everyone this is karen waxman founder of
retail mba and in this particular
segment we're going to be covering how
to get your products into chain stores
fast
now if you've ever tried to sell to a
chain stores you'll probably be
wondering what i'm talking about because
it isn't fast to get a product into a
store but on occasion there are things
that you can do to help move things
along so if you're not getting any
responses from buyers or you're really
getting stuck i'm going to give you one
strategy that i use it's not always my
favorite strategy but it is a strategy
if i'm getting stuck or i want to move
forward or i want to get my products in
the chain stores much faster than usual
so the way that i do it is that i will
actually reach out to the assistant
buyer
and i will ask them to set me up with a
an appointment for vendor day so let me
explain these two things so first of all
if you don't know this all buyers start
out as assistant buyers that's usually
how it works in the chainsaw business
they usually have to go through some
training process so they all start out
as assistants and then ultimately they
become buyers so there's always an
assistant buyer around for the buyer so
just know that so what i'll do is i will
actually reach out to the assistant
buyers when i want to get a meeting for
something called vendor day
so what's vendor day defender day is the
day of the week or month or quarter that
a chainsaw buyer will schedule time
where people who want to be vendors fly
into the corporate office and ultimately
try and sell their products to them so
it's a day where uh you know 10 vendors
will come in every 15 to 30 minutes and
pitch their products to that buyer and
ultimately if the buyer likes that
product they will actually get them you
know probably a purchase order and move
forward so the key here is that you can
get a meeting with a chain store buyer
during one of these vendor days and so
the way to get a meeting at vendor day
is to call the assistant buyer you don't
call the buyer for this you call the
assistant buyers you got to figure out
who the assistant buyer is and then
ultimately reach out to them and say hey
i would like to be part of your next
vendor day and then they a lot of times
will get you on the schedule and that's
a quick way of getting your products in
front of chain stores and ultimately in
front of the chain store buyers and
hopefully they'll like your product and
will buy your product now i actually try
and avoid vendor day typically because
if i can actually have a meeting with a
buyer on a one-on-one basis that's not
on the same day as all my competitors
i'd rather do that i'd rather have sole
focus and energy from that buyer and
when they're meeting with 10 other
potential vendors it's not always the
best situation right because they're not
always focused on me so i will always
use my my strategies and my tactics to
get products in stores the tactics that
i treat that i explain in retail mba my
program but ultimately vendor day is one
way that you can get a product in stores
uh fairly quickly because you can
actually streamline the approach get a
meeting with that buyer for the next
vendor day and they do these fairly
often right so that's the good news
because again they're always looking for
new interesting innovative products so
if you want to get your products into
chain source a chain store fast and in
front of that buyer you know that's the
quickest way to do it you have to get a
meeting with the buyer you have to get a
buyer to take a look at your product and
that's one way of doing it so anyways i
hope that provides value this is karen
waxman with retail mba if you want to
learn more about how the entire process
of getting a product into a store works
please check out retailmb
my actual program
otherwise please leave your comments
below i hope this provides value and
please be on the lookout for the
additional content that i create thanks