Independent grocers can be a huge part of either a new brand’s launch strategy (and often are the first accounts any brand acquires) or an existing brand’s growth strategy. How do you take advantage of the independent retailers’ ability to onboard you quickly and get rapid consumer feedback? For larger brands, how do you scale up your growth across this massive number of independents? Founders face a huge task in scaling sales from local success to widespread distribution. What if you could reach 7,000 grocery stores in a single month?
We chose this target number as an example of what a company could currently ask us to support in a single month–but whether it’s 7 or 70, 700 or 7,000, choose the right level for yourself, every month you are growing.
1. Build A Target Retailer Profile (But Be Ready To Adapt)
Identify Ideal Channels: Explain the importance of understanding which sales channels (e.g., natural grocery stores, big-box retailers, specialty food stores, food service accounts, boutique retailers, online accounts) are most successful for your product
Every brand has unique types of accounts that will best succeed with your product. There is no substitute for understanding these accounts!
Retailer Fit: You may have heard the expression “it’s not the number of doors, it’s the right doors.” This is incredibly true in retail grocery CPG. In the right doors, your brand will succeed and thrive, earning a positive return on investment and making you, the retailer, and your consumers thrilled. It’s important to learn these right retailers. Even similar types of retailers (perhaps regional chains with a natural focus) can be vastly different in benefit to you based around their cost profiles or shopper profiles.
Customer Demographics: Who is your consumer? This probably is many different things, but finding your target consumer from a demographic standpoint will guide you to your best fit retailers to a large degree.
Regional Preferences: Notwithstanding the many favors you will receive as a local brand, consider your abilities to personally support your brand with local or regional marketing events. If you are building a customer base in your local region, your local retailers are going to feel that benefit.
Financial Fit: Growth comes at a cost, particularly fast growth. There is no cheap, fast, and widespread growth. Know your budget, and where you are in the growth process. Placement deals are only the start. You need to land in stores and succeed, not launch for a few months and fail, and promotions, events, demos, digital advertising, influencer/social media marketing and/or other types of consumer focused marketing can make the difference between a successful partnership and one that doesn’t last. Plan for the long term and you’ll succeed in the long term.
First Impressions: Don’t forget that you are making first impressions with consumers, buyers, and other industry partners. Plan to make a good first impression and you won’t have to try harder, at greater cost, to make a second one.
2. Make a Target List of Retailers That Fit Your Sales Targets
Retailer Research: Once you’ve defined your capacity for growth, make a target list of accounts. You can google search your lights out, ask for industry guidance, or use a tool like Harvest Hub CPG that already has a massive list of accounts organized by region, distribution, etc.
Prioritizing Retailers: There are a few factors that can easily guide you to a retailer priority list. First, do they specialize in what you sell? Giftable sets are going to do really well at gift shops. Stores with a large produce set and section are going to have more options for produce-adjacent items like dressing and dips. Retailers are going to be interested in local items–look in your city, county, state, and region to prioritize. Finally, larger stores have more room than smaller stores and often try out products more quickly and easily.
Using Data to Inform Your List: Discuss the role of sales data, market analysis, and industry reports in refining your target list.
3. Selling Into Each Retailer
Finding the Right Contacts: Once you have your list of stores, who do you ask for when you call? Many stores will be kind and just direct you to the right person, but having access to a tool like Harvest Hub CPG can give you a name and often an email to ask for, which can make a huge difference. Some stores put the name of their managers on their website! And linkedin can’t hurt to use either.
Crafting Your Pitch: Once you have the retail buyer on the phone or in front of you, what do you say? First off, your first sentence or two has to capture them and make them interested to talk more. Here’s one that works well calling independent stores:
“Hi Samantha, it’s James with Good Now Foods, we represent a local line of infused almonds called Recipe 33, which are active in Crown Pacific with both seasonal and year round flavors. We just released a new flavor, Garlic Dill, and I thought it might be a great fit for your store as it retails at $5.99 for a 4oz bag, and $4.99 on sale which we run frequently. Is that something you might like to give a try?”
Breaking that down, these two sentences get in local (or other key attributes) as well as talk about the brand. It opens up the possibility of different types of placement (maybe they just reset snack nuts but are considering holiday items). It mentions distribution up front (if you have it), and then gives some key initial info, before the most important part–asking the buyer if they would like to try it. We like asking if a retailer would “like to try the brand” because it both asks for the close (trying it on shelf) and also asks about samples (trying it as in sampling). Whichever option they are interested in, they can gravitate toward and “trying” something out is very non threatening.
