, Amazon was treated, at retail typically for many categories as what I would call a tier 2 or a tier 3 account. COVID then happened and it is the biggest catalyst of accelerating e-commerce growth. And we went from what would've been the growth accelerated by about nine years. So we are in a place where Amazon and all levels of e-commerce is in huge demand. Then what we do you do to manage Amazon, how do you find the right skills in the market segment to manage Amazon? And that's why we have the skill gaps that we've currently got.

Paul Sonneveld 
I'm assuming, aware, I mean, to what extent, how much have aggregators contributed to this? Maybe it's a bit of a contentious topic, but obviously they flooded the market two years ago. Billions of dollars of capital. Started to buy brands. Need to manage these. To what extent did that, in your view, exacerbate the situation? 

Asha Bhalsod 
Well, look, lots of businesses needed to of course, work out how to manage Amazon, and I think what they did was they either looked to their existing Amazon talent and asked them to upskill themselves very quickly, or they outsourced it to an agency. I feel that it's a fascinating space, and time because people and businesses that needed to drive growth on Amazon had to quickly learn what was working and what wasn't working for them. And, it became quite clear that there was a very limited pool of resources that you can tap into to drive Amazon for you in your business

Paul Sonneveld 
Alright, well let's jump into kind of the broader topic now in terms of finding the skills. Obviously, we're talking about finding talent, so that implies we're talking about recruiting, externally. Going out there, finding someone with an impressive, CV that says Amazon. But why not, isn't there an option just to kind of develop your own team and promote from within? There must be some e-commerce experience.

Asha Bhalsod
Yeah.

Paul Sonneveld 
How do you think about that? 

Asha Bhalsod 
Yes. My thoughts very much are, is when we talk about Amazon's skills in the market segment. Because Amazon was treated like a tier 2 or tier 3 account, a lot of these skill sets had to sell flat. And then Covid happens and you know, these skills are being challenged to make Amazon this amazing platform. This sells a marketing platform that I talk about. And then, you have senior managers that don't typically understand Amazon.

And so, when people come in at interview level and can demonstrate through buzzwords such as Advertising, A Plus, Analytics, you know, it's quite almost easy to use some of those Amazon buzzwords. Managers can become quite overwhelmed and almost easily swayed and, and bring that talent in. The other thing that I think happened is salaries. The ridiculous level of salaries was offered. If you had the word Amazon on your CV. And when you kind of look back at the last 12 years, what is happening is those pools of people that you know took, a huge salary hike to go and manage people's Amazon businesses didn't necessarily have the skills to see through the strategic plan that they've put in place. 

And therefore, then move around and very quickly what we have, I think in our market segment is a skill shortage in the world of Amazon, that I've had to self-learn, haven't had the grit and backbone to see it through. You need failure. Failure is an important way of learning, and you have to be able to make mistakes. The challenge in all of this is also the fact that Amazon is consistently changing. So these skills also need to stay very fresh and very knowledgeable about the things that are happening rapidly in across many categories in Amazon.

Just last week, there was a huge breaking news, which is that Amazon has decided to stop trading with distributors in Europe. And it will only be trading 1P directly with brand owners. How do they go and find now a huge new pool of Amazon skill sets in the market? Because brands are going to have to either manage 3P, which is another whole skillset, or 

Paul Sonneveld
Yep.

Asha Bhalsod 
Go and build out an Amazon business unit themselves. And so now we're requiring a magnitude of different skills to come in and manage Amazon. 

Paul Sonneveld 
And you've got eight weeks to sort it, right? At least that's what the email said. 

Asha Bhalsod 
For some fortunate businesses, I'd say eight weeks, some have until next year, but there's some very tough decisions that brand owners are going to have to make.

Paul Sonneveld 
Yeah. So, I just want to go back to the recruitment question and the fact that it's easy in an interview as an Amazon guru to impress I guess the person on the other side of the table with the fact that there's a slight, difference in Amazon knowledge and terminology or vocabulary, I should even say.

What advice do you actually have to say e-commerce managers that maybe on not that experienced at Amazon but looking to hire Amazon expertise in their business, or what are some of the biggest kind of mistakes that you see them make or some of the things that you'd really encourage them to think about as they go through that process?

