You're Telling the Wrong Story to Retail Buyers

Since starting WeStock I have had over 3,000 conversations with brands. It is my favorite part of the job. I love new brands, I spend way too much money weekly on emerging brands that I find in the wild, simply put....it is a problem.

I still remember the first brand I spoke to, it was a bagged tea brand that had a joke printed on each tag called Teaheehee. During a time when I didn't know when I was getting my next paycheck and whether I had a viable idea, they signed up and it really meant a lot to me that the first brand I spoke to resonated with our mission.

I try to approach these initial meetings like a first date and like most first dates, if you are the one who is doing the majority of the talking, it probably isn't going very well. So, I ask questions, lots of them. I keep them talking throughout and treat my role in the meeting as an explorer, simply trying to find where I can add value.

I begin every demo the same way, asking brands to tell me a little bit about their brand and what their retail goals are. The answers interestingly fall into two buckets depending on the founder that I am speaking with.

Most founders will focus on their personal story and why they created the product. They will talk about how everyone who tries it, loves it. Their passion is palpable, and then I hear it. The phrase that almost every brand says to me during one of these conversations, "we are the only ones doing this," or at least some variation of that statement.

What they don't know is that I just got off a call with a brand, that is doing something very similar, and if I am questioning that when I hear it, you have to imagine that retail buyers are as well.

Founders are passionate, but we are also too close to the problem and too close to our product to see clearly. The main issue is that most founders are crafting their brand story based on anecdotal, qualitative data points. The person who loved your product at the farmers market or the one who emailed you that they have been searching their whole life for a product like yours, those interactions stick with us.

These accounts are amazing initial proof points for the story you are going to eventually craft for your end consumers, but the story that you tell a retail buyer cannot be the same story you tell a consumer.

The other bucket that my brand conversations fall into are founders who are much more tactical in their approach. They have a detailed roadmap for their brand and they focus on internal metrics and data to describe their brand to me. My goal with this post is to get more founders and salespeople into this bucket, especially when you are speaking to a retail buyer vs. a potential consumer.

Buyer pitches are becoming less structured post-covid. You might land a retail account through a handful of zoom calls and emails verse an in-person presentation.

Your brand is fighting for valuable buyer headspace at all times and you need to make sure you are hitting the criteria that they are looking for in a new brand. For me, these five bullets always ring true when speaking with buyers.

1) Buyers are not consumers

We have already covered #1, but it bears repeating. Your pitch to an end consumer is much different than your pitch to a buyer. Consumers care about your personal story, the product attributes, and your “why” for creating the brand. Those are tangible things to the consumer that affect their purchasing decisions.

The buyer cares about those things too, but not to the same extent. You can cover all of that in one slide or in a 2-3 minute intro, but too many brands get lost in this rabbit hole and leave a buyer meeting having not touched any topics the buyer actually cares about.

2) There is no checklist

Brands often get into a buyer pitch or conversation thinking they need to fill the entire time with the sound of their voice. They feel compelled to hit some sort of internal checklist and if they don’t hit all of those points they feel like their pitch will fail. This will also lead brands to be too reliant on their deck.

Make the meeting more conversational and remember you are speaking with the buyer, not at them.

Successful brands, instead, ask questions and try to deeply understand the needs of their buyer, and from there they craft their story around those needs, not their internal checklist.

You are going to uncover the pain point for that buyer as long as you keep asking questions to better understand their needs.

• How has the category been performing this year?

• We have seen trend X really resonate with our customer base, how about you?

• Demos have been a successful tool for us in our previous accounts, what trade spend programs are currently resonating with your customers?

Keep working these types of thoughtful questions into your pitch and once you unearth a pain point that you can solve for, let that buyer know you can be part of the solution.

3) Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes

A buyer is not making a decision simply based on if they like your product or not. It is a big decision and it has a lot of implications. You have to deeply understand everything that is running through that buyer's head when they are presented with your brand.

The most important thing to me is that I make the buyer feel supported. I want them to hear about our trade spend plan and feel confident that I am going to work to get the product off the shelf.

I want them to know that I understand what is on their shelves currently and that I have actually been in their stores prior to this meeting. One human element here that most brands forget is that a buyer has to remove a product off the shelf to make room for yours. You need to paint a picture of how your brand is going to outperform that brand who they have already established a relationship with.

I want that buyer to understand that I care about their numbers and not just mine. Brands need to articulate not only how they intend to hit their goals, but also drive total category sales growth for the retailer.

How are you bringing new consumers into this set? How are you increasing basket size? Is your product an incremental item? You have to be answering these questions unprompted through your pitch.

Whenever possible you want to be able to support your claims with data. This can be tough for emerging brands, but the more insights and proof points you have, the better.

In short - you have to understand that they have a job and you need to de-risk their decision to bring your product on by any means necessary. To better understand how a buyer thinks, I would suggest watching the below interview with James Ren of Thrive Market.

4) Have a clear trade spend strategy.

Whether it is merchandising, promotions, or demos, you have to have a plan in place for how you are going to support that buyer. You will 100% have your own view on what works best, but it is important to listen to the buyer since every store has certain programs that perform best.

5) Create a relationship

At the end of the day, this is the most critical step. The buyer needs to feel like they are going on this journey with you and you need them to feel both invested in and supported by your brand.

Get to know them, don’t just keep moving to get the “yes”. Take your time and understand that buyers won’t give you a yes in your first meeting. Instead, you are just trying to secure the next meeting or action step.

This seems obvious, but many brands try to expedite the relationship-building process with buyers and it simply takes time.

To conclude, I want all of us to slow down and take a step back. Let's take the time to figure out the difference between your buyer story and your consumer story.

If you want to record your buyer pitch or send me your deck, I would be happy to review and highlight it in the newsletter.

Here is to making our buyer pitch flawless in 2023!