BRAND SECRETS AND STRATEGIES

PODCAST #87

Hello and thank you for joining us today. This is the Brand Secrets and Strategies Podcast #87

Welcome to the Brand Secrets and Strategies podcast where the focus is on empowering brands and raising the bar.

I’m your host Dan Lohman. This weekly show is dedicated to getting your brand on the shelf and keeping it there.

Get ready to learn actionable insights and strategic solutions to grow your brand and save you valuable time and money.

LETS ROLL UP OUR SLEEVES AND GET STARTED!

Dan: Welcome, I appreciate you for listening. Thank you for all the great feedback and support you're giving me. Remember, the show is about you, and it's for you. If you're new to this show, please subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review on iTunes. Don't forget, I wanna remind you that there's a free downloadable guide for you at the end of most every episode of the podcast. I always try to include one easy to download, quick to digest strategy that you can instantly adopt, and make your own. One that can help you grow sales, and compete more effectively. Remember, the goal here is to get your product on more retailer shelves and into the hands of more shoppers.

This is exactly what today's story is about. We talked about the old strategies, and how the old school strategies are really essential for helping brands develop a solid foundation to grow their brand on. Today, my guest and I talk about the old school strategies that we learned when we worked for big brands, and how those strategies are not being taught today in natural, and why they're so imperative to the health, success, and longevity of your brand.

There's a wrong way, and a right way to do most everything. Sadly, these strategies are really not being taught in natural. That is the core focus of this podcast, and this is exactly why I brought Peter on today. Developing these strategies and baking them into your brand's DNA is what's going to differentiate you between a one hit wonder and a legacy brand that can withstand the test of time. The kind of brand that makes the impact that you probably started this for, the kind of brand that has the resilience, and the ability to compete head-to-head, toe to toe with the biggest brands out there.

During this podcast, I talked about my free course, Turnkey Sales Story Strategies. This is exactly why I developed this course that I teach brands, exactly what we're talking about today. These are the same strategies that Peter has relied on throughout his entire career as the president of Hain Celestial, the president of Justin's Nut Butter, and the President of ONE Brands.

Think about it, this is the kind of impressive resume that can only come by having the discipline to make sure that you have a solid foundation to build your brand on. Here's Peter. Peter, thank you so much for joining me today. Could you start by telling us a little bit about yourself, and your journey as the former president of Hain Celestial, the former president of Justin's, and the president of ONE Brand?

Peter: Sure. Sounds like I've been a three-time president. That's pretty cool.

Dan: It is.

Peter: Thanks so much for having me. I'll start by saying I've been in consumer packaged goods my entire career, so I started as a part-time retail audit person way back in the day going in and out of stores, and surveying, distribution, pricing, promotional activity, and working on brands like Kool-Aid and Country Time. I'd work in the summer time and go in and out of stores, and really just fell in love with being out of my own, and interacting with people. Right out of college, I started in big CPG with international Playtex which at the time was a division of Beatrice. Retail sales rep up in Boston, and just fell more in love with consumer package goods.

That translated into moving from Boston to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and running a district, and then a region, and then worked for a division of Procter & Gamble until 19 … Let's see, 1988, when I had the brilliant idea to try to become an entrepreneur, went into business with a couple of guys that I went to high school back in Boston. We opened up a commercial janitorial, and carpet cleaning business, failed miserably, declared personal bankruptcy in 1990, and decided to get married that same year. If you haven't tried that trick, I'd try to probably avoid that as best you can.

Dan: Good advice.

Peter: Then in 1992, a friend of mine from P&G got into the recruiting business, and I interviewed with Celestial Seasonings to become a regional sales manager in Boston. Mo Siegel hired me in 1992 to do that, and then in '97, moved out to Colorado. There was a management change. Steve Hues hired me to run all of sales, and we moved, my wife, Leslie and our three young girls out to Colorado. 2000, the company got sold to Hain and I left in got into the world of private equity. From really 2000 on, it's been a great journey in private equity with great brands like Mauna Loa, IZZE, Justin's, and now my most recent stop at ONE Brands, so it's been quite a ride.

Dan: We've got some similarities in upbringing. I once carried a sales bag for Unilever, and I've been a grocery manager, district manager, et cetera. The reason I went down this path is that a lot of the things that we see natural today are very similar to what we saw in mainstream 20, 30 years ago. Not to date ourselves, but we are. The point being is that, we had to learn how to do things the way that the natural brands are doing today. We had to become more strategic, and really think through how do we get our products on a shelf more effectively than the way we were doing it then.

With that as the underlying current, can you talk a little bit more about your relationship with P&G and Playtex when you were running a division, and where I'm going with this, Peter is that, again, you're relying on a sales team that's knocking on the door so it's going into every single retail store to help make sure that things work on the shelf, to help make sure things get cut in. I remember back then, there were a lot of times were my competitor would go in and change the shelf tags. There were games I get that were played.

You know exactly where I'm going with this. Can you talk about that time, where we were a lot more innocent and a lot more naïve about how to really drive sales, and the gamesmanship, and not really to highlight that, but I really wanna get to the struggles that small brands have today because we empathize with them, and like we said right before I hit the record button, we're here to help fix it, help these brands avoid some of those struggles.

Peter: Right. I mean, the great thing about being classically trained in consumer packaged goods is that you develop a great foundation, and fundamentals in the business.

Dan: Absolutely.

Peter: I still rely on those fundamentals today, so we always talk about distribution, shelf management, planogram, pricing, and promotion. That was drilled in my head in my early 20's and I still regardless of size of business in the national organic space or wherever I've been, I still think that way, and I think what companies of today need to think about more quite honestly is those fundamentals because getting it done, the right way, with the right products, the right pricing, the right promotion, being at retail is still something that I do today.

I'll go out and visit 10 stores, and I'll stand in front of my section and look at it, and talk to consumers, and see what they think, and ask them questions, and hand them coupons. The fundamentals that I got from classically trained companies, I think could be applied more to some of the younger growing brands today. Focus and discipline is what I learned at those companies, and I think that can be applied to some of the companies today, and it's amazing because I'll be on boards or I'll talk to some young entrepreneurs in boulder which I often do, and we'll just have some very basic conversations.

