BRAND SECRETS AND STRATEGIES The Retail Solved Blueprint

Every brand's success can be traced back to how well they execute fundamental strategies. Small nuances in the way brands plan, implement, & collaborate with retailers can set you apart as the category leader giving you a sustainable competitive advantage

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Scorecards are powerful goal setting tools. You’ve probably heard that “what gets measured gets done”. Scorecards map out objectives in bite-size manageable chunks that keep you on-track and focused. They're what you need to succeed.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE STRATEGIC GUIDE: Retail Scorecard

Today I want to talk to you about a problem that plagues all businesses. I work with brands at all levels of development, from pre-revenue startups to multi-billion dollar companies with a strong global presence. They all have these similar problems in common.

Today I want to share with you 10 strategies to help you build sustainable sales and profits. As you begin to develop your business strategy for the next year, it's wise to first reflect on the prior year. Did you achieve all your business objectives? Did you reach your goals? What would you have done differently, given the opportunity? Did your actual results match the goals of the projections that you set? These are all important questions you need to answer.

What I find is that when brands are setting their New Year's resolutions, typically they don't complete the project. Or, they put it off. Now is the time for you to take this seriously. Again, it's not just the small brands that struggle with this. Larger brands have their own set of challenges. I'll explain more in a minute.

This is the first place to start when developing your business strategy. Next look at the goals themselves. Were your previous goals reasonable and achievable? Don't set goals that are too far out of reach. For example, if your business grew 5% last year, don't set a goal of 25% for the next year.

Your goals should be smart goals. They should be Specific. Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. Resolutions are similar to goals. They encourage and motivate us to achieve more than we did previously. They also help us stay focused and on track. While you should set your business goals at least 6 to 12 months ahead on the calendar in order to achieve them, I find that most of the businesses that I work with don't have really well-defined goals. Learn key strategies to help you achieve your goals for this year and beyond.

This episode's FREE downloadable guide

Want an unfair competitive advantage?

Take the 30 Days To Prosperity Challenge to master the brand-building skills and strategies required to give your brand a substantial and sustainable competitive edge. Stop Using the same cookie-cutter tactics your competitors rely on. RetailSolved.com/30daychallenge

FREE Trade Promotion ROI Calculator:

RetailSolved.com/PromotionROI

Download the show notes here:

RetailSolved.com/session24

Perseverance, sweat, hard work, and a quality team are the recipe for building a solid brand. Inspiring natural brands align with worthy causes. Mission-based causes are in their DNA. Care2 amplifies their message while being social warriors for good.

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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

Perseverance, sweat, hard work, and a quality team are the recipe for building a solid brand. Inspiring natural brands align with worthy causes. Mission-based causes are in their DNA. Care2 amplifies their message while being social warriors for good.

Today's story comes from an entrepreneur that tried a lot of different things before successfully getting his brand on shelves and in the public eye, while becoming a social warrior for good. At the heart of his message, you hear him talk about perseverance, about how you've got to continually work hard, and that a large part of your journey requires you to talk to a lot of different customers to get your product in front of live customers and talk to them and sample things and ask them, "What do you like? What do you like better?"

His story is the ultimate rags to riches entrepreneurial story. When I use the term riches here, I'm talking about the richness of having a successful brand, of being able to accomplish what few do, to be able to come up with a creative solution, snacking solution that customers love, that they evangelize. That to me is the definition of success in this industry.

As my guest shares, this is where you begin the customer journey. This is where you need to put all your focus on first, because customers will reward you if you provide a solution that they're looking for that meets their needs.

Today's story is about a young brand that started out with really no focus, no plan, and yet he was able to turn his determination into a successful brand, and in the process became a social warrior for good. Today's guest is Justin Perkins of OLOMOMO and Care2.

What's fascinating about Justin's story is that it resonates with so many of us that have an entrepreneurial spirit. Despite all the challenges that he ran into, Justin never gave up. Justin shares with us today his story about how he was able to successfully build a brand and in the process, he was able to successfully connect consumers to important causes.

