335. What Retail Buyers Need to See Before They Say Yes.

0:00What retail buyers need to see before they say yes. Getting into retail can be one of the most expensive yeses your brand ever receives. That probably sounds strange. Founders work incredibly hard to get the meeting, get the buyer interested, get the authorization, and finally get the product onto the shelf. But getting the yes is only the beginning. Years ago, an avid podcast listener told me about a product launch she was excited to support. She went into the store specifically looking for that product. She could not find it. She asked the store employee and then another. They searched for roughly 20 minutes before finally finding the product in a completely different part of the store.

0:42Think about everything that had already gone right. The brand had created a product somebody wanted. They got the retailer to say yes. They got the product onto the shelf. They spent money trying to drive shoppers in to buy it. A motivated shopper actually showed up. and the sale was almost lost because no one had made one of the most basic things clear enough. Where does this product belong? That story is one of the original reasons I created the New Item Central system, and it's why today's episode is not really about building a prettier pitch deck. It's about becoming more useful than the brands you're competing against.

1:20Welcome to the Bulletproof Your CPG Brand Podcast. I'm Dan Loman, founder of RetailSolve. Now let's roll up our sleeves and get started. If you've been listening in the last few episodes, there's a thread running through all of them. In episode 332, we talked about why a promotion can increase sales and still make cash tighter. In episode 333, we talked about why the best product does not automatically win. The product that solves the right shopper problem has the advantage. Last week in episode 334, we talked about what happens when the promotion is approved, but the shelf does not look anything like the plan.

1:57Today I want to move one step upstream. If you're building a CPG pitch deck for a retailer, the question is not whether it looks impressive. The question is whether it makes the retailer's decision easier. Before the retailer says yes, what are you giving them that actually makes their decision easier? Because most founders are trained to do something very different. The industry spends a tremendous amount of time teaching founders how to pitch investors, and then they use the same pitch with the retailers. Here is the founder. Here's the product. Here's the mission. Here's the market opportunity.

2:31Here is our traction. Here's how fast we are growing. Here's why we are different. Here's what we need. There's nothing wrong about that information, but a retailer and investor are making two entirely different decisions. An investor is asking, if I put money in this company, what could it become and what will my return be? A retailer is asking, if I give this item scarce space on my shelf, what happens next? Can I trust what this brand is telling me? Where do I put it? Who buys it? What does it replace or sit beside? How does it help my shopper? What does it do for my category? What does it do for my basket?

3:08What risk am I taking? Can this brand support the business after I say yes? That is a very different conversation. And yet I have sat through more new item presentation meetings than account where the team was getting ready to walk into a 45-minute retailer meeting with a 60 or more page slide deck. Sometimes it felt like the salesperson was preparing to carry the phone book into the meeting. The frustrating part was that some of the best shopper and category work that we had ever done never made it into the presentation. Instead, the deck became a long version of here's who we are, here's why our product's great, here's how big our market is, here's how fast we're going.

3:46Here's a pie chart showing something you should probably already know. Here's a bar chart focused on what I think your priorities should be. Here's what we want from you. Again, that does not mean every one of those slides is useless. It means the presentation is usually built around the brand story instead of the retailer's decision. And most retailers already know far more about their category than your presentation gives them credit for. That is the problem. Think about the last time you needed a favor from someone. Would you begin by telling them everything you wanted from them? I need more space.

4:21I need another item. I need a display. I need a lower fee. I need more distribution. I need you to take a chance on me. Probably not. And yet, when I sat on the retailer side of the desk, that was essentially what I heard from brand after brand. I knew it well because I lived it. Brands would come to me and tell me what they needed from me. While I was responsible for the assortment, inventory, merchandising, and the decision that could have a very real impact on whether their product succeeded. Almost nobody started by asking what mattered to me. Almost nobody tried to make my job easier. After you hear enough versions of the same pitch, you start tuning them out.

5:00That does not mean that the brands are lazy or bad at what they did. Most are doing exactly what this industry has taught them to do. The light bulb came on for me years later when the roles reversed and I became the brand. I was determined not to become one of the suppliers I had tuned out. Early on, I was given one of the weakest DSD routes in the company selling salty snacks. These were some of the poorest performing stores, and a lot of the retail relationships were not particularly warm. That is a polite way of putting it. Some of the stores had been neglected by us. So I started with something incredibly simple.

