How to Get Approved by Brands on Amazon (What Actually Works)
Brand approvals are where most new sellers get stuck, and most virtual assistants working for clients too. Getting a brand to say yes is hard, especially on a fresh account. But there are real things that move the odds. Here is the whole playbook.
A brand approval is when a brand agrees to let you buy and sell their products on Amazon. It is different from getting ungated, which is Amazon's gate. This is the brand's yes. And getting it, especially as a new seller or a VA working for a client, is one of the hardest parts of wholesale. Over the years I have learned what actually moves the needle, so let me walk through all of it.
First, are you even a good fit?
Before you email a single brand, be honest about whether you are someone a brand would want to work with. A few things raise your chances a lot.
What brands want to see
- Other businesses you can show. It does not have to be e-commerce, just proof you are a real operator who has been in business for a while.
- Real capital. Brands usually want bigger orders than distributors, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars per product, sometimes more.
- A good credit score and an aged account with feedback. Some brands and distributors will ask to see your Amazon account, so real ratings and history help.
- Physical presence. A brick-and-mortar store or a warehouse. Most people do not have this, and it is one of the biggest levers there is. I have worked with clients who had a physical store and their approval rate skyrocketed.
If you or your client do not have most of these, I will say what I always say: start with distributors. There is no magic that makes brands suddenly accept a brand-new seller with nothing to show. With a good distributor you get going fast, ungate easily, and make money while you build the history brands want to see. More on that in how to find wholesale suppliers and brand direct vs distributors.
Pick the right brands (you cannot contact just anyone)
You cannot grab any brand off Amazon and email them. It has to be a good fit, which means doing a little research on the product and the listing first. Before I decide a brand is worth contacting, I look at things like:
- Healthy sales volume, so you know there is real demand and not a dead product
- A decent number of reviews and a solid sales rank
- Stable pricing, with no race to the bottom
- Who controls the Buy Box, and how many sellers are already on the listing
- Whether the brand has other strong listings you could also sell once approved
A simple way to do this is to score each brand against your own checklist and only reach out to the ones that clear your bar. You want brands where the products sell, the pricing is sane, and there is room for you to come in. Most of this you can read straight off the data, which is exactly what Keepa is for. Contacting random brands you have not vetted is how people waste months getting nowhere.
Give the brand a reason to want you
This is the part most people get wrong. They send a message that basically says "let me buy your products to resell." Why would a brand care? They can already sell those products themselves. You have to be better and different than every other Amazon seller emailing them, and that means offering something real.
Do your research on what they are doing wrong on Amazon, then offer to fix it. The trade is simple: you help grow their brand, and in exchange you get approved to buy and sell their products. Here is what you can bring to the table:
- Listing and SEO improvements. A better title with the right keywords, proper images (six or more, plus a lifestyle photo and a video), keyword-rich bullet points, A+ content, and a fuller description. Better listings mean better conversion, ranking, and brand awareness, which is what every brand wants.
- Help getting more reviews. More social proof, which every brand wants more of.
- MAP enforcement. MAP is the minimum advertised price, the floor a product cannot be sold below. If sellers are undercutting and starting price wars, you can help the brand set and enforce a MAP so pricing stays healthy.
- PPC advertising. To drive ranking and organic sales. You do not have to be an expert, you can partner with someone, but offering it gets attention.
- Cleaning up negative reviews. Summarize what customers complain about so the brand can fix the real issue, and work with Seller Support to remove reviews that break the rules.
- Brand registry and A+ content. If they do not have it, help them register and unlock the listing protection and marketing tools that come with it.
Learn the basics of Amazon SEO and listing optimization, because that is your currency in these conversations. You are not asking for a favor. You are offering to make their brand bigger.
How to actually reach out
Once you have a brand worth contacting and something to offer, the outreach itself matters more than people think.
Personalize every email, no templates
Do not send the same copy-pasted template to every brand. Two reasons. First, you blend in with every other seller doing exactly that, and you need to stand out. Second, identical templates sent over and over get flagged by spam filters, and your emails start landing in spam instead of the inbox. I have watched a fresh inbox go from great reply rates to nothing in a couple of weeks purely from sending the same template. Personalize instead: mention their brand name in the subject line and the email, the state they are in, a specific product of theirs you looked at, their website. Make it obvious you actually looked at their business.
Pick up the phone
Calling is a big one, and almost nobody does it. A call converts better than an email because they can hear your voice, your tone, your energy. It is far more human than a block of text any bot could have sent. Brands get spammed with seller emails every single day, so a real call cuts through. If you are not comfortable on the phone, for example if you are a VA worried about your accent, partner with someone who can make the calls. But calling will lift your success rate.
Learn sales
This is one of the biggest tips I can give you. You might think you are not selling anything, but you are selling yourself and the idea of working together. Learn basic sales: how to listen, how to use what you hear to move toward what you want, and the right words to use. Sales is how you get the yes.
Send a report, and follow up
When you reach out, attach a short report on one of their listings: the issues you found and how you would fix them. It proves you did the work and you are serious. And always send follow-ups after a few days. A lot of deals are lost simply because nobody followed up.
Turn a no into a yes
Here is the mindset that changes everything. Most people, the second a brand says no, reply "okay, thank you, goodbye," or just disappear. In this business there are so many rejections that if you accept every one, you will get nowhere. Treat a no like an unprofitable product on a price list. You do not just close it and move on, you work it.
When a brand says "we do not work with Amazon sellers," that almost always comes from a bad experience with sellers in the past. So instead of accepting it, ask: "I understand, do you mind if I ask why?" Then listen. Learn what went wrong before, and show them you are different, that you are here to help their brand and not just grab their products. I have turned a lot of nos into yeses this way.
Better yet, assume from the start that they will be skeptical of Amazon sellers, and do all the work upfront so they are convinced before they can object. The report, the listing audit, the offer to help, all of it exists to prove you are better than the average seller before they get the chance to say no. And if a brand requires a physical presence, a warehouse or a prep center can serve as that location, and having a real website helps too.
It will not work every time. Plenty of brands will still pass, and that is fine. But do this consistently, lead with what you can do for them, and you will start landing approvals other sellers never will. The best of those relationships can grow into exclusivity, where you become the only authorized seller of a brand on Amazon. That is the payoff worth all the rejection along the way.
The full course covers supplier outreach, brand approvals, and the exact way I position myself to get the yes. Or if you want to sample the teaching first, the free minicourse walks through the basics.