Photo Credit: herlitz_pbs via Compfight cc

From the Kitchen Table –

When you’re in the trenches of creating, building and selling a product, it’s common for your perception to be one sided. You know your product backwards and forwards, however, your consumer does not; and that’s something you can never forget. How are you telling your story? Are you focusing on the basics of why every household needs your product? Or are you too busy being stuck in the chaos of making decisions on brightly colored packaging and wholesale price points?

Consumers are smart. They are savvy. They, frankly, can see past the BS and just want products that work for their everyday lives at a price point they can afford. These are my five simple tips to stay focused on your brand and how to continue to grow it.

1) Let them know why. You must let your customer know why, in layman’s terms, before anything else why your product is a must have. If you don’t have a sales pitch that you can sum that up on one sentence, go back to the drawing board. If you’re having a hard time crafting a message that’s clear and conscience, ask your spouse or children what they think your product does.

2) Stay authentic. Once you’ve created “why” your customer needs your product then stay with that message. No matter what, stay true to your beliefs about your product. You’re going to come across naysayers. Don’t be intimated. You may meet with multiple investors until you find the right one and you may come across retailers that don’t understand the value that your product provides. If you’ve seen it be proven to work for you, then don’t underestimate the fact that it can work for someone else too.

3) Are you relatable? It’s more popular than ever before to put a personal story along side of your product. When your customer can relate to why you’ve created your product, there’s a larger chance of them purchasing it over your competition. If you haven’t made your spouse laugh or smile lately, chances are your customer won’t be that into to you either.

4) Chat it up and hand it out. When you’re in the midst of growing your brand, this isn’t the time to be shy. If you are, hire someone now who can speak up for you. Let everyone know about your product. Get cards made that are easy to hand out. The front should be your name and contact info, the back should be your logo and information about the product. Hand it out and leave it often.

5) Cry, cry, and try again. Before you roll out your product pitch it to strangers. Create a team that can be your sounding board. You don’t want “yes” people around you at this time. If someone keeps telling you that you’re doing everything right, get rid of them right away. Sometimes its hard to hear your spouse doubt a concept or an advisor tell you to go back to the drawing board; however, it will save you time and money in the long run. If you don’t have access to team of executives, create your own focus group with moms and dads in your playgroup. Buy a few pizzas, see what they think and use that information to refine, rethink or hopefully launch your brand.

Being served on the next Kitchen Table for June 5:
We celebrated and went right back to work; the truth about landing your product on the shelves.

Have an opinion? I would love to hear it.
Tell about the first time you got your product in a store? How did you feel? What fooled you about the future? Send replies by May 29th to loria@oliverwilsonconsulting.com

Loria Oliver has over ten years of experience working in corporate communications, media relations, and special events. She also has managed non-profit fundraisers and in 2011 founded OWC PR, a boutique public relations agency. Under her leadership, this start-up agency tripled its client roster in less than nine months. She has worked at the award winning global communications firm Golin Harris and has practiced public relations and account support in Atlanta, New York City, and Houston. She is a proud wife and mother who is from the Washington D.C. metro area. www.oliverwilsonconsulting.com @OWC_PR

The post How Do Others See Your Product? 5 Tips to Grow Your Brand appeared first on Selling to the Masses.

Marketing Profs recently offered up an analysis of the Spring 2013 Taking Stock With Teens survey from Piper Jaffray. Some of the findings included a growing disenchantment with Facebook, an increase in the use of Twitter and Instagram and a decided preference for in-store shopping.

So what does this mean for your business?

• This research gives you some ammo in working with buyers for big box retailers. Point out to a buyer that teens like to shop in “real” stores and that having your product on the shelf will attract teens (and their parents’ money) to the buyer’s store.
• If you’re marketing to teens, don’t focus on online sales so much that you forget brick & mortar efforts. Connect with in-store promotion experts if you need help navigating conventional retail.
• Be flexible when developing social media content. Twitter, Instagram and Facebook are very different platforms, so your social media people need to tailor your content accordingly.
• Monitor social media preferences and usage as these stats change quickly and frequently.
• Develop hybrid marketing strategies that combine digital promotions with the brick & mortar shopping experience.