Building Relationships: When you call on stores, it’s important to understand that you are catching people in the middle of their workday. Be polite, don’t take too much time explaining who you are and your story. If they sound rushed or busy, ask if there is a better day to call back, or offer to ship a set of samples and follow up in a couple weeks. Store level team members have a dozen tasks they are doing all the time, from helping customers, to stocking shelves, to ordering, to setting up team schedules, to many more things. Most people enjoy seeing new items but it’s important to know when is the right time (not during lunch rush, not during much of November and December).
Overcoming Objections: Once you have the buyer on the phone, and they say, “that sounds interesting, tell me…” and they start asking questions, that’s a great sign. The most common objections are going to be related to price, distribution, velocity, and product/store fit. Breaking those down:
- Price. Retailers know their customers. Some stores cater to a high end, well heeled crowd with budgets to match their tastes. Others serve a more value driven shopper, and everything in between. If you are a premium brand pitching to a mid-level store, be prepared to talk about how your brand gives consumers an option to “trade up” at only $1 to $2 more than the less sustainable (or, nutritious, or non-Organic, or etc.) option, giving stores a higher basket ring. If you’ll be supporting the higher priced item with demos or more promotions than your competition, those will certainly resonate with a buyer.
- Distribution. If you have distribution and you are calling stores that buy from that distributor, great! Be sure to mention it early on. Stores have preferences about distributors and it can vary wildly from being happy to route all business their way, to only using them for a very few products. If you can work directly, try to have a price that is “all in” including shipping to the store, even if it’s not perfectly accurate for all stores. Buyers don’t want to take time to figure out what UPS or FedEx might cost to calculate what they will have to sell the product for to hit their margins needs.
- Velocity. If your product is selling well in other similar types of stores, mention it. Units per store per week (UPSPW) or sales per store per week (SPSPW), also measured as UPPD (units per point of distribution) or SPPD (sales per point of distribution) are common measures. Stores want their shelf real estate to be stocked with products that their customers are buying and this velocity measurement is the way they evaluate it.
- Product/Store Fit. One of the common adages in the industry is that the right 10 doors will sell more than the wrong 100 doors. You want to show the buyer why your product fits well at their location.
4. Execute a Launch Plan for Each New Store
Customizing Your Launch Plan: You’ve gotten the approval! Congratulations. The real work begins now! How are you going to support your brand and ensure it’s successful at the store?
Marketing Support: Every store is different in terms of what they allow aside from your product on shelf. Some allow shelf talkers, or feature them for local products or sustainable products. Some allow other marketing programs. Be sure to ask what options are available! Many of these are free or low cost and well worth the time.
Staff Training: In addition to being consultative resources for shoppers, the staff shop at the store and get a discount! Make sure the staff gets a chance to sample your product–ship some extra items just for them or, when doing a demo, be sure to sample the in store team too. Many stores have a break room with products available to try–feel free to ask if you can leave some for the break room as well.
Monitoring Sales: Once you are selling, keep track of how many cases are moving in a week, a month, a quarter. Look for spikes or drops and be sure you know why. Did you get moved to a better location on the shelf, or put on the bottom? Did the store forget to order for a month? Sometimes it’s as simple as picking up the phone and asking how things are going. Another option is to offer a demo, and suggest the store order up to support it. You’ll figure out quickly at that point how well, or not, things are going!
5. Maintain Relationships
Buyer Preferences: Be empathic with your buyer–read their feelings. Listening is key. Ask what you can do to help them and do it. Be the brand that is responsive to their requests, and they will make sure you hear it before things become an issue. We often use our SOS team to call back to stores to make sure distributors are following through, ensure all SKUs are on shelf, and to gather information about performance.
Check-In Calls: If you haven’t gotten an order for a while, call and ask if they need one. Even great brands sometimes fall off the shelf because someone forgets to place an order. Be the helpful brand that checks in, and ask the store when you should check back again in the future.
Ready to Grow Your Brand?
Partnering with the right retailer is critical to scaling your brand’s success. If you’re looking to make that leap, we can help! This article is sponsored by Good Now Foods, a brand that understands the intricacies of the CPG industry and can help guide you through your growth journey. Interested in connecting with Good Now Foods for an introduction or partnership? Simply click the button below to request an introduction and start your journey towards reaching more retailers!