A perfect example is, “How many products do you have in your portfolio?” They'll say 50, and my next question will be, “Out of those 15, how many items make up 85% of your sales?” Some of the questions you get back … or answers you get back to that question are … Some will say, “Well, we have four.” Then my next question is, “Well, why do you have 11 that are doing 15%, right?” “Well, it's because we wanted to do this or we wanted to do that.” The real work, and the real success that you get in this business is taking what you know that works.

I have products in these many stores. All you need to do, and it's no easy, and it's not sexy is to drive what works into more doors, it's pick and shovel work, and it's hard. It means that sometimes you don't get to play around, and do the next bright shiny thing, that might work. You've got to focus on your core business, and if your core isn't growing, you're in trouble. I hope that helps a little.

Dan: It does, absolutely, and this is the same thing I keep talking about all the time in the podcast. Again, like I shared with you, this is why this podcast exist. Back up a little bit, Unilever which is the company I worked for originally, and then Procter & Gamble are known as the best training platforms, programs for any young person looking to get into this industry. The point being here that as you said, they drilled in to us. This is a way to do this, and there was a way to do it, there's a structure to do it.

My point being that, whereas nowadays the brands have the ability to use social media to have that relationship with their core customer, but they still miss that really critical step of, as you said, and thank you for saying this, Peter, of having that one in one relationship or conversation with a live customer in and out. Where I'm going with this, is that, we were taught to rely a lot on focus groups, and the brands would … did, excuse me. The point being is that a lot of times, in the focus groups, brands are told what they think they wanna hear, but old school people like you CPG experts, and like myself go into the isles and we get a much different perspective.

We actually get a chance to learn and listen, and really understand not only why is someone buying that product, but more importantly how do they use it? Why are they shopping that category, that product, your product, why they choose your product over another product? It gives us a much different flavor for what's unique about our product so that it helps us develop a selling story that we can use elsewhere. Can you talk a little bit more about this and where I wanted to go with this Peter is how do you leverage it, or how do you install that focus and that commitment to on the ground training, on the ground having conversations with live customers, within your current sales teams and previous sales teams?

Peter: I think you have to make it part of your core company culture, and as the leader or CEO of a company, they're gonna cue off of you. I believe in rapid communication, pictures being in stores as a CEO riding with your retail team, grabbing your marketing lead at lunch and say, “Let's go get three or four stores in a market. It really comes down to the CEO or leader of the group, instilling that in there company. As a perfect example. My chief marketing officer at ONE Brands is out in LA today, and he has a meeting with an agency at 2:30.

First thing we talked about before we left last night is, “Hey, listen. I'd really like to get a look at four Trader Joe's, three Sprouts, a couple of J&C, a couple of vitamin shops, and maybe pop into an independent gym or nutria shop. Tell me what you see? Tell me what you hear? Talk to some folks. Send pictures of planograms.” All that makes the company better because if he's doing his retail work, he sends a picture of a Sprouts planogram, that may be right or may not be right.

The person calling in on Sprouts and saying, “Hey, I didn't see Almond Bliss, our number three selling protein bar in the set.” That creates conversation around well, is it on stock? Is it missing a tag? Operationally, did we short an order? It's just that rapid democratic text picture back and forth but unless the CEO is doing it and make sure that everybody else is doing it, it's not gonna happen. It becomes part of what you do.

Dan: Absolutely.

Peter: And in part of your daily routine.

Dan: You sound a lot like my old boss. Every time we went, we're together. Anytime I went to a market. I mean, that as a compliment. Every time we went to a market, it was going to as many stores as you possibly can, report back to me. I really wanted to highlight this because this is a lot different than hiring a third-party merchandising team to go … Whether it's a broker, whether it's an independent group, it doesn't matter, to go into a store and take a look at this set. You need to be in there, and you need to be involved. You need to be engaged with your consumer because that gives you the foundation to really grow your brand.

A couple other things you mentioned. By the way, Steve Hues was one of the podcast. You're gonna have to listen to that. He did a great job. I've been a huge fan of Celestial Seasonings for years. I'm a Colorado Native, so I love the fact that they're in my backyard. I remember when they owned the tea category, and I love all the innovation that they have in their category, but again, you wouldn't see that or you wouldn't understand how they interact with their core consumer, if you're not in the store especially back before we had Twitter, and text messages and stuff like that.

Can you talk a little bit more about … What strategies do you use today to help communicate throughout your entire sales team. I know you mentioned having your lead go into various stores, but then do you have a platform or a place where you can bring all these common information back together, so that it's available to you, and yourselves team, your senior management team, as you're making decisions and going forward.

Peter: Sure. I mean, I'm a big people person, so I've been incredibly fortunate to work with just some amazing people, and time and time again. When I had my key functional leads, sales marketing ops, and finance, I empower them to do their job, and it's very clear when you hire in that fashion, that you're there to support, you're there to empower, but you're also there to be involved. I'm the sales person. I grew through the sales rec. It's tough to work for me on the sale's side because I wanna be involved, I want to be in front of the customer, and I love the game.

Really, what we do is we have weekly meetings myself with my lead of sales and some of their department folks and we'll go over what's going on in the grocery channel or what's going on at Walmart, or convenience, and just have, again, a great exchange of ideas, and priorities. The things that I try to do right out of the gate for the company is we list a group of company goals at the beginning of the year, and at each department, we'll have their own goals that obviously will feed into the companies. There's five of them. There's not 10 of them, there's not 26 of them, there's five.

You're gonna be opportunistic in things that come your way, but we're working towards those five things that we all agree to at the beginning of the year. I think that helps anchor folks, but I let my sales lead manages information, manages department. He knows Involved. We have weekly meetings, and we'll do a my list to your list, but my whole philosophy is I work for them, they don't work for me. My job is to make sure that they have every single thing they need to be successful, because that's what I do. I wanna make sure they have the right people, the right resources, the right money, the right assets, the right everything to make sure that they can be successful. If not, they have to pour that into me, it's I have to pour it into them. It's just a little bit of a different philosophy.