As a business owner, he talks about the strategies and the challenges that he ran into in terms of getting his product on shelves, and then he talks about how he transitioned his product to an online marketplace and how digital marketing strategy helped him get his products in the hands of more consumers.

In addition, Justin shares with us how he became a social warrior for good and how Care2 is impacting a lot of lives, how to improve the way we communicate social change and social justice through social media and through email marketing, the power of a solid digital marketing strategy.

I'm excited to introduce you to Justin Perkins. Here he is. Hi Justin. Thank you for coming on today. Before we get started, I'd like to learn a little bit more about you, how you started, and what took you on this journey from entrepreneur to social warrior.

This episode's FREE downloadable guide

Want an unfair competitive advantage?

Take the 30 Days To Prosperity Challenge to master the brand-building skills and strategies required to give your brand a substantial and sustainable competitive edge. Stop Using the same cookie-cutter tactics your competitors rely on. RetailSolved.com/30daychallenge

FREE Trade Promotion ROI Calculator:

RetailSolved.com/PromotionROI

Download the show notes here:

RetailSolved.com/session33

What retailers and shoppers really want. How to get your brand on the shelf. Dan and Phil candidly discuss market changes, insights, trends, small brands and the future of the CPG industry

This episode's FREE download

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

What retailers and shoppers really want. How to get your brand on the shelf. Dan and Phil candidly discuss market changes, insights, trends, small brands and the future of the CPG industry

If you've been listening to this podcast, reading any of my content, or going through my free course, Turnkey Sales Story Strategies, you've heard me say repeatedly, time after time, that you need to be an expert in your product, your consumer, your competition, the category, other categories that are associated and related to your products. In other words, what consumers buy when they buy your product, and the retailer. Not just one retailer, but every retailer you compete against. Every competitor, everyone on the shelf, the same shelf that you're on. Well, the challenge that faces literally every brand out there is we get so busy, so immersed in what we're doing that we get blinders on. We forget, or sometimes, just can't see what is going on around the corner, in the next market, in retail, et cetera.

Today's guest solves that problem. I am excited to introduce you to Phil Lempert, the Supermarket Guru. The reason that Phil is so important to this audience, to this message, is that he has been working for years now to communicate what's going on in different markets, different retailers, across different channels, et cetera. In other words, Phil is giving you that unique opportunity to see what's happening next door, in the next retailer, in the next category, et cetera. Phil's content has just been amazing. He's an icon in the industry. He's been a featured speaker, a regular contributor to leading publications, and he puts outs so much content, honestly, I don't know how he does it. His content is amazing. He has several different videos that he puts out on a regular basis. He has reports that he puts out, product reviews and other great insights.

I highly recommend that you visit his website to learn more about the resources that he has available to you. Phil is going to help guide you and help you understand, help you get a better picture of what's going on beyond your market. Leverage his resources at retail. I've been using his content for years.

This episode's FREE downloadable guide

Want an unfair competitive advantage?

Take the 30 Days To Prosperity Challenge to master the brand-building skills and strategies required to give your brand a substantial and sustainable competitive edge. Stop Using the same cookie-cutter tactics your competitors rely on. RetailSolved.com/30daychallenge

FREE Trade Promotion ROI Calculator:

RetailSolved.com/PromotionROI

Download the show notes here:

RetailSolved.com/session32

Sales are the key to every brand's success. Learn effective ways to ensure that your sales strategy is consistently communicated to shoppers, retailers, brokers, investors, and more. Learn innovative product demo strategies to accelerate your brands' growth

This episode's FREE downloadable guide

Scorecards are powerful goal-setting tools. You’ve probably heard that “what gets measured gets done”. Scorecards map out objectives in bite-size manageable chunks that keep you on-track and focused. They're what you need to succeed.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE STRATEGIC GUIDE: Retail Scorecard

Sales are the key to every brand's success. Learn effective ways to ensure that your sales strategy is consistently communicated to shoppers, retailers, brokers, investors, and more. Learn innovative product demo strategies to accelerate your brand's growth.

