Podcast transcript
Introduction
Hi, and welcome to another live episode of Marketplace Masters, sponsored by MerchantSpring, your go-to for marketplace analytics. Now, today's episode is also supported by the UK Marketplace Awards. And in case you're wondering, these awards present an opportunity for Amazon sellers and vendors to showcase their brands and be judged by a panel of industry experts.
With over 21 categories celebrating Amazon excellence, this is your chance as an agency or brand to have your achievements recognized and celebrated. Now, you can submit your brand by visiting themarketplaceawards.com. I might just get that out on the screen in case you're wondering at themarketplace awards.com. There we go. All right.
Paul Sonneveld
I am your host, Paul Sonneveld. And today we're going to build on last week's episode, episode where we talked about systematizing your operations. Today, actually, what we're going to do is go much deeper into standard operating procedures or SOPs, especially within the context of a medium-sized Amazon agency business.
Now, I have invited Andy Banks and Jonathan Newton to join us and to share their valuable expertise and perspectives on how to achieve this. So let me welcome today's guests. Andy is a VentureForge CEO, a global agency that enhances Amazon brands on major sales channels, including Amazon, of course. With 20 years in e-commerce, he directs the agency's vision and growth, balancing work with family life, and a passion for charity marathons. I know that certainly fills up his LinkedIn feed a lot.
Jonathan Newton, the COO, brings 25 years of experience in retail and digital, focusing on really exceeding client expectations. When he's off duty, he is a dedicated father, coin enthusiast, and a live performance aficionado. Clearly a highly dynamic pair. Andy and Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us today.
Jonathan Newton
Thanks for having us, Paul.
Andrew Banks
Thank you.
Paul Sonneveld
Clearly, I love the topic of SOPs, not because it's terribly sexy. I guess it's like the accounting part of accounting or running an Amazon agency. But actually, Amazon agencies are, by the large part, people businesses. And how to scale really requires some careful consideration because it's easy to scale without making any money whatsoever and upsetting a whole lot of clients in the process. And I think SOPs are critical. However, let's explain and unpeel the topic first, right? Maybe we can start off with a question here, which is, what are SOPs and what are they in the context of an Amazon agency business?
Jonathan Newton
Yeah, let me let me jump into that, Paul, if I can. So I guess in the simplest of terms, a standard operating procedure is a repeatable, scalable process that allows agencies like ours to service our clients with specific tasks or duties. I think for us, it really sets a standard of execution across our business, really allowing our team members to execute sometimes very, very complex tasks and ever evolving tasks in the Amazon ecosystem to a really, really high standard.
And I think like everything in life, we from time to time need to change account managers onto various clients to ensure we've got the right skill set and the right fit or perhaps there's a change in the leadership within one of our clients. And what is really important is that those standard operating procedures allow us to have a consistent approach in everything that we do, a consistent approach to excellence and a consistent approach to format as well.
But what I think is really important is that you devise a series of SOPs that allow for flair, creativity, and individuality with each individual team member. So putting too much rigidity into an SOP can be great for execution, but putting too much rigidity into an SOP can be really quite poor for culture and really quite poor to allow people to bring their own flair and opportunities to the individual SOP.
I think as a final point, I think they're a fantastic way to onboard new clients, onboard new team members, and can be a really great opportunity for especially team members who are new to the Amazon ecosystem, to learn their ropes, cut their teeth accordingly, and learn some really quite complex processes in a really standardized and well-executed format.
Paul Sonneveld
Thanks for that great introduction there, Jonathan. So give us a bit of a flavour here. I'm assuming that you didn't set out by, hey, Andy, let's start an agency. OK, that's great. Before we get any clients, let's do all the SOPs. I think probably in hindsight, that's always a good way to do it. But what did it look like in reality? What was your initial approach? And was there a catalyst for creating SOPs and going down that journey?
Andrew Banks
Yeah, absolutely, Paul. I think my answer might actually contradict how you kind of teed that up. So actually, we did almost set out right at the beginning, say, let's build an agency based around SOPs. I just want to build on Jonathan's answer to the previous question. It's very easy to look at an SOP and think that's an internal thing. But I think you said in your intro, Paul, an agency is a group of people providing a service. And you can't build any agency or any business just based on the goodwill or the intention of the people. The business has to have its process, its way of doing things.
So for me, when I started to build VentureForge, and with Jonathan's great input at that stage as well, we said right from the outset, this has to be a process-driven business. We have to create the VentureForge way of doing things, not Andy's way, not Jonathan's way, not Becker's way or any other future or past employees' way, it's got to be the VentureForge way of doing things, because that's something we can own, we can control, we can be famous for.