Asha Bhalsod 
In terms of recruitment and in the three years of owning this agency, I always say when people come to me and say, look, I think we need to hire an Amazon talent. What do we do? I always start by saying, what type of Amazon skill are you looking for? I like to put the Amazon skills into buckets. You have the strategic leads, the ones that love negotiating terms or building hybrid models or, you know, unpicking what are the core nuances are of Amazon. I then say that you have marketeers that, you know, want to grow the brand, love Amazon advertising, brand stores, promotions, all of that fluffy stuff that we call marketing.

Paul Sonneveld
Yeah.

Asha Bhalsod 
Have then, an analyst that loves crunching numbers, creates P&Ls, understands net PPM or the challenges with margins with 3P and lost buy box and all that stuff. Or you have an operations person that is always constantly forecasting, looking at different operational mechanisms with Amazon, whether it's FOB or FBM or whatever operational mechanics that there are.

So technically I see there are four types of buckets in of Amazon skills to businesses that are hiring. First, I think it's really important to understand where you are in your journey with Amazon and what do you want to do over the next three years? What's your three-year business plan with Amazon? And then hire the talent based around what you want to do to drive your business forward. So quite often, like I said, businesses come to us and say they want to hire Amazon talent, and we as an agency challenge that thinking and we'll say to them, let us conduct an audit and assessment for you first. Let us find for you what is working, what's not working, and we'll present it back to you. And then we'll help and support recruiting in that space based on the findings of what's working and what's not working well for you.

Paul Sonneveld 
I like how you sort of laid out the four different skill sets and it clearly depends on where you are as a business and also the amount of budget, right? So, if you do have the headcount budget for an extended team, some of this may become a little bit easier. But. I sort of want to just take back and, you know, we could take different perspectives here, but let's take the perspective of a vendor, right? And in fact, I was talking to a Spanish vendor earlier this evening, my time. You know, and they've just been on the Amazon vendor platform for about a year. Not very long really in a kind of getting to learn the platform and that build phase. But you know, with that also probably small headcount, right? There are any people in their business don't know about Amazon vendor. Half the management team is not convinced. So, no one's going to write a blank check, check for like a 10-person team. We, in a situation like that, obviously it's a bit of a theoretical scenario here, but starting out as a vendor, Where would you start in terms of the skillset if you were to hire and part of my question, sorry, it's a long one, what do you need to hire for versus what skills can you teach? If you have to pick. So a few different angles in there. So, I, I can go over it if I need to.

Asha Bhalsod 
Yeah. So I would say for a business that is either just launching in the space of Amazon or have been established for a year, I challenge whether you need to hire immediately or whether you'd bring in an expert agency and outsource those elements. And I am not sure if I should say this loudly, but I don't believe that you should outsource your entire Amazon business to an agency. What I believe you should do is have somebody managing elements of it but outsource specialists area.

So for the vendor that you are just talking about. Yeah. I probably would recruit an Amazon account manager, a junior Amazon account manager. But then use an external agency, to support this person that could potentially even train, coach, and develop but an agency that could also manage for things like Amazon advertising, content listings, optimization, and even strategy consultancy. And then what you have is sustainable growth in that business. And then you are able to decide in year two, year three if you have, the capital to be able to add more skills, to your existing team. And Paul, I know you've asked me that question, but I just want to take it to another topic. 

Paul Sonneveld
Sure. 

Asha Bhalsod
That relates to this. Another problem that I have clients coming to me with, which is we want to grow our business in Europe or globally, and they rely on their existing Amazon skills in their business or their teams to do this for them. And I challenge their thinking again because the expectation that your existing Amazon team who is running the day-to-day of your Amazon business then move their thinking and their day-to-day work into the space of growing and expanding into Europe or globally, that's an ask that I'm not sure that business owners have really thought it through. And this is where you probably do need to outsource and hire, a user consultancy to a point to do the launch for you to almost hand it back and use your existing team to manage it going forward. 

Paul Sonneveld 
Hmm. The other thing that, as you were talking strikes me a lot is we haven't really sort of spoken a little bit about Amazon vendor, but then there's of course the Amazon seller as well. I'm yet to meet a vendor that just has a vendor account, most of them will have a hybrid, a seller account, a hybrid approach, or they may be vendor in Europe, but they're expanding to the US in the seller account. I mean, for some of this might be like super obvious but  I just want to sort of be great for you to lay it out. Hiring for an Amazon vendor channel might be very different to an Amazon seller channel in terms of skills and expertise. Can you just kind of touch on some of those differences? 

