Over the past few months I have been working with clients in Canada, Australia and New Zealand – all really exciting and varied projects. Food and drink producers who want to scale-up want to know the same things wherever they are. They want to win more listings and sell more of their product? So I’ve put together some tips to help you grow your food or drink business.
Apart from it being a challenge to remember who is in what time zone and to arrange Zoom meetings appropriately (!) – it is no different to working with clients in the UK. People have often got one or two listings – maybe by networking, hard work and persistence, or via an introduction – but that’s when they often get stuck.
Planning to win more listings
How do you grow from there? Well, in my experience, you need to have a plan. Even if you haven’t found your first retailers, you need to narrow down your focus so that you can target your efforts. That’s why I recommend a deep dive into all your potential routes to market. Should you be prioritising retail or wholesale, or are foodservice or direct-to-consumer more apprpriate? The key is to understand the suitability of each channel for your food or drink product and your brand. How are you positioned? What kind of margins can you sustain? Who are your target consumers and where are they?
- Have a sales plan! Make it targeted and measurable and stick it somewhere where you will see it every day! Incentives for achieving targets are always a good idea too!
- Make sure you know who your target stockists are and understand them and why they would want to list your food or drink product.
- Do your research and find out the name of the buyers before you approach the retailer.
- Think creatively about how you can approach (and reapproach) buyers so that you get noticed but don’t annoy them! Perhaps you’ve won an award or been shortlisted, launched a new product or variant, or are attending an event?
- Create a winning retail pitch deck – make sure it contains all the information a buyer wants and needs to know about your food or drink brand to convince them to list your product. Focus it on what they care about but make it succinct and easy to read.
- Make your introduction compelling – be one of the few emails that buyers open and read. Spend plenty of time making the subject line compelling and enticing.
- Ensure you are retail ready (eg stock available, right accreditations in place etc) – if the buyer shows interest in your food or drink product you want to be ready to seize the opportunity!
- Be able to show that there is real interest in your product from consumers – how large and engaged is your social following, do you have reviews and testimonials or even vox pops and research, and be sure to include sales success from other outlets.
- Have a compelling marketing plan! Whatever that looks like and whatever size your budget, make sure you support your product with marketing activities – be that social, PR, promotion, sampling… If your budget is small, that’s when you need to get really creative! People need to know about your food or drink product.
- Be persistence and don’t expect miracles overnight. It takes time to gain more listings and build a food or drink business and gain listings.
If I can help you win more listings, or you just want to chat about your sales or listing challenges and goals, drop me a line and we can arrange a FREE 30 minute discovery call .