Creating an Effective Sell Sheet

We are less than two weeks away from Expo West and all of you are stressing about everything you are going to load your booth with ahead of the show.

I mentioned in my Expo West post that you don’t necessarily need a bunch of takeaway material for buyers at your booth, you really just need a solid one-page sell sheet.

This got me thinking about the range of sell sheets I see on a weekly basis.

Some have too much information and some have far too little, simply put there isn’t just one definitive guideline on what to include or not include in your sell sheet. So that is exactly what this post is going to be!

In short, a sell sheet should tell someone (most likely a buyer) everything they need to know about your brand to place an order.

They ride along with all of your correspondence with a potential new account and they are what you have in hand when stopping into a prospective retailer.

It is a very actionable document. This isn’t your sales deck which is filled with beautiful brand imagery and romance copy, this is a tactical one-pager that answers the decision maker’s questions in a glance.

Below is a breakdown I created of all the components you want to include in your sell sheet:

Now that you understand what goes on your sell sheet, let’s walk through some examples that I really like. All of these are public.

Mamma Chia does a great job of fitting a large product offering onto one page.

They have clear product images that show how vibrant their product is, but there isn’t any wasted space. They outline all of their tactical information for the buyer below and as a buyer, I could easily make a buying decision from this information.

The only input might be to include your preferred distributors, so the buyer can easily place an order.

I wouldn’t include seasonal flavors or LTOs (limited-time offers) in your everyday sell sheet.

Instead, I really like the approach Health-Ade took here making a one-off sell sheet for their seasonal flavor. I think this is ok for seasonal products or LTOs because you are most likely selling these products into accounts that you have already been working with.

This gives you an opportunity to add some more context and describe the product, but still gives the buyer all the information they need to add this item to their next order.

You are going to be handing out a lot of sell sheets and product information at Expo West. You want to make sure that when those buyers are back home and going through their totes of samples and brand materials that the information you provided is sticking out.

A good sell sheet is more important to me than a good sales deck.

When you're pitching a buyer, the deck is background noise to the story you are telling, but a sell sheet usually has to tell someone everything they need to know about your brand when you aren’t in the room.

If you are working on your sell sheet or have one you would like me to review, my Linkedin DMs are open. I would be happy to check it out and give you my feedback.