Help Food Distributors and Brokers Share Your Selling Story (Correctly).
You’ve created a killer pitch deck and selling story. You’ve researched the retailer’s plan-o-gram (POG), the trends, and competitive homework. You’ve finally had a meeting with a retail food buyer – and it went well.
That’s how the journey starts. But sooner or later on your journey to conquer the retail food shelves of the world, some buyer is going to want to schedule a meeting you can’t physically attend. Then you have to rely on your partners – distributor or brokers to take the meeting and make the pitch.
So if you follow our philosophy, you think of your selling story as a compelling (but friendly) argument to persuade a retail food buyer to place your product on the shelf. If this is the case, you are not going to want your distributor, sales reps, or broker to “wing it.”
Coach Your Story
What if you had only 15 minutes with a buyer? How would you summarize the main plot points of your selling story? Go through that same process with your food distributor, sales reps, or broker. Prep them for the meeting by sharing your playbook. Here’s an example:
How your product addresses key items (fresh ingredients, a local company, package shape, flavors, etc.) missing in the buyer’s POG = helps the buyer sell more
How your packaging and price point(s) support a segment the consumer is looking for = helps the buyer sell more
How your marketing program (social, demos, grassroots, coupons, etc.) drive consumers (and you’re fan base) to the retailer = helps the buyer sell more
You get the idea.
What are the next steps?
That’s not a sub-heading. That’s the main thing you want to have your food distributor, sales reps, or broker ask at the end of the meeting so you know what to do with your follow-up.
Singing From the Same Hymnal
There is a term we use around the office to quickly communicate why it is essential to invest in writing things like selling stories for our clients. We do this so your leadership team and all your stakeholders are collectively saying the same thing in meetings. You are all singing from the same hymnal. To take it one step further (and stay in-theme), if you’ve invested in a selling story that works, it’s as good as gospel. It’s best to help your food distributors, sales reps, and brokers correctly share your selling story.
To identify and isolate areas for improvement in shopper marketing program strategies and tactics to further your CPG brand growth against set KPIs:
Maximize the economic performance of your CPG brand shopper marketing investment
Increase velocity at retail and consumer brand affinity
This shopper marketing audit will detail and contrast your CPG brand shopper marketing and messaging versus that of industry standard competitive practices and will include, but not limited to:
Target market reach, integrated retail marketing support, promotional continuity & awareness, offers and incentives, and tactical execution timing
Go-to-market launch strategies, timing, and tactical execution
Deliverables
Marketing Communication Audit Report
The deliverable will be a white paper with NewPoint Marketing findings and recommendations related to marketing activities in one retail partnership or DMA/market as defined by the client.
Brant brings 20+ years of experience to NewPoint as chief brand communicator and marketing-plan contributor.
Brant’s specialty is bringing an outside, investigative perspective that can feel alternately “rigorous” or “exasperating” depending on your point of view. Yet, he never fails to uncover a business’s unique selling proposition—one which can serve as a brand foundation for marketing that is compelling, creative and “sticky.”
Throughout his career, Brant’s applied his skill set to a broad range of business applications along the food supply-and-service chain. His services have provided vital clarity for all types of operations, from the more conventional food and food equipment manufacturers to the adjacent enterprises that partner with them, such as the Purdue University College of Agriculture.
Stephanie Bossung
Food industry marketing expertise—from retail to food-service and food-service equipment— is a natural outcome of having deep knowledge in every facet of a business’ operation. With 10 years in branding and business development, preceded by 15 years in mass media and promotions, Stephanie is an FMI Emerge mentor, holds an executive-level expertise in sales, marketing, media, and production management.
This exceptionally diverse skill set adds value for NewPoint clients by providing a full complement of perspectives on food-industry brand management endeavors.
Wired for a hawkish attention to detail while also maintaining a high-resolution view of the big picture, Stephanie is uniquely able to provide astute branding direction and simultaneously apply the business principles necessary to squeeze more bang out of every marketing buck.
Patrick Nycz
A member of the Forbes Agency Council and quoted in the New York Times, USA Today and Adweek, Patrick Nycz is the author of Moving Your Brand Up the Food Chain: Marketing Strategies to Grow Local and Regional Food Brands. He is an FMI Emerge mentor, an American Advertising Federation’s Silver Medal Award winner, and the Founding President of NewPoint Marketing, a full-service food industry marketing firm focused on food industry brands On a mission to grow.
Patrick’s vision for NewPoint emerged from his team’s success using this proven model for food industry clients and is fueled by NewPoint-funded food buyers and food manufacturers research around tracking consumer, industry, and ongoing food trends.
Kristy Blair
Since starting her 20-year career in commercial graphic design at one of the foremost catalog retailers in the world, Kristy’s visual branding skills have organically narrowed into the food-industry niche.
In that time, she’s directed graphic identities for snack food and restaurant startups, print materials for multiple agricultural seed companies, display graphics and merchandiser signage for major food-equipment manufacturers and everything in between.
Today, as one of the key brand architects for NewPoint clients, she continues to lead our visual research & development team, always working to find the innovative median between the best practices worth honoring and the accepted rules worth breaking.