Retailer Pitch Essentials for New, Incumbent, and Mature Brands

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In the dynamic retail landscape, successfully pitching your brand to retailers is crucial whether you’re a new entrant eager to secure shelf space or an established player aiming to expand your footprint. This report delves into essential strategies tailored for brands at different stages of their retail journey, offering insights on crafting compelling pitches, leveraging data-driven analyses, and navigating the complexities of retail relationships. Discover how to align your brand’s objectives with retailer goals and effectively communicate your unique value proposition to drive mutual success. Join us as we decode the art and science of winning over retail buyers and category managers.

IN THIS REPORT YOU’LL LEARN:

Strategies for crafting impactful pitches tailored to new, incumbent, and mature brands in the retail sector.
How to utilize data analytics to strengthen your case and optimize product placement on retail shelves.
Techniques for understanding and aligning with retailer goals to increase the likelihood of securing shelf space.
Insights into effective promotional strategies and leveraging market trends to drive brand visibility and sales growth.

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Retailer Pitch Essentials for New, Incumbent and Mature Brands

Retailer pitches tend to focus on one of two different objectives: bringing a brand’s new items onto the shelf or adding more of a brand’s items to the current set already on the shelf.

Retailer Pitches – The Audience

You’ll be talking to a buyer/category manager or someone with a more specialized role such as forager. This person will have many responsibilities and a variable knowledge of data. They are usually concerned with their section of the store and making sure it is performing well.
Try to ascertain what their goals are for the year or category before you talk to them. What are they trying to achieve? How could your brand align with that? Can you find a win-win?

The content of retailer pitches is also dependent on how long the brand has been on the retailer’s shelf.
New brands are approaching a retailer for the first or second time. Their focus is increasing their distribution. The products presented for the retailer’s consideration may be new to the market and have very little or no competitive retail sales data.
However, there are other things that brands can show to help prove their case to the retailer.

Analysis Templates

Create The Win-Win For Brand And The Retailer Account

New Brands

Focus on Differentiation

long the brand has been on the retailer’s shelf.

second time. Their focus is increasing their distribution.

may be new to the market and have very little or no

If you’re a new brand, this checklist can help you make sure that you have the fundamentals of a good retail pitch.
•
Problem/Solution: The mandate of an entrepreneur is finding a problem worth solving. What is your brand trying to solve? What imperfect solutions exist now? What are you doing different to solve the problem?

•
Origin Story: What inspired you to take on this journey?

•
What makes your product different from the others – and how are you communicating that to the consumer?

•
What people have you brought on to manifest your vision – and what are their qualifications?

•
What will you do (demos, free fills, marketing, promos, swag, etc.) to help support the launch and rollout of your products?

Qualitative Elements

Problem/Solution

Origin Story

Unique Selling Proposition / Key Differentiators

The Team

Marketing & Store Support Plan

Remember, getting onto the shelf may seem hard, but that’s actually the easy part. Getting off the shelf and into the customer’s shopping cart is a lot harder.
You will need to continue to build interest, sales and velocity for your items post-launch, and the only way to make consistent progress against a goal depends on the ability to measure progress toward that goal – an ability that data provides to brands.
The quantitative element checklist on the right is fueled by retailer or market level syndicated data. Incumbent and Mature brands use these analyses in their retailer pitches.

Quantitative Elements

Size of Market/TAM

Promotional Plan

Growth of Market/Category

Quantified Opportunity Gap

Brand vs Category

Demographic Data

Brand vs Brand or Item vs Item

Contribution to Growth/Decline

Velocity Metrics

Pricing Analysis

White Space

Velocity Quintiles

Incumbent brands are familiar with the struggle of getting into the customer’s basket. Brands at this level are monitoring their competitors pricing, promotion and marketing strategies. They are adjusting trade spend (usually a brand’s biggest expense) to optimize their lift % and drive trial to their brand and away from other brands.

Analysis Templates

Incumbent Brands

Trade Promotion Tools

Trade

Incumbent brands are familiar with the struggle of getting

monitoring their competitors pricing, promotion and

(usually a brand’s biggest expense) to optimize their lift

brands.

If you’re creating a promotional plan for a retailer and you have access to their data, use it to make smart decisions with your trade spend.
•
Analyze which brands are currently positive in sales and velocity growth

•
Review their promotions over the past year – how many did they do, how deep was the discount, how widely was it executed, and most importantly – what was the lift?

•
Learn from their past strategy – did a short and deep discount drive better lift, or did a moderate and multiple week promotion move more units?

•
Cut ‘em off at the pass! A great time to go on sale is right before your competitor. Assuming they run the same playbook this year, when should you execute your promotions?

10% off, 8 weeks, 50% of stores

30% off, 8 weeks, 100% of stores

20% off, 8 weeks, 80% of stores

50% off, 4 weeks, 100% of stores

If this was your competition, the first and fourth promotions are worth replicating for your brand – perhaps at an earlier time than the competition

Mature brands are defending their space by using pricing, velocity or new item introductions to maintain or gain market share. Due to their longevity on the shelf, these brands often have longstanding relationships with the buyers/category managers, and use data to build the case for additional SKUs.
When retailers trim or optimize their sets, they often look at item velocity to make informed decisions. One method of analyzing performance is called Velocity Quintiles.

Maintain Top Brand Position,
Or Prove You Deserve To Be Top Brand

Mature Brands

Velocity Quintiles

Mature brands are defending their space by using

gain market share. Due to their longevity on the shelf,

the buyers/category managers, and use data to build the

Velocity Quintiles may sound complex but it is simply a ranked and graded list. A retailer takes all of the items sold in a set and ranks them on their velocity. The list is then broken into “quintiles” or five equal gradations:
•
1st quintile – Top performers

•
2nd – 3rd quintiles – Middle performers

•
4th-5th quintiles – Bottom performers

Items in the bottom/red tier are ripe for replacement. Mature brands understand this can suggest that their newly developed items be swapped in for the low performers, often suggesting a list of deletes and justification in their retailer pitch.

Things to remember:
•
Show product-market fit – how will your products appeal to this retailer’s customers?

•
Make sure your value proposition is clear – it should be the hero of your story

•
Retailers say “no” more often than “yes”

•
Retailers want the right product at the right time – your product might be innovative, but could be perceived as “too early” or even “too late”

•
Try to discover which way the category is performing at the retailer. If it’s increasing, that’s great – does your product align with the other types of brands or items that are pulling in this growth? How is your product slightly different or better? Make it the hero of the story. If the category is flat or in decline, weave the narrative that your product will help turn things around. Point out how it’s different from what is dragging down the category and how customers will be attracted to it.

•
Working with retailers is about building intimate relationships – you’ll get to know the store manager’s names and build long-standing relationships especially in the beginning. Remember to take care of these relationships even as you grow and expand into different markets

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