Dan: Honestly, it resonates with me because again, you and I are the same in this regard. I believe that my responsibility as an employee when I was working for someone is to make my boss look like a hero to champion the people underneath me, to be able to support everyone at every aspect of the business. Peter, I created a course. It's on my website Turnkey Sales Story Strategies that deals with and focuses on exactly this. I really wasn't playing or getting to this at this point but what I'm getting at is that the basics, the basics, the basics.

If brands don't handle the basics correctly, handing your keys to an agency, to a broker, to distributor or someone else other than you, is crippling your business. Where I'm going with this is that, that passion that you share with your team by working with them, by getting into the trenches with them, by having those ongoing conversations with them so that everyone is sharing that same passion, that same enthusiasm working together on lockstep is what makes your brand successful, is what makes you standout on a crowded shelf, is what helps differentiate you from any other brand that the retailer has to deal with that day. It's what makes you a category leader.

On that note, can you please talk about some of the experiences that you've had where you've been able to really define yourself or differentiate yourself within a retail environment because of your efforts to, and your commitment to this strategy?

Peter: Sure. I'll use my most recent experience because there's probably no more crowded category, I guess than the bar category.

Dan: Absolutely.

Peter: At ONE Brands, we manufacture hi protein, low sugar protein bars. In a space where you're fighting for shelf, and retailed distribution, and promotion, you've got to make sure, again, that you've got those basic fundamentals down and really, really secure. It's like building a house. You got to build the foundation before you build the deck on top of the roof. It all falls apart unless your foundation is great. In relationship to ONE Brands, my founder, Ron McAfee is probably the most knowledgeable person about protein bar making in the business, and as a result of that, we make an absolutely great tasting incredible bars that has a taste and texture, and a flavor profile unlike no other.

I came into this position in a lucky spot because the product is just outstanding. However, what we didn't have when we got here is we didn't have good packaging. The product that you were eating over delivered, the packaging under delivered. We went through package design, and got the package right. Then we looked at the pricing aspect of what we're doing. We developed a promotional calendar. All of this is the boring non-sexy work, but if you do it right at the beginning, it really will establish that solid, solid foundation, and allowing you to go in with your ducks in a row. We've been doing that at ONE Brands, and our businesses is taking off.

You also have to be disciplined, and as an example of that, we've been together as a management team for a year-and-a-half. Ron has been making bars for 18 years, so he's an 18-year overnight success, but in that first year, Walmart called us down, and we had a conversation. They wanted to expand and take on a bunch of new products, and I told them no. I said we're not ready for you yet. We don't have that foundation built. We need the operational expertise, we need the production expertise, we need redundancy, and manufacturing because ultimately, we will disappoint you if we took the business. Thank you. We wanna come back when we're ready.

To that point, we came back, right product, right packaging, right pricing, right promotional activity, right operation support, and supply chain. Now, we have a great emerging business, and we're the fastest growing bar at Walmart. Point is, those fundamentals are so, so important because they allow you to grow, and grow in the right way. If we had said yes, we would have messed up our relationship. We would out-of-stock Walmart, and we probably would have been thrown out of the store. I encouraged the young entrepreneurs to breathe, and really focus on the stuff that's working, and maximize that before you go and do other things.

Dan: Well, said. Great story. I really appreciate you're sharing that. Again, this goes back to our roots where we were taught there is one way to do this, and it's getting all that, as you said, boring, non-sexy stuff down. I remember early in my career going, “God, why do I have to do this again,” but yet now, I know. Now, I understand at the end of the day, it's all distribution. I also love the fact that you also shared that having the courage, having the strength, the awareness to be able to say no, to Walmart because you couldn't handle the distribution, I always say, you never get a second chance to disappoint a customer especially a customer that has the potential of dramatically changing the trajectory of your business.

For you to be able to say that, says a lot about your leadership, but more importantly understanding the category, understanding the brand, understanding where you were in terms of your growth. As you're talking about that, and again, going back to the basics, and what you need to know, and why you need to know this, see, this is one of the things that a lot of the brands that I work with, Peter struggle with, as you've said, trying to get them to understand, they've got to get this stuff right on day one. It cost a lot more to hire someone like me or another consultant afterwards to try to clean up a mess because they didn't do it right the first time.

Again, that's why this podcast exist. Can you talk a little bit about where you were? You mentioned that the packaging wasn't right, and you had to put together a pricing program, and a promotional program, and a promotional calendar. What did that look like? I'm guessing that you probably didn't have any of that infrastructure in place at that time?

Peter: Correct. A lot of the smaller brands don't have that infrastructure in place, and what they try to do is they try to go from zero to 120 miles an hour, and get as much revenue as they can, and hope that the lucky bus comes by, and maybe they get acquired for a lot of money. I've bought businesses, I've sold businesses, and I can tell you, it all comes down to the foundation of the business, and evaluating the decisions that the people make in going into those businesses. A perfect example again is we make a great bra. We're really, really good at it now.

We can ship on time, we can deliver on time. Our quality is great, our complaints are down. Our costs are in line. We're in really great shape. Having said that, we're in 40% of the grocery stores, 20% of the convenience stores. We have almost no club business, no international, no food service, very little chain drug, yet all the time, I will talk to people and they say, “When are you coming up with cookies. When are you coming out with other products?”

I'll look at them, and I'll say, “Not yet. Not yet.” We're not ready. We need to maximize what we have here, and then what I believe happens is your consumer then gives you the permission, and almost expects that you get into a different category, but again, if you've established that foundation, and our business now is 80% grocery and 50% club and 75% convenience store. Okay, now, we're a real brand, that's doing business, and I've delighted my consumer base, and they're coming to me in saying, “What's next?” or we know what's next, and we introduce it in the right way.

Again, the discipline is tough to get, and founders in general don't like discipline, and don't like to hear the word no, but it really is critical. I could never be an entrepreneur. I could never be a Ron McAfee, I could never be a Justin Gold, a Todd Woloson of IZZE. Those guys have a skill set and a tenacity that I just don't have. My responsibility with them is to make sure that I'm maximizing their hard work, years of hard work and making sure that they realize the full potential of the brand.