And if something isn't working, it's not down to, is it the employee of a way they're doing something? It's at the heart of it, is the process right? And then that'll become a really valuable asset for us. I think what kind of spurred it on for us, it was like that I promised myself years ago that I would never create an agency again and then ended up building an agency. When I started to do that, I looked at, well, why do agencies succeed? Why don't they succeed? And a couple of great bits of reading at that time, a book called Traction, which talks about the entrepreneurial operating system, a process for running a business and building a business. And at the same time, a book called The E-Myth, or the more recent version, The E-Myth Revisited, by a guy called Michael Gerber. That's all about building a business that is scalable, repeatable, and process-driven.
So for me, it was almost a contradiction of how you kind of set up the question. We did actually design a business built around SOPs because we knew it had to be scalable right from the outset. And it kind of leaves us in a wonderful position now where we've actually got a business that can take two to three times the volume that it has within it. I don't mean in terms of capacity that we sat on in terms of the operational process, rigour, and organizational design. Our challenge now is one of selling, not one of operating. That's set us in really good stead for getting the business off the ground.
I think the final point I'll add to that is actually the fact that Jonathan's here as my business partner. You know, that's not by accident. Yeah, we had a past, we got on, we had a relationship. But through that process of understanding, particularly from the traction and the entrepreneurial operating system way of looking at things, every business needs a visionary.
That's your CEO in a typical business. And it needs an integrator, the COO. And in really simple terms, one is the lunatic that comes up with 100 ideas. The other is the person that works out which 10 of those actually matter and make sure they get implemented. And that actually in our organization, is by design. Jonathan is part of our business and founded the business together and created it, but with two very deliberate hats on. And one focused on operationalization in our business, not just selling and growing at all costs.
Paul Sonneveld
That makes sense. Sounds like a great partnership. In terms of maybe a question for you, John, in terms of creating these SOPs and processes and structures, was there a natural place where you sort of started? I know we'll go into a lot more details here, but I'm just really curious, particularly if you're saying you did this at almost like at the inception of your agency. Did you start more on almost like the sales and business development side of things or was it very much focused on operations and the delivery side of things? I mean, was there a natural gravitation to one or the other?
Jonathan Newton
I think selfishly, Paul, because the SOPs tend to sit within my remit within the business, I naturally gravitated to how do we run a successful Amazon agency? How do we really successfully service clients and grow their sales in a profitable way? So I think we typically started with the 80-20 rule over, what are the big things that we have to do on a day-to-day consistent basis that are going to make the biggest impacts to our clients. And that's where we started. And I guess we kind of adapted and iterated based on those things.
But, you know, it's safe to say, and I'm sure the audience will know this just as much as we do, you know, Amazon is a continuously evolving beast. And I say the word beast really quite deliberately because it is enormous. You know, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands of microprocessors that need to be considered on how to successfully run, not only an Amazon agency, but how to develop and grow an Amazon business.
So, you know, we're constantly iterating in that regard. But I think back to your original question, we started on the really big things. What are the things that are going to make the biggest difference to our agency and its success? And what's going to make the biggest difference to our client success and the things we have to do for them? So that's kind of where we started. And we always carry that very simple mantra of it's very difficult to boil the ocean, so don't try and do it. Start in the big things where you can make a big difference and move on from there.
Andrew Banks
Well, it's also important to add, Paul, that it's very easy sitting here as guests on the webinar talking about SOPs. We're not perfect. We haven't got a 500-page document covering every touchpoint in the agency. And to Jonathan's point, I'd say we are really well SOP'd and operationalized on our service delivery. We have SOPs. I think we actually shared them with you in the past poll around webinars and just sharing that insight with each other as to how we do stuff. Do we have it on every aspect of sales and marketing? No, we don't.
Part of that's deliberate and subconsciously deliberate. Do we have it on finance? Yes, we do. But is it as documented as it is on the service delivery side of things? No, but that's not unsurprising. At the heart of what we do, we're a service delivery business. And if we get the service delivery right and we invest our time there, the business will naturally grow around that. We can backfill in other areas as we go.
Jonathan Newton
I think it's a really good point. I think the trick to SOPs or successful SOPs is understanding when an SOP is required or not. Sometimes an SOP, to Andy's point, can be a very detailed, very deep document that needs to be trained out, and considered across the agency, and everyone understands the role they're playing in it.
In other cases, it can be a five or 10-minute conversation around this thing that just needs to happen in this sequential order. Or in other cases, it could be a simple Loom video with one person within the agency just chatting about how they do a certain thing and allowing the team to adapt their own processes around that.
