Growth comes from one of four places: more traffic, better conversion, a higher price, or more products. Before you hire anyone, work out which of the four your account is short on, then score candidates on that specific capability. A weighted scorecard beats any published ranking and takes an afternoon.
The short version
- Diagnose the stuck lever first. Hiring a traffic specialist for a conversion problem wastes a quarter.
- Score candidates on weighted criteria you set. Weight the thing your account is actually missing.
- Demand market sizing before a quote. We will not build on a market under $2 million a year, because the revenue is not there to capture profitably once acquisition cost is paid.
- Cheap validation exists. Around 200 units and $5,000 to $10,000 tells you whether a product deserves scale.
- Ask what they would refuse to do. The answer separates operators from order takers.
Step one: find the lever that is stuck
Revenue on Amazon is sessions multiplied by conversion rate multiplied by price, added up across your ASINs. Everything an agency can do for you moves one of those terms. Pull the numbers from your business reports before you take a single sales call.
| Symptom | The stuck lever | What you are hiring for |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions rising, sessions flat | Click-through | Primary image, title, price position |
| Sessions healthy, unit session percentage low | Conversion | Listing copy, images, A+ content, reviews, rating |
| Conversion fine, sessions low | Traffic | Keyword strategy, advertising, off-channel demand |
| Everything fine, profit thin | Price and cost | Fee audit, packaging, freight, ad efficiency |
| All four fine, growth capped | Catalog breadth | Product research and a second launch |
Most sellers I speak to have already decided they need advertising. About half of them have a conversion problem, which means more advertising buys more expensive proof that the page does not work.
The scorecard
Set your weights before you meet anybody, then score each candidate one to five on evidence rather than impression. Here is the version I would use, with the weight adjusted to whichever lever your diagnosis found.
| Criterion | Weight | Evidence that scores a five |
|---|---|---|
| Owns the stuck lever in-house | 25% | Names the person who does it, shows work in your category |
| Sizes the market before quoting | 20% | Sends back a market size figure and a demand curve, unprompted |
| Has a written stop rule | 15% | Can state what evidence would make them tell you to kill a product |
| Reporting cadence and access | 15% | A written weekly update and a live review you can put in your calendar |
| Commercial terms | 15% | Flat fee, no lock-in, notice period you can live with |
| Category familiarity | 10% | Specific mechanics of your category, not generic FBA advice |
Score the shortlist, then throw away the total and look at the criterion you weighted highest. If a candidate scored badly there, no total rescues them.
Growth when the account is already clean
Once the listing converts and advertising is efficient, the remaining growth is a research problem, and this is where most engagements quietly stall.
We hold a floor of $2 million per year in market size before we will build in a category. Below that, even a strong share of the market does not produce enough revenue to capture profitably once cost of customer acquisition is paid. It is an unpopular rule because it disqualifies ideas people are already emotionally committed to, and it has saved our clients more money than any optimization we have ever run.
Below that floor the honest answer is to look elsewhere. Above it, validation is cheap: around 200 units and $5,000 to $10,000 puts a product in front of real demand, and up to four products can be tested at once. Phase two, real inventory and real ad budget, only starts when rating, conversion rate and acquisition cost are proven rather than hoped for.
Ask any candidate to size a market for you before they quote a monthly fee. If the quote arrives first, you are being sold hours.
What most agencies will not tell you
They will not tell you that a meaningful share of accounts do not need an agency yet. If you have one product, no reviews, and no trademark, the highest-return work available to you is a trademark filing and better photography, neither of which requires a monthly retainer.
Nor will you hear that growth targets are usually set by what the seller wants rather than what the category can deliver. A market only has so much demand in it. An agency that agrees to your number without checking the ceiling is agreeing to your budget, not to your outcome. Ask what the category's realistic ceiling is, and ask what evidence that estimate rests on.
Related answers
- Who to hire to scale Amazon listings
- Best agencies for Amazon product launch strategy
- What does a good Amazon account audit include
- KPIs an Amazon agency should report weekly
- Done-for-you Amazon management: the complete guide
If you want the diagnosis done for you before you decide anything, the free 48 hour audit is at Flapen.
