279. How to Turn In-Store Demos Into Retail Sales

0:01Welcome to Startup to Scale, a podcast by FoodBevy. I'm your host, Jordan Buckner. Join me as I talk to aspiring entrepreneurs, seasoned industry experts, and everyone in between as we unlock the keys to growing from startup to scale.

0:18Showing up in-store and conducting demos is one of the most quintessential things you can do as a CPG brand, but not all demos are created equal. I have personally done dozens of demos, probably over hundreds now at this point for my brands I ran in the past and know that every demo is different and it can be the moment of meeting a customer in the store to bring them to be a loyal brand advocate. But as a founder, it's hard to show up in every store all the time. And so you have to expand, work with brand ambassadors. But how do you actually do it in a way that's effective? So today I want to bring on Matthew Kubik, who has a team of over 300 brand ambassadors who've done over 10 ,000 demos in a year and really knows how to sell brands.

1:05Matthew, welcome on. Awesome. Thank you, Jordan. I appreciate you excited to chat. So let's talk through demos. I know I hear all the time about brands in terms of like when to do them, when not to do them. How do you view demos and their role in helping brands grow? Yeah, 100%. That's a great question. So and you mentioned when to do them. So ultimately, demos, sampling events, you know, we go and we sample a product, ultimately, with the goal to sell the brand, right? We want to get people to buy the product off the shelf, and then ultimately convert and come back to be a reoccurring customer, right?

1:35The whole mission of a demo is to bring to build lifelong buyers of your brand. So here's one thing that I find really interesting, right? So as a new brand, it's really important to get in front of customers because if you launch a new store, let's say there's hundreds of people who shop there every day. Most of those people, actually, almost all of them don't know that you're on the shelf. And those that are in the store, they've never tried your product. And so I always love thinking about like, how do you maximize the awareness at an individual store level? So at least a larger number of people know your product exists, not everyone's gonna buy it.

2:11And then they can decide like, is this product for me or not? But you might have customers who shop at a store who actually love your product, but they literally just don't know it exists because there's 10 ,000 other items there in the store. And so as a founder, it's really important early on as you're building that awareness, as you're growing your business, that you show up, you're doing demos so that you are building that store-by-store awareness. And then also you're learning about your customers and the product and what they think about it. I think it's one of the best experiences. And so I'm kind of curious from your perspective, things that you've learned about products while doing demos that maybe people wouldn't have learned about otherwise.

2:47Yeah, it's a great kind of question or topic to discuss. I mean, so doing demos, yeah, it's one of the best ways to figure out who vibes with your product. And so demos are a really effective way to see if your product is viable for a particular shelf or rather how do you like re like change your product to fit a particular shelf right i was watching a video um there's a guy dom his last name starts with an l he owns bum nutrition they got their energy drinks and that kind of stuff you probably heard of their brands and he was just talking about how they spend millions of dollars trying to figure out which skews match which shelves right and so like for example in in walmart and in vitamin shop and gnc they might have the same flavors of products but they're in different serving sizes right or different containers, or maybe the branding is more female or male oriented, right, or different color spectrum, or something like that.

3:35Like GNC, for example, is very much a male shopper, I think they have like 85 % male shoppers, and then the rest is females, right. So a lot of the branding and stuff that goes into a GNC store, and the serving sizes, they also do more research, you know, if you're going to buy in GNC, typically customers are going to have done more research, right versus like a Walmart, Walmart, you're typically going for savings. So demos, and just in general, like where you're trying to, you know, learn how to best navigate your product and make it successful at retailers. Demos are a great way to get feedback from customers and figure out like, hey, is this product viable for this particular store?

4:07Or maybe customers are telling you like, hey, it's too expensive, right? So if that's the case, then you got to figure out how do I restructure this product to make it sound more cost effective for the consumer at this particular store? Maybe you drop the serving size by 10, you know, or maybe you use different ingredients. Your attack plan for Costco is going to be different than for Sprouts. And your attack plan for Sprouts is going to be different than Gelson's or Mother's Markets or one of those kind of midsize chains. So there's a lot to your question and the topic you were just mentioning there.

