How to contact 25 stores in a week
2018/11/06 4:09 PM
Do you wonder how some brands are all of a sudden “all over the place” and just a few months before you’d never even heard of them? I used to wonder that too until I figured out their secret to quickly getting into tons of stores. I’m going to show you how to contact 25 stores in a week.
They all have a Black Book.
I’m talking about a Buyer Black Book – your own personal rolodex of the store buyers you want to sell to.
This is your golden ticket to what your company needs most: getting your products into stores everywhere – and then you’ll be the one people are seeing all over the place – and wondering where the heck you came from!
So let me show you how you build yourself a Buyer Black Book……
In business, in order to build a BBB you need to figure out the following and I’ll show you how….
- A list of every location that could offer your products
- A list of stores that offer products similar to yours
- A big-picture vision of your ideal clients
- A go-to referral source of allies, and vendors
- Sales leads for follow-up or future phone calls
- A map of connections you’ve made and want to make
In other words, the BBB is your everything.
It is the “oh-crap-sales-are-down” list of companies that you need to start calling first to try to get more inventory orders.
Step 1: Know Your Target Market
Before I get too deep, I want you to think about who your target market is. You might have heard this referred to as building an Avatar. Let’s answer a few quick questions about your products because these responses will help you determine which cities and states your customer lives in.
- What is the sex of your target buyer?
- How much money do they make?
- Where do they shop, specifically?
- What brands/stores do they buy?
- Where do they spend their free time?
- What do they value/respect/admire?
- How old are they, on average?
- Why would they buy from you?
Selling to Your Target Market
Now the really tough question; where do these people go shopping? When you sell a product, you have to work to get your products into the stores that already sell to your target market.
You will never see a $250 handbag for sale at a Target or Kohls. Likewise, $50,000 wedding dresses are not the norm at David’s Bridal Boutique. And do your organic, cruelty-free vegan shoes belong on the shelves at a Cowboy Boot Outlet? (Hilariously, no.)
If you are working your butt off to put your product on the wrong shelves in the wrong store, you’ll quickly exhaust your most valuable resources: time & money. Having the right BBB helps you avoid the inevitable burn-out associated with a leak in your sales funnel.
Let’s think bigger than your backyard. Where do the people who buy your product live? The geographic location of the stores you want to see your product placed in is equally relevant to your success as an entrepreneur.
You can sell the right product to the wrong people in the wrong place, etc. but you won’t get very far. Your BBB must target stores that sell to the right people, in the right place, and the right time.
Step 2: Sarah Shaw’s BBB Super-Secrets
Creating an BBB can be a lot of work. And I should know. Sarah Shaw Handbags had to learn the hard way before I discovered this technique.
How to contact 25 stores in a week
I don’t want you to suffer. Here are my four best secrets to successfully creating an BBB:
- Look at a few competitor store listings.
A lot of brands have a link on their website that says, “Find us at these locations.” Those, websites are gold mines. Right in front of you is the perfect list of stores that are already offering a product that is similar to yours. Be sure to look at the websites before you contact them to be sure they’d carry your line. Next, think about complimentary products and do the same thing and review that list. If you sell handbags, look for brands that make clothing you feel your target market wears and check out their store list. If you sell baby clothes, look for brands that sell baby toys, bottles or bedding and take a peek at their store list. - Read magazines to find new stores.
Read magazines to find popular stores. Magazines still credit stores in the “where to buy” and you can often find the perfect stores in the magazines your target market reads. - Check out blog listings for “Best of”
Ugg Boots CEO Brian Smith recently spoke at an expo I attended. It turns out Oprah listed him as one of her “Favorite Things.” His sales instantly sky rocketed. Look for the blogs of key influencers in your industry and see what they are celebrating as the “Best of”. Are there any up and coming baby boutiques? Did they mention a new product that’s complimentary to yours? - Google “Best in…” for your cities.
We already touched on the importance of researching the right geographic location to sell your products in. A second idea is to google the “best of” in those cities.You can be generic and say, “best clothes shopping (city)” or get specific to your product, “best fitness wear for women (city).” Remember these will be the crème de la crème in your BBB so don’t expect to find 1,000 results for every area you search.
Bonus BBB Builder
Another thing you can do that might have not even occurred to you is to ask your target market where they go shopping. This is perfect for very unique products that you don’t have the luxury of using the above tactics for.
I’m a huge fan of Facebook groups, but maybe you prefer a forum or Twitter party setting. Find these on social media and just start asking the people that you meet:
- Where do you go shopping?
- Where did you buy your last XYZ?
- Would you try an ABC product?
The anonymity of the online environment will let you harvest the field for the best possible targeted responses from the people around you. The key is to be friendly and polite. Act like a friend.
However, let’s say that you sell dog sweaters. That’s a pretty cool, targeted niche. Buyers have to own a dog plus have the expendable income to buy clothes for their pooch.
Why not reach out to someone and ask, “I see your dog has a sweater on. Where did you buy it?” If you tweet @ someone, 9 times out of 10 they will answer you.
And the answer will lead you to do additional research of a store that should definitely be part of your BBB. Just think how easy it was to find that tool – a person you could sell your product to – right there in front of you on social media.
Bigger is Better
Your curated BBB will be the perfect list of stores that you have the potential to work with. Therefore, don’t limit yourself.
Conduct the above searches once a quarter (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4). Put it on your calendar and make sure it gets done. Consistency is key to getting the best results in marketing.
Once you have a large list of stores buying from you on a consistent basis, when there are ups and downs you won’t feel the pinch as much. The bigger your list, the more stability you’ll have. Likewise, the more connections you create, the more opportunities you’ll have to develop a thriving, healthy, no-excuses business for yourself.