I'm an older guy. I grew up in CBG environment, and a lot of folks think I'm very conservative and maybe sometimes I take a little too much time, but at the end of the day, that method and program really that we run with, the great people that I run it with, has worked over the years. We're gonna keep doing it that until somebody tells me not to.

Dan: You need to, and I hope everyone listening to this is really trying hard to understand, put themselves in our shoes, our shoes meaning that this is the way that you do things. What I'm getting at, me mentoring brands, you mentoring brands, working with brands et cetera. The point being is that, and I don't mean this as a negative, but traditionally sales people are inherently lazy, and where I'm going with that is that rinse and repeat is not a strategy. What differentiated Unilever, Kimberly-Clark, Playtex, et cetera is that we didn't use that strategy. I mean, to some degree maybe, but those of us that really stood out on the shelf, those who really had the opportunities that we really drove profitable sales with the business, we rose quickly in our careers, we use the strategy that we relied heavily on making sure we had the basics.

Going back to what you said in terms of hoping you get acquired, I wanted to point out, and get your thoughts. If you're doing everything right, and again I love the fact that you said this. You got to focus on the foundation. If you're doing everything that's right, that means your company's worth listen to this people a whole lot more money. You can get a lot more out of it. If your sole purpose, your sole goal is to get acquired, this is how you maximize that opportunity. Your thoughts?

Peter: No. There's no question about it. That's foundation. Look, if I'm buying a business, it's just like buying a house. What does the outside look like? What does the inside look like? What does the foundation look like? I'm gonna ask folks if I'm buying a business, “Why did you make that decision and what did you learn from it?” There are decisions that you can make early on in a company's life cycle that can cripple you and cost you, your company.

There are brands littered on the street that decided that they were going to go to Walmart or the club channels or international because they get all excited because someone wanted to give a big order, and they got a lot of revenue, but they didn't understand their pricing structure, their cost of goods, their supply chain, their promotional structure, but yet they couldn't say no because it was such a big revenue check, and they needed the money, and got star struck with what folks would tell them and it's hard. It's hard to say no. Justin Gold is one of my good friend at Justin's, and we had a great relationship.

He came into my office one day before Expo West, and said to me, he goes, “Peter, we don't have anything new at the shelf. When someone comes up to me and says, what's new, what am I going to tell them?” I said, “Well, here's what you can tell them Justin, that we have a great supply of almonds. We have the ability to deliver and ship on time within our windows. We can promote aggressively. We're spending money on marketing, and we have an innovation pipeline that we would be rolling out as we put thought around that and understand our consumer. It's just a different way to think about it as opposed to we're just gonna whip up another product to go to the trade show with.

Meanwhile, your number one SKU which is selling like crazy is in 35% of the grocery stores. The answer isn't getting in other skew, the answer is taking up the ACD from 35 to 70, and guess what, that's hard freaking work. It's hard work. It's done at retail, it's done at headquarters. It's meeting with distributors. It's going to. It is hard work, but if you show up, and you're ready to play, you're gonna win you're share, jump balls and pick off that ACD time and time again. Those are really some of the things, that again, I tried to talk about with some of the younger entrepreneurs that I'll sit with. It's not necessarily what they want to hear, but it's what they need to do.

Dan: I appreciate you sharing that, and I love your stories. I love the way that you put things together. They make so much sense. I often say that retailers generically don't make anything. They sell other people stuff. What they sell is real estate in the form of the space that your products take up on their shelves. The reason I wanted to go here is something that you said. If you don't have the ability to help them avoid out of stocks, to not embarrass your retail partners, to help your retail partners be successful.

If you're not in a position to be able to do that, you should not be thinking about innovation. I'm so glad you said that. So many of the brands that I talk to, they'll start in New York and they'll have an opportunity to go to H-E-B or some place in California but yet they've got nothing in between to support an infrastructure or they try to develop a new product line to your point and they can't support it. Having the ability to develop a strategic relationship with your retail partners helping them be successful is the only way you're gonna be successful.

I love the fact that you're helping Justin with this. He's gonna be on the podcast really soon, is helping brands like that understand that once you cement that, once you are able to develop that relationship, and support that relationship at the level it needs to be, then as you said, and I love the way you put it, your customers give you permission to grow. Where I wanted to go with this, is that in the online space, we constantly hear about AB split testing, we constantly hear about when you're talking to marketers about how you've got to have a relationship with your core consumer.

I believe your customer is far more valuable to the retailer than whatever is in your packaging. Where I'm going with this, Peter, let me know your thoughts, is that if you can't accurately communicate the benefit and the value of your product, have it on the shelf where customers can find it, then really you have no solid business. Again, you don't have that sturdy foundation to help really grow. Your thoughts?

Peter: No. It's exactly right. I mean, I can't tell you the amount of people that I meet with, small, medium, large, companies, and we'll have a conversation that goes like this. “Tell me about your business.” “Well, we're about a $5 million business and we have these 10 products and we just got to figure out how to grow and how to grow faster, and get into more channels of business. We're looking to hire all these people and spend money on marketing, et cetera, et cetera.” Then I'll ask the next question, “Okay. You're a natural organic product?” “Yes.” “All right. How many Whole Foods regions are you in?”

Typically, they'll say, “We're in four. Okay, we're on four regions.” “Do you have any business at Sprouts?” “No, don't have any business with Sprouts yet.” “What about NCGA, INFRA those guys?” “Yeah. We have a little bit of business with them, but look, we got to get to Target. We got to get to Kroger and Safeway, and convenience stores, to be something for us. I'm meeting all these international guys at Trader Joe's and they want to buy trailers of this stuff. “

In that point in the conversation, you have to get real with them and say, “Look, what you have is working, and you have a $5 million business to prove it.” That's great. It's a major accomplishment. My advice to you is to stick to your knitting instead of three or four Whole Foods regions, you need to be in all of them, and you need to figure out how to get to Sprouts, and you need to figure out how to get to NCGA and INFRA in a big way. If you maximize that opportunity and really forget everything else right now, your business could go from five million to 20, but it's gonna built the right way, with the right consumer base. By the way, it's working in a the three or four Whole Foods regions you have. Go get the rest.