So yeah, I think for anyone considering SOPs is that I don't think there's a perfect solution. I think the perfect solution is to make sure the things that really matter are captured somewhere, somehow, and make sure that your organization understands the role they play within that. And I don't think you'll go already far wrong with that.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, that makes sense. So I've got two follow-up questions on that. Let me throw the first one out, which is probably the easier one. The next one is maybe a bit harder. But the first one really is, How do you decide whether you actually need an SOP? So let's say, oh, we're going to do a Christmas party. We did one last year. Do we need an SOP for how you organize a Christmas party? Maybe not. Maybe you guys have one. I don't know.
But practically speaking, because some people have a tendency to worship the process as opposed to the outcomes. So how do you evaluate? actually, guys, we really need an SOP because that's going to be great for our business versus guys, that would be overkill. We just turn ourselves into bureaucracy if we do that.
Andrew Banks
I think we'd be lying, Paul, if we said we had a formal process around that. I don't think we do. But I think what we have got is a good inclination as to what matters in your own organization. So to take your Christmas party example, if you can't organize a drinking session in a brewery, can we get together as a group of people, go to the pub, celebrate Christmas, and have a cooking class? Of course, we can. Do we have a culture in our organization that says we get together every quarter, we celebrate big things? We do, but most of that lives up here and it lives in the culture of the organization. What do we do as a business? We grow brands on Amazon. That's what we do. And that for me tells me that's important. We've got people around that. We have teams around that. Almost 80% of our workforce sits in that area. So that's where the effort needs to be. So I think it's almost a subconscious way of working for us. If it feels important and if it's done a lot and it's repeatable and significant, it needs an SOP.
I think to the point that Jonathan touched on earlier, an SOP can be 55 sheets of A4, or it can be five bullet points on a list, or it can literally be something in your calendar that says every quarter. We were talking about Mumfen, weren't we, John, yesterday? It could just be there's a note in my calendar that says Mumfen's financials need to be wrapped up by next Friday. That is an SOP. It lives in our operational calendar. It then happens off the back of that. We can't run our entire client service operation on that high level of detail, but you can run simpler stuff on that basis.
Jonathan Newton
I'd agree with Andy. I think as an agency scales and grows and becomes naturally more complex, either by complexity through additional team members or more clients or more processes and more systems, it becomes a beast in its own right to wrestle with. But I think for me, the trick is on why would you develop an SOP. For me, it's quite simple. If there is a repeated instance of something going wrong, or a repeated instance of somebody asking for the same thing, or a repeated instance of a challenge from somewhere in the organization, the likelihood is you need an SOP because you've got that frequency and consistency in the challenge, or the change, or whatever that might be. And having that one single SOP that you can train out en masse or have in a G drive, or have as part of a systemized process internally, just mitigates some of those sticky points within the agency.
So I think where we're really using with huge value, like Andy said, is repeatable process, financial operations, client expertise, onboarding and inductions, where we use SOPs in a huge, huge environment. Every inductee as part of our business has taken through a fairly rigorous eight-week induction program of which SOPs probably occupy 50 to 60 percent of that time, so they can be used highly efficiently for the longer-term benefit of the individual or the client or the challenging question, I guess.
Andrew Banks
Just one point to add to that is also when something is going exceptionally well and you don't want to admit how well it's working, I use our own webinar delivery as an example of that. We found a way of moving our attendance rate from what was 20% up to 50-60% and our registration rates have gone from 50s into the hundreds to the hundreds and 50s. You don't want to lose that. There's three or four tactics that are working. We've got great people in that team, but they won't be around forever or people might be off. So that has to live at the heart of the business. So things that are going well also needs to be repeatable to keep things going.
Paul Sonneveld
I just want to let our audience know that this is a live session. I'm actually seeing some questions flow in. I will get to those. There's some great questions already being submitted by some others, but if you're tuning in live, we've got quite a few people watching live right now, so throw in your question and I'll make sure I'll put them in front of Andy and Jonathan.
Now, here is my second question. That was the easy bit. And luckily, you didn't say we have an SOP for working out if we need an SOP. But my second question is, sometimes I tend to equate SOPs as just with documenting a process, right? But how do you make sure you don't document a really poor, inefficient process, right? Because it's not just the ways of working. You want to make sure that you're doing things in the right way, the smartest way, the efficient way. I'd love to hear how you think about that and maybe some practical examples of how you drive efficiencies in your business.
Andrew Banks
Yeah.
Jonathan Newton
Okay. So I think a couple of things stand out for me, and I think I'm going to use my first example very, very explicitly to Amazon Best Practice. I'm not even sure there is a best practice for Amazon. Of course, there is. There's good ways and bad ways to do everything in life. But I think because of the very nature of Amazon and the speed at which it progresses, I think it gives individuals the opportunity to constantly iterate, and constantly refine processes in order to get the best results. And especially as more technology comes onto the scene, as AI starts to play a part in that. So finding the balance of technological advancement and human intelligence, I think, is always a really interesting point.