And that, my friends, is what will keep you moving forward no matter what.
Learn more of my secrets here……its free!
Like what you read? Ready to step up your own game?
Book a strategy session with me and let’s see how I can help.
https://sarahshawconsulting.com/sarahshaw/apply-case-study/schedule-strategy-session/
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There are 2 comments
Wendi Knox says: Well, you obviously know how to do this. I opened your email immediately.
Thanks for the tips and for continuing to be honest, inspiring, authentic you.
Rebecca says: Sarah,
We are learning so much from you! Looking forward to applying your tips and tricks. We’ll keep you posted how it’s going.
Thank you!
Rebecca
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Building an email list can be tough, I totally agree. But an email list is just as important as social media in my opinion. Social media is fleeting. Your customer might not see your post flash by, the FB or Instagram algorithm changes all the time so you never really know if anyone is seeing your posts (as much as you hope at least), and unless they purchase, it’s hard to tell if it is driving traffic or not.
When I started my handbag line, the internet was just getting started, and people were just beginning to get online for the first time and the biggest thing since sliced bread was www.match.com.
Note the www…… everyone used that back then so you’d KNOW it was a website. LOL.
And to get on the website, even just to learn more about it, you needed an email address to get past their “paywall”. The Paywall was a pop up of sorts that asked for your name and email in order to “grant” you access to see what was behind the curtain. They built a list of millions in a few short weeks and that was more valuable than anyone just “knowing” about their company because they could market to them incessentanly.
Daily. And I mean sometimes multiple times a day. I’d never seen anything like this.
They were the first company that I knew of who “collected” emails, then turned around and marketed to you to get you to sign up for their services. And they were relentless……
I’m not saying you need to send emails daily, or emails multiple times a day, but if you don’t email your list at least weekly, they will forget about you and end up buying something similar chez someone else who is sending them emails.
So Why are Pop ups so important? Pop ups are a way to collect emails via your own “Paywall” and continue to market to potentially interested customers. If they take the time to sign up (first baby step) then they are showing you that they are on the first step of the staircase and want to keep walking up. It’s your job to keep enticing them to the top! AKA buy something.
Step 1: Sign up with a content management system like Active Campaign, Mailchimp, Klayvio or whichever one you like best. I like Active Campaign and have been using it for over 10 years. Some people choose to use the forms that come with these programs and I have too in various situations, but I also recommend Privy if you use Shopify, and Ninja Pops if you use Wordpress. They can easily be installed and connected to these CMS systems.
Step 2: The first and easiest way to collect emails is to have a homepage pop up with an offer for a % off the first order. That is a way to ‘collect” emails and give something in return. It’s the first step in building rapport with your potential customers. It’s like saying, let’s be friends, I’ll give you something you want, and you give me something I want, your email.
Step 3: Make sure you have an automation set up in the CMS system. This is an automated email series that will be sent to anyone who gives you their email address on your pop up. I call it the Hello Series. The idea of this series is to again, build rapport, and tell the customer a bit about you and your company over a 2 week period. This series has nothing to do with your regular email marketing emails. This is a sole and separate email series to build rapport so just set it and forget it. Yes customers will probably get some of these on the same days as other marketing emails but just don’t worry about it.
This is how it works:
The first email to go out immediately is the one with the coupon code they just signed up for. Add something about your brand and photos of your products linking to your website.
The second one goes out the next day and asks them if they had a chance to use the coupon yet, and then tells them to whitelist your email so they don’t miss your promotions and special offers for people on your list. Always have images of products that link to your website.
The third email goes 4 days later and in this one I like to tell a story about how I got started with the business. Add images and links here too.
The fourth email shares something cool about your business. Could be some nice stores you are in, a press placement, a celebrity who has your stuff or perhaps posted about it on Instagram. It can also be a tutorial about how to use your products, or a blog post you wrote on a topic they’d be interested in. Share something that will make them feel happy for you, and encourage them to hang with you.
The fifth and final email in this sequence encourages them to follow you on social media. I like to entice them with “doing” something in exchange for a gift. Could be something like “post your photo using or wearing our product, and be entered in our monthly drawing for a free X”.
Step 4: Now that you have collected more emails with a pop up, your ongoing marketing efforts will start to pay off faster. As the list continues to build, you’ll have more people to market to, invite to events you do, and share your good news with. Hopefully they will become loyal customers, share your site with friends, and continue to be an active part of your social media channels. Keep sending emails weekly ( at least) to your list so keep them active and engaged. I’m sure you’ll see a big difference.
If you want ideas to help you fill in the blanks about the above, drop me a comment below and I’ll be happy to help out.
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Do you know how to set the right price for your product line? Lordy knows I sure didn’t when I first started my handbag line. But once I learned the correct way to do it, I never mispriced anything again! Now I want to share this method with you so you can be profitable and not wonder why you can’t pay yourself.
It took me years to figure out how to set the right price for my product line when I first started out, so I can imagine you might be in the same situation. If you are not sure if you are making any money, then there is a good chance you’re not pricing your products correctly.
Proper costing is the lifeline to your business and profitability. Taking into consideration and finding all the hidden costs, is the key. So many people forget little things that they add up and then BOOM, you are not making any money. Once you have the actual cost (cost of goods sold) then it is easy to figure out the wholesale and retail prices so you are always making money.
I’d love to share this formula with you. It totally saved my rear when I was in year 3….. Just thinking of all that lost money in the first 2 years…. I want to cry!
Drop me a comment with “PRICED FOR PROFIT” and I’ll reach out and connect with you.