That's the discipline that I follow because if you go to Target or you go to Walmart of H-E-B as you mentioned earlier, you're not dealing from the position of strength. Those major retailers, the Walmarts, the Krogers of the world, first thing they're gonna say is, “Who's your consumer? Where's your base of business.” If you say, “I'm in four Whole Foods regions. We focus on natural. We're in Sprouts. We have a good penetration at NCGA and INFRA, and now we're ready for premium grocery stores that look like natural food stores. That's our next ring of distribution, and we're gonna build out Kroger, and Wegmans, and H-E-B.”

Just approach it in a logical way because you're just gonna get spread out, and diluted because the chances of you being in three or four Whole Foods regions, and then throw it on the shelf at Target, and having it work, slim to none. You get to have more of foundation base. That's the advice that I give some of the smaller company. We practice it here too, so it's not like it's just a theory.

Dan: Well, so valuable. While you were talking, you reminded me of when I was a retail grocery manager and then I started working for Red Seal potato chips. At the time, Red Seal used to be one of the biggest brands in the country, but at this point we were a small barely surviving regional brand, and I remember where it was all based upon the more chips I could get out, the more displays, the more features, whatever, the more sales I'd have. I remember where I'm going with this is that when I transition to Unilever, having a really difficult time understanding that selling more toilet … Actually not toilet paper, selling more laundry detergent and stuff like that, that had really very little to do with how many displays I had.

Where I'm going with this, is that if I realized it, it took a little bit for me to really appreciate this, that if I could get one incremental facing on a retailer shelf at 50, 60, 70% of the stores in their chain, that did far more to drive sales, profitable sales for the brand, for the company than anything else I did. Instead of chasing after the opportunities that could elude you that really weren't gonna support you in terms of the quick win merchandising, et cetera, it was all about like you said, the blocking and tackling.

Point being, and again reinforcing everything that you're saying here is that having the right distribution, and the right store with the right merchandising, the right product assortment, the right pricing, the right everything else is far more important than anything else that we do as sales people. Then another thing you touched on …

Peter: Yes

Dan: Thank you for saying that. Do you want to expand on that?

Peter: Yeah. Just one point. I mean, one of the things that … It's all the questions that you keep asking. In my business today, we've got some great business. We have single bar trades. We have multi-packs, and you take a customer like a High V. That's one of our great customers. A gentleman who runs that business … You just start asking the questions, and it's, “How many stores do you have? Do we have 10 items in all stores? What about permanent, secondary locations? What about … Can we go to registers and become an impulse business? Are there other places in the stores that we can go?” Point B is going deep with a retailer, can provide great results.

We did that really well with Justin's. We had peanut butter cups, everywhere that you could possibly put them on the freezer door, on top of the salad bar, in a display, in a freestanding display in the aisle. To your point, getting really, really deep and understanding … Set the facts and data around that can be really, really powerful. What's a point of ACV worth is a great question to ask folks. You're at 40 ACV on your item in natural. Let me ask you a question. If you take it to 65, what does that do for your business? A lot of folks can't answer that question, but they can tell you what the new flavor is gonna be or what the new package and thing is gonna be. That's important, but it's not what you need to do at that time. You need to continue to build that foundation.

Dan: Let me go one step further, and I appreciate you sharing that, if you can demonstrate to the retailer that your value added resource, that you can support them in everything they need, guess what, they're gonna turn to you first.

Peter: You bet.

Dan: I don't know. You're probably aware of this too, Peter where I didn't pay slotting, I didn't pay for some of the ridiculous fee, some of the retailers charge, but they called me before they called anyone else I delivered at such a high value. Your thoughts?

Peter: I think that makes sense, and one of the lines I use when we've developed a relationship, and we're doing well, and things are working is … And we may not be the biggest brand. We may be on the smallest side, and you say to the category manager or your buyer, “Look, if this opportunity is to come up, I want you to call me first. I'll travel. I'll be down here. I'll give you ideas. We can brainstorm.” That's a lost … I don't want to say it's an art, but it's just what I believe makes you successful. I hate conference calls. I can't stand them. I'm much more of a face to face person.

Let me come to you. Let's sit together for an hour and get to know each other a little bit, and have an understanding about where we are, and where we're going. I mean, we're in front of the major retailers that we had, the customers that make us famous as I call them. We're in front of them, as often as we possibly can. We'll take a meeting with a seasonal person, a register front end person, a buyer, a pricing coordinator, a supply chain person. It makes you better, and it shows the retailer that you care so that when they have an issue around “Gee, the planogram just opened up, and I got a couple extra slots. I wonder who I should call?” I wanna be the first person on the speed dial list. If you're doing that the right way, you will be.

Dan: My boss used to call it pressing the flesh, and I always thought that was a funny term. It's true. Again, if you can prove yourself … and by the way, episode 68, I talk about this how I was able to leverage exactly what we're talking about here when a superstar opened in Denver, Colorado. I was able, as the small regional chip brand to dominate that store where the big 800-pound gorilla could not get a single display within that store, and it was just because I did exactly what you're saying. I showed up. I challenged them to challenge me. I delivered at a high value, and because I proved myself over, and over, and over again, I was the first person that called.

In addition to that, that opened up other doors. By the way, that's really been my super strength or my super power is that my entire business, my entire career is being able to differentiate myself or my brand, the brands, my client, et cetera, by being able to help them stand on our crowded shelf and not be like all the other brands that stand in line with the retailer saying, “Here's what I need from you. Give me, give me, give me,” so thank you for sharing that. It's such an important thing, and I don't know …

Peter: Yeah, it is.

Dan: Go ahead.

Peter: It is a little bit of a street game too, because another example is my founder, Ron McAfee at one brand he literally will spend weeks going up and down the coast of California with new ideas, different platforms that he's worked up on the lab, and talk to folks, and talk to the consumers that are coming in. “Sample this, try that. What do you think of this? What do you think of that?” Weeks and weeks of research and talking to people, and try to get a feel for where everything is going. That's how he built his business, and it's amazing to me that he still takes the time, and the energy obviously to go out and do that, but it makes you a better person, a better business person.

