What Happens When You Join the Program
When you join the Amazon Business Seller Program, you open up another set of features in your Amazon Seller Central account, expanding your selling potential with Amazon to specifically target businesses in addition to individual customers shopping on Amazon. Along with these additional features and tools, you will also receive special messaging on your product detail pages that lets businesses know you are enrolled in the Amazon Business Seller Program, and as such meet the high performance standards of the program. This information can make your products more attractive to business customers, since it shows a level of legitimacy and quality. Participating in the program also allows you to share more information about your business with potential business customers, such as business credentials and information about the diversity and ownership of your business, as well as the quality of your products. All of this can give you a big leg up on the competition and go a long way in convincing business customers to purchase from you, rather than the competition.
When to Consider Signing Up
If you sell a product that businesses would be interested in purchasing (ie. office supplies, or consumer electronics, or industrial and scientific products, etc.) then you should seriously consider signing up for the Amazon Business Seller Program. The features offered by the program will not only position you to be more competitive in selling to businesses, but will also give you access to the tools and features that make it easier to manage selling to businesses, in addition to standard customers.
Program Participation Requirements
Before you sign up for the Amazon Business Seller Program, there are a few participation requirements you must meet. First off, you must have a Professional subscription to Seller Central. In addition you must meet a strict set of performance requirements:
Image source (Seller Central login required)
Program Features
The Amazon Business Seller Program comes with quite a few features that aid in selling to business customers and managing your Amazon business as it relates to selling to businesses. The main features are included below, but be aware that Amazon regularly adds to the offerings of this program to make it more functional and better suited to business sellers.
Business Pricing and Quantity Discount
This feature allows you to offer pricing that is unique to business customers, in addition to the pricing you offer to your regular customer on Amazon. This feature also allows for tiered pricing for bulk purchases made by businesses. You can also use this feature to upload and manage negotiated pricing for specific business customers.
More information about Business Pricing and Quantity Discount can be found here (Seller Central login required).
Business Customer Exclusive SKUs
As an Amazon Business Seller, you can offer SKUs that are only available to business customers, allowing you to more directly target the unique needs of businesses.
More information about Business-Only Offers can be found here (Seller Central login required).
Reduced Referral Fee Schedule
In the Amazon Business Seller Program, products that fall within certain categories are subject to reduced referral fees for bulk purchases. This can save you significant money in the event a business purchases from you in bulk, and allow you to offer more competitive bulk purchasing discounts to your business customers. Here’s what the Amazon Business Seller referral fee schedule looks like:
Image source (Seller Central login required)
Let’s look at an example of how this fee schedule could work. Let’s say you sell a filing cabinet (in the Office Products category) for $100. Below is a breakdown of the referral fees associated with the order of one cabinet, versus the referral fees associated with an order of 20 cabinets.
Image source (Seller Central login required)
As you see from this example, once an order exceeds a product value of $1,000, you pay a smaller referral fee percentage of 10% instead of 15%. So in the example order of 20 filing cabinets, you would save $50 in referral fees compared to what you would have otherwise paid were it not for this reduced bulk purchase referral fee schedule.
More information about the Amazon Business Seller Fee Schedule can be found here (Seller Central login required).
Tax Exemption
Another big perk of the Amazon Business Seller Program is that you can participate in the Amazon Tax Exemption program. If you choose to participate in this program, businesses will have the ability to make tax exempt purchases from you by providing a tax exemption certificate. The Tax Exemption program automates the process for participating sellers to accept tax exemption certificates from customers, making the process quick and painless for both you and your business customers.
More information about Tax Exemption can be found here (Seller Central login required).
Seller Credentials
As a participant in the Amazon Business Seller Program, you will have the ability to display one or more supported quality or diversity certifications on your seller profile. For example, with this feature you can distinguish yourself as a Woman-Owned Small Business or ISO 9001 Certified.
This information can be helpful for businesses who are considering purchasing from you, since many businesses have goals associated with quality sourcing as well as corporate responsibility goals.
More information about Seller Credentials can be found here (Seller Central login required).
Enhanced Content
With this feature you can add enhanced product content such as user guides or Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) to products that fall within specific categories.
More information about Enhanced Content can be found here (Seller Central login required).
Enhanced Business Seller Profile
This feature can be used to add additional information to your business profile, such as business type, year established, enhanced logos, and more.
More information about Enhanced Business Seller Profiles can be found here (Seller Central login required).
Enhanced Reporting
Participation in the Amazon Business Seller Program gives you access to additional reporting fields in Seller Central, allowing you to identify business-specific orders or orders that are tax exempt.
More information about Enhanced Reporting can be found here (Seller Central login required).
How to Join the Amazon Business Seller Program
It is easy to join the Amazon Business Seller Program, and just requires a few clicks within Seller Central to activate.
To begin, on the Seller Central homepage enter “Amazon Business Seller Program” in the search field and click the search icon.
Next, click on the link titled Who is eligible for the Amazon Business Seller Program?
Next, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on Check your eligibility.
From here, if you are eligible you will be taken to a screen that allows you to sign up for the program. Click on the check box next to I understand Amazon Business Seller program is only available to professional sellers and then click on the Enroll Now for Free button.
Congrats! You are now enrolled in the Amazon Business Seller Program, and the program features are now available to you in Seller Central.
To Wrap it Up
For sellers who offer products that businesses purchase, participating in the Amazon Business Seller Program is a great way to help you manage this division of your business, and also gives you access to tools and features that can give you a leg up on competitors that haven’t entered this program.
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