MISTAKE #73: You did not take time to find common ground with the buyer

Do you know the number one thing vendors can do to get on the good side of buyers?

It is amazingly simple, yet regularly overlooked:

 

Buyers like vendors that help accomplish their strategies for the year. 

Pretty simple, right?  And it doesn’t exactly take a rocket surgeon to figure out.

 While some companies convene huge teams and spend hundreds of hours on Joint Business Planning (JBP), any company can invest just a few hours to make sure they’re on the right track.

Here is a simplified three-step process for those that have neglected, overlooked, or wandered away from JBP-type direction-setting.

STEP 1:  Get a clear understanding of the retailer’s corporate strategies as well as your buyer’s category strategies and any tactics planned to deliver them.

While this is sometimes easier said than done, retailers generally aren’t trying to keep their strategies as state secrets.  Call the buying desk or call people in your network to get answers.  Read the retailer’s annual report.  Listen to the last quarterly call with Wall Street.  Just don’t be ignorant about what the official direction is and what hot topics may be demanding urgent adjustment to those plans.  Some basic perspective this can provide includes:

• Are they trying to attract more shoppers, win more trips or increase the average transaction size (CoV)?

• Are they more concerned about growing sales or increasing profits?

• What key themes or topics are getting a lot of attention?  (sustainability, made in the U.S., organic, large count packs, natural, etc.) 

STEP 2:  Take a closer look at your corporate, product, or brand strategies, equities, marketing plans, and core competencies.

Hopefully, this information actually exists and is pretty easy to compile.  As you review it, don’t overlook the potential value of other assets or abilities your company has but is not focusing on.  Understand what you’re hoping to accomplish overall and with particular retailers.  Consider how you’ve developed your plans based on your ability to be better or different from competitors.

STEP 3:  Identify and build your plans on the common ground where your business can best (or uniquely) help the buyer and retailer accomplish their goals while meeting your own objectives.

Figure out how your company or product can be positioned to help the retailer deliver its objectives.  Identify the unique value you can offer the buyer that your competition can’t.  And, please, make sure your corporate plans are not in direct contradiction with the retailer’s.

A BLINDING CASE OF THE OBVIOUS, RIGHT?

As I said, this isn’t rocket surgery.  Yet too many companies don’t zero in on the mutually beneficial turf where your interests and the retailer’s interests overlap.  You can’t just focus on what you want to sell and not consider what the retailer wants to buy. 

After all, retailers are just like shoppers in many ways.  They tend to act in their own best interest.  They want to know they’re getting a good deal.  And it is far easier to satisfy their existing desires than to create new ones.

This article is obviously an over-simplification of Joint Business Planning, focusing on just one element.  But it should be a good reminder to never forget where to start and what needs to be the foundation of a successful longer-term relationship.

If you’ve neglected to do this upfront planning or are struggling to find the right benefit you can bring to a retailer, let us know.  We can help with your annual planning process to make sure you’re heading in the right direction.