Selling on Walmart Marketplace Vs. Selling on Walmart.com

New Quick Training on Selling on Walmart Marketplace

Selling on Walmart Marketplace is not exactly the same as selling on Walmart.com. This is a common misconception that comes up all of the time in my workshops and classes.

So, if you think you have a great product for Walmart.com, I suggest watching my latest training video about Selling on Walmart Marketplace Vs. Selling on Walmart.com! I share some quick tips and strategies that may just be helpful to you when selling to this big box retailer. Just click on the video to watch!

(For those of you who prefer to read this content, transcription is included as well below!)

Wishing you so much happiness and success.

Karen Waksman, Retail MBA

P.S. Want to Get Your Products into Chain Stores in a Fraction of the Time? Check out our Retail MBA System! We walk you through exactly how to approach, pitch and sell to chain stores. No sales experience, patents or buyer relationships required!

Transcript for this training on “Selling on Walmart Marketplace vs. Selling on Walmart.com”

Hey, everyone. This is Karen Waksman, founder of Retail MBA. Today, I want to talk about selling on Walmart.com versus selling on Walmart Marketplace. The reason I decided to create this particular training is because for the last decade, I’ve taught tens of thousands of product companies across the globe on how to sell to retail chains like Walmart, and a lot of people really want to sell to Walmart, and Walmart Marketplace comes up all the time, and I really wanted to discuss the differences because it could be the difference between you making millions of dollars or maybe not as much. So just really wanted to share this information with you.

Walmart is an amazing retailer, obviously. There’s a lot of reasons why you’d want to sell to them. They have millions of people who know about them. They’re worldwide. They can buy a lot of product. With that said, Walmart.com, a top destination for people to purchase stuff, and so where it gets confusing is there’s a few ways to sell to Walmart on their website.

One of them is selling directly to Walmart.com, and one is to sell to Walmart Marketplace. So let’s walk through the differences. I did an event with Walmart, and the buyers were there reviewing products to purchase, and that’s what we do. We try and help people get in front of buyers and so forth in various ways. Walmart buyer is teaching, educating the class about what they’re looking for in regards to being a supplier and so forth. We have segments of that video in our YouTube channel if you want to take a look at that. But anyways, one of the things that somebody had asked her was, “Hey, I’m selling on Walmart.com.” And when she looked deeper, she said, “No, you’re not. You are actually not a vendor in our system.” And so he says, “Oh, well, I signed up through Walmart Marketplace.”

Now what happened was the Walmart buyer was liking his product. She went back to take a look to see what was going on because he had mentioned he’d already been selling on Walmart.com, but she didn’t find them in the system, and the reason for that was because he went directly to Walmart through Walnut Marketplace, and for her, that wasn’t something that was interesting to her. So if she wanted to work with him, she would actually have him remove himself from Marketplace and place him as a vendor.

Let’s walk through the distinctions here. Walmart Marketplace means that you can go to Walmart Marketplace, and it’s very similar to Amazon, and you can upload your photos and so forth and submit your products to be placed on Walmart.com, just like Amazon. So that is something that anybody can do. They can sign up for an account, get reviewed, get processed, hopefully, and get submitted. And that’s exciting, right? You can be on Walmart.com. Then you can sell on walmart.com and so forth. However, when you’re looking at the listing on Walmart.com, you’ll notice the distinction of the actual fulfillment house, and that would not be Walmart. It would be the company that is submitting their products there.

So when you want to actually sell to Walmart.com as a vendor, you actually need to interact with a human, with a buyer, and convince them that your product is interesting, and then she would give you a purchase order and she would buy a certain quantity of your product. She would get that product placed on Walmart.com with you, obviously, and your support. And ultimately, you then become a vendor of record. Why that matters is because Walmart.com, the buyer, is different than Walmart Stores buyer, which basically means that Walmart Stores is looking for new products. They always like to check what’s going on with Walmart.com. If you’re a vendor of record, you’re in their system and so forth, it’s very easy for them to transition as a vendor already in the system. You’ve done all the paperwork as an actual vendor to transfer them over to Walmart Stores and so forth. So there’s a lot of room for opportunity with Walmart and being a vendor actually makes a big difference.

So when I was mentioning the story of the guy who was at my event who thought he was on Walmart.com, he was, technically, but for the retailer perspective, he needed to resubmit, get interest from the buyer, get submitted all over again, start over, and then become a vendor, and then ultimately, hopefully get into Walmart Stores and so forth. So you can go the quote-unquote ghetto man’s way and submit your product on Walmart Marketplace. There’s nothing wrong with it. I’m just making jokes. But you could literally get your product on Walmart.com right now.

It really is not the optimal way. A lot of Amazon training programs teach you how to sell on Walmart.com. Seems exciting, but honestly, I would rather spend a few more steps learning exactly how to approach, pitch, and sell to Walmart correctly. Then, ultimately, you have this buyer connection, buyer relationship, vendor number. You can go after the corporate buyers. You can do all sorts of really interesting things. There’s a lot of ways to sell into Walmart. We have so many clients that got in Walmart Stores, and some of these strategies just can change your life, can make you millions and millions of dollars.

Anyways, just wanted to share the distinction. If you want to learn more about how to get your products in a Walmart or other chain store similar to that, take a look at the link below. We actually have a webinar that we have often, and that webinar includes information on how to approach, pitch, and sell to Walmart and other chain store retailers. All you have to do is click on the link below. It’s absolutely free. And we can go into detail about how retailers work, how they operate, and some of the nuances that you might not have known.

I’d love the opportunity to support you with retailers. Otherwise, please like this video. If you like it, place a comment below and/or watch our upcoming videos because we’re constantly creating new content and we’ve been doing this for so many years. There’s so much good stuff out there. So take a look at our YouTube channels, social media, Facebook, and so forth. We’d love the opportunity to work with you. Karen Waksman, Retail MBA. Thank you so much for your time.