5 Ways To Prepare For A Retailer Buyer Meeting – Get the listings you want

Preparing for a retailer buyer meeting is always daunting. Product buyers or retailer buyers are trained and experienced to get the best deal for the retailer, which can often mean a poor deal for you.  You want to grow your product business and getting retailer listings is a really great way of growing so there is a lot riding on the meeting with the buyer. I go through the key areas you need to focus on prior to going into the meeting.  Do these well and you have a much better chance of walking out of the retail buyer meeting with a profitable listing. Getting a loss making listing is much easier, and a mistake that many entrepreneurs make.  The pricing negotiation nearly always goes to the party that is best prepared, knows the most about the other party and is confident in their proposition. Doing your research is an obvious step to most, yet how many really do what is needed? Working out exactly what your products value is to both the consumer and the retailer is critical to proposing and negotiating good retailer pricing. Learn new tips and tricks for this.  Knowing exactly what you want from the meeting other than a “yes” is another very valuable step. Be specific. For instance, do you want listings in all the stores they have or only certain ones. What about shelf position? Gondola ends? Marketing? There are a lot of factors other than price to consider.  Next, you really do need to know your own pricing back to front. Work out all your costs. Create pricing propositions hitting several price points so you have the ability and flexibility to negotiate during the meeting with confidence that you are not going to walk away with a loss making deal. And finally, practice before you go into the retailer buyer meeting. Obvious I know, yet many don’t do enough. The words you use and how you come across matter. Don’t sell yourself, your product and your business short.  Good luck with preparing for your retailer buyer meetings