But to answer your question, Paul, more explicitly, within our business, each SOP is assigned to an owner within the business. And to Andy's earlier point, that's not just he and I as co-founders of the business. Each one of our team has really quite a specific skill set, and that might be something in their technical ability, or it might be something in their personalities. And what we try to do is match those SOPs to individuals to own the SOP.
Now, by allowing individuals to own the SOP, we get a much greater buy-in across the business and across the agency, rather than Andy and I trying to push it down from a senior leadership point of view. And that's been fantastic from day one. It's always worked, and it's always had really great buy-in. But I think what's really interesting is that as something changes in our world, maybe it's a change in a process, maybe it's a change in Amazon, maybe it's a change in people, that central ownership of that SOP by a person allows them to take personal responsibility for moving that SOP forward in line with whatever changes or environmental changes are going on around them.
But each individual has to be willing, confident and comfortable on being challenged on their SOP because it can't be Andy's way, it can't be Jonathan's way, it can't be Matt's way, it can't be you know whoever else in the process of doing this. But by allowing each individual to be open to challenge, you start to get a really good blended balance of best practices, of relevant knowledges across not only our agency, but where those team members have come from historically as well, whether they've come from another agency, a brand, or a big corporate business, you get this really nice pliable kind of SOP that just continues to organically be alive and continues to scale and grow in line with us or the changing world we operate in.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah. So is it in my writing saying that you appoint an owner of an SOP. I'm assuming, I just want to sort of put downward on progression about, when they own it, you mean they are the people responsible for developing it and sort of getting everyone sign off and input and making sure that we sort of got this best of breed.
Jonathan Newton
Yeah, yeah, that's that's exactly right, Paul. So you know, each individual owner may not be able to fully refine or nail down the SOP by themselves. So by nature of the beast, they have to pull other expertise from around the business and other conversations. And that's really great for from a cultural point of view, it really, it really bakes in our one team value. But yeah, by doing so, you get a really nice blend of expertise across the business.
And what that really means is from an executional point of view, you don't just have one point of failure. So if that person leaves the business, becomes ill, isn't great at presenting or training, you get this multitude of opportunities where lots of team members across the business can take a part in training or development or presentation skills. And it just helps really hold the whole culture of the SOP together.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, makes sense.
Andrew Banks
Jonathan also touched on one of our brand values. I think for me, that's another fundamental piece in this. The culture of the organization drives the development, the ownership, and the efficiencies around that SOP. So Jonathan touched on one team. We operate as a single team, not just internally, but across our clients as well. But around that, we've got empowered ownership.
Everybody in our business works on accountability. So even though they may own the SOP, that doesn't mean they have to do it and deliver it. They've got to own the development of it and the management and the ownership of it that the team are all involved in that. And the most important one we have is dynamic innovation as a business we should constantly be iterating and as Jonathan's already said that's happening in the world around us in Amazon but it also means the way we drive our business and if I look at just one of our SOPs for how we do content for clients that has fundamentally changed from the day we started the agency or started the SOP on that, up to how we deliver that now.
And the process is now significantly much more efficient by how we brought tech in, how we're using stuff in the middle of that. So, wrapping those values and culture of the organization around, not just the SOPs, but the entire way we work, drives that continued accountability, iteration, ownership, and puts that SOP at the heart of the business.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah. So if I can just push you a bit harder on that, Andrew, because that's really interesting. Because I think a lot of businesses say, Oh, we're a continuous improvement. We do these things all the time. And you know, a lot of times just fluff, right? It's a statement in terms of the corporate values, how in reality, take that, that content process, right? How does that evolve? How does that become better? What happens inside your business? If I were to sort of be a fly on the wall within your business for a month, what would I see?
Andrew Banks
So let me take that specific example and we'll go a little bit higher level and talk about the role of SOPs in our business. All our people are accountable. They're all here to get the job done and they know exactly where we're going for our clients and overall as a business. So the role of SOPs in our business are more like the bumpers on a bowling alley. We've got our people heavily focused on knocking the pins down. The SOPs aren't there to make sure the ball goes straight, it's to make sure it doesn't go too far off track.
So culturally we trust our people to get the job done. The SOPs are the guidelines, but they're not rules that can't be broken. And in the world of our content, I'm thinking back sometimes, I might not be 100% accurate on how this came to life, but we were doing lots of manual work on content, lots of handwritten content work, lots of manual keyword research processes that were kind of linked through people, but not through tech or process.
Through that, we developed a proof of concept that allowed us to go and test a different approach. Simple way of looking at it, the majority of the business is running to SOP, but somebody in the team has said, hang on, I think there's a better way to do this. We could use some AI tech or a platform that allows us to do the keyword research quicker, create the initial listing content quicker, and then still wrap a manual process around that in terms of quality checking and making sure it's fit for purpose. But that could get us to the same outcome. And to come back to my analogy, that could still knock down the bowling pins, but in a slightly different way for that client. It could be quicker, it could be faster, it could be smarter.