When you walk into an appointment, you can say, “So, have you … Listen, I was just in store 132. Let me tell you what I saw. This is what I'm thinking. This is what I see. This is what the data tells us. What do you think?” That goes a long way with customers because it just, again, shows a level of care. It's real easy. Fly in, have lunch, go to the appointment, fly home. That's not gonna allow you to have a great business. If you wanna be average, and you wanna be good, and you have a great product, then you can probably get away with that. If you've got the ambition to be a great brand and a platform business, you got to get after it, and you got to get after it every day, and work it, and it's worked, for sure.

Dan: Absolutely. We just call that shoe leather. I'm sure, you did too. You're absolutely right. It's so very, very important. You've got to be involved and engaged. The other cool thing about it is, if you're developing products based away on what your consumers are telling you they want, you've practically pre-sold the thing before you make it, so that goes back to what you said earlier where you're getting permission from your customers to innovate, to grow sales, to get into other areas of distribution. One of the things I say a lot is that natural is the R&D of the consumer packaged goods industry.

What I'm getting is that the big brands, when they say that they're innovating, they're changing a label, or packaging, or sprinkling on a different flavoring. It's not true innovation. Consumers can see beyond that today. Consumers want we're talking about. They want the ability to have a stake in terms of how that product is put together or an understanding or relationship with that brand where they understand how far over and above you go to provide transparency, authenticity, the ingredients that they want. Again, if you are what you eat, and what matters, and being able to communicate that one on one with your consumers, and develop the products at that granular level before you take the product, and put it on the shelf, saves you a lot of money, and a lot of headaches in the long run, and it also helps you develop the story, the selling story that you need when you start working with retailers. Your thoughts?

Peter: Agreed, but I think it also goes beyond the … If it's more ingrained in your culture too. A perfect example is Expo East that just happened in Baltimore, right?

Dan: Right.

Peter: I got several calls from companies big and small, “Are you going? Are you not going? What's the story?” I said, “Look, it's always gonna be safety first.” You have to make that call, but if you're asking me if I'm going, the answer is yes. If the weather is so bad, and they shut the airports, and there's obviously, no one should go, right?

Dan: Right.

Peter: Here's what happened. Guess what? A lot of people didn't show up to Expo East, and a lot of people … I was next to him, and I saw him leaving after a Thursday, the first day, leaving Friday at noon, leaving Friday afternoon. That's not okay. If you're a small emerging brand or even a big brand, if you're gonna take the time, spend the money, then show up and stay at the trade show, work the floor, plan it the right way, organize it the right way. It's real money that you're spending.

I would suggest that a lot of people didn't go to this show because they thought they maybe would get stuck there or couldn't get back for Saturday date night or Sunday tea time. That shouldn't be the attitude of small hungry natural and organic food businesses. They should be there working that booth from the start to the finish. That needs to be ingrained in the fabric of your company. That's my philosophy, it's not everybody's, but look, if people said Expo East was slow, it was slow because you made it that way. There were plenty of people there to talk, to listen to, to get involved with, but again, it's real work.

Dan: It is. Well, you've got to look for the opportunities. Opportunities just don't come … Find you necessarily. Going back to that eight year overnight wonder or however you said that at the beginning, because you're right. You're absolutely right. When I was at Expo East, and sorry, I didn't actually get a chance to see you there, the show floor was really light. A lot of people were complaining that the retailers that they were hoping to see weren't there. A lot of booths were empty, but yet to your point, if those brands had developed or taken the time to develop a relationship with some of the other brands that are out there that were on the show floor, maybe that strategic relationship would help them do more to grow sales.

Let me give an example. If your product, and you've got a product, you find a product a similar product that complements your own, and you can co-promote, well, then you can spread the cost of a promotion over the value, or for both companies, and where I'm going with this, is that's how you maximize your trade marketing budget. That's how you take advantage of getting new customers, customers that may not have bought your product before, that brought the other products. Developing those strategic relationships, again, I agree with you 100%.

Tremendous missed opportunity, and it was really sad, disheartening to see so many brands weren't there, so thank you for sharing that. Actually, I've been hearing a lot about that as well. Another thing that you said that I wanted to go back to, and I really wanted to put a little bit of focus on this a little bit is you said you need to know your customer. Now, traditional CBG companies, we learn to identify our customers as female, head of household, 2.3 kids, and that kind of stuff.

The reason I put that course together, I've talked to you about a couple times, the reason we're having this conversation is you got to do more than that. That goes back to what you said, in terms of being able to walk into the aisle and talk to the customer. They're not a statistic. They're not a demographic profile, they're a real person, and you need to have a relationship, a one-on-one relationship with that customer. If you know, if you are truly an expert in your customer, and you can get everyone within your company to understand exactly who your core customer is, who your competitor customer is, et cetera, and then be able to leverage those insights with the retailer.

Again, the most valuable thing as a brand that you bring to any retail situation is your customer. How do you leverage what you said, in terms of knowing your customer within the retailer to help them understand that you're a category leader? By the way category leader, in my mind is any brand willing and able to step up to provide this level of support to a retailer. How would you leverage this information, that information to help you at retail, help your retailers compete more effectively?

Peter: I think it really comes down to being in front of them and listening to what their challenge is, and what their needs are, understanding what they're trying to do, how they're evaluated, how they measure performance. Is it about unit volume? Is it about profitability? Really listening to all that, and then catering your presentation to fit their needs. Look, by having that understanding about where it is that they need to go, or want to go, if you can help them provide a solution to their problem, that's very unique. One of the benefits that some of the smaller companies have is they can be fast, and they can be flexible, and fluid for the right opportunity.