Today's podcast is all about selling. While the focus is on demos, there are such great insights in this podcast about selling. We discussed in-depth, the core strategies that you need to take with you when you walk into any selling situation, especially when you're working with your venture capitalists, with your investors, and with your retail partners.

In fact, this episode should be Selling 401. This is the episode that you need to share with your entire sales team, perhaps your entire organization. The point being is that if everyone's on the same page, it helps you communicate your message to the end consumer that buys your product more effectively.

In a perfect world, the founder would be the person doing all the selling, making all the retail calls, all the buyer calls, all the distributor and broker calls, and talking to all the consumers. Since that's not realistic, the next best thing is to make sure that your entire sales team is 100% on board with your message. You want everyone that hears your message to hear the same passion as though it was coming from the founder's own mouth.

In this episode, you're going to hear about effective ways to sell and effective strategies to make sure that you have the right message at the right time.

Product demonstrations have been around for a long time They're perhaps the single best way to get your product into the hands of new consumers.

New consumer trials are the key to growing your business. Product demonstrations are one of the key ways that natural retailers rely on to bring consumers into the stores, to create excitement in the category and to boost category sales. There's a lot more to it, however than just simply setting up a table and passing out samples. When done correctly, this can be a huge boost to your bottom line. Effectively, adding rocket fuel to explode your growth. When done incorrectly, a poorly run demo can leave a sour taste in the mouth of the consumer and your retail partner. You never get a second chance to disappoint a customer. This is what you need to avoid and this is why you need to listen to this episode to learn how to maximize the demo experience.

This episode's FREE downloadable guide

Want an unfair competitive advantage?

Take the 30 Days To Prosperity Challenge to master the brand-building skills and strategies required to give your brand a substantial and sustainable competitive edge. Stop Using the same cookie-cutter tactics your competitors rely on. RetailSolved.com/30daychallenge

FREE Trade Promotion ROI Calculator:

RetailSolved.com/PromotionROI

Download the show notes here:

RetailSolved.com/session23

The strength of every natural brand is the trust consumers have in it. It’s the promise of consistent quality they can count on every time. Trust begins with the claims brands make and their ability to support them. Learn common pitfalls to avoid

This episode's FREE downloadable guide

Real shopper loyalty is earned not found on plastic cards. Your brand’s real strength is its ability to convert casual customers into brand ambassadors.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE STRATEGIC GUIDE: Merchandising Checklist To Grow Sales and Shopper Loyalty

The strength of every natural brand is the trust consumers have in it. It’s the promise of consistent quality they can count on every time. Trust begins with the claims brands make and their ability to support them. Learn common pitfalls to avoid.

I have a question for you. Have you had an opportunity to listen to episode 10 of this podcast? Episode 10 was Retail Horror Stories. The reason I ask is because I shared several real-life stories about costly mistakes that brands make. For example, packages that don't stand up on the shelf or packages that won't even fit on the shelf.

Imagine this, you're a brand, you spent a lot of time and energy developing a product. Your goal is to get it in the hands of more consumers, but in your haste you overlook something. Perhaps something as important as making sure the product will fit on the shelf. This story's a lot like that, only more importantly this story goes to the heart of your brand. Let me explain. You've taken the time to search out the best ingredients to provide the best value to your customers. Next, you want to sing the praises of your brand all over the packaging and on any marketing material you have, but can you make that claim legitimately?

This story is about how to help you identify what you need to know so that when you make a claim you can stand behind it proudly without any concerns of anyone questioning the integrity and the efficacy of your product. Today's story is a road map to help you identify before you start building the product, what you need to know so that you can set yourself up for future success. I'm pleased to introduce Risa with Tap~Root. She's a well-known author and advocate for natural products.

This episode's FREE downloadable guide

Want an unfair competitive advantage?

Take the 30 Days To Prosperity Challenge to master the brand-building skills and strategies required to give your brand a substantial and sustainable competitive edge. Stop Using the same cookie-cutter tactics your competitors rely on. RetailSolved.com/30daychallenge

FREE Trade Promotion ROI Calculator:

RetailSolved.com/PromotionROI

Download the show notes here:

RetailSolved.com/session22