How to write a Jeff Bezos Email

What does it take to write to Jeff? Mr. Bezos is one of the richest, most influential men in the world.  How do you as an Amazon seller escalate to his staff in order to resolve your Amazon problems?

Jochen and I have both reviewed Bezos escalations while working at Amazon and since leaving the company, and we covered them during our webinar on April 6th for Seller Labs. Did you miss the webinar? Watch the replay or download the slides.

When performance or policy teams cannot reply meaningfully to your emails, as it often happens these days, Executive Seller Relations represents a last resort. If other internal teams can’t be bothered to read or take the time to understand your response to their own request for information, then another channel is needed. You have little choice but to ask Jeff’s people to put their own team on it, because without them, you’d keep banging your head against that Product Quality wall.

Make sure you point to your past Plans of Action when you contact Jeff, and attach those documents. Also specify in your plan that you’ve implemented all of those steps. You made this abundantly clear to Product Quality teams in the course of your appeal, but they failed to act. Who knows, maybe they sent you the same email over and over. Maybe they asked you for more information. In any event, they did not take your material seriously, nor did they review it and make an adequate decision based on the information provided. It’s time to change the game. Email Jeff.

Will Jeff listen? Bezos Escalations are on the rise. They may not answer as quickly as they did in my days patrolling the escalation queues, and they may not have their top people on them now, either. They are overloaded, they are trying to keep their emails from aging out, and they often need to dig through weeks or months of account annotations in order to sort out your story. Make sure Jeff listens by doing things right. You only get one crack at this, in most cases. Don’t chance it with crazy long passages explaining background of a situation, or by blaming Amazon for their awful inability to correspond effectively with you.

Get the vital, relevant details in front of the investigator and briefly cover what was missed in prior investigations. Then you’ve made your case and given yourself the best possible chance to succeed.

Watch the webinar, How To Communicate With Amazon Performance Teams So They Will Listen,  or download the slides.

This post, How To Write A Jeff Bezos Email, originally appeared on ecommercechris.com. Image: Jeff Bezos caricature by DonkeyHotey via Flickr under Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0