Getting ranged doesn’t mean getting sold

The sell-in story has to survive in-store reality

There’s a heck of a lot of knowledge and work that sits behind a new product launch.

Then the product arrives in store.

The shopper is oblivious to all the effort involved to get it there.

Quite possibly, so is the person working in the store.

So an important question for any product brand is:

Is the reason the buyer listed your product still obvious when a shopper is looking at it on shelf?

Because somewhere between the sales presentation and the retail shelf, quite a lot can disappear.

The carefully crafted proposition becomes a few words on a pack.

The product story becomes whatever the member of staff remembers from a training session six weeks ago.

The reason to pay more becomes a price ticket sitting beside a cheaper alternative.

The shopper is left to work out the rest.

That’s quite a significant gap.

Some products can sell themselves. Others can’t.

This is where I think Steven’s “hang and hope” comment becomes more interesting.

Not every product requires the same amount of support.

If someone wants a familiar, inexpensive product and already understands what it does, the pack, price and location may genuinely be enough.

The shopper knows the category.

They understand the need.

The risk of choosing badly is relatively small.

But imagine a new product with unfamiliar technology.

Or a premium version where much of the value isn’t immediately visible.

Or something entering a category where customers already have established habits.

Or a product that works brilliantly, but only when somebody understands what makes it different.

Now the shelf has much more work to do.

There’s an important question to ask:

How much help does somebody actually need to understand and choose this product?

A launch can have a huge amount of activity around it while still leaving the shopper confused at the critical moment.

Equally, a simple product with a clear proposition may need relatively little.

The support should reflect the difficulty of the decision.

The product has to work when nobody is there to explain it

A comment from Alan Roper, Managing Director of Blue Diamond Garden Centres, makes Steven’s point from the buyer’s side particularly well.

In our Glee Tips from Industry Leaders episode, Alan explained that when he walks a trade show he deliberately avoids being talked through products. He wants to know whether the product can make sense without the salesperson standing beside it.

“I don’t want anybody to come over and talk to me about their product, because I want the product on the stand to do the job it’s got to do in my stores.”

“If that product isn’t talking to me in the right way, through the packaging and the narrative on the packaging, if I can’t understand what that product is on their trade stand, I’m not going to buy it, because I don’t have anybody standing in my centres next to their product explaining it to them.”

That’s a tough test, but a fair one.

At a trade show, the product is surrounded by the people who know it best. There is a sales team, a carefully designed stand and plenty of opportunity to explain the idea.

In store, most of that disappears.

If the proposition only becomes compelling after a five-minute explanation from somebody who helped develop it, the proposition isn’t travelling far enough on its own.

Packaging becomes especially important here. It doesn’t need to tell the customer everything, but it does need to carry enough of the story to make the product understandable and worth considering.

What is it? Who is it for? What makes it different? Why should I care? And, if it costs more, why might it be worth more?

Alan’s point is not that retail staff are irrelevant. It’s that a brand shouldn’t design a product story that depends on somebody always being available to rescue it.

As he put it:

“You’ve got to get there through the packaging. If the packaging can’t do that, it’s not going to sell out in the garden centres.”

The retailer shouldn’t have to invent your proposition

Of course, not every answer belongs on the front of a pack, and some products will always benefit from staff knowledge, demonstrations, POS or digital content.

But if your product needs explaining, somebody still has to be able to explain it simply.

Imagine a member of staff being asked:

What makes this one different?
Why is it £10 more?
Which one would you recommend?
Is this suitable for what I want to do?
Does it work with the thing I already own?

They need an answer.

If the brand hasn’t made that answer clear, the retailer has to fill in the gaps.

They may do an excellent job.

They may also say:

“They’re all much the same really.”
“This one’s more expensive, but I’m not sure why.”
“I’d probably just go with that one.”

There goes your beautifully prepared positioning.

This isn’t an argument for turning every retail employee into a product expert.

They have far too many products to understand for that to be realistic.

It is an argument for making the proposition easy to carry.

Who is the product for?

What problem does it solve?

Why would I choose this instead of that?

Why might it be worth paying more?

What is the simplest useful way of describing it?

If those answers require a 40-slide presentation, it probably requires some further thinking.

Buyers need confidence in what happens after the listing too

There’s another angle to this.

When brands think about sell-in, the focus naturally falls on persuading the buyer.

Why should they list us?
What margin can they make?
How big is the opportunity?
What makes the product different?
What evidence supports the forecast?

Those are all legitimate questions.

But there is another one sitting behind them:

What are you going to do to help this sell?