We typically run that as a proof of concept and we see how that develops. That then becomes a conversation with the operational team, and if that now creates a better way of working, off we go and we do it. Without going too much away, we've got a similar proof of concept running at the moment in terms of how we manage the tech we use to manage our paid advertising for our clients. Again, proof of concept approach. The team is directed to going up the pins down, the SOP and the guidelines. If there's a better way of doing it, we're not sat here with SOPs saying, the SOP says to do it exactly this way, you must do that. If there's a smarter way, come and challenge us, come and push that back up through the team and let's make it happen.
Jonathan Newton
Yeah, and I think there's a number of ways we can measure and monitor that, Paul, as well, you know, to get to the real crux and the real specifics. You know, every quarter we run team member satisfaction scores, and our team members, through their bold integrity value, will always tell us if they are wasting time, if something has become overly complex, if they're not as efficient as they can do. So that's just one element where we can take some feedback from the team on something needs to change.
We do the same with our clients, and you bet your bottom dollar, if clients are dissatisfied, they will tell you very, very quickly. And we have an exceptionally high client satisfaction score across the board. But that's because we refine our SOPs, we continue to iterate, we continue to develop. But to one of your earlier points, Paul, that can all sound very fluffy. To give you a little bit of just raw honesty, not every SOP in our business is fit for purpose at this point in time. And that's kind of OK.
We operate on a very simple RAG status, a red, amber, green status. And that's simple. Green, the process or the SOP is fit for purpose in the here and now. It works well. It's highly efficient. Don't change it. Amber, we're starting to get some sense of a niggle. Something doesn't feel quite right. It perhaps is taking us slightly longer than it used to, or there's something there that's just not quite where it needs to be on point, but we'll carry forward and carry on looking at this.
There are a couple of SOPs in the business that are flat out reds. The process is outdated. It's clunky. It's cumbersome. That doesn't mean to say we're going to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but that is a very loud sign to myself as Chief Operating Officer to say, we need to talk to the owners of this SOP. We need to look at a better solution because it's hindering our organization. And we might be realizing that in the P&L, that could be a specific cost strain or a margin gain on the business. It could be that it's given a client a headache. Or it could be the reason why one of our team members is having to work two more hours in a day just to do something.
Paul, I'm going to perhaps take an opportunity to flatter your own ego and MerchantSpring ego here, if I may. A great example of the kind of iteration around SOPs is all of our data that we used to use for our clients used to be manually pulled from Vendor Central, Seller Central. We used to then do some Excel wizardry and bring together some lovely data sheets in Google Data Studio to present to our clients and present to stakeholders.
You know, MerchantSpring comes along, we had a red SOP against that, we knew it was time consuming, it was highly inefficient for us, and we bought into what MerchantSpring had to offer because it was a phenomenal step change in the way that we went about our everyday reporting and analytical queries. And that's been a monumental step change in the time and energy that we used to put into that SOP. Rapidly, that SOP went from a red to a green, but it might drop to an amber again in time. And that's when we would be challenging yourself and your team at MerchantSpring Paul to understand what does the platform now need to do to get that SOP back to green.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, and I think that's a great example. And just for our audience,
Jonathan Newton
That was not scripted, I promise.
*(all laugh)*
Paul Sonneveld
No, no. Actually, I have a rule where I don't do any kind of sales or business development stuff. I don't like to talk about MerchantSpring too much because I want to make sure we get into those topics. But thank you, Jonathan. I do think you touched on something, particularly around the aspect around clients, and profitability. I just want to go back to, in my intro, I talked a little bit about, at the end of the day, we don't do SOPs just because it makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside, although some people do love that.
But in the context of an Amazon agent, it's about serving your clients consistently with high quality and ultimately scale up and draw, build a very profitable business. I'd love to just understand, I don't know if you've got examples ready, but you know, in what ways have kind of SOPs sort of directly impacted kind of client retention or profitability at VentureForge? I mean, if you can share some specific examples where SOPs have made a difference, I'd love to, and I'm sure the audience as well would love to hear it.
Andrew Banks
I think for me, I'll tackle the financial aspects of that, that's where I spend a fair bit of my time in the business. We track our gross margin, we separate out the cost of the income in the business from the direct cost of running that. And if I went back, I'll steer away from promoting MerchantSpring, but steer back to a previous world where we were doing manual reporting. And we had inefficiencies in there and in the previous world where we're doing lots of manual heavy lifting around content and keyword research.
