Part 2 (of 5): It’s on you.

Here is that tough ❤️ I promised:

YOU have to change as well.

• YOU have to take full responsibility for your success in landing on - and selling off of - those retail shelves. 

• YOU are the person responsible for getting your product off those retail shelves, and into shoppers’ baskets.

• YOU are the person who is responsible for increasing velocity, hitting your sales goals, and succeeding in your wholesale accounts.

• YOU are responsible for getting those reorders.

• YOU have to sell your product. It’s not the store’s responsibility to sell your product. It’s not the category manager’s responsibility to ensure you’re a fast-moving line. It’s not the stockers or the merchandisers who are touching your product. And - get this: it’s not even your broker or distributor, who likely has promised you the world.

When you’re stuck in this belief that once you get ON the shelf, it’s everyone else’s job to sell your product, you’re eroding those retail relationships, letting your sales stagnate, and are getting straight on the path to being discontinued.

No one wants that.

What does it look like when you’re stuck in this belief? It can show up in a million different ways, but here are some of the most common:

➡️ You’re a brand that doesn’t have a well thought out marketing strategy that you execute with each new account. You feel like success is out of your hands once you deliver that order.

➡️ You’re a brand who has no budget for promotions, and when you DO sporadically run them you don’t have a way of measuring whether or not it was worth it.

➡️ You’re a brand that doesn’t prioritize staff education, or it hasn’t even crossed your mind that you’re missing the opportunity to turn those store employees into mini brand ambassadors for you!

➡️ You don’t say yes to doing demos and haven’t mapped out how you’ll nurture accounts that are simply too far away to run demos yourself.

➡️ You haven’t thought through how you’re going to drive trial on the shelf because you’ve spent all your energy getting ON the shelf in the first place. 

➡️ You don’t have a system for following up with accounts and ensuring they’re reordering, and you don’t know whether your product is going out of stock on the shelves, if it’s simply not selling, or if that buyer has simply forgotten about you. You know you’re missing sales opportunities but don’t have an organized way of managing all your different accounts. Layer in a broker or distributor? Forget about it.

You, in short, are only doing half of your job.

So what do you do instead? This is the million $$$ dollar question. Keep reading and we’ll tell you more.

Up next: Part 3 (of 5): hint: it’s time to try something different