Suzi Wynne, Wynne Business: Market research - improving your pitch to retailers

Suzi Wynne from Wynne Business explains the importance of research for scaleup businesses seeking to gain a route into retail.

Doing a little research before presenting your product to a potential retail buyer will go a long way to increasing your chances to gaining golden shelf space.

Come product range review time, retail buyers really do have a difficult job. Presented with a steady stream of innovative products from creative new (and old!) brands, they must select which, if any, they feel will give them the best return if they award them space on the shelf.

Shelf space is like gold dust, so any changes to the listed product range that a buyer makes, will come with a certain amount of risk. So, it’s on the brand owners to do as much as they can to mitigate the risk, if they are to succeed with a precious new listing!

Be prepared

We always advise and then help our clients to thoroughly do their homework before developing a sales pitch for buyer meetings. Years of experience has taught us that taking the time to go through this detailed process at the beginning, will result in a confident and targeted pitch that is much more likely to succeed.

It’s one of the topics that I will be covering during Two Zero’s new Route into Retail programme, which is designed to help Lancashire’s thriving food and drink businesses to launch onto supermarket shelves.

Researching helps to gain practical tips and advice on all aspects of the vital groundwork buyers expect you to have prepared in order to support a new product launch. It includes:

• Understanding market dynamics and how your product will add value.
• Reviewing consumer insight and how your product meets a clear consumer need.
• Assessing each channel to determine where the best opportunity for your product lies.
• Analysing your core competitors to establish that your product adds value.
• Looking at new product trends to validate your products place in the market and think about potential areas for longer term new product development (NPD).

Have a strategy

Following on from doing the above research, the next task is to look at developing a sales and marketing strategy and creating a compelling pitch to buyers to help to win those first accounts and winning shelf space.

This will be covered in my next blog post: How marketing principles support retail listings.