Asha Bhalsod 
I think there are differences because of course the platforms are different but the underlining skills I don't think differ. You do still need to have somebody that's building and executing the strategy. I think it is a less strategical work I'd say in the fact that with vendor. The person that's leading the strategy needs to understand how Amazon is placed as a huge against all your bricks and mortar or your independence or all the other channels. Whereas with seller, you are more in control of your price. You are more able to be reactive. So, you probably need more hands on doers, I'd say, in that, in that space. Of course, you still need the marketeer, of course you still need the, analytics and of course you still need the operations. So those skills are, are still just as important. 

Paul Sonneveld 
That's certainly true. You mentioned agencies, using agencies for certain tasks. Let's just talk about the elephant in the room here, like hiring agency, particularly in the UK is expensive, right? How do you, I guess I'm asking to put your agency head on more, which is when you are talking to vendors or to sellers and you're helping them with the resourcing, and I really like the fact that you're not like, hey, give me your whole business. Let me do a specific thing and do something in-house. But how do you paint that picture for them? How do you paint that business case for them in terms of the agency fees and those external costs, which a lot of times comes out of a different budget as well. So sometimes there's sort of internal cost allocation politics involved too. 

Asha Bhalsod 
Yeah. Look, it's never easy for a business to sign off an agency fees. Because having said that, more and more conversations I'm having recently is that they do want to reduce fixed costs in the business. So having an agency contract will be just six months, it allows the business to be a bit more flexible and dynamic in the way that they're working. But it's also, allows them to almost gain knowledge and confidence that their Amazon business is working. Because an agency, the requirement of an agency is to be experts. And that's the requirement I have with my own team is that we're all experts at what we do. And we work with a number of different vendors or seller in across a range of different markets and across a range of different catalogs.

So we are quite experienced and astute, I'd say actually, in the problems and the challenges that are faced. Whereas when you homegrown your own talent, which can I just say again that I think it's very important that you do that. Sometimes what happens is, tunnel vision happens. And, tunnel vision because they only know what they know because they're working at in your business and amongst your brands and your products on a day-to-day basis. So having an agency provide external influences and external experience is quite important. So I don’t know if that answers your question, but it may also ask, answer the question that you said earlier, which is, how do people stay fresh. 

Paul Sonneveld 
Yeah. And the benefit of, expertise and experiences across a wider set of countries, clients, and categories, not having to learn by trial and error all the time. Yeah really, really valid points.

Asha Bhalsod 
And Paul, can I just add to that as well? I think, as I look at the last kind of couple of years, amongst Covid, and what I saw happen was lots of good Amazon talent moved around really, really quickly. Now, why did that happen as well? Why were businesses not able to retain their Amazon talent? Senior leaders in the business ahead of the pandemic, like I said, treated Amazon, a real distance. They didn't know what is this big beast and how to manage them and you had their Amazon, managers, account managers in there. No doubt advocating and pushing for more stock or, or, you know, challenging the way promotions were set up. But, why did retail and the impact that would have on Amazon or the investment Amazon probably needed in terms of advertising from a marketing budget as a, as opposed to stock accounting for it in just an Amazon P&L. 

And then these people get frustrated. They get frustrated that they weren't heard. They would get frustrated that they needed support and budgets to be signed off and this had didn't happen. And these frustration leads to Amazon talent moving elsewhere. But the challenge with that also is I do think Amazon people that do need to see through the time that they're working in at businesses and don't just be, pulled into different directions, at salaries. Because there is a shortage gap in the skills, but the shortage gap actually exists in my opinion, of really good Amazon talent and really good Amazon talent need to understand the importance of man strategically navigating Amazon in your own business but staying fresh from an outside perspective and understanding what's going on in the Amazon world. And that is the engagement of agencies as well. 

Paul Sonneveld 
That's right. Yeah. I was going to say, just listen to these podcasts and that's how you can stay fresh. But that's just a shameful plug. What I was going to ask, it's probably a very specific question, but I'm just super keen to hear it in terms of, as you're about talent, we're talking about really retention, right? There's a big skills gap. People are hard to find and hard to keep as well. Particularly in the context of the skill shortage and also within the role of Amazon, which probably isn't as deserving as it should be and within a lot of organizations. Certainly with a lot of vendors, you mentioned the word like junior account manager. You know, there's no kind of that makes complete sense, but that means, will that person even have a seat at the table with the account managers that run the Tesco accounts and the other accounts?