A buyer isn’t rewarded for giving a product shelf space. They need the shelf space to earn its keep.

So the strongest sell-in story shouldn’t end with the listing. It should give the retailer confidence in what happens afterwards.

How will shoppers discover the product?
What will make it easy to understand?
How will it be supported in store and online?
What might encourage trial?
What will help retail teams explain it?
What happens if rate of sale is slower than expected?

There’s a world of difference between presenting a launch plan and presenting a sell-through plan.

The first explains how the product arrives.

The second explains how you intend to help it succeed.

The job the customer is doing may be bigger than your product

Steven also talked about something that can sound rather old-fashioned in retail language: attachment selling.

But there’s a more useful way to think about it.

Take somebody buying a tomato plant.

They might also need compost. Feed. Canes. Ties. And perhaps a suitable pot.

Viewed purely commercially, those are additional sales.

But viewed from the customer’s perspective, they may be the things that help turn a tomato plant into actual tomatoes.

That changes the meaning of the conversation.

You’re no longer simply asking: What else can we sell them?

You’re asking: What else do they need to succeed at what they’re trying to do?

That distinction is valuable for brands as well as retailers.

Sometimes marketers become so focused on their individual product that they lose sight of the wider task. Understanding the wider outcome can reveal useful opportunities for packaging, content, merchandising, bundles, demonstrations and retail partnerships.

And sometimes helping a customer buy more genuinely gives them a better result.

Premium products need the value story to travel

This becomes particularly important when brands want shoppers to trade up. The product manager may know exactly why the premium version costs more: better materials, greater concentration, longer life, better performance, additional functionality, or lower cost over time.

But none of those advantages are automatically obvious from a higher price. The shopper needs a reason to believe the difference is relevant to them.

Steven talked about good, better, best ranges and the role staff can play in helping customers understand their options.

I think there’s a wider principle here.

A price hierarchy without a clear value hierarchy leaves the customer doing the hard work.

They can see that one product costs £20 and another costs £35. What they may not understand is why.

And if the only obvious difference is price, the cheaper product has a very compelling argument.

The premium story has to survive without the marketing manager standing beside it.

Through the pack, a demonstration, comparison, digital content, a sales assistant, or usually a combination.

But somewhere, the extra value needs to become visible.

Retail support shouldn’t become retail dependency

There is a counterargument to all this.

Surely the brand can’t be responsible for everything that happens in somebody else’s store?

And you’d be right, no, it can’t.

Retailers control their own environments.

Staff change. Displays move. Stock ends up in unexpected places. POS gets damaged or disappears.

The product you imagined sitting beautifully within a coordinated range can find itself three shelves away beside something completely different.

That reality makes the proposition more important, not less.

The goal shouldn’t be to create a product that only works when every element of the retail plan is executed perfectly. It should be to create something robust enough to survive imperfect conditions.

Retail training can help. Good POS can help. Clear merchandising can help.

But none of them should be disguising a proposition that is inherently difficult to understand.

The first 90 days matter

There’s another reason I think brands need to think beyond getting listed.

The first few months reveal things the sell-in presentation couldn’t.

Where are shoppers hesitating in making a decision? Which questions keep being asked? Are people understanding the difference between variants? Are retailers putting the product where you expected? Are online reviews revealing a misunderstanding? Are certain stores doing noticeably better than others?

Getting listed creates an opportunity to learn.

Yet it’s easy for organisational attention to move straight onto the next launch, or whatever else is coming next. That’s a wasted opportunity.

If one store is dramatically outselling another, there may be something worth understanding.

The merchandising may be better. Perhaps the team understands the product better. The customer base may be different. Or the original assumptions behind the launch were simply wrong.

Sell-through data isn’t just a sales result.

It can tell you something about the quality of the proposition and how well it survives contact with the shopper.

Distribution is not demand

I can understand why getting ranged feels like the finish line. It’s tangible.

You can count the stores, photograph the product on shelf and share the news internally.

And without distribution, most product brands don’t have much of a business.

But distribution and demand are different things.

A listing gives the customer the opportunity to buy. Marketing still needs to give them a reason to choose. And for products sold through retail, that means thinking about the whole journey between the brand and the shopper.

The buyer needs a compelling commercial story.

The retailer needs confidence the product can sell.

Store teams may need a simple way to explain it.

The shopper needs to notice it, understand it, want it and feel confident enough to choose it.

Those are different stages of the same sale.

So instead of asking: How many stores are we going into?

We should be asking: What are we doing now to make sure the product ends up in a customer’s basket?

Because getting ranged is an achievement.

Getting sold is the point.