Does your product appeal to teens? What do you do to reach this demographic?

The post Teens Prefer In-Store Shopping: What Does this Mean for Your Business? appeared first on Selling to the Masses.

Photo Credit: Walmart Corporate via Compfight cc

Editor’s Note: This part three in a three part series. If you like, you can read part one and part two before reading this last part of the series.

There is more to retail success than having a great product. A consumer product marketer should consider carefully each of the following before making a pitch to a retailer. Keeping them in mind will improve your chances of getting and staying on the shelf.

1.    It’s not personal — A buyer’s job is to be an advocate for his or her customers, ensuring that when customers shop in one of that retailer’s stores, they find the products and prices they want and need. That’s it. You will not become friends with a buyer. You will not be given special consideration because your company is new or small or because you are handsome or friendly or articulate. Both parties at the negotiating table play a high stakes game, and you will need to play to win.

2.    Know yourself — It is important that you know your own capabilities and limitations so you don’t over sell and under deliver, two of worst things you can do to a buyer.

3.    Know your customer — Retailer operations are not all alike. Before you even ask for a meeting, take the time to understand how business is done at that particular retail operation. Learn the role and mission of your buyer, then use that knowledge to help you prepare.

4.    Performance is all that matters — Retailing is the great meritocracy, and there is no such thing as loyalty to a product or supplier or a person that doesn’t perform. Save your excuses. Figure out how to deliver on the promises you have made.

5.    Knowledge is power — If you lack the basic skills necessary for performing at a very high level (negotiation, communication, analysis, and decision making, all done simultaneously and at a very fast pace), there are resources available. Do not wait until after you get an order to start acquiring these skills. Do not wait until you have messed up your first meeting to seek a helpful resource.

6.    It’s about who you know — Who will you call when you need a tweak made to your packaging on Saturday afternoon? Who will you call in the middle of the night when your goods won’t clear customs? Who will you call when you can’t figure out how to find the data that your buyer is asking for? What about when your product is at the distribution center and won’t scan? Personal relationships in this business are critical, and it is important to begin cultivating them right away, as opposed to when you find yourself in a mess.

7.    Resources are abundant — Everything you need to be successful in this business is available, but you have to know where to look. You are the one who must determine what it is you need and then track it down. You definitely do not want to use your buyer to fill in these gaps.

8.    Partnerships are key — If you decide connecting with a retailer is more than you can handle, you may need a partner to help you. There are great companies out there to help you finish what you’ve started. (Selling to the Masses, The Harvest Group, etc.)

9.    Attitude is everything — At some point you will realize that this game isn’t fair. What seems right and reasonable to you is not necessarily how things are done, and that’s just the way it is. If you want to play – if you want to win – you must accept the reality of retail. It is NOT up to the customer to decide, and so the buyer SHOULD NOT put your product in stores just to see what happens. It is NOT the buyer’s fault that the item isn’t performing, and so the retailer SHOULD NOT cover the markdowns at its own expense. It is NOT the buyer’s job to teach you how to run your business.

10.    The retailer needs you, too — Remember that retailers need suppliers (and their new products) to be successful. Don’t think they are doing you a favor by making time to meet you. If your product is a winner and you can deliver on your promise to ship it, they both want and need you.
While these principles are sound, helpful, and proven, they can in no way guarantee success. Factors too numerous to name will determine the fate of your product, but keeping these considerations in mind and applying them wherever possible will improve your chances of being one of the 5% of new products that succeed.

Matt Fifer is co-founder and partner in Selling to the Masses (a subsidiary of the 8th & Walton Group). Selling to the Masses provides education and mentorship with the goal of “helping great products go from idea to shelf.” Prior to founding 8th & Walton, Fifer spent over 12 years working for Walmart Stores, Inc. in management, operations, people development, marketing, and mergers/acquisitions, both in the U.S. and abroad.