Asha Bhalsod 
Can I just stop you there? Cause this is another, another thing that almost makes me laugh, I feel really passionate about is when I see job adverts out there titled Amazon National Account Manager. Paul, what is an Amazon National Account Manager? Is it somebody that is managing Tesco in Saintsbury or the entertainers and the bricks of the world then managing Amazon? How are those skills the same? They're not. So, a National Account Manager for Amazon, in my opinion, does not exist.

Paul Sonneveld 
Well, it gets particularly where there's fewer Account Managers on the Amazon side, vendor managers to even negotiate and talk with. The nature of the relationship has always been very different, but it feels like it's moving in a very different direction to Amazon negotiate with the buyer at Saintsbury’s.

Asha Bhalsod 
Whereas Amazon, you don't have, you know, it's less and less, people to negotiate or to talk. Amazon job titles. You know, you have amazon Amazon leads, you have, head of Ecommerce, which is a rather highlight title for because actually if you want to homegrown your talent, the job title should almost be brought to allow them to actually and encourage them to want to look outside of also managing Amazon. And there is a huge e-commerce channel here. It's not just Amazon, of course Amazon is a huge element of it, but there is a huge e-commerce channel. But going back to the job titles, national Account Manager for Tesco of the Saintsbury’s exists. Because, I can understand that, and that's quite a traditional job title. But a national account manager for Amazon, I'm not sure is a correct job title because you don't negotiate, you don't go and see your buyer, you don't have buyers. You fundamentally need to be seeking opportunities in your Amazon business. Testing and learning and analyzing what works and what doesn't work. 

Paul Sonneveld 
So sounds like on the top of our retention strategy, give people a job title that's a little bit more meaningful, and not, not misleading, but more seriously though on the topic of retention. I know we're talking more about recruitment, but I sort of, they're part of the same coin. What have you seen your clients do? Well, those that managed to hold on to not just standard Amazon talent, but great Amazon talent, which is hard to get. What are they doing well to hold onto those people? 

Asha Bhalsod 
It's truthfully, it's the ones that have given the opportunity to the juniors that I called, and I don't really want to call them juniors, I'd call them the opportunists in here. They have homegrown that talent and they've done that through seeking external support, whether that's through training or whether that's through help and support in specialist areas. And I feel like the businesses that I work with, have this hybrid model, and I call it a hybrid model, not in the way that we're talking about it. 

I mean an agency, the internal candidate has a sound board almost to go to which is an external agency, to be able to ask for support and advice on aspects that sometimes one person just doesn't know the answers to. And also, that also takes it back to Senior managers, in a business. The expectation is that they have the skills in their business to just manage Amazon. Senior managers don't know about Amazon. They don't know how to manage Amazon, and that's okay. It's not their roles necessarily to know how to meet and manage Amazon. But who do these Amazon account managers, marketeers, and analysts go? To soundboard, to test, to find out what works and what doesn't work, what's new, what's not. You know, are they missing something in their strategic plan that they've built out? And those clients that I work with that not only have grown their own talent but also outsource areas to a specialist agency, I think they're the ones that are the most successful.

Paul Sonneveld 
That's a great segue just to sort of bring us back up a level because we started talking about kind of the different options, train or promote from within, develop internally, recruit versus outsourcing or using an agency. Maybe you can just if you could just help me, it's a good way to sort of, framing our conversation so far, you know, between each of those three, what are, what.do you see as the main drivers between each of those, and how should brands think about those? It's almost like, what's the, what's the little cheat sheet that you'd give listeners of this podcast in terms of what makes sense when. 

Asha Bhalsod 
Paul, I'm going to ask you to rephrase that question because I could almost spend the entire hour talking about this

*(both laugh)*

Asha Bhalsod
Give what's the most important aspect, I'd say, for a business. What is at the heart of what they're trying to achieve is a short way of doing it. But please rephrase it so I can do you more on that.