5:34I tried to help the retailers get what they wanted with as few headaches as possible. I learned what mattered to them. I listened. I followed through. I made recommendations easy to understand. I made the work as turnkey as I could. I did what I said I was going to do, and I committed to always over-delivering. It did not change overnight, but the relationships changed. The skeptical retailers started trusting me. Many became friends and business allies. Within a few months, that route became the highest crossing route in the company. As a commissioned salesperson, I literally doubled my paycheck.

6:09There was no magic sales trick. I simply stopped thinking about what I needed from the retailer and started thinking about how I could help them win. That lesson has followed me throughout my entire career, and it's one of the biggest opportunities I see for challenger brands today. You do not have to outspend the biggest brands. You do not need their headcount. You do not need every expensive piece of software they own. You can create an enormous advantage by being more prepared, more useful, and easier to work with. Here's one of my favorite examples. One of the first things a retailer needs to understand about a new item is incredibly basic.

6:48Where does it go? Not just which department, what category, what segment, where on the shelf? What should it sit beside? Why would the shopper look for it there. Bigger companies have sophisticated planogram software that can cost many thousands of dollars. Those tools can be extremely helpful if you need them, but you don't need a huge software subscription to simply answer that question. Take a picture of the shelf, put it in a PowerPoint slide deck, drop an image of your product onto the place where you believe it belongs, then explain it. That's it. Now put yourself in the retailer's chair.

7:24Instead of forcing the retailer to imagine what you mean, you're showing them exactly specifically and you're supporting it and recommending it with facts. Here's the category. Here's a segment. Here's the shelf. Here's where the item fits. Here's what should sit beside it. Here's why the shopper will look for it there. Here's what role it plays. You just removed work from the retailer's decision. A picture really is worth a thousand words. In this case, a simple picture can do more work than a 20-slide deck of generic information. And if you do not make placement recommendations clear, the retailer may make the decision for you.

8:02That is how good products wind up in the wrong place. Then several months later, someone looks at the sales report and concludes that the item did not work. The report may be complete and accurate. It may also be telling you the result of a mistake that happened before the first shopper ever saw the product. That is an execution leak. That is why the fundamentals matter. So before your next retailer presentation, I want you to pressure test five things. First, where exactly does the product belong? Can the buyer see the shelf in their mind? What category, what segment, what product sits beside it?

8:38Why does the shopper expect to find it there? If the retailer has to figure that out for you, you're adding work and adding risk. Second, who is the shopper and why does that shopper matter to the retailer. Do not stop at a generic demographic. Millennial moms who care about wellness does not tell the retailer very much. What problem is the shopper trying to solve? How do they use the product? What do they buy with it? What makes them choose it again? What else is in the basket? Why is that shopper valuable to this retailer? Our product appeals to the busy, on-the-go mom, searching for a quick, easy-to-prepare meal solution.

9:16Our customers frequently also purchase organic milk, organic snacks, organic bread, and when they purchase this item, their basket is 15 % higher as a result. This is exactly why I keep talking about listening to real shoppers. The company can't explain why it makes. The shopper can explain why it matters. Your job is to turn both into a retailer story the buyer can use. Your job is to help the retailer easily connect the dots between the items and the other things your customer frequently buys. Third, what can you show the retailer that they do not already know? This is especially important if you're already selling in their stores.

9:54The retailer already knows how your item is performing. They have the numbers. They do not need you to spend half of the meeting reading their own report back to them. Show them something useful instead. A shopper signal, a category gap, a placement problem, a market opportunity, a competitive weakness, a new occasion, a basket opportunity, a reason your shopper makes the category more valuable. For example, maybe you discover plant-based sales are growing more slowly at this retailer than at the key competitor, even though this retailer's shopper strongly aligns with your product. Now you have something worth investigating.

10:32That is how you stop being another brand, asking for something, and start becoming a resource. Fourth, what does the retailer gain if they say yes? Most brands can explain exactly what the brand gains. More doors, more volume, more awareness, more credibility, more distribution. But the retailer is responsible for their business. What do they gain? Does your product bring a valuable shopper? Does it fill a real assortment gap? Does it improve the category? Does it help the basket? Does it create a new occasion? Does it make the shelf easier to shop? Does it help the retailer stand for something important to its customers does it reduce a risk or solve a problem your product does not need to do all those things it just needs to do some of those things a little better than some of the other brands the retailer sells but you should know which one matters fifth what happens after the retailer says yes this is where a lot of brands get into trouble who owns the setup who verifies the item landed correctly who checks the shelf who watches the inventory what does the broker need to know what is their promotion supposed to accomplish what does the distributor need how are you going to measure success what happens when the first problem shows up what happens if the item is in the wrong place what happens if the inventory is sitting in the distributor warehouse what happens that the promotion is approved and the shelf is empty getting the authorization is not the win the next sale and the sales that come after it matter even more authorization is permission that you deserve to be on the shelf.

