Creating a winning pitch to retailers: Part 1

With advance knowledge, planning and practice, creating a winning pitch to retailers becomes easier and more likely to succeed so here are my top tips to get you on the right track.

If you haven’t done this already, make a start by getting online and researching the overall product category before moving on to look at competitors so you know who the other sector players are and the specific attributes of their product, brand, packaging design, stockists and pricing strategy.

Determine if the category is in both value and volume growth or just volume growth. This is important because entering a category where volume is growing ahead of value means it will be super-competitive and challenging to establish a new brand and additional price promotion activity may be necessary.

Think about which consumer groups you are targeting and why they will buy your product instead of their current purchase. This will be important in relation to the focus of your brand push.

Then identify the retailers you feel are best suited to stocking your product. Visit a number of their stores and look at the fixture that’s relevant to you.

Look very carefully at packaging formats, pack size/product weight and price per 100g, not just the overall price. This may provide valuable information in relation to your product size and proposed price. If possible, sneak a couple of photographs, looking at how much shelf space is dedicated to your competitors: the brands, their colours, packaging formats, product volumes and prices.

Which of the products currently on sale could yours replace and why should a buyer stock you in place of those already listed? Retailers do not have elastic shelves so for every new product they list, they will take one out.

And pay attention to which products appear where. The top shelf tends to be for premium products, eye level for the best-selling products (these will have earned this visually dominant position by having a higher, comparable rate of sale) and low-level for brands which are important to the retailers overall ranging strategy but not those which they expect the highest levels of sales from. Note any promotions too.

And think about your product, brand and packaging. Have you done all that you can to be super-impactful on shelf? Do you compare favourably to existing products when viewed from three feet away so that you can achieve that all-important initial engagement.

Then create a market map using all the information you’ve gleaned to define the positioning of your product relative to existing brands and in particular those which are your main competitors. 

Once you’ve undertaken this preliminary work, the next step is to define your proposition to prospective buyers.

• Is your offer within the good, better or best price tiering and are you pricing it accordingly?
• Is your product higher-priced and therefore providing a higher margin to the stockist?
• How will stocking your product in place of others positively impact on the retailer’s sales?
• Will stocking your product attract new customers to the store? Is there potential to make your targeted retailer a destination store because of your product?
• How are you going to support your launch? What marketing activity will you undertake? What price promotion activity are you proposing? How does your proposed marketing activity compare to current sector products?
• How are you going to make the buyers job easier and make their boss sing their praises by increasing their category revenue?

You’re now ready to prepare a compelling retailer pitch dec – Canva or PowerPoint is much better than Word for this and will allow you to create a visually stronger presentation. And it might be worth using Grammarly too.

So here are my Ten Top Tips.

1. Ideally, limit your presentation to no more than ten slides and a maximum of 3.5 minutes reading time.
2. Focus only on your ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘who’ and ‘how’.
3. Keep it brief and to the point.
4. Avoid the temptation to use your brand logo on every page and present no more than 4 bullet points per page.
5. Think carefully about the strength, clarity, impact and importance of every single word you use. If the recipient doesn’t ‘get it’ at first read you will lose the opportunity to engage them,
6. Where relevant, use good-quality images.
7. Include snippets of your brand strategy and background research in support of your ‘why’.
8. Don’t overload pages with irrelevant graphics and images – communicate clearly and precisely.
9. Highlight the reasons why listing your product is going to improve the retailer’s category performance and profitability.
10. Make sure you include a marketing promotional plan as part of your ‘how’ and I strongly recommend that price promotions feature within this, shaped on the information you’ve gleaned from your retailer visits. (N.B. Price promotions are often a key element in securing a listing but they need to be properly understood and considered so I offer mentoring to look specifically at this key aspect).

You’re now ready to prepare your intro email.

• Be compelling, use positive wording and put yourself in the buyer’s shoes.
• Again keep it short and to the point.
• Use your  ‘hook’ in the subject title or first line of your email
• (In this initial email it is worth asking when the review period is for your product category as typically they only take place once a year – so it could be several months before they will be ready to consider listing changes).
• Don’t be put off if they don’t reply to your first email, they get inundated and you will need to be persistent.
• Keep your emails polite and to the point and whenever possible, use new insights, industry news or trends data relevant to your products so that you can demonstrate that you have your finger on the pulse and are aware of constantly changing consumer wants and how this is reflected by the retailers.
• And use information specific to the retailer you are emailing wherever possible. (For example ‘I saw in the Grocer Magazine that you are looking for new gut health products’…).