Paul Sonneveld 
Well, so let's make it really practical, right? So I'm an Amazon, let's call it Amazon vendor. I have a specific talent need and I could go hire an agency or obstacle, an internal team, or recruit externally. Those are the options before me to feel a specific need. What are some of those decision points that might lead me one way or another around a specific need or maybe what are some questions that you, you'd want to ask the vendor do that? 

Asha Bhalsod 
The first thing I'd then say is I think everybody would typically say, what's your budget? What's the salary? That's probably what I think a lot of people would say. What I would probably say is, what are you trying to achieve with your Amazon growth over the next three years? Are you a brand-led business or are you a trader? If you are a brand-led business, I would then say that you probably want to outsource that specialism to an agency, so I would carve out what is the plan I'd carve out. What are the most important factors? 

And then I would decide whether I recruit, look at my existing team, work out if there is a skill shortage in a gap. how am I going to plug that gap? Because I actually do believe that businesses should be given the opportunity to their own internal candidates fast and give them the opportunity to develop and learn in this Amazon space. Otherwise, we're in a never-ending cycle of a skill shortage gap. And give them the opportunity to learn Amazon from experts. But allow them to also make mistakes and fail because failure is part of lightning. 

Paul Sonneveld 
Great answer. I really like the way you brought that in a very simple way. Very understandable. Much better than my question. So thank you for that. I am looking at the clock. We've gone over a half an hour and I'm trying to stick the time, but I want to, I just want to prod you on another last final topic. I've heard you talk a lot about the Amazon mindset and how having one can really help brands to be more successful. That sounds really nice, but tell me more about that. What does that really mean when you talk about it? Because a lot of people talk about it, but when you talk about it, what do you mean?

Asha Bhalsod 
When I talk about the Amazon mindset, I'm talking about senior leaders in a business that understand the importance of Amazon and don't ignore the importance of Amazon. And Amazon isn't, an account that should just be treated like a sales account. It's a huge marketing platform too. So by adopting an Amazon mindset, you are understanding what that platform can do for your brand. Can I say by developing an Amazon mindset, I don't mean that you always put all your eggs in the Amazon basket.

It's actually understanding how to balance. It's unhealthy for a business to only be trading with Amazon or to have a huge percentage of their business with Amazon. So it's actually about understanding where to balance, where to allocate stock, but the implications of if they then allow independent sellers to sell through Amazon Marketplace and what that impact would be then on their brand or the impact of not investing correctly in the space of Amazon advertising as an example.

Paul Sonneveld 
Thank you.  I like that. I like the answer about it, it's really about the organization internally as opposed to just a specific Amazon specialist that has the Amazon mindset. I think that's the part I hear a lot about, but more about how do you get the whole organization to have that mindset is very useful. Okay, well we are out of time, so we're going to have to wrap it up. Asha, thank you so much for, coming on the show today. You've shared a lot of, you know, I think for those of you watching, watching this is sort of on demand. You, you are probably forgiven for thinking that Asha is a full-time sort of Amazon recruit in its space. She's not. She runs an agency Etopia with deep, deep expertise, but obviously has had a lot of experience in this space. Which leads me to my next question, which is for anyone who's watching, watching this live or, afterwards or listening to the podcast, and want to get in touch with you, what is the best way to do that?

Asha Bhalsod 
Look, I love talking all things Amazon, so we are thank you for defining It. We are an expert Amazon agency offering a range of different services and audit and assessments and strategy consultancy is at our heartland at everything we do. Thus, talking about, the topic of recruitment in such a passionate way because it fits such a huge part of what we do. But for anybody that wants to talk Amazon, I am reachable, on my email address, which is as. At asha@etopiaconsultancy.com. 

Paul Sonneveld 
Just put it on the screen there. Quickly typed away. Thank you. Awesome. Okay. That is great. Well, that is a wrap. Thank you so much, Asha. Look forward to seeing you next week at the White Label Expo in London. For those of you who are going down there, come and say hi. I know Asha you’re speaking at a couple of the slots and also exhibiting there, so go and check that out. But yeah, thanks for your time, Asha, and till next time. 

Asha Bhalsod 
Thank you very much, Paul. See you soon. Bye! 

Paul Sonneveld 
Thank you. Alright everyone. Well, that is it for this episode of Marketplace Masters. Thank you so much for listening. And don't forget to visit merchantspring.io to access exclusive offers only available to listeners and viewers of the show. With that, thank you very much. Until next time.