Amazon Business Seller Program: What You Need to Know

You’ve most likely heard of it or you may have seen some discussions on it. As an Amazon Seller, the important question is, do you need to be part of the Amazon Business Seller Program? “What’s in it for me?” you ask. “Is it worth the fee?” “Is there an added fee to begin with?” These questions and more are what we intend to answer in this article.

What is the Amazon Business Seller Program?

In a nutshell, the Amazon Business Seller Program is a specialized suite of tools that allows to enable B2B ecommerce. In other words, it’s a platform where you’d be allowed to sell your products mainly for businesses. It doesn’t mean that you’d be shifting to a different set of target customers. Whatever market you have with your standard Selling on Amazon account, you get to keep. The Amazon Business Seller Program will simply augment what you currently have, plus you get to enjoy the added perks exclusive for Amazon Business accounts.

If you have an Amazon Consumer account, you get the following market:

• 300+ million worldwide customer accounts
• 42+ million US monthly unique visitors
• 126+ million US monthly unique visitors

Now, if you get qualified for the Amazon Business program, the following will be added:

• 1+ million worldwide customer accounts
• 150+ thousand Amazon Business sellers
• $10+ billion Global annualized sales

Qualifications for the Business Seller Program

To be eligible for the Amazon Business Seller Program, the following requirements must be met:

• Pre-shipment cancellation rate needs to be low – should be less than 1%
• Late shipping rate also needs to be low – should be less than 2%
• Low ODR or Order Defect Rate –  this includes A-Z claims, returns, and chargebacks, and was used to be set at below 1%. The updated Amazon Business Guide now shows that there should be ‘few.’ 

To check whether you’re meeting the required metrics, you can log in to your Seller Central Portal, which provides personalized, up-to-the-minute metrics on your performance.

How to Register as an Amazon Business Seller

So you’ve checked your metrics from the Seller Central Portal and you confirmed that you are qualified for the Amazon Business Seller Program? It is now time to register. Simply follow the steps below. For more insights on this process, see this post on How to Start an Amazon FBA Business.

1. Register to Sell on Amazon

If you still don’t have a Selling on Amazon account, it’s time you have one by signing up on amazon.com. If you have an existing Selling Account, you can add Amazon Business via the Seller Central Portal.

2. Create a Business Profile

Add your detailed business description via the Profile Editor. You can also add quality certifications and diversity credentials. More on these later.

3. Set Up Your Products

Listing tools are provided to allow Business Sellers to add their product catalogs. Also use the Enhanced Content feature to display additional product info to your clientele.

4. Start Selling

Reach millions of consumer and business customers.

Fees Associated with the Business Seller Program

There are two main fees that you may have to worry about when signing up for an Amazon Business Account. The good news is if you have an existing Consumer Account, then there won’t be an additional monthly fee. 

Monthly Subscription Fee

When you initially sign up for an Amazon Seller account, there will be a monthly fee of $39.99. Adding the Amazon Business platform will not incur an additional monthly fee. 

Referral Fees

Four product categories will have lower referral fees for a Business Account. These product categories are: Consumer Electronics, Office Products, Tools & Home Improvement, and Industrial & Scientific. For other product categories, the referral fees will be the same as with a Consumer account.

For the complete list of fees, go to this link.

Key Features of an Amazon Business Account

This is where you need to pay close attention to if you’re seriously considering signing up for the Amazon Business Seller Program. These key features intend to aid in selling to business customers and managing your Amazon business. 

Lower Pricing + Quantity Discounts

This feature will let you offer different pricing that is solely intended for your business customers and not for your regular consumer customers. This will also allow you to offer tiered bulk discounts, which is a type of purchase expected from businesses.

Visual Dashboards

1. Sales Snapshot – allows you to compare the growth of your B2B sales from registered business customers vs non-business customers. It also allows you to view your Year-Over-Year (YoY) performance in both customer segments.
2. B2B Performance by Industry – shows the breakdown of your sales per industry and sub-industry segments of your customers.
3. Top Products – shows your top five selling products to registered business customers, so you know which products to put more focus on.
4. Business Action Center – shows suggested tasks that are relevant to your B2B business via a link on the Seller Central page. There is a dismiss option for each task if you think they’re not applicable to your case.

Business Profile Editor

Having a business profile gives that extra level of confidence to business customers that they are making informed buying choices. Your profile on your Business Seller account will allow you to add your company logo, the year your business was established, your business type, a unique company story and description, and more. These pieces of information will be available to customers when they click on your seller name in the Buy Box, in the Ships from and Sold by line on a product detail page, or on the product’s More Buying Choice and Offer Listings pages.

Enhanced Product Content

This feature will allow you to bring your product closer to your customers by providing them with a wide array of relevant information about your products such as user guides, spec sheets, CAD diagrams, comparison charts, installation manuals, and more.

Requests for Quotes

Different businesses require different purchase quantities, regardless if you already have tiered pricing laid out to them. For this reason, an option to request for quotes was added as a feature on Amazon Business. Your business customers can provide you with the quantity of potential orders and you can reply with a discounted offer.

Quality and Diversity Credentials

You can add quality, diversity (national and state diversity), and ownership certifications to help your company stand out to your business customers. 

Quality and ownership certifications include ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and AS (aerospace standard) systems. 

Meanwhile, national diversity certifications include women-owned, LGBT business, minority-owned, veteran-owned, and some SBA (small business administration) certifications.

Finally, state diversity certifications vary by state.

Final Thoughts

This is almost a no-brainer. If you’re qualified to include business customers to your market, there’s really no reason not to become an Amazon Business Seller. If your Seller Central metrics do not qualify you for the program, it might be high time you find a proper fix for it. You may think the added features are something you have no use of. Probably only for the time being, but in the long run, it will be worth it.

Sources:

Amazon.com
Sales Backer
AMZ Advisers
Seller Central