If I was to look at our gross margin on a like-for-like basis back at that point, our gross margin would have been reduced. And that doesn't necessarily mean I'm looking to make more profit. Of course we are, we're a business and we're an agency. But it's also about where do we spend the time with our client? Is it the time that I've got within the resource we have in the organization best spent pulling data, putting it into a spreadsheet, creating a dashboard, putting that to a client. Is it then best spent manually doing keyword research, putting that in a spreadsheet, then manually briefing in content, writing that, and then manually uploading that to Amazon?
Yes, there's a role that stuff needs to happen, but does it need to happen through inefficient process? I'd also argue that if you have a standard operating process that is so repeatable you should be looking at tech to solve it. If it is literally moving data, doing stuff and heavy lifting, if you can put tech on that or you can automate it or simplify it and put efficiency in the SOP that has a direct correlation to the gross margin in an agency or it has a direct correlation to the amount of time you can spend on that client doing other things that are more growth generative which then impacts the client satisfaction rates, it then impacts the client retention rates, and of course all of that then drops through to the bottom line of the business.
So for me, efficiency in an SOP, whether that is just pure efficiency in the people in the process, or finding something that can be automated, replaced with technology, and I don't mean people, but I mean parts of process, that allows you to do more with the resource you've got in the business, and it drives success to the client, which in turn drives success to the agency.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, no, for sure. And actually, as part of that question, I'd love to hear a little bit more. I know we spoke about MerchantSpring. So let's skip over that one. But in terms of technology and tools, right, both in terms of how do you document and how do you visualize and how do you communicate SOPs internally, as well as, other tools, systems that other agency owners should be thinking about? Because maybe they've helped you implement some better SOPs along the way. What can you share around the technology side of things?
Jonathan Newton
So I take absolutely no shame in saying that we don't use any SaaS platforms or any technology platforms to manage our SOPs. They are, dare I say it, good old Word documents that are housed centrally with an RAG rating against whether they are currently suitable and fit for purpose. And that's never really tripped us up, to be fair, Paul. That's always just been a very, very simple way to put thoughts down, maybe attach some Loom videos to those things. But I guess to the wider point around tech, and this response isn't necessarily about what tech do we use to manage SOPs, but I think tech has got a role to play in pretty much every SOP, by hook or by crook, either by how we deliver and train that SOP, how an SOP uses a particular tech platform to weave itself through the SOP.
And if you come back to how we use our tools specifically to run our business, we don't necessarily write an SOP about this is how you use this tech to do this part of your role. We say there's an SOP that is a process that happens to include a piece of tech within it. So the tech becomes almost the or should I say the tech doesn't become the linchpin on the success of the SOP, it becomes part of the SOP. So you can very easily and very agile replace a piece of tech in and out for one another without fundamentally breaking the SOP.
So let's take an example Andy mentioned quite recently about our finance processes. We've recently moved our accountancy software. Now, that could be disastrous for a set of SOPs that have always been written about that piece of tech. But what we can do quite naturally is create a process that talks about how we reconcile client invoicing, as an example, and reference the piece of technology that historically has helped us with that process.
And as we bring one in, we move one out, and the SOP remains relatively intact. So, I think a very long-winded way of answering your question is we don't have any particular fancy tech managing SOPs. It's brainpower, it's pens on paper, and it's understanding the balance of human interaction with technology to make a really good set of processes.
Andrew Banks
If I can start, I think for me the value in an SOP is it exists, it's repeatable, and it's simple to follow. And when you work in the tech sector, I'm a geek at heart, I've been in the tech agency in Commerce World for 20-odd years, it's easy to think, right, what tool do we use for that? What's the SOP tool? And when we started processing VentureForge, we started to build a lot of this in Notion. And actually, it doesn't matter if it's on Notion. It could be literally on the back of the handkerchief. As long as it's in a central location, it's clear what the process is, it's easy to follow, it's adaptable and updatable. It could be in Loom, it could be on the back of the fag packet, it could be in Word documents pretty much as we have it.
The only thing I would say we have in our organization that breaks that mold a little bit is a staff induction process where we have some predefined decks because it's just repeatable. We kind of only hire a couple of different types of role into our organization. Why do the same thing three times? And we also use Asana as a project management tool. You could use monday.com or anything similar. That just means when we're in high growth periods and we're inducting, we can literally clone an induction board, tweak it a little bit, but 75, maybe even 90% of the heavy lifting for an induction is done.
So we have little bits of tech, but the core message I'd say is ignore the tech. It's kind of, as long as you have a process and everybody can see it and follow it and it lives in the central location, it could literally be red. Well, maybe not on the back of your hand, because that wouldn't be central location, but back of the restaurant napkin is a good enough place as long as it's there. Yeah.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, no, fantastic. So I want to just shift a little bit to small agencies, maybe agencies that are just starting out, they're tuning in here. And in fact, I'm going to actually pick up a question from Grant. I'm just going to bring it on the screen here. I hope you can see that. He's asking, what stage are SOPs actually critical? You know, startup agency has been around for too long, it's got five clients. When do you want to start thinking about investing in implementing it and kind of living by SOPs? What advice do you have for agencies that I guess at the start of their journey?
