Hey {{first_name|there}},
I spent years trying to solve outreach with VAs.
Executive assistants. Direct hires. Agencies. One was ex-JP Morgan.
I've been through 13 VAs. None of them were that A player, no matter how much I invested, no matter how many SOPs I built.
The results were inconsistent at best.
The good ones were expensive.
The rest needed constant supervision — which defeated the point.
And then just the time wasted training a VA for a month, investing my personal time every single week. And then at the end they just walk away.
The AI agent costs about $60 a month in subscription fees.
$200 if you wanna go all in and have it work 24/7.
The beauty with the agent is that it's not going to leave, and it gets better over time.
Here's the 80/20 of Ecom for this week:
In today's issue:
The outreach workflow we're building together in the Yes-Button Sales Agent Accelerator.
Amazon's insurance requirements, with advice from Ashlin Hadden.
Your Amazon payout is not your profit: the new Link My Books interview.
What to ask your forwarder about Q4 stock still on the water.
Want to sponsor The 80/20 of Ecommerce?
If you're reading this and would like to have your company featured here, let us know.
Build your AI sales agent with me in two weeks
The proof: it generated $4,448 in sales in 2 weeks, and it's still going.
It doesn't need onboarding and suddenly change its mind and quit on you a week later.
It doesn't take sick days.
It doesn't send the wrong version of the pitch.
It doesn't forget to follow up.
And while you were reading this email, your competitors figured this out.
Not the big ones — they have sales teams.
The ones your size.
The operators running outreach-heavy businesses who are quietly closing deals faster than they should be able to.
One deal closes the cost of this cohort.
It's like 80% autonomous, but I don't want it to be 100, because I still want to confirm the final deal.
I want to just double check the verbiage.
4 live, 60-minute sessions. A small cohort of 12.
Bring your sales outreach: a sheet of leads, examples of your brand voice, emails and information about your offer.
This works best if you already have active outreach and want help doing it more consistently.
Same 4 live sessions. Pick your time zone:
Session 1: Mon Nov 9, 4–5 PM EST / 9–10 PM GMT · Tue Nov 10, 6–7 AM JST
Session 2: Wed Nov 11, 4–5 PM EST / 9–10 PM GMT · Thu Nov 12, 6–7 AM JST
Session 3: Mon Nov 16, 4–5 PM EST / 9–10 PM GMT · Tue Nov 17, 6–7 AM JST
Session 4: Wed Nov 18, 4–5 PM EST / 9–10 PM GMT · Thu Nov 19, 6–7 AM JST
12 seats total.
Enrollment closes Friday, Nov 6, 11:59 PM EST / Saturday, Nov 7, 1:59 PM JST.
Amazon's insurance requirements: what to check this week
Since November 2, if you have listings in a category with enhanced safety listing requirements, you need commercial liability insurance covering those products.
Minimum $1 million per occurrence and in aggregate. The $10,000-a-month threshold doesn't matter here.
It applies to new and existing listings.
For sellers based in mainland China, Amazon requires newly submitted policies to come through the Amazon Insurance Accelerator. A compliant policy submitted before November 2 can be used until it expires.
What an insurance pro told me
I asked Ashlin Hadden, Founder/CEO of Ashlin Hadden Insurance, what she's telling sellers. Her answer was blunt:
Every seller needs insurance, no matter how small... it only takes one claim to take down everything you've built.
And her read on the change:
Amazon is just making official what should have been happening all along.
On cost, she said some policies run "as little as $500 a year."
What you sell changes the price, so get a real quote for your own catalog.
I also asked what happens if you just wait. Here's what she saw when Amazon rolled out the earlier $10K-a-month rule:
…we saw them give one warning and then start suspending accounts. I even had clients who had their money held for 30 days. Waiting this out is a really expensive gamble.
What to do this week
Ashlin's advice:
Get a policy in place. Don't wait. Make sure it meets Amazon's requirements and get your certificate uploaded before Amazon comes asking.
Here's the 80/20 checklist:
Check every ASIN against the safety category list.
Check your policy. Make sure it covers the products you actually sell.
Upload your Certificate of Insurance on the Business Insurance page in Seller Central.
Put the renewal date in your calendar. A policy that lapses puts you right back here.
If you need cover, Ashlin's agency specializes in ecommerce insurance: ecom.insure.
TAKEAWAY: Check your catalog against Amazon's safety-category list and check that your policy covers the products you actually sell.
Your Amazon payout is not your profit
Special thanks to our sponsor, Link My Books.
I remember whenever I got a deposit from Amazon into my bank account, I was thrilled I made that much "profit." But at the end of the year, after doing my books, I learned that I was wrong.
Lesson learned: your Amazon payout is not your profit.
Stefan Dobrev from Link My Books walks through the 5 numbers sellers get wrong going into Q4, and what a clean month-end close looks like.
One test to try: take last month's Amazon deposit and see if you can explain every line between the sales total and the cash that landed.
If you can't, start there.
What you'll learn:
Why the deposit in your bank isn't your revenue.
Settlement totals vs. real revenue, refunds and fees.
Splitting fees by type so storage and ads become decisions, not surprises.
Tax you may be overpaying: US marketplace facilitator vs. UK/EU VAT.
Deferred and held balances.
Try Link My Books with code SELLERSUMMIT50: https://linkmybooks.com/?fpr=sellersummit
TAKEAWAY: Map every fee type before Q4 closes, so your December numbers show real profit, not just the payout.
Q4 stock still on the water?
Ask your forwarder today where each container is, which terminal it's going to and whether it's moving by rail or truck.
Build a stock buffer for Black Friday and Cyber Monday on your top ASINs, and don't let them run down to zero waiting for inbound.
Add days to your FBA inbound timing, and keep MCF or backup stock ready if a shipment slips.
For ways to automate this, check out our own Q4 AI Tools Map.
Read more:
TAKEAWAY: Ask your forwarder where each container is, which terminal it's going to and whether it's moving by rail or truck.
In case you missed it
From last week's 80/20 of Ecom:
Talk soon,
Gary
P.S. Attend the sessions and do the homework. If you haven't closed your first AI agent sale within 30 days of the last session, show me your results and I'll help you get there, or refund you 100%.