4:37But yeah, you got to be doing demos. If you're a founder, I recommend you do the demos yourself at the beginning until you get some actual cash flow. And then also you'll learn how to pitch the brand. You'll learn it yourself. You'll become a master of pitching and selling your brand because you get more repetitions talking to customers and selling your products. Demos are like the number one. It's the best way to learn how to sell something because you're just you're interacting with so many customers over and over and over again. So in one demo, you might interact with 60 to 100 customers. Boom, you just got 60 or 100 repetitions selling your product.

5:07And then if you do that over and over and over again, eventually you'll know exactly how to pitch your products. And that's also going to help you, as I said, with your product placement. You know, how do I package this to sell itself at, you know, Costco or Walmart or X, Y, and Z store. No, I love that. I mean, one of the biggest things with any business is getting product market fit, which is making sure that you're aligning the problem that you're solving with the product and that it's actually delivering on that promise. And doing demos is a great way of understanding if you have product market fit, because you can tell someone like a quick pitch about your product and then they can immediately buy, right?

5:40Like they're face-to-face, that's gonna be your best chance for someone to buy from you. And if they're still not buying, then either they're the wrong person or you're not articulating the problem that you're solving or how your product is actually the solution for that. And it's a really great way, as you mentioned, to like get those reps in. I remember with my brand T-Squares, we were selling in Whole Foods and I was doing a demo. Someone came up to me and they said, hey, I actually saw this on the shelf the other day. I thought it was interesting, but I did not buy it. And then they like, I told them my story, told them the pitch and they're like, oh, these are great.

6:11And they bought like three bags. But if I did not do that demo, I will have lost that customer because I realized that our packaging was not a sales ready packaging and telling that story effectively on a shelf with everything else. And so that actually triggered us to do a redesign for our packaging and our branding so that we could more accurately communicate what are those pain points we were solving and how do we communicate on that packaging? And I never would have learned that from doing without doing demos. Love that. That's awesome. So interesting. A lot of founders think about demos in terms of their like return on investment.

6:45I know you mentioned this a little bit earlier in terms of like, are you going to see immediate profitability first versus like a longer term kind of ROI? What are some of the things that brands can do to ensure they are having the best chance of their demos driving immediate sales and long term repeat business too? Yeah, so that's a great question. And if you do really good at your demo, and you get good ROI at the demo itself, you will get better long term, you know, sales as well. So you really want to set up your demo for success 100%. So there's a lot of different things that make a successful demo.

7:18The first one is having, you know, an awesome brand ambassador that knows what they're doing. They're trained in the sales process, you know, hopefully they're good looking to that helps, you know, and then on top of it, they've got some different tools in their tool belt to sell your particular brand, right? It's one thing to be a master salesperson. It's another thing to be a model. It's another thing to know this particular product, like the backside of your hand. And if you know this product, like the backside of your hand, you can communicate to somebody very efficiently. You know, the guy Carl Sagan, he can explain very complex topics very simply.

7:49We want to do that with our brand as well. So yeah, those are three things that make a brand ambassador perform at the highest level. Obviously, it starts with you as the brand owner. If you have your own brand, you want to master it first because then you, like Carl Sagan, can communicate your brand to a brand ambassador very concisely, straightforward, and you can leave all the fluff out. There's a lot of good selling points. You can take any product on the planet and there's infinite selling points for it, but not all those selling points are good and they don't resonate with the customer. And on top of that, they might not even resonate with the customer at Sprouts or Costco or whatever platform you're selling at.

8:24So you really need to distill it down to what are maybe the top three selling points for your brand. At our company, Local Demo Service, we've got a tried and true script we essentially follow for all of our brand ambassadors. Obviously, there's some play with it. Everybody's a little different. I sell differently than somebody else. I have people that I train to sell at demos and they're very comedic. So we play that comedic edge for them. And then for me, I'm like an auctioneer almost. If you've seen an auctioneer rattling off sale stuff, talk really fast. You might notice the way I'm talking.