The post Playing to Win in Retail: Why Even Great Products Fail, Part 3 appeared first on Selling to the Masses.

E-commerce is easier now than ever before — easy enough that CPG manufacturers can realistically plan to sell online while establishing a presence in brick and mortar stores.

The first step is to determine which products you will offer, in what quantities, at what prices, and to which locations. Your fulfillment house or logistics department can help you with this. Modern consumers are often resistant to paying shipping, so working out the most economical approach to delivering the goods is really the first step. We’ll discuss these details more in a future post; for now, make a note to determine the most profitable selection of your products before you finalize your e-commerce site.

Building an e-commerce website is the next step. If your company already has a website, this is the time to take a good, critical look at it. Adding an e-commerce function to an existing website may be the way you want to go, but it will require an investment of time or money or both. If your current website doesn’t make your company look good, it might be worth updating it while you add the shopping cart.

Assuming that you have a website already and you’re happy with it, here are the steps to add e-commerce:

Choose and install a shopping cart or e-store program. There are many, many options for this, from a simple free cart from Google to robust software that can handle large-scale e-commerce. Your choice should depend on these factors:

• How many products will you have? If you’re selling five products online, you don’t need something as fancy as you would need for five thousand products. This may seem obvious, but there’s often a feeling that bigger is better. In fact, bigger can sometimes just be more expensive and harder to use.
• Who is your target audience? While most consumers nowadays expect a smooth, Amazon-like shopping experience, you might be able to go with something simpler if your online shoppers will be die-hard fans, or people who can’t get your products elsewhere. If they fit into both those camps, you can probably choose a very simple e-commerce solution.
• What platform or language does your current website use? If you have a WordPress website, you can choose from several good e-commerce plugins. A site built with Expression Engine will offer fewer options. If you have a traditional website, you’ll need to find out whether it was built with php, asp, or another language, because not all e-commerce solutions with work with all computer languages. Talk with your web designer to find the option that will work best with your current site.
• What does your web team know well? Choosing a particular cart because someone you know liked it can backfire if your designer or developer has no experience with it. Generally speaking, configuring software for the first time takes much longer than doing it for the fifth or fiftieth time. If you have your heart set on a particular software program, consider hiring a specialist in that program.

Whichever cart you choose, you need to make sure that it has certain features:

• Make sure you can show images of your products and that the way they look will be compatible with the design of your website.
• Unless you have just a handful of products, your customers will need to be able to search for products. Many e-commerce solutions have very frustrating search functions, so try it out before you choose.
• You’ll want to be able to keep good, searchable records of customers and their orders so you can provide the level of customer service that will keep customers buying.
• With new legislation on the way, you’ll need to be able to collect sales tax. An e-commerce solution that automatically keeps up with sales tax percentages will be a major time saver.
• You need to have a secure way to accept payment. While a small e-commerce venture can rely on PayPal, you should make sure that the cart you choose will at least allow you to add credit cards in the future, and that your hosting company can provide secure hosting when you need it.

Develop strong content for your products.

Your website should have stunning photos of your goods and enticing descriptions, too. Use them in your e-commerce area. Too often, manufacturers choose photos of boxes that all look pretty much the same, often with identical descriptions with a few slight changes.

Not only is this less appealing to customers, it also makes the pages less appealing to search engines. If you give each product its own page with a unique description, you’ll have more sales.

Adding reviews, Pinterest-worthy photos, and plenty of information will make your results even better. If you’re planning to use sales of your products to persuade mass retail buyers to pick up your products, or hoping to add a good additional revenue stream, it’s worth the effort.

Work out your systems.

Consider all the tasks you’ll add if you add e-commerce:

• Updating products at the website
• Accepting and tracking small orders as well as larger orders from retailers
• Packing and shipping to consumers
• Possibly filing sales tax returns
• Possibly marketing to and/or communicating with end users

Work through a test order or two to make sure that the experience for your customer is smooth. Identify any points of pain for your company and do your best to work them out before you launch your e-commerce initiative.