Jonathan Newton
Yeah, great question, Grant, and thanks for asking. I think it really comes down to your ambition for your agency. So if, for instance, your agency is going to scale to six clients and you're at full tilt, maybe you are a single owner manager or with a couple of team members, you may find that an SOP is just an unnecessary set of baggage. But I would come back to one of my previous answers in that if you are getting repeatable, consistent issues of the same thread, you probably want to at least tackle an SOP for those particular things, because that's just going to save you efficiencies in the short term. And as you continue to scale and grow, that's just going to likely act as a really good vehicle for your continued growth.
If on the flip side of that, your ambition is to scale to 50 clients, which of course is, and trust us, we know, is a very, very different agency to run with more complexity, more challenges. then, you know, we made the decision to build SOPs from day one. And to Andy's previous question, we knew we would scale. We knew we'd scale rapidly. We've got an exceptional business that is scaling and growing very, very quickly. And I can only imagine a world now where if we were trying to implement SOPs on the fly, as we were scaling and growing, it would make it in well, fundamentally difficult to do that. And I certainly think from a sales point of view, our sales team would be high-fiving each other when a new clients. Operationally, my team would be creaking under the pressure of a growing agency without foundational SOPs.
I think my big, big piece of advice for you, Grant, however, is there's no perfect solution to this. I think it's really relevant to where you are in your personal journey, what you're trying to achieve, and just recognize that the role of SOPs is never complete. Don't kid yourself and anyone else who thinks they can write a set of SOPs once and then it's job done and put them to bed. It's never done. And as soon as you accept that the role of SOPs is to grow in line and change in line with your business growth and your client dynamic, then you can get very comfortable with that.
Andy will laugh when he hears this response, but I'm obsessed about detail and obsessed about process. I guess that's what makes me a good COO. But I have to make peace with the fact that not everything's perfect. But as long as it's good enough, and as long as it's documented, and as long as we are aware things are not good enough, you can do something about that down the line.
Andrew Banks
To answer that Grant, I'd say keep it really simple and focus on what matters. So what is most important for me in an agency is understanding the flow of the process. So let's say you're heavily invested in the content side of Amazon. You've got to start with some market research, followed by keyword research, followed by competitor research, followed by a listing creation perhaps.
I would focus maybe on top level first, work out the pieces of the puzzle that need to happen and a flow for the client journey and a flow for process. Where I then get hung up on the absolute detail of every process beyond keyword research or then below content creation, writing, imagery, whatever it may be. That would be my next step.
I think it's a bit of real kind of specific guidance there, pick up the e-myth book by Michael Gerber, but that was fundamental to how I started to look at this in our agency. Something really simple, bullet point based processes, you can get somewhere very good, very quickly, with a very high level of detail. And if you're at that early stage in your business with five clients, that's probably where I'd be starting from. Keep it really simple, high level, and build from there.
Jonathan Newton
Yeah.
Paul Sonneveld
Excellent. Well, to close us out, maybe my final question for me, and I might throw in one or two from the audience here, but as you look ahead, I mean, we're in an industry that's evolving quite rapidly. I mean, how do you see the role of SOPs really evolving within the context of running an Amazon agency business? And what trends and changes do you see on the horizon that may impact how you think about SOPs?
Jonathan Newton
Do you want me to jump into that first, Andy?
Andrew Banks
Go for it. Over to you.
Jonathan Newton
So look, I think I've got quite a simple mindset, and this is Amazon and other marketplaces and other digital channels will continue to get more complex as opposed to less complex. I've no doubt about that. I think you have to make peace with the fact that many SOPs will either become redundant completely or will need to be iterated and changed upon as the balance of humans and AI start to cohabitate with one another.
I think my final point in this is I do and can see an argument in larger agencies or more complex businesses where dedicated roles and responsibilities should be assigned to SOPs. Maybe not the creation of the SOPs but just having someone who can step away from the detail from either managing a client or running a finance process or you're conducting a webinar to just look more objectively about does this make sense, is it adding value, is the process helping or hindering us, is it slowing us down, and can it be as resourceful as it can.
So I think if I was to try and summarize accept things are going to change, accept things are going to have to be redone quite a lot, and understand the benefits that AI can bring. I shudder to the notion of AI running an entire agency, but I think it does have a very, very valid role to play and can be an extraordinarily resourceful tool to use when used in the right ways. And recognize that you might need to step away from the detail to truly understand the detail you need.