There are not these big CTG companies that have problems. I'll give you another example is with Mauna Loa Macadamia Nuts. We decided that we were gonna get in to the mixed nuts business, and we wanted to be in cans. We were gonna combined macadamias, almonds, and big cashews, and create this nut mix product. I went down to Walmart with a bag of macadamias, a bag of almonds, and a bag of cashews, and met with a buyer. We're talking. He looked at me and said, “Hey, I'm glad you came in here. I can't seem to get anybody to give me a 9.25 ounce can. I've talked to some of the bigger players in the category and they can't do that for me.” I said, “Let me get back to you.”

A lot of research, back and forth, and came back to Walmart and said, “I can do a 925 ounce can.” It was like I put a man on the moon for the guy. He's like, “If you can do that, then this is what I can do for you.” We crafted a relationship, and off we went.” Again, the listening and help them problem solve is something that can happen because the bigger guys, they know what it's like. They have 35 meetings. They have 25 meetings to make a decision 12 months later where I can walk down the hall to Justin and say, “Hey, I just had a meeting and this guy wants a peanut butter cup with peppermint on the inside instead of peanut butter. We can do that, right?” “Oh, we can do that. We can do that in three weeks.” That's an advantage.

Dan: Yes.

Peter: Again, you got to be listening to help solve the problem.

Dan: Well, and you got to be engaged back to what you said. Again, the reoccurring theme here is there's a way to do things, and the way to do things is you've got to get the basics done. You've got to have a solid foundation. You've got to have a one on one relationship with your customers and with the retailers. As you just stayed, and again, thank you for saying that, that's where the opportunities present themselves. For you to have not been there, or not been a part of that equation, think of the opportunities lost, and then if you had gone to him at a later time, and try to get in another product, you probably would have had to work a lot harder. You probably wouldn't have had as many opportunities, but I'll bet the same guy probably reached out to you later, and said, “Hey, we need this or sure, I'll take this product on.” Do you have any more anecdotal stories to go with that?

Peter: Well, sure. I mean, if you can deliver and do what you say you're gonna do, and do it in a timely way, that always impresses me, right?

Dan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Peter: I'm gonna get back to you. I'll do my research. I'll call you on this date. Again, we'll set up another meeting to discuss, and you deliver against those timelines and deliverables. You've become an asset to the retailer and to helping them solve their category issues. At the time when your brand is ready to go into another product line, into another category, a different buyer, what do you think happens? I'll go to my guy that I've delivered, gal I've delivered to and say, “Hey, we're coming out with trail mixes, and we know that the buyer is this person.” “Oh, I know that person. Hey, if you need a reference, do you want me to call for him?”

Then there's the talk behind the scenes of, “Tell me about this company, that person. Are they reliable? Can they deliver?” All of a sudden now, again, you've got that relationship on a face to face level, and it's a true partnership. It also helps you on the other side so that when somebody comes back to you to your earlier point of, “Hey, we're charging X amount an item, or we've got this program or that program,” you now have the credibility to go back to him, and say, “You know what, that's not gonna work for me. However, here's what will work for me. Can we do it this way? Instead of giving that fee, for that project, how about I give you that fee, but in return, I get 500 displays for the that are coming up in two weeks”.

Dan: I love that.

Peter: Those are the things that you can begin to ask for, and really create a win-win relationship.

Dan: Absolutely. Everything is negotiable and I don't think a lot of people realize that. It's not something that where you just go select, “Here's the service I want.” Everything is negotiable. Again, it's all about the human contact. I really appreciate you're sharing all of this because this is so critically important. Again, I know people are gonna get a lot out of this because we're talking about the basics, the things that really matter the most. If brands can be engaged and really understand how to drive sales, have that relationship, know your customer more importantly, know your product, know what you're capable of doing. Don't overpromise and under deliver. All these great insights, and thank you for sharing that. Is there anything that I can help you with in terms of bottleneck you might be facing, something that I can help hopefully solve?

Peter: Well, look, the interesting thing that I think a lot of these companies, they go from small to medium, to large, the big thing that's out there is this whole online Amazon, the party direct to consumer piece. I'll be honest, it's not what you or I grew up with. I'm trying to learn it as fast as we possibly can, but I think as much intelligence and information in an ever-changing channel of business that can be out there, and folks like you or other folks can provide is gonna be invalid, because look, it's changing. I realize it's changing.

If I were to start a business today, in the natural organic space, you would maybe think about it a little bit different. Some folks have had great success with a director consumer model, and then they plug in retail after that. Really anything around the whole … And it's changing like I said the Whole Foods Amazon, online positioning for brands and products. I'm trying to learn it as fast as I can. The second I learn some of it, it all flips and changes, and the initials get different, and you become more confused. That bottleneck or that side of the business, any insights there would be much, much appreciated.

Dan: Sure. Actually, I'm speaking at NatchCom a couple weeks in Boulder, so you'll have to go. I've got a special coupon on my website. For anyone listening it's NatchCom 2018, if you're listening to this in the future. Let me answer your question. Peter, we talked about knowing your customer. We talked about really understanding who your core customer is. Again, not that there are 2.5 kids live in this neighborhood or whatever. Are they involved in LOHAS? Do they go hiking? How do they use your product when they're using it? How do they consume it? Do they share it with their friends? How do they evangelize your product?

Having that selling story is so critically important. Where I'm going with this, and I've alluded to this earlier is that big brands spend most of their time, and most of their energy talking at us, not having a one or one conversation like we've been talking about this the entire time, how you need to get into the aisle and have that relationship. That is so critically important. Again, you are far more to retailers and just a package on the shelf. Point being is if you can develop a relationship with your core customer, wherever they shop online, traditional brick and mortar, et cetera, and you know who your customer is, now you have the ability through social media and through other platforms to develop that relationship, to cultivate that relationship, to be able to grow that relationship, to be able to have that consumer become an evangelist for your product and share with other people.

Now, here's where I'm going with this. If you take that evangelistic consumer that you know very well, where they live, how they live, etcetera, and then you start selling online, and you're able to communicate through rich detail, rich media on whatever platform you use, Amazon, et cetera, it doesn't matter, and you're able to communicate in a language that they understand. That's how you develop sales. Well, online is great because then you can build additional runway to fill other things.

