In its mission to help Lebanese agri-food innovators thrive, the QOOT Cluster seeks to create the ideal environment for agri-food businesses to strengthen their expertise, fuel their ideas, build fruitful partnerships, and establish themselves in new markets.
In a recent virtual workshop titled “Export Readiness for SMEs in the Agri-Food Sector”, QOOT hosted Danielle Mol – founder of GreenUp Consulting, who took the participants through the different strategies to increase their chances of having their products listed in retails spaces such as supermarkets and specialty shops.
Top Tips
In this blog post, Danielle Mol shares with us her top ten tips to improve the odds of listing agri-food products in retail:
- Know the trends and challenges in the category that you want to enter: your customer usually has the responsibility to manage many different categories. You should be the expert of the category that you are active in.
- Have a good overview of the competitive market: make sure you know all the players in the market and what their strengths and weaknesses are. What are your strength and weaknesses and where do you fit in? What is your positioning?
- Make sure your story is credible and realistic: the data you use should be correct and coming from trustworthy sources. Make sure that you perform a good analysis and that it’s credible. Optimistic is always good but keep it realistic!
- USP’s, USP’s USP’s: it all comes down to having added value. What makes you stand out in the crowd? And most importantly: does this meet consumer needs?
- Contribute to the targets of the retailer: read their strategy plans (can often be found online) and talk to those responsible in stores. How are they struggling to achieve those targets? How can you help them achieve those targets?
- Make sure you have removed any barrier: figure out the requirements of the category. What is the minimum sales number that you must achieve to stay on the shelves? Is there a minimum on margin? Is your shelf-life long enough? Are the sustainability goals in order? This is all dependant on the category that your products fit in.
- Make it concrete: do not put too many sheets and text in a presentation. Always ask yourself if the information adds value to the presentation. You can always put extra information in the attachments. Managers in retail are busy…
- Always keep in mind ’what’s in it for them’: why should the retailer put your product on the shelves? Try to look at the presentation from the perspective of the customer. How do you make it so that they can only say yes?
- End your presentation in a one-pager: in one overview it should become apparent what your added value is to your customer (margin, revenue and other factors).
- Practice makes perfect: if you do not have a lot of experience, hire the help of an expert, or at least practice your presentation with other relevant people before you go to an important customer. You only have one chance to make a first impression!
About the Trainer
Danielle Mol is the founder of GreenUp Consulting with more than 12 years of food industry experience as a consultant for retailers and industry players. She worked in several commercial role at several suppliers to large retailers, led the development and product launch strategy of many successful innovations. In addition, she’s an expert in market analysis and discovering growth opportunities and improvement projects (profit increase, transition to more sustainable protein, etc.).
