What to Bring When Meeting With a Retailer
It’s tough to land new retail accounts. You have to decide if it’s a good store to approach, prepare your materials, and practice answering common questions.
I just met with a new retailer for Green Mountain Mustard. It was my first retail visit in a while because we typically go through a couple of distributor.
I needed to take a fresh look on what I brought to the buyer. And of course that meant writing a blog post to cover the essentials you should be bringing to sales meetings, too.
5 Things You Should Bring When You Meet With a Buyer
1. A Sales Sheet
Your sales sheet tells buyers everything about your company on one piece of paper. Typically, printed on 8.5 x 11 printer paper, it contains your company logo, contact info, pictures of product, prices, and UPC codes. Take your sales sheet up a notch and include testimonials, and suggested uses.
2. Business Cards
Just like sales sheets, business cards are a necessity. And they should match your sales sheet. Get them printed at Vistaprint or use a local print shop. Include your company logo, name, and contact information – include your website and Facebook page, too.
3. Samples
What’s a buyer meeting without samples? Take a small version of your product or break your product in pieces to save money. Rather than bring your whole product line, bring one or two varieties that showcase your most popular flavors and what makes you stand out from the rest of the products on the shelf.
4. Point of Sale Materials
To make your product stand out on the shelf, many retailers are going to ask for point of sale materials. The most popular point of sale material is a shelf-talker. This is simply a sign that goes on the shelf. They’re varying sizes and can be printed on your computer at home. I use large postcards for my Green Mountain Mustard shelf-talkers.
5. The Answers to Common Questions
Do you need to memorize anything? Nope. But you should have a good handle on answering the following questions:
- Do you do direct-store-distribution (DSD)?
- Are you (the owner) available for demos?
- How long have you been in business?
- What are your most popular flavors?
Landing retailers takes planning. With these five tips, you’ll go into your next retailer prepared and ready to make the big sale. With a better approach, more retailers will bring your product on and you’ll have more accounts than you can handle.
What do you recommend to bring buyers?