Having your buyer pitch perfected is critical to your success as a brand. The issue is that most brand’s are not crafting the correct story when they go to pitch to retail buyers. In this module we will highlight how to craft your retail buyer pitch and have you hear from some actual retail buyers first-hand.
1) Buyer are not consumers
It is important to remember this. Your pitch to an end consumer is much different than your pitch to a buyer. Consumers care about your personal story, the product attributes, and your “why” for creating the brand. Those are tangible things to the consumer which direct their purchasing decisions. The buyer cares about those things too, but not to the same extent. You can cover all of that in one slide in 2-3 minutes, but too many brands get lost in this rabbit hole and leave a buyer meeting having not touched any topics the buyer actually cares about.
2) There is no checklist
Brands often get into a buyer pitch thinking they need to fill the entire time and all the air in the room with the sound of their voice. They feel compelled to hit some sort of internal check list and if they don’t hit all of those points they feel like their pitch will fail. The successful brands approach these first meetings like a first date. They ask questions and try to deeply understand the needs of their buyer, and from there they craft their story around those needs, not their internal check list.
3) Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes
A buyer is not making a decision simply based on if they like your product or not. It is a big decision and it has a lot of implications for them.
They need to know if you can support their stores. They need to hear your trade spend plan and how you plan to move your product off the shelf.
They have to remove a product off the shelf to make room for yours. You need to paint a picture on how your brand is going to outperform their current offerings.
They have annual category numbers to hit. They need to know that you understand that and you need to articulate how you are not only going to hit your numbers, but also drive total category sales growth for them.
Data. They need to see data to support their decision to bring in your product. If you are selling them a qualitative sales story without any data to support why they should bring you in, how are they going to support that decision with their superior?
In short - you have to understand that they have a job and you need to de-risk their decision to bring your product on by any means necessary. To better understand how a buyer thinks, we suggest watching the below interview with James Ren of Thrive Market.
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4) Have a clear trade spend strategy.
We will cover this in a future module, but you need to have a clear strategy and plan for how your product is going to be successful. This plan needs to adjust to each retailer you pitch and be built into your pricing strategy.
5) Create a relationship
At the end of the day, this is the most critical step. The buyer needs to feel like they are going on this journey with you and you need them to feel both invested in and supported by your brand. Get to know them, don’t just keep moving to getting the “yes”. Take your time and understand that most buyers won’t give you a yes in your first meeting. Instead, you are just trying to secure the next meeting or action step.
We are always happy to hear your buyer pitches and help you craft a winning narrative. If you want to set up a time for some pitch help, please email us at
The Buyer Pitch