Every Amazon "partner" has a slick deck. Fewer have the operating model, incentives, and persistence to actually move your contribution margin. If you're evaluating help, start with economics and accountability — not buzzwords.
Use this as a checklist when you're comparing agencies, accelerators, consultants, and buy-sell operators. For how those categories differ, read Amazon agency vs. accelerator and Vendor Central vs. Seller Central.
1. Do They Win When You Win?
Ask plainly how they make money. Retainers, percentages of revenue, and performance bonuses create different behaviors. A partner whose income rises with your gross sales isn't automatically bad — but you should understand what happens if growth is unprofitable, or if Amazon retail gets noisy with unauthorized sellers and price erosion.
In a buy-sell model, your partner buys inventory and lives in the same margin reality you care about. That's not the only legitimate structure — but it's the fastest sniff test for incentive alignment.
2. Retail Execution, Not Just "Strategy"
Amazon rewards operators. Ask for specifics: how they run catalog governance, how they prioritize fixes when listings break, how they structure PPC, and how they measure total channel health (not just ROAS). If answers stay at 30,000 feet, expect 30,000-foot results.
3. Brand Protection and Distribution Discipline
If your partner treats MAP and unauthorized sellers as "someone else's problem," you'll leak margin no matter how clever the ads are. Strong partners have a documented approach to unauthorized sellers and removing bad actors that matches your legal and channel strategy.
4. Transparency You Can Audit
You should know what's being done weekly — not just what slid into a monthly PDF. Ask how reporting works, who owns decisions, and what happens when Amazon changes the rules overnight. The right partner expects you to ask hard questions.
5. References in Your Category (and Honesty When They Don't Have Them)
Relevant experience matters because Amazon is category-specific. But sophistication also matters: a partner who admits where they're building new muscle is often safer than one who claims universal expertise.