3 Questions To Ask When Interviewing Brokers

Before we dive into this week’s topic I do hope that anyone reading this who has been affected by the L.A. fires is doing well and is safe. I am proud of how many brands have been stepping up this week with donations and WeStock will be making a donation as well. 

With that being said, we have officially passed the point of including “Happy New Year” in all our email outreach which means we are fully engulfed in 2025 and hitting our sales targets. 

I am not going to lie, it does seem tough out there right now for brands based on the recent conversation I have been a part of. Budgets are constricting, layoffs are occurring, and funding is down. 

Brands are looking for growth both with their current accounts and potential new accounts which leads to January being a big month for brokers. Like anything, good brokers can turbocharge your business and make you feel like you have a true partner in scaling your brand in retail while bad brokers can make you feel gutted and helpless. 

I wrote previously in 2023 about what I look for in a broker, but I wanted to go further with this issue and highlight three questions that I feel are necessary to ask when interviewing potential broker partners. 

Let’s dive in, shall we! 

1. What’s your annual brand churn rate?

I once spoke to a broker who told me they expect to churn 60% of their brands in a calendar year and that their primary focus outside of getting results for the brands they currently work for was to also make sure they have a healthy amount of prospective brands in the pipeline to make up for that 60% churn. 

I want to be clear here, some churn is healthy for any business.

I would say that a broker who is between 15-25% churn annually checks the box for a positive response here.  If a broker comes in lower than that it probably raises some red flags on the size of their portfolio or their aggressiveness in growing their own business. 

Some brands simply don’t sell no matter how good the representation is and you don’t want brokers to continue to work with a brand that isn’t selling, so a healthy churn number is a good signal, it just can’t be drastically high. 

A churn percentage over this though could signal that the broker is simply playing a numbers game especially if they have a monthly retainer involved for their services and that their priority is more focused on securing that fee instead of securing results for your brand. 

2. What’s your specific plan for our brand?

This seems obvious, but you’ll notice as you talk to brokers that they don’t necessarily roll out a Don Draper-like presentation that has been painstakingly labored over to serve your specific brand needs. 

Most brokers sell their capabilities and their past results. They then walk you through how your brand will go through that funnel and have success. 

The capabilities will include team size, retail relationships, third-party partnerships. The results will include their top logos and the results they have gotten for other brands in your category. 

Reviewing your capabilities though is more of a presentation of current and past results and not a clear plan of potential future results for your brand. 

I believe brands have the right to push for this and treat the broker conversations in the beginning as an interview and not a demo. 

This does take the founder having a level of experience selling the product themselves which most do. You have to understand the hurdles you have faced and the feedback you have received from the buyer in order to push the broker on how they are going to get past those. 

Contacts are readily available now and a buyer is a simple LinkedIn search away from you finding them, so the broker can’t simply prop up their past results and relationships as a selling tool. 

You want to at least qualify that they have thought about how they are going to approach your brand in a way that shows they have put some thought into and aren’t just rinsing and repeating a playbook they have already had success with from another brand. 

3. How collaborative are you planning to be with our brand? 

This is a partnership and brokers should welcome the founder or internal sales director into the process if they want to be involved (hint: you should want to be involved). 

I found that when a broker didn’t want me to be on the meeting it was mostly because they were presenting multiple brands during the meeting which gets back to question #2. You want to make sure that your broker is representing your brand in those meetings and not their firm. 

You want to have a CRM that you're working collaboratively with your broker in, tracking their follow-ups and meetings, while being available to come in and help them close. 

You as the founder or sales director should be looked at as a resource for that broker, not someone they are shutting off because they are worried you will get in the way of their process. 

BONUS QUESTION 

4. What’s your plan for after we get on the shelf? 

I had a great regional broker say to me that their job wasn’t fully done until the third re-order. 

You want to have a broker who can guide you through the promotional plan that you will need for each specific retailer. 

You don’t want just the retailer or distributor guiding this conversation. Your broker should be there to provide you with input and help you put together a retailer specific promotional calendar based on the results they have seen from previous clients and the individual needs of each retailer. 

You also have to push for the “what then” answers. 

If we secure Sprouts, what then. Let’s say we get into Costco, what then. The hard work starts after you get the yes and your broker needs to be your sherpa not just to get the order, but in guiding you through the unique trade spend strategies that each retailer is going to need from your brand. 

Brokers are amazing partners, but they can set your brand back years if you make the wrong hire. Take your time with the process and only move forward once you feel fully comfortable with the team. 

Also, please remember, that a broker will NEVER save a brand that has flat or declining sales. 

They will only amplify the speed of growth of an already successful brand.