12:06The deck is not the strategy. It should be evidence that you understand the strategy. And this is where another story becomes important. Years ago, I invited the founder of Bubba's Fine Foods in the podcast. His company had started small and focused. For the first couple of years, they were profitable. They sold directly online and then began shipping directly to stores that were asking for their product. The demand was pulling them forward into retail. Then they decided they wanted to grow faster. They hired an experienced master broker. The founder wanted to start carefully in the western United States where the company could support the business.

12:42The advice he got was essentially why limit yourself? Go national. Very quickly, the product was pushed into distributor DCs from west coast to the east coast. The problem was that the brand had not yet built the infrastructure to support that footprint. They learned about free-fills, chargebacks, distributor costs, the cost of supporting velocity, and the simple truth that getting a product into a distribution center does not mean a retailer is committed to it, and getting it onto the shelf does not mean the product will move. This is where fees, chargebacks, deductions, and cash pressure can start compounding.

13:17The founder described adding roughly 1 ,000 stores during that period. Sales activity looked like growth. Cash told a very different story. eventually he ended the master broker relationship focused on the markets the companies could actually support and let some of the distribution go i'm not telling you that story because brokers are bad they are not good brokers can create enormous value the lesson's much bigger your broker should help execute the strategy your distributor should help move the product your software should help support the process your data should help answer a specific question your agency should help bring in expertise, but the brand still has to own its own strategy.

13:56You need enough understanding to ask whether the recommendation actually makes sense for your business. Can we grow profitably in these new retailers, regions, and channels? And if we do, can we actually support that growth financially and operationally? You need enough retail muscle to know what questions to ask, what good looks like, and where the risks are, and when something does not make sense. That is the distinction. The easy button comes after the fundamentals. The tool can help you move faster. It cannot decide where you should be going. And that is why I've become focused on what I call building retail muscle.

14:34Think about any great athlete. They do not become great because they discovered one secret trick. They practice the fundamentals over and over until those fundamentals become automatic. Retail works the same way. one retailer meeting, one better shelf recommendation, one shopper question, one clear broker assignment, one promotion with a specific task, one piece of data brought to answer a specific question, one scorecard that makes ownership visible, one better decision. Then do it again while striving to be a little better the next time. At first, you have to think about every move. Over time, those moves become retail muscle memory.

15:14They get baked into your brand's DNA. And that is when a challenger brand becomes very difficult to compete against. Not because you suddenly have a bigger budget, because you are more prepared, because you ask better questions. You make fewer preventable mistakes. You make the retailer's job easier. You learn faster. You waste less money solving the wrong problem. And you become more useful every time you sit across the table from a retailer. That is the advantage. If you're building a CPG brand and want practical help competing at retail without wasting money on the wrong fix, subscribe to the podcast.

15:50That's what we work on here every week. And before your next retailer meeting, I want you to do one thing. Do not begin by opening your current pitch deck. Open a blank sheet of paper. Write this question at the top. How can I make this retailer decision easier? Then answer the five questions we just covered. Where exactly does the product belong? who is the shopper and why do they matter here what can I show the retailer that they do not already know what is the retailer gain if they say yes and what happens after they say yes if your current presentation cannot answer those questions clearly do not add another 20 slides fix the fundamentals first I created a free resource to help you do that it's called the new item essential system and watch you through the retail fundamentals behind a stronger new item plan including a story placement shopper trade data assortment broker merchandising and execution questions that can determine what happens before and after the retailer says yes the goal is not to become a retail expert overnight start with one question which retail fundamentals costing you the most right now then build that muscle first you can get the new item essential system free at RetailSolve.com slash guide 13.

17:07Again, that's RetailSolve.com slash guide 13. One skill, one item, one retailer, one better result. Then build the next muscle. Because retailers do not need more brand promises. They need brands that help them win. I'm Dan Lohman, and this is the Bulletproof Your CBG Brand Podcast. Thank you for listening. You can get this week's show notes and this week's free guide at RetailSolve.com for Session 335.