Spread the word.

While we’ll be talking more specifically about how to sell products online in a future post, you should think about how you want to spread the word about your e-commerce during the planning stages.

For example, if you expect to use social media to let people know, you’ll need to set up social media accounts and include links to your social media accounts on your website. If you use TV spots or print ads to market to consumers, you’ll want to plan how to incorporate them into your e-commerce site — you certainly want to get the most out of that investment. If email marketing is a method you want to try, make sure your website has a prominent newsletter sign up.

“Well begun is half done,” the old saying goes. That may be overstating the case with e-commerce, but taking these steps will increase your chances of success significantly.

The post E-Commerce: Getting Started appeared first on Selling to the Masses.

Photo Credit: thetaxhaven via Compfight cc

Venture capitalist Jeff Richards suggests that transparency with your board members and investors is a key element of success:

“The most successful entrepreneurs I know are transparent with their team and with their board. They stay in regular communication with their board members and treat board meetings as an opportunity to have a meaningful discussion around core issues – not as a sales pitch. Your board and investors are ‘in the boat’ with you and fully invested in helping you build a winning company. If you have to constantly ‘sell’ your company to your board members, you’ve got the wrong board members.”

Get more tips at VentureBeat.

The post Be Transparent appeared first on Selling to the Masses.

Starting a business is a vulnerable process. Often operating on a limited budget and with limited support staff, new business owners spend a lot of time negotiating with investors, prospects, clients and partners. In many cases, consumer product entrepreneurs don’t have a lot to bring to the table, other their product and themselves. This makes professional presence important.

To get a better idea about what professional presence is and how to achieve it, I spoke with Catherine Johns, a former Chicago radio personality who now assists people in developing magnetic presence so they can achieve their business and life goals. Her first book, Show Up and Shine, comes out this summer.

Catherine Johns on Defining Professional Presence

Catherine notes that it’s easier to detect professional presence than to define it. Externally, professional presence is recognizable in the way a person dresses, sits, stands, moves and sounds. Internally, professional presence is often the result deep knowledge of one’s business and industry. People with real presence aren’t easily tripped up in conversation.

The cost of low professional presence is significant: Many people offer great ideas at work, only to see someone with more professional presence take the credit. In developing a new business, a lack of professional presence keeps you from attracting both investors and clients.

Fortunately, professional presence can be learned and developed. During our conversation, Catherine specifically addressed two areas that make significant differences in how an entrepreneur presents him or herself to others:

Body Language

Your product might be amazing, but poor body language turns others off, jeopardizing your business efforts. Nervous fidgeting, as well as awkward posture while sitting or standing diminishes presence. Being still and standing or sitting with both feet on the floor exudes confidence and can put the people around you at ease.

For Women: A lot of women ask Catherine about an appropriate sitting posture while wearing a skirt or a dress. Many body language experts warn against women crossing their legs, but Catherine says that many women do it because it feels natural. She offers the following tips for sitting with legs crossed:

• Sit so your bottom is evenly balanced on the chair and that one foot is planted firmly on the ground.
• The upper body must be vertical, and the head straight up and down.When you shift over on one hip and curve the spine, you lose that strong presence.

Catherine also notes that women are often afraid of taking up “too much space.” Yet taking up space is an important part of professional presence (think about how tall people often manage to command attention and respect without even trying) and women shouldn’t hunch their shoulders, draw back in their chairs or assume other body postures that suggest discomfort with being noticed.

Speaking

Your words are important, so is the way you speak them. Catherine spoke of how singers distinguish between a “head voice” and a “chest voice.” A head voice is thinner, higher pitched and softer. A chest voice, on the other hand, has a lower pitch and a richer tone.

Interesting fact: People associate lower pitched voices with trustworthiness, so if your voice is naturally high, you might want to seek out a vocal coach.