Andrew Banks
I think, I always find that webinars are like a bit of a counselling session. I think when Jonathan said, I'm comfortable with some of our SOPs being read, that's a massive window into his soul. Jonathan loves the detail, the granularity and things being right. But I think that's the one thing you have to accept as an agency owner or a business owner in a fast-moving sector. The world will evolve around you. None of your SOPs at any point in time will be perfect. And you have to be okay with that.
I think for me, in a fast-moving sector like an Amazon agency, to have a culture that allows you people to adapt around SOPs, to have a team that are aligned with doing the right thing and being willing and able to navigate around where an SOP does or doesn't work. Putting the culture at the heart of that for me is probably, and this will sound really odd on a webinar about SOPs, but it's probably more important than SOPs. Great people with the right intentions, the right brand values and going in the right direction will trump an SOP any day of the week.
And in a world where those SOPs will rapidly become invalid, I think you have to become comfortable with that and invest in great people doing the right things with SOPs as guidelines around them. God forbid we should be running a business in the AI space because if we think Amazon moves fast, I'll know the SOP around there.
Electric vehicles or AI or those even faster-paced industries, no, I think you've got to be comfortable with change and comfortable with it not being perfect. But big enough bumpers down the bowling alley in a clear direction to come back to my really rough analogy, that for me is at the heart of being uncomfortable that nothing will be perfect all the time.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, no, fantastic. Well, thank you so much for sharing your journey, your thoughts, I guess your philosophy around SOPs and how you've made them work. I really appreciate the transparency, too. You know, they're not all green. They're always a work in progress. Honesty is great, because this is real life, right?
Andrew Banks
Right.
Jonathan Newton
Absolutely.
Paul Sonneveld
Building a grown agency. Look, before we say goodbye, I do want to just quiz you a little bit on these, these Marketplace Awards as well. I know you're both heavily involved in this great initiative. I just wanted to sort of, hey, look, how did this come about and what are you looking to achieve with these awards? And I might just put up the banner so that people can have a look.
Andrew Banks
Thanks, Paul. Well, I'll take that one. We looked at the Amazon community in the UK about 18 months ago, and we thought there was a real lack of anything celebrating the success of good, meaningful, strong sellers and vendors. And we literally set out to go and create that. We challenged ourselves pretty much 18 months ago to the day to go and take that big hairy go-along.
So we created the Marketplace Awards. It's a genuine celebration of marketplace success in the UK. Watch this space. We may be doing the Marketplace Awards Europe in October. But I can either confirm or deny that. But what we've built is a really credible judging panel of not just people that are paying to play, but actual real credible experts in the Amazon field. We've got some of the largest vendors. We've got people that have built and run the UK's largest marketplace agency and exited that business.
We're looking for brands to enter that really want to pit themselves against the best in the sector. We've got categories there from individual awards for the best marketplace manager. We've got the best seller, we've got the best vendor categories, and we've also got plenty of categories on particular Amazon subsectors. So best home interiors business, best fashion business.
We really want to see brands challenge themselves and put themselves against the best of the best. And as I say, what we're trying to create is a genuine true celebration of the best of the Amazon space in the UK. So, if brands would love to enter, thank you for sharing that detail there, Paul. If anyone's got any questions on it, I'm on LinkedIn as Andrew Banks. You've got Jonathan Newton on there. Just look us up and we'll point you in the right direction.
Paul Sonneveld
Fantastic. It's a great event. And I know you guys did it for the first time last year, and I'm sure this year is going to be bigger and it's going to be still very much in a build phase. So very, very exciting. And thank you for championing that. On that note, we're at 45 minutes, well over a lot of time, but it's been super interesting and super insightful.
So thank you, Andy. Thank you, Jonathan. I really appreciate your sharing your advice and giving your time very generously today to educate me and our audience. Thank you.
Jonathan Newton
Very welcome.
Andrew Banks
Thanks, Paul.
Jonathan Newton
Appreciate it.
Paul Sonneveld
All right, everyone. Well, that is it for today's episode of Marketplace Masters. I hope you have enjoyed it. If you are hungry for more, don't forget to visit our on-demand library on our website for a real treasure trove of insights, particularly focused on topics that cover Agency Best Practice or Amazon Vendor topics. So go and check it out.
And of course, if you are aiming to streamline your analytics and build streamlined SOPs, as Andy just mentioned, and Jonathan just spoke about as well, make sure to reach out to me and I'm happy to share how MerchantSpring can help transform your journey.
Lastly, I'm on the lookout for speakers, topics for the next, really for the second half of this year. So, if you've got a great topic in mind or a great speaker, just get in touch with me and let me know what you're thinking. Until then, until next time, keep thriving, keep innovating, and thank you so much for tuning in. Take care. Bye bye.