8:53I talk really fast. So for me, that's the way that I sell, right? So everybody can take their unique style of selling and then use a tried and true script to ensure that they're getting consistent sales every single time. So for example, we have our demo table, you know, we're set up, it's looking good. We got a lot of product on the table, right? Every single customer that's walking in a store, you want to talk to every single customer that walks by. If you don't talk to every single customer that walks by, you're automatically losing sales, right? Like let's say I'm at a demo and there's going to be a total of 125 people total in the store from start to finish on my demo, I want to talk to all 125 of those people.

9:29That is my first goal, right? And even if I sound stupid, I stumble over my words, if I talk to all 125 people, I am going to have a higher close rate. You know, I'm going to close more people at that demo than if I talk to 50. So that's the first step is you need to talk to everybody. Plus, the more you talk to people, the more you start kind of loosening up, you get a little bit more. You know, it's like putting some oil on the gears almost your gears start going, and then things start flowing a little bit more, you know, and every time you talk to somebody, you'll improve at that talking, right?

9:57So not only are you going to increase the amount of sales you get at a demo by talking to everybody, but you're going to improve your skill set of talking to people huge as super important, right? So now when you're talking to everybody, you got to hook them with something, right? Hey, would you like to try a sample of x, y, and z, right? It's the simplest hook, you don't need anything complicated, you can sure you could do a joke or something catchy, and that might work for you. I mentioned I trained somebody recently who had like a very comedic way of being. Their hook could be very comedic and that'll be great, right?

10:24For me, I'm not that good at jokes. I'm not a comedian, right? So a simple hook. Yeah, I wouldn't land. If you try doing it. Yeah, exactly. A simple hook is all you need. Hey, have you ever tried X, Y, and Z? Or hey, do you know what this is, right? Like for example, I had a brand we were sampling that was a gin kombucha. So gin versus kombucha. Kombucha, they consume sugar. Gin consumes honey, right? So it's basically kombucha but with honey, right? Right. So I'm like, Hey, are you familiar with what gin is? And people are like, what the heck is gin? Did you say gin? You know, like gin and tonic.

10:52And then you can go into your conversation explaining what gin is, right? No, it's a honey fed kombucha. You want to try a sample? It's super delicious, right? Boom. They try it. As I'm handing them the sample, I'm starting to go into three selling points, right? I always do three selling points. It's the sweet spot. Sometimes two is good. Sometimes four is good, but three is the sweet spot. You typically don't want more than three or less than three. Less than three, it's like it's not unique. It doesn't what's so good about it. Right. And then more than three is like, okay, it's too much. Like, I don't know what you're saying.

11:23I forgot everything you just said. Right. So three selling points. So it could be it's organic, it's made with honey, and it's in a glass bottle, right? Those could be the three selling points. Or it could be it's locally grown, and it tastes delicious, and it's low in sugar, right? Pick three solid selling points. You can always sell more later as the customer asks questions. But when you're selling, you don't want to oversell. Give them three solid points, right? And then after you get the three solid points, you want the customer to talk. So then I hook them, I give them three selling points, and then I ask them a question.

11:55What do you think of the flavor of that? How does it taste? Do you like it? Some sort of question like that. Get them to talk, right? And then as they talk, now they're selling themselves, okay? So you give them the chance to sell themselves. Now they're selling themselves on the product because they're talking about it. You let them talk or they tell you something that they don't like. I don't like this flavor. It's too sour. Or they might tell you something else like, I don't know. I can't tell. Maybe it's too bubbly or I'm not sold yet. Or it's too expensive. That gives you the opportunity to solve that problem next.

12:22What's too sour? Oh, you know what? I got this other flavor. Try this one. Boom. It's too expensive. Well, actually it's on sale today. Buy two, get one free. You can solve the next problem when they respond back to you. But ultimately you don't want to stomp over them with all of your talking and selling. You want it to be a conversation. This is like, hey, I'm building a relationship with you. I'm a human, you're a human. I'm tuning into you. And then that's going to make them open up and give you the tools you need to close that deal. And then after you solve any problems that they have after their question, you're going for the close every time.