Catherine also warns against adding a “question mark” to the end of your sentences. Some people develop this habit and it severely damages their credibility. If you tend to lilt the end of your sentences “up,” stop doing it. It turns your statements into questions.

Talking With Investors and Bankers

Approaching folks for money is a tough, but necessary task in developing a business. I asked Catherine for tips on talking with investors and bankers. Here’s what she had to say:

• Respect an investor’s or banker’s time and get right to the point in conversation: “Say it once, say it well, then stop talking.”
• People in power respect other powerful people. While you don’t want to be arrogant, being self-deprecating isn’t going to work either. Catherine suggests relating to a banker or investor as if you are “on par” with them by modeling their demeanor but then taking “one step back.” While this person does hold the cards, you still want to relate to the banker/investor as if you are equal to him or her in competence.
• Avoid using a lot of filler language such as “you know” and “ok.” Constantly filling pauses and silences during conversation shows a lack of confidence.
• Our culture admires youth but trusts experience. People give money to those they trust. If your voice sounds young and immature, you’re going to have a hard time convincing investors and lenders to fund your product.

Cultivating Professional Presence

For those who feel held back by a lack of professional presence, Catherine offers the following tips:

• If you can’t afford one-on-one coaching, seek out group workshops and opportunities. Local Chambers of Commerce, National Association of Women Business Owners chapters and other business organizations often sponsor free or low cost workshops by business and image coaches.
• View videos of yourself: Critically examine your posture, facial expressions and way of speaking.
• Addressing a lack of professional presence in business partners and employees can be tricky. One way to approach the issue is to create a reciprocal arrangement: You ask your partner or employee to provide you with honest feedback and you’ll do the same for him or her.
• Catherine has found two books helpful in the development of professional presence: Executive Presence: The Art of Commanding Respect Like a CEO, by Harrison Monarth and The Nonverbal Advantage, by Carol Kinsey Goman.

You can visit Catherine online at her website or her Facebook page.

What have you done to develop your professional presence? Tell us about it in the comments section.

The post Catherine Johns On Professional Presence appeared first on Selling to the Masses.

Factories do a great job of what they do: making lots of things in a short time at a low price. It’s the traditional factory model that made our modern CPGs possible.

Sometimes that’s not what you need.

Consider the example of one innovative entrepreneur. She was quoted $100,000 to develop a prototype of her product. With plenty of corner-cutting and ingenuity, she was able to bring the price of each prototype down to about $1,000, but there were dozens of prototypes before she got her product perfected.

If she had instead invested in a 3-D printer, she could have had all the prototypes she wanted for less than she spent on her limited numbers. With the ability to have as many iterations as she wanted, she might have been bolder in her innovations. With the 3-D printer on her desktop, she certainly could have increased the efficiency of her process.

The forthcoming book, Fabricated, by Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman, lists ten principle differences between 3-D printing and traditional manufacturing:

• The cost to produce an object doesn’t increase when the object is more complicated.
• The cost doesn’t go up when you make changes, or make new versions.
• No assembly is required, so the supply chain is shorter.
• There is no lead time. Period.
• The shapes that can be made are not limited by the shape of the machines used to make them, as is the case with a lathe, for example.
• No human skill is required for manufacturing (though skill is required for design).
• A 3-D printer can make objects as big as it is — or bigger.
• There is much less waste.
• Raw materials can be blended, offering a completely new range of raw materials.
• A far greater degree of precision will be possible.

Imagine what that could mean to your products.

3-D printing doesn’t currently offer economies of scale; if you ignore the initial cost of buying a printer, it’s no cheaper to make your thousandth item than your first. That’s why you will probably head back to a factory for actual production. For prototyping, though, 3-D printing is a game changer.

In a few decades, factories may be obsolete. Until then, take advantage of this new opportunity. Check out MakerBot as a starting point.

The post How 3-D Printing Could Change Your Business appeared first on Selling to the Masses.

Editor’s note: You can read the first part of this series here.

While getting a new product onto a retailer’s shelves is difficult, keeping it on the shelves can be even more so.

