How to publish buyer enablement assets on Amazon
Buyer enablement is the concept of helping your buyer to understand the problems they face, the value of solving those problems, the possible solutions and guidance on how to implement them.
Research from Corporate Visions shows that the vendor that helps a buyer understand the problem and the value in solving it is chosen 77% of the time
Gartner suggest a list of tools that vendors should be creating to help buyers with these challenges:
Calculators - providing ways to analyze customer-provided data
Diagnostics - a framework for surveying one or more users and presenting results
Connectors - methods of aligning buyers with challenges their peers face
Recommender - a playbook or guide with step-by-step instructions for buyers to follow based on their inputs
Advisor - coaching the customer through the steps in their buying process
Benchmark - real world data for the buyer to compare themselves against peers
Simulator - more than a demo video, a personalised walk through of the customer’s usecase
In your business consider the templates, spreadsheets, calculators or project planning tools that your onboarding teams or CSMs use. Think of the ROI calculators that your sellers develop with customers.
This content can be turned into buyer-centric content.
For my own business I have created a 22 question Revenue Operations Maturity Assessment that helps a founder or revenue leader to assess their business against a range of capabilities required to deliver predictable and repeatable revenue growth.
Typically this type of tool is created in a digital fashion.
An online assessment
A calculator that can be emailed
A downloadable benchmark report
But I am a big fan of analog.
I believe in this day of digital overload and diminishing attention spans that having a physical item on someone’s desk or in their bag can keep you top of mind.
I read physical books
I use a physical diary
I write in a physical notebook
I wanted to turn my online assessment into a physical workbook that either potential buyers could order themselves, or I could order on their behalf.
Here is the story to give you confidence that you could do this yourself with your own buyer enablement content.
But first, why should you consider publishing your content with Amazon?
Amazon is more than an online retailer
KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing.
It is Amazon’s self-publishing platform that enables authors to publish fiction or non-fiction without a publishing deal.
One of the biggest categories on Amazon is what is called low-content books.
These are diaries, journals and notebooks.
They are quick to produce and easy to upload to the Amazon platform.
I’ll discuss how to create the book shortly, but I want to highlight the value that this platform brings to you as a founder.
Once your book is on the Amazon platform:
Any potential buyer in any Amazon marketplace globally can have your diagnostic, benchmark, or assessment tool on their doorstep in a couple of days.
Amazon prints each book on demand, meaning no requirement for you to invest in printing and warehousing 2,000 copies of a workbook that might never get bought.
Amazon has one of the best logistics networks in the world, meaning they handle the packaging, shipping and tracking of all your books.
Amazon prints each book locally, meaning an order in Brazil gets printed in Brazil - no international shipping costs or environmental impact.
As an author you get to purchase ‘author copies’ at the printing cost plus shipping. This means you can order copies for near zero cost and have them shipped direct to your customer.
Think this through with me.
Let’s say you have created an assessment workbook for potential buyers and you have a prospect who is in their problem identification phase.
You could have the workbook shipped to them directly, delivered by Amazon in the next couple of days, for around $5.
You’ve given them something of value. Its physically on their desk. It took less than 48 hours to arrive.
You can’t do that any other way.
How to create your workbook
I used a tool called Canva to create my manuscript and cover.
To give you some guidance I recorded the process I went through.
Most of it is in this 30 minute video, although I forgot to hit record when I did the cover!
The key is to have the content for your assessment or diagnostic ready before you try to create the book.
Order a copy for yourself
You can now order a copy of the Revenue Operations Maturity Workbook for yourself.
As you think about your own business, it is up to you to decide what content you currently use with customers that could be turned into a workbook.
What I hope you take away from this post is that the logistics of creating and publishing your idea are easily solvable - don’t let that be the reason you don’t commit to it.
From idea to ordering in a few hours
If you want help with any step of the process just let me know - its all part of my work with founders!
Get started
Whenever you are ready, there are three ways that I can help you accelerate your revenue.
RevOps Maturity Assessment - Take my free 22 question assessment and receive specific suggestions on how to improve your revenue growth.
Business Model Design Workshops - I’ll work with you and your team to design or refine a business model for a new or existing product.
RevOps Impact Playbooks - I’ll help you implement one or more tactical processes across your revenue teams - content, referrals, testimonials, adoption and more.