Here's what I think most every … Everyone I've talked to is certainly missing out on, is that if you can develop a strategy to be able to target or pinpoint a neighborhood, a geography, a zip code, with an online strategy. Now, you can then take that same strategy to support traditional brick and mortar stores. Now, where I'm going at this is that same as the example we're sharing. If you had the opportunity to get to know brands that compliment yours and promote with them, now you have the ability to have retailers that complement each other and help support that.

The example being that Amazon with Whole Foods, if you can drive a lot of promotion through Amazon and help support your growth at Whole Foods, that would be a huge win-win. At that point, you're far more than just another brand in the package. You can go to Whole Foods and say, “You know what, here's what I'm doing online to drive traffic into your store. By the way, this can also work with other retailers, Amazon, Sprouts, it doesn't matter, but the point is, you've got to first really understand who your core customer is, really understand who they are.

Walk in their shoes for a few days. Once you understand who that customer is, then you need to understand who your competitor's customer is. Then once you understand that, you need to understand your retailer. Again, these are the three tenets of that course I was talking about, Turnkey Sale Stories Strategies. Once you understand how to leverage those insights, then you can begin as you were talking about to develop strategies where you can leverage your online presence, your social media presence, and your traditional brick and mortar presence because at the end of the day, remember, retailers, all they want is a reasonable profit, and a little bit more traffic in their store. If you can deliver that whether it be an online store or traditional store, at the end of the day, that's what they want, that's what they need. Does that help?

Peter: Absolutely. It's amazing. I'm the father of three 20-year-olds young women, my daughters at this point, and it's just amazing to see their interaction and their drift around social media, Instagram, Facebook, online celebrity. It's fascinating to me to learn about and I'm older, but still have the thirst to learn about it because obviously it's critically important. If that can help set the strategies of what you can do at brick and mortar and ultimately how you drive your brand and revenue, that sounds terrific. It's fascinating to me. It really is.

Dan: It is, and the fact that you can get in front of customers today that you couldn't get in front of before, I mean, think about it, how long does it take you to book a flight, fly down to some place, and make the appointment, have the appointment, jump on a plane, fly back. That takes a lot of time. Back when I was working at Unilever for a while I literally was traveling six days a week. That's brutal. Like you said, this is not easy work. This is hard work, but as a result, the payoff was tremendous sales growth. Now, I can impact and have a lot of those relationships without having to necessarily jump on a plane, but when I get in front of a customer, I maximize each and every opportunity.

It's sort of a hybrid between what people are doing today and the old school way that we grow up with. Long story short, it's all about relationships. I recommend instead of brand using what I would call a push strategy where you walk up to the retailer and say, “Here's my money. Here's what I need from you. I need … ” on, and on, and on. Push, push, push, push. The strategy that we grew learning to having a pull strategy, and the pull strategy is if you can develop something that is so-appealing to your customers, to your retailers, and then you can leverage that in your selling story, and then you can take that information, and be able to bake it into any of this, anything you've got going on, your assortment, your promotions, et cetera, that's the way you differentiate yourself.

Oh by the way, most of the other brands that you're competing with as you started this conversation with and such a difficult category, I've played in the energy bar category a lot, they're not doing this. If you can differentiate yourself by doing these few simple easy things, you're not gonna do it perfect the first day, but if you continue working on that, as you said, continuing having these relationships, and these conversations with your teams, that's how you become a category leader. That's how you get yourself to a point where a retailer says, “Hey, I need this and a 9.25 ounce can, can you help me?” Then you grin and you say, “Give me a minute, I'll be right back with you. That's how you do it. Any other questions? Anything else you wanna share?

Peter: No. I think that it. I really, really, enjoyed the conversation. This has been fun.

Dan: I have to. Thank you so much for making time for me. If there's anything else, I can help support you with, Peter. I really appreciate your time, and just so grateful, and so thankful, and so appreciative that you came on today. I hope you had fun.

Peter: I did have fun, and love doing this stuff, and so if I can be of any help in the future, or assistance then I'd love to do it. All right, Daniel. Thanks so much. Talk to you soon.

Dan: I want to thank Peter for coming on the show today and for sharing his wisdom, having a strong, and unwavering commitment to the basics is what's helped Peter succeed all these years, and in all these important roles. It's what can differentiate you from any other brand on the shelf that you compete against. I'll be certain to put a link to ONE Brands in the podcast show notes, and on the podcast webpage.

On this episode, we talked about the basics, and the importance of having a solid foundation to build your brand on. That is exactly the focus on my course, Turnkey Sale Story Strategies to help you develop the strategies to do exactly what Peter and I talked about throughout this entire podcast. Once you're able to do this and to do it right, and bake it into your brand's DNA, then layering on all the other aspects of fact-based selling, and consumer insights, and things like that, that's what sets you apart as a category leader. This is at the heart and soul of everything I teach, and this is the focus of this podcast episode, and every other episode.

You can find a link to this free course on the podcast show notes and on the podcast webpage. You can get there by going to brandsecretsandstrategies.com/session87. If you like, you can get to the course by going to turnkeysalestorystrategies.com/growthsales. I appreciate your listening, and I look forward to seeing you the next episode.

ONE Brands https://one1brands.com

This episode's FREE downloadable

Your brand's selling story is the cornerstone of all effective business building strategies. Learn How To Get Your Brand On The Shelf and What Retailers REALLY Want. This Is Your Roadmap To Success.

CLICK HERE TO GAIN INSTANT ACCESS TO MY FREE TURNKEY SALES STORY STRATEGIES COURSE

Thanks again for joining us today. Make sure to stop over at brandsecretsandstrategies.com for the show notes along with more great brand building articles and resources. Check out my free course Turnkey Sales Story Strategies, your roadmap to success. You can find that on my website or at TurnkeySalesStoryStrategies.com/growsales. Please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends and colleagues.

Sign up today on my website so you don’t miss out on actionable insights and strategic solutions to grow your brand and save you valuable time and money.

I appreciate all the positive feedback. Keep your suggestions coming.

Until next time, this is Dan Lohman with Brand Secrets and Strategies where the focus is on empowering brands and raising the bar.