Every once in a while a “dog item” slips in under the radar. (Remember Celery Jell-O, Clairol’s “Touch of Yogurt” shampoo and Windows’ Vista?) More often, a product’s failure occurs just because stuff happens. Things change. Buyers rotate into other areas; retailers de-emphasize (and sometimes re-emphasize) entire categories of merchandise (think fishing, hunting, and crafts at Walmart). Hot new products sometimes squeeze out the last products in, especially if they are not performing at the same level as the newer.

But at the end of the day, an item’s longevity is determined by one thing: results.

“There are several steps along the path from ‘concept to cart’ that a new supplier must successfully navigate,” says Ross Cully, senior partner at The Harvest Group, “And one such critical step, the one we spend the most time with our clients on, is retail execution.”

In fact, many great products are awarded distribution and arrive on time at stores, only to find that poor execution at the shelf-level negatively impact sales and destroy the confidence of their buyer.

Consumer product marketers today are held to incredibly high performance standards related to sales, returns, on-time delivery, fill rates, out of stocks, shrinkage, damages, and recalls.

Success depends on more than persuading a buyer that a product belongs on the shelf. It is absolutely critical that product-marketing teams convince the buyer that they are capable of keeping the goods flowing and driving great results.

Matt Fifer is co-founder and partner in Selling to the Masses (a subsidiary of the 8th & Walton Group). Selling to the Masses provides education and mentorship with the goal of “helping great products go from idea to shelf.” Prior to founding 8th & Walton, Fifer spent over 12 years working for Walmart Stores, Inc. in management, operations, people development, marketing, and mergers/acquisitions, both in the U.S. and abroad.

Next week:
Part Three: Playing to Win at Retail

The post Products Can’t Succeed If They Can’t STAY on the Shelf Part Two of a 3-Part Series: Why Even Great Products Fail appeared first on Selling to the Masses.

While many of us frankly admit to being addicted to our smartphones, these multitasking devices have a few drawbacks.

The most obvious is battery life: All those fun apps use power quickly, forcing smartphone users to carry cords, adapters and even external power supplies to keep our phones going. For most smartphone users, keeping our phones charged is a minor annoyance, though battery life is a more serious issue for hikers, campers, and anyone else who spends a great deal of time away from electrical outlets.

The second issue with smartphones is readability: Bright sunlight can make viewing a smartphone screen difficult and uncomfortable, particularly when reading large amounts of text.

One possible remedy for these defects is using e-ink in smartphones, a concept that was recently profiled by Springwise. The article notes that, in addition to being easier to read, these phones also have a long battery life: a week with normal usage, four weeks when in standby mode. This could be a big plus for outdoors enthusiasts, as well as anyone who likes the security and convenience of not having to recharge their phone every few hours.

Here’s what Matt Fifer and Jeff Clapper, partners in Selling to the Masses, have to say about e-ink phones:

Matt’s take:
“I think there are enough users (myself included) who rely upon their devices primarily for basic (and reliable) communication that they would give up some functionality in order to get extended use.“

Jeff’s take:
“Makes sense, but only for a little while. It’s only a matter of time before battery technology allows full features to power a phone for a week (without sacrificing other features).

“But until that technology is ready or affordable, an e-ink phone could make a lot of practical sense.

“That said, would people rather have color but recharge constantly or low brightness black & white for a week at a time? I suspect this bridge idea will fade before there’s any real market adaptation.”

Bottom line:

The e-ink phone is a smart idea that could meet the needs of many consumers. Improvements in battery technology, however, might render the e-ink phone obsolete in a few years.

The post This Week’s Pick: E-ink Smartphones appeared first on Selling to the Masses.

Business strategist Ken Foody recommends concentrating on product salability:

“Stop doing anything else until you can say you’ve mastered the ability to sell what you offer. Everything is easier when you develop the ability to find a need; fill it and then be paid well to do so.”

Read more tips for entrepreneurs at Forbes.com.

The post Focus On Salability appeared first on Selling to the Masses.