Jeff Bezos on Sales and E-Commerce

The Founder of e-commerce empire amazon.com, Jeff Bezos is an innovative Techno-preneur who has played a pivotal role in the growth and development of e-commerce over the last two decades. Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1964 to humble beginnings, Bezos developed a fascination with new technologies and mechanics from an early age, spending his summers fixing windmills on his grandfather’s farm in Texas.

His mechanical prowess led him to study electrical engineering and computer science at Princeton University, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1986. After a short stint on Wall Street, Bezos left his position at New York firm D.E. Shaw & Co. to found amazon.com in Seattle, Washington.

He was Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 1999 and Fortune Magazine’s Businessperson of the Year in 2012. His net worth is upwards of $28 Billion.

Here are some of his best ideas concerning Sales and E-Commerce.

  1. Your margin is my opportunity.
  2. If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.
  3. We can’t be in survival mode. We have to be in growth mode.
  4. There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work  to charge less. We will be the second.
  5. A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do  hard things well.
  6. We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient
  7. As a company, one of our greatest cultural strengths is accepting the fact that if you’re going to invent, you’re going to disrupt.
  8. If you’re long-term oriented, customer interests and shareholder interests are aligned.
  9. A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last.
  10. If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is  very powerful.
  11. In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your  time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.
  12. If you double the number of experiments you do per year you’re going to double your  inventiveness.
  13. If you’re not stubborn, you’ll give up on experiments too soon. And if you’re not flexible,  you’ll pound your head against the wall and you won’t see a different solution to a problem  you’re trying to solve.
  14. Work hard, have fun, and make history.
  15. We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day  to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.
  16. The great thing about fact-based decisions is that they overrule the hierarchy.
  17. We innovate by starting with the customer and working backwards. That becomes the  touchstone for how we invent.
  18. If you decide that you’re going to do only the things you know are going to work, you’re going  to leave a lot of opportunity on the table.
  19. I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get  out of a tight box is to invent your way out.
  20. The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be  earth’s most customer-centric company.

Jeff Bezos has created not only one of the world’s most innovative companies, but shared a unique perspective on business, as well.

Posted in collaboration with BillRingle.com.

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