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When Pat Hanna joined me on Revenue Playbook Chronicles, I expected us to spend most of the conversation talking about Amazon tactics.

PPC campaigns. Product listings. Seller compliance. The usual problems that make Amazon business owners lose sleep.

We covered those subjects, but Pat’s career revealed a more useful lesson.

Before founding Seller Pro, Pat trained seller support agents around the world from Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle. He worked with escalation teams and saw the problems sellers created long before they reached customer support.

After leaving Amazon, Pat stepped away from ecommerce completely. He started a handyman business and discovered how different business ownership feels when every expense, missed day, and poor decision belongs to you.

He bought tools without tracking his costs carefully enough. The physical work drained him. A hobby he enjoyed became a job he no longer wanted to do.

That experience taught him something Amazon never could: knowing how a system works does not automatically make you a disciplined business owner.

Pat eventually returned to ecommerce through an Amazon agency. There, he learned how to build seller accounts, manage compliance, develop product listings, coordinate creative work, and run advertising campaigns. Those years gave him the operating experience that later became the foundation for Seller Pro.

His journey offers a useful warning for any brand thinking about hiring an Amazon agency.

An agency can improve execution. It cannot manufacture sound business economics.

Amazon makes it possible to reach millions of shoppers, outsource fulfillment, advertise products, and build detailed product pages inside one marketplace.

That convenience comes with several layers of cost.

Amazon sellers may pay selling plan fees, referral fees, fulfillment expenses, storage charges, advertising costs, and other optional service fees. The exact amount depends on the product, category, fulfillment method, and programs being used. Amazon maintains a current breakdown on its selling fees and pricing page.

Those expenses have to fit inside your margins before you pay an agency.

Suppose you sell a product for $40. After manufacturing, freight, marketplace fees, fulfillment, returns, discounts, and advertising, you may discover that the sale produces very little actual profit.

A skilled agency might increase sales from $50,000 to $80,000 per month. If your contribution margin remains weak, the agency has helped you scale a financial problem.

Revenue looks good in a dashboard. Cash flow tells you whether the business is healthy.

Before hiring an agency, calculate what remains from each sale after every variable cost. Then model what happens if advertising costs rise, Amazon changes a fee, or a competitor cuts its price.

You need room for those things to happen because eventually, one of them will.

Pat described an Amazon market where sellers are facing higher costs, aggressive price competition, and manufacturers that can sell directly to consumers.

A brand that buys a white-label product from a manufacturer may eventually find that manufacturer, or another supplier with similar access, competing against it.

The competitor may be able to sell at a lower price because it begins with a different cost structure.

Your agency cannot control that.

Before you hire one, know these numbers:

Run the calculation at your current price and at a lower competitive price. If a modest price reduction erases your profit, the agency conversation should wait.

Your first job is repairing the offer, cost structure, or product strategy.

Pat trained support agents to help sellers navigate difficult escalations. He has seen how quickly a missing document or overlooked rule can interrupt a business.

Amazon has category and product-specific requirements. Children’s products, supplements, cosmetics, electronics, and other regulated goods may require testing reports, certifications, safety information, or additional documentation.

A seller can create strong listings and still run into trouble if the product was never prepared for the marketplace.

Before launch, create a compliance file containing:

Amazon’s Seller University provides current training on listings, fulfillment, advertising, inventory, and account health. Use it to understand the requirements yourself, even if an agency will manage the daily work.

Delegation works better when the business owner knows what is being delegated.

Pat spoke about sellers finding a trending product, sourcing a version through Alibaba, and launching it on Amazon.

That model can produce sales. It can also attract competitors with similar products, lower costs, and no reason to respect your position.

A brand needs an answer to a simple question:

Why should a customer choose this product when a cheaper version appears beside it?

“Better quality” is rarely enough. Every seller believes that.

Your reason might come from:

Amazon provides tools such as A+ Content, Brand Stores, and Brand Analytics, but those tools express a market position. They do not create one.

For eligible registered brands, A+ Content can add richer text, images, video, comparison charts, and brand storytelling to product pages. Brand Analytics can help sellers understand search and purchase behavior.

Both become more valuable when the brand already knows what it wants customers to remember.

One word kept returning during my conversation with Pat: collaboration.

His best client relationships involve people who respond, share information, consider recommendations, and work through problems with the agency. His hardest relationships involve businesses that delay decisions, withhold context, or expect the agency to operate without access to the people who understand the product.

Assign one internal owner to the Amazon relationship.

That person should have the authority to:

Without that person, the agency becomes a professional follow-up service.

Work slows down. Problems stay unresolved. Both sides eventually blame the other.

An agency should bring expertise and execution capacity. Your company still has to participate.

Amazon advertising can make a report look active.

Impressions increase. Clicks arrive. Revenue moves. Everyone has numbers to discuss during the monthly call.

The useful question is what those sales contributed to the business.

Your agency scorecard should include:

Advertising cost of sales can help evaluate campaign efficiency, but it should not become the only number that matters.

A campaign may appear efficient while promoting a low-margin product. Another campaign may look expensive while introducing customers to a product with strong repeat purchases.

The agency needs marketplace data. The owner needs the complete business context.

Pat’s background gave him three distinct views of the marketplace.

He saw Amazon from the inside. He managed accounts at an established agency. Then he built his own firm while dealing with the financial uncertainty every business owner understands.

That combination led me to a practical test for choosing an Amazon agency.

Ask the agency to diagnose your business before it pitches its services.

A serious diagnosis should address:

Listen closely to the questions the agency asks.

If every conversation turns immediately toward ad spend, you may be speaking with a media buyer rather than an operating partner. If the team asks about margins, inventory, compliance, product differentiation, and internal responsibilities, it is examining the business behind the account.

That distinction matters.

Pat’s handyman business did not become his long-term career. It still gave him an education that shaped the agency he later built.

Working for yourself requires systems that nobody else will enforce. You have to track expenses, protect your time, communicate with clients, and make decisions without waiting for a manager.

The same principle applies when you hire an agency.

Outsourcing execution does not outsource ownership.

You remain responsible for the product, the economics, and the direction of the brand. A good agency helps you make better decisions and execute them faster. The relationship works when both sides bring useful information to the table.

That is why Pat’s story matters beyond Amazon.

He learned the platform as an employee, the work as an agency operator, and the responsibility as a founder. Each stage gave him knowledge the previous one could not provide.

You can watch my full conversation with Pat Hanna here.

An Amazon agency may help with account setup, product listings, compliance, creative assets, advertising, inventory planning, account health, and marketplace strategy. Services vary, so confirm exactly what is included before signing an agreement.

Consider hiring an agency after you have validated the product, calculated your margins, prepared the required compliance documents, and assigned someone inside your company to manage the relationship. An agency is most effective when the business has a solid foundation and needs specialized execution.

Pricing may include a monthly retainer, a percentage of advertising spend, a percentage of sales, project fees, or a combination of these models. Compare the fee against your expected contribution profit rather than total revenue.

Track profit, contribution margin, conversion rate, advertising efficiency, organic sales, inventory health, return rates, and account issues. Agree on the scorecard before the work begins.

No responsible agency can guarantee sales because results also depend on the product, price, competition, reviews, inventory, demand, and marketplace conditions. An agency should explain what it controls, what it can influence, and what remains outside its control.

If you are preparing to hire an Amazon agency, review the five gaps before signing a contract. The exercise may reveal that you are ready to scale. It may show you exactly what needs attention first.

Revenue Playbook Chronicles turns candid conversations with experienced operators into practical decisions you can use in your own business.

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