(5 Steps to Strike Retail Gold!)
If you have a new product and you are wondering how to sell in retail – you will probably want to know the 5 steps you need to take to make this happen!
And that’s what this short training video is about!
During this training, we will discuss how you can get your products into stores as quickly as possible.
Hope it helps!
To get access to an entire 6 Part FREE video training series, please enter your name and email address in the box next to this video!
Also, if you like this content, you will probably LOVE Retail MBA – a Year Long Training and Coaching System That Helps You Get into Chain Stores NOW!
Either way, I would love your comments and/or feedback below.
To Your Success,
Karen Waksman, Retail MBA
Transcript for This Video Listed Here:
How to Sell in Retail – This is Karen Waksman, Founder of Retail MBA. And in this particular segment, we’re going to be covering the top five steps on how to sell in retail and to strike retail gold! And what that really means is that we want to get your products to the chain stores, because that’s where the real money is at because these buyers or chain stores can buy your product in mass. So that’s why I talk about chain stores and why I teach about it. So we really want you to strike retail golden. With that said, we’re going to be covering five steps that the retail sales professionals take in order to get a product into a store. And I’m hoping that these tips will help you think, and get going, and get started and getting your products into stores. So the first step is that retail sales professionals do what they try and get products to the stores is that they do not make any decisions until they go to the retailers and they go shopping.
What does that mean? Well, retail sales professionals know that if they walk a store and they look at the section of the store that matters to that product that they’re representing, that they will get all most of the information that they need. So for instance, if you have a consumer electronics product and the retail sales professional goes to that retail store, what they’re looking for is the consumer electronics section of the store. And they’re going to walk to that section of the store and they’re going to analyze all sorts of stuff. And the reason they’re going to do this is because they want to make sure that they understand exactly what the retailer wants. And the only way to know that is to walk to that store because you can learn all about a buyer simply by seeing what they purchased. You see, buyer purchased your competitors’ products, because they think there’s something interesting there, which means that the buyer approved their pricing, it means that the buyer approved their packaging, they approved all sorts of things, which means that the buyer likes that.
So what you want to do is understand by going to that section of the store, you will learn so much about that buyer and what matters to them. So that’s why retail sales professionals don’t do any marketing, or selling or anything until they walk the stores. If I can give you any advice, that’s the first thing that you do. Step one is you go to the section of the store that’s relevant to your product type. The next thing is, you’re going to assess and this is what the professionals do. They assess the competitor’s price, packaging, and placement. So if you’re looking at that section of the store and you see that all the products related to your product type your competitors are at $19.95.
That means you need to be in that range or a little bit less or a little bit more, but mostly about that range because that’s what the buyer wants. And a lot of people just create pricing based on what they think is interesting for their product type, but a buyer won’t buy. And the buyer is actually telling you what they want on the store shelves. And also, packaging. A buyer will tell you what kind of packaging they want. So if you go to that section of the store and you see all your competitors in a box, the packaging is in a box at a certain size and shape. That means that your product needs to be in a box and certain size and shape. That’s what the buyer wants. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with packaging. And I go into all of this in my program, but just know that these are the things that the sales professionals look for.
They’re trying to figure out what the buyer wants and the way to do that is to walk the stores and figure out what’s consistent here, what it is that they’re buying and so forth. The next thing that the retail sales professional do, and step three, is that they then go and figure out their plan. Which basically means that they’re going to find all the retailers that fit for their product type for the best return on investment. So they’re looking for all the different retailers that would currently be willing to buy their product and actually have room for their product. So there’s a section of the store that’s related to their product type. So again, if it’s a consumer electronics product, they’re going to look for all the retailers that sell consumer electronics product. And then ultimately they want to find the ones that are relevant to their product, and that can buy a lot of product, which means the larger the stores, the ones that have the most volume, the one that can buy the most are the ones that should be on their list.
So they’re going to create a list of all of the potential stores that they can go after. They don’t just pick one or two, they pick 20 or 50 or 100 of them on their list. So that’s the next thing they do. The next thing they do is they basically analyze the strength of the product and its unique quality. So they’re going to look at… So it’s that consumer electronics product, once they went to the stores and they analyze what’s going on in the market, and then they figured out all the retailers they could potentially go after and they realized that there is a good market there that people would be willing to buy, there’s enough retailers to sell to, the next thing they’re going to do is they’re going to analyze their particular product they’re responsible for because ultimately that’s going to help them sell.
So they’re going to analyze all the strengths and unique qualities of this product. So now that they saw what the competitors are doing and what their competitors unique qualities are, they’re going to have to come up with all new sense of unique qualities that they’re going to include in their pitch because the retail sales professionals need to explain to the buyer what it is that’s interesting about that product type. And the thing about retail buyers is they see the same product all day, every day, so you better have a really, really interesting story as to why your product is unique, different, interesting, and so forth. And ultimately that’s what the retail sales professionals do in step four, they analyze the product strengths and unique qualities and ultimately come up with a whole list of all the reasons why that product is so unique and different that ultimately a buyer would be willing to take your product over somebody else’s, and that’s what they do.
And then step five. Once they figure out all those things, once they’ve gone to the stores, they’ve analyzed the competition and they figured out all the different potential stores to go after, and then they analyze all the strengths and weaknesses of this product and all the different reasons why this product should be in stores that are unique to the competitors, then what they’ll finally do is create packaging and sell sheets and all sorts of marketing collateral so that it is in alignment with what they saw. So, step five is critical here. You take all that information that you have based your competitor’s information and all this stuff that you did by going to stores and analyzing the qualities of your product and then you ultimately create marketing collateral that explains all that. Because what you want to do is make all your marketing and packaging relevant to what matters to buyers and what matters to the audience.
And the only way to do that is to go out and do your research. And then ultimately that’s when you start creating packaging and that’s when you start creating marketing collateral. And that’s when he started approaching buyers, because all the heavy lifting goes in figuring out the process of how to make your product interesting, unique, different to that chain store buyer. And the way to do that is to do all that research in advance and then adjust your packaging, and sell sheets, and marketing and so forth to make that happen to make it interesting so that that stuff actually sells your product for you because your packaging is so on point, and your sell sheets and your marketing’s so on point that the buyer’s interested in you because they can tell that you know what you’re doing based on all the research you did. Obviously there’s a whole list of things that you do to get a product into a store.
But if I was to pick the five steps to strike retail gold, it would be these things. And these are the things that retail sales professionals do. And obviously, I teach how to create sell sheets and what is the sell sheet in my program, as well as how to actually create packaging succinctly and marketing collateral and all this other stuff in Retail MBA my program. But ultimately I hope this stuff helps you get going and thinking about how to get your products into stores. This is Karen Waksman, founder of Retail MBA. Please be on the lookout for the additional content that I create. And I would love your feedback, comments below. If you have a moment, it’d be great because I love to know whether or not I’m on track and it’s helpful and so forth. And ultimately, please be on the lookout for the additional stuff that I create in order to help you with your journey of getting your products into stores. Thanks so much.
