Can you just..." Three of the most expensive words in the Amazon agency industry
By Simon Ellicott · June 12, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Can you just..."
Three of the most expensive words in the Amazon agency industry.
- Can you just look at Germany?
- Can you just join this call?
- Can you just review these forecasts?
- Can you just take a look at DSP?
- Can you just help us with AVNs?
- Can you just...
Nobody means any harm when they ask. And most agency owners don't mean any harm when they say yes. That's the problem.
Over the last 24 months, I've spent a lot of time inside Amazon agencies. Some are growing. Some are struggling. Some are wondering why revenue keeps increasing while profitability refuses to follow.
One thing comes up again and again: the client isn't the reason margins are disappearing. The agency is.
Somewhere along the way, many agencies stopped selling a service and started selling access. A client pays for account management, then gets strategy, forecasting, commercial advice, support for internal stakeholder meetings, help preparing for AVNs, support entering a new marketplace, and whatever they ask for next. All under the banner of: "Full Service."
I've said this before, but I've yet to meet two Amazon agencies that mean the same thing when they say "full service." Not two. Ask ten founders and you'll get ten different answers. How can clients understand the difference if agencies can't even define it themselves?
This is where profitability starts leaking out of the business. Not through one big decision, but through hundreds of tiny ones. Every "quick favour," every "while we're here," every "it'll only take five minutes," and every piece of invisible work that never finds its way into a proposal.
A few months later, the founder is looking at the management accounts wondering why margins are under pressure despite strong client retention. The answer is usually sitting in the delivery team, doing work nobody is charging for.
The irony is that most clients don't actually expect unlimited support. They expect clarity. If you tell them what is included, most are perfectly reasonable.
The problem starts when agencies try to be everything to everyone. Once you've taught a client that every request is included, good luck explaining later why it suddenly isn't. At that point, you're not managing scope; you're renegotiating expectations.
The agencies with the healthiest margins aren't necessarily delivering less. They're simply clearer. Clear on who they serve, what they do, what they don't do, and where additional value creates additional cost.
This brings me to a slightly controversial opinion: I don't think most Amazon agencies have a pricing problem. I think they have a scope definition problem. If you don't define what you're selling, your clients will do it for you, and they won't do it with your margins in mind.
#Amazon
—-------------------------------------------
📈 Helping Partner Agencies navigate GROWTH pains from Start-Up to Scale-Up to Sale
—-------------------------------------------