Great Story, Great Sales, and Your Food Buyer Pitch

Think of your retail selling story as making a good argument

As gatekeepers to the shelf, food buyers are not sitting there with an open spot on their plan-o-gram (POG) waiting for your product. You are going to have to displace a competitor to get on the shelf. This is where an excellent retail selling story is an essential component of your food buyer pitch deck.

The supermarket shelf is one of the most volatile, competitive spaces in retail.

Your retail selling story takes the form of a “pitch deck” or set of slides and talking points. Ideally, this “deck” creates a compelling argument to displace a competitor and add your (or more of your) product to the POG.

Be strategic, focused, and deliver the goods.

Your food buyer pitch recipe looks like this: good selling story = partnership = moving a product into the cart = checkout lane.

With insight comes expertise.  With expertise comes respect.   With respect comes partnership.

The insight that fuels your pitch comes from “roll-up-your-sleeves” hard work by picking apart the buyer’s retail POG product-by-product. Here are a few “primer” things to ponder:

• Can you find out who is the top-selling product?
• Which product/brand is the leader?
• How many items per week the buyer is expecting you to sell?
• Which product/brand has the top/mid/bottom price points?
• What flavors/styles they have too much/not enough of
• Note all types and callouts for ingredients
• See any packaging innovation?

If you can answer these questions and find a way to use them to help create a compelling food buyer pitch deck, you are off to a good start.

If you would like to learn more about building a compelling food buyer pitch deck, please reach out to the NewPoint team. If you are interested in more food marketing topics, please visit our “Food for Thought” page. Alternatively, check out NewPoint’s book: Moving Your Brand Up the Food Chain.