12:53If you don't go for the close, you don't get the close. I know most brand ambassadors, this is probably their number one problem. And the reason why they don't sell enough is because they don't close every single time. I talk to 100 customers, I close 100 customers. That's what I'm going into demo for, right? So I'm going to close and be like, awesome. Well, if you want to buy one, boom, I've got two for you right here. Do you want to take it with you and go purchase it at the cash registers, right? That's how you can close the deal. So you got to ask them for the sale. Hey, do you want to buy this?

13:21Awesome. You like that one. Do you want to grab two off the table? Awesome. Which ones do you want? Do you want me to grab one off the table for you? That's how you close the deal. You give them a closing statement. So you hook everybody, right? You give them three selling points. You ask a question and then you close the deal. If you do those four things, I don't care if you've got zero experience. I don't care if you stutter. You don't speak very good English. You will sell more than most brand ambassadors out there in the field, I promise you. So I hope those four points. I love that framework.

13:47Yeah, I think that was really awesome. Thanks for walking through there. Actually just reminded me my favorite way of closing is while I'm going into the conversation of handing them the package to look at it, to read it, to see it up close. And then it sounds like, hey, we'd love for you to have it. You can take that one in your hand, right? They literally already have it in their hand. And they either have to give it back or put it in their cart, right? And so like then they physically have to make that decision. That's money. We call that the Jedi mind trick. So we actually have a, by the way, if any of your people that follow your podcast want to check it out, we've got a YouTube channel.

14:17We only have three public videos, so it's kind of small. But that trick you said right there, that's called the Jedi mind trick. So when we're explaining selling points, we'll hold the product out like this. And I'll be pointing at the selling points. And naturally, the customer wants to grab it out of your hand. and then as soon as they grab it exactly what she said they either have to give it back to you which makes them feel uncomfortable or they have to buy it so that's money right there i love that yeah so it's so much fun you mentioned earlier about the sprouts forager program and costco road shows i'd love for you to hit on both of those because they're kind of unique sampling opportunities and so let me start with the sprouts forager kind of program innovation set and what's different about that and how you approach it differently awesome yeah so sprouts in my opinion is the number one natural retailer out there right now.

15:01They're growing faster than any other natural retailer. You have Whole Foods. Whole Foods used to be like the number one and then the whole Amazon purchase thing happened and they've just been, they've gone a whole totally different direction. So I don't even really consider them in that category anymore, especially if you look at like what's on in their ingredients and food. Like I used to love Whole Foods, but anyway, Sprouts, they're the fastest growing natural retailer out there. They're investing a lot of money in growth. They're adding like just under a hundred stores this year. We're going to be demoing all those new stores, by the way, for Tractor Beverage Co.

15:31So if you know the brand, they're awesome. Organic soda with apple cider vinegar. But yeah, Sprouts, they have the best innovation program in the United States of America. And now all these other retailers are following them, right? So Sprouts has their innovation program, Forager Finds, Fresh Finds. Those are the kind of three programs right there. They also have one other program that they just launched. I have a client that just got set up for that. It's a 60-day program. The other three are a 90 day program. So basically you have 90 days, right? They bring you into shelves nationwide or they can do regional.

16:02I know some people that have done just California or just Florida, but they bring you into Sprouts shelves and you've got 90 days to hit a certain amount of sales per week on average in order to go in line, right? So they do this for new and innovative products. So if you've got a product that's innovative, it's different, it's unique, Sprouts wants it first. So I recommend anybody who's listening to this, if you've got a new and innovative product, go after Sprouts. It's the best program. There's a lot of kind of financial benefits to going in the program too. I'm not going to go over all of them because they may be changing.

16:33I know they're constantly changing things, but you get a lot of like really beneficial price reductions and like distribution costs and things like that when you do these programs. So definitely look into it. The foraging team at Sprouts is awesome. Brody Burke, Jorge Espinosa, Lori Brogy, all those people, Mason Webb, it's the best set. And so we've been really focusing on that set predominantly because it's the ultimate launch pad for new and innovative brands. It's a great way to automatically roll into, you know, up to 400 plus stores, just like that. They're bringing in brands like every 90 days.

