How to Sell Your Amazon Business – 12 Steps to Successfully Close Your Sale

How do you sell your Amazon business?  Here is what I did to sell mine.

1. Make your business as profitable as possible.
2. Decide why a buyer would want your business.  What is your unique selling point?
3. If you intend to sell your account then get Amazon’s permission.
4. Get your financial records together.
5. Find a business broker.
6. Engage your business lawyer and CPA.
7. Work with the broker to create a marketing summary they will use.
8. Answer all questions promptly and completely.
9. When a buyer makes an offer, negotiate on terms as needed.
10. Provide information requested for buyer’s due diligence.
11. Set a close date, get final numbers together, sign, transfer your account if included, receive the cash.
12. Provide transition coaching if included.

You should be optimizing your business’s profits all the time, but for selling it, consider pruning your product line, and manage your inventory levels to keep storage costs down, yet have sufficient product to support sales.

A prospective buyer will want year-over-year comparisons, probably by month and product line.  They want to see your major blocks of expenses, for example, cost of goods sold, commissions and fees, tax, shipping, advertising.

Allow time for due diligence.  My buyer wanted to see all business checking and credit card statements, vendor invoices.

Clean out your Amazon account.  If you intend to continue buying on Amazon then create a new account.  Transfer all Kindle books to this new account if you can.  Use up any gift card balance.  Once you close on the sale you will need to cancel your existing credit cards and request replacements because you must have a valid card on file to have an active account.

When you get permission to transfer your account, Amazon will give you some direction on how to do it.  Hold onto this permission and the directions.  The main step is to update the account’s primary email.  This must be an email that is not associated with any Amazon account, even if the buyer uses the existing account solely for buying.  Update the tax IDs, bank accounts per Amazon’s directions.

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to cooperate with Amazon.  Make certain your buyer understands and commits to following all the rules.

Transition services will almost always include introducing the buyer and your vendors and some training or coaching.  My buyer was already familiar with Amazon’s policies and procedures.  Our contract called for a number of hours over 30 days and we actually spent less time than that.

Overall I am very pleased with the sale.  Given I had originally planned to simply fade away, this gained me extra income and kept my vendors’ business intact.  A win/win for everyone!