Sales is an important channel to bring your Brand Strategy to life and set you apart in a crowded market. But how do you put on your sales hat and adapt your Brand Strategy specifically to a conversation with buyers? And what goes into a successful sales pitch?
This week on the Real Food Brands Marketing Podcast, host and Food & Bev Brand Strategist Katie Mleziva talks to Sandra Velasquez, the New York City area Sales Manager for Van Leeuwen Ice Cream, National Sales Rep for HiBAR and founder of DistroTalk, where she offers a course on how to talk to chain stores and distributors. In this episode, we discuss how to talk to buyers, and when the time is right to approach distributors.
Why Sandra Started DistroTalk
Sandra started DistroTalk and her course DISTRO 101 to share the knowledge she’s obtained from her work in Sales and Distribution over several years in New York City. She’s worked in several different categories, from beverage to bath and body and now frozen as well. “I started DistroTalk as a live Zoom class for new brands in the space, to teach them the real-world nitty-gritty math hard truths about how sales and distribution really works,” she says, “it’s really all the stuff I wish I had learned or someone had told me when I first started in this business.”
Why Buyers Are Different Than Consumers
Many founders run into problems transitioning from the language they’ve used to develop their brand for consumers and what they need to say when they’re talking directly to buyers. “You have to learn how to talk to people and present an opportunity for them,” Sandra says, “in the world of grocery, that’s how your product is going to help them generate revenue for your category.”
“Your story and your intentions aren’t going to be what helps your product move off the shelf,” Sandra says, so you want to be talking about your support plan, and any numbers you can point to that prove that putting your product on their shelves makes good business sense. Sandra has some simple questions you can ask yourself:
- Who is your product for?
- Where do these people shop?
- Where does your product belong? Whole Foods? Target? 7-Eleven?
- What is the support plan you can offer to your retail partners?
The answers will help you figure out what retailers to approach and what to say them. Sandra recommends starting small and staying local with direct store relationships as long as possible. “Go hard in your own backyard” as she likes to say, so you can keep tabs on everything and start collecting the data you need to make your case to other buyers and distributors down the road.
There’s so much we cover in this conversation, like going direct versus working with a distributor, how to get the data you need to tell a compelling story, which chains work with which distributors and what to put in an email to get a buyer’s attention. Listen to the full episode for all the details and subscribe so you never miss an episode.
Now, let’s go shake up shopping carts!
In This Episode:
- Why Sandra started DistroTalk and what she has learned from her years of experience working in a variety of categories.
- How to talk to buyers in a language they care about (hint: it’s not the same thing consumers care about).
- How to get stats for your product to build a compelling story.
- How to find buyer names for stores you’ve identified as a good fit.
- Exactly what Sandra puts in her emails to buyers.
- When it’s time to work with a distributor, and which chains work with which distributors.
Quotes:
“I started DistroTalk as a live Zoom class for new brands in the space, to teach them the real-world nitty-gritty math hard truths about how sales and distribution really works.” – Sandra Velasquez
“You have to learn how to talk to people and present an opportunity for them. In the world of grocery, that’s how your product is going to help them generate revenue for your category.” – Sandra Velasquez
“Go hard in your own backyard” – Sandra Velasquez
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