17:05So they're constantly changing that shelf. And then when you get on that shelf to a lot of the stores, that innovation shelf is like right dead center in the store. The other shelves are kind of further away from there. So if you walk in the store, you will see this set. It's like dead center. It's like, it's got a really, they pop up that shelf. So you get a lot of exposure. So yeah, we're focusing on that. We're doing more demos for that set than anybody else. How do the demo strategy for that do you think differs from other programs? Because I know there's like limited time. They essentially want to see how well your brand sells through in that limited time period.

17:38And so how do you then approach like sampling in those locations differently? Is it like everything all at once? Do you take their top stores and drive velocity that way? Like how do you recommend getting in there? Cause it's a limited timeframe. Yeah, good call. So exactly that. You want to front load as many demos and other marketing events as possible. So obviously I'm going to pitch you demos, but there's lots of other things you can do to move your product. Ultimately you want to get that product moved ASAP, right? Cause you got 90 days and the stores can reorder too. So if you can do all of your marketing and sales efforts in like the first two weeks, that's the sweet spot because then you're going to get as many stores selling through product.

18:14And then also when the store replenishes, those people who already bought from you, they can come back the next week and buy again, the next week and buy again. So definitely the funds you put in for investing, I typically recommend you front load those. One more thing I'll mention too, you'd be surprised, even though you're supposed to automatically go into all the shelves, you're supposed to be on the schematic, right? If you get an innovation forage deal, you're supposed to be on the schematic for those 90 days. I had a brand call a month in to hire us and we showed up at a few stores where the product was sitting and receiving for 30 days.

18:44So you want to touch on those stores, whether it's a phone call or a live visit or a merchandising event or something, right, in the first few weeks so that you ensure that product gets on shelf and it's moving. Yeah. And it's important. And then let's talk through Costco roadshows real quick. Costco roadshows, it's like a different environment. It's kind of a high selling activity. How do those differ from your experience in terms of like strategy or execution? Yeah. So the roadshows, it's kind of similar in that it's a very explosive event. You've got a four or five day period to ensure your product is moving.

19:17This year, we've done like 100 roadshows. And we've learned a lot this year about the roadshows. So Costco is also making a big effort to bring in new and innovative brands. This year, I've noticed they brought in more roadshow rotations than I've ever seen in the history of Costco. So they're catching up to all these new and trendy things coming in. They realize customers want these new and innovative products. They want healthier products, right? So you have four or five days to get a certain amount of sales. And usually, depending on the category, there's different categories. A lot of the beverage brands we've done, they want to see like 10 ,000 plus sold in a single day in a roadshow.

19:53So by the end of your four or five day roadshow, they want 40, 50 grand of product minimum moved. On that note, I know of brands who are selling six figures in a roadshow and they do it every single roadshow. So you're competing against those brands. And if you don't match up to those brands and hit those sales, they're probably not going to give you a rotation. And then you're just burning through that capital, right? You're not going to make money on the roadshow. You're just not, you know, cost money for the LTL. It costs money to do the demo. You know, there's a lot of the product costs money.

20:21It's a lot of costs. So it's expensive to get your product there. The benefit is if you move a lot of it and then you get a rotation, right? So in those four or five days, you really want to be set up to sell a lot of products. One thing I've noticed right off the bat with roadshows is you really need more people. So a regular demo, you can send one person in, they go do their demo, whatever they sell product, right? And then you can do that for four or 500 stores or whatever you want to do. A Costco roadshow at one location, the more people you have, the merrier. And you want trained salespeople.

20:49So typically what we'll do is we'll have CDS sample the product, and then we'll send in sales reps to sell the product, right? Because you don't need a high-level salesperson sampling. You just don't, right? And there are times in Costco, there's like a good six-hour window each day where it's just like boom, boom, boom. There's like tons of customers walking by. So you really need somebody just handing out samples, and then you need somebody else that's like going and grabbing somebody, bringing them in, going and grabbing somebody, bringing them in. And ideally, you have one CDS and multiple salespeople.