How to start selling?

Jurga78

Hi everyone, looking for some thoughts, views and advises

Me and my friend had started a business a year ago. Manufacturing of organic fertiliser. Finally we will have our product ready in a couple of weeks.

Absolutely clueless how to start selling to Gardening Centers , big and small.
Do we just go there with a product and presentation, do we write an email, do we call to arrange an appointment? How does this go?:rolleyes:

jimmii

Ring first and ask when is the time to pop in. Most places like that are going to be quite big and you don't want to go to the hassle of getting down to them only to find the person to talk to isn't there. You can email too but I feel a call will probably be more likely to get a good response. Do follow up the call with an email with a link to your website or something though so that if they are really interested early they can find out a bit more info and formulate any questions they may have for you about certain product specifics etc.

Peterdalkey

Have you done the basics including
Established nutritional content of product.
Properly printed sacks with bar codes and formatted pallet size.
Pricing and trade discount structure.
Sorted distribution and cost of same.
Website and or Facebook page for product.
A PR and promotional plan for getting your company product known... One West Cork organic fertiliser company got a great spot on Nationwide recently. They had all their homework done!
One you have all the above in place or ready to roll, you are now ready to start selling. If you start selling first, you will damage your brand/product with the market right from the get go and look like complete amateurs to your target market.

I would visit say half a dozen garden centres and ask the owners for their advice as how best to tackle the market. They are generally very earthy helpful types and I expect will be very generous to you. DO NOT TRY TO SELL THEM AT THIS POINT, if they love it, let them ask to buy. You must not be seen at this stage to be "cutey" selling, rather just looking for their very experienced advice.

terryhobdell

Did you not do any start your business course? Selling is an absolute fundamental. Peter has highlighted many basics in his mail but there is an old saying If you can't sell it don't make it.I really think you have put the cart before the horse. Get out quick and talk to those garden centre owners and see what they tell you.Good Luck.

Jurga78

Thank's so much for your posts!
Yes we're more like the people who are a bit clueless on how to do business. We have an idea, we love it and work hard and try to learn as much in the process .

bizzyb

Jurga78 wrote: »

Thank's so much for your posts!
Yes we're more like the people who are a bit clueless on how to do business. We have an idea, we love it and work hard and try to learn as much in the process .

Jurga last year i did a course with my county enterprise board "The Art of Effective Selling" i think it was called. You would benefit hugely from it, its amazing the amount you will learn in just 2 days and it gives you the confidence to get out and start selling.... go for it!

Jurga78

will have a look what's on board thanks

87pio

Could u pm me more details about your product?

Jurga78

Jurga78 wrote: »

will have a look what's on board thanks

I was looking at organic fertilisers a couple months ago. Theres lots of them on the market so before you go pitching anyone, you better know the prices of all the competition and why the garden centre should buy yours instead! They are probably getting pitched a lot for this kind of product lately

Jurga78

For starters we've decided to exhibit at Bloom in Phoenix park later this month.

Gloomtastic!

Jurga78 wrote: »

For starters we've decided to exhibit at Bloom in Phoenix park later this month.

Great showcase but you need to work hard to convert passive passer-bys into buyers.

Make your stand interesting and eye catching, something to look at and learn from.

You want to get visitors' details - email addresses, phone numbers so you can add them to your mailing lists. Run a good competition.

Get plenty of leaflets designed and printed, you'll be handing them out to everyone who passes.

Beware the time-wasters. Professional bores who will talk to you all day about absolutely nothing while hundreds of potential customers are walking by. Politely but firmly say that you would love to talk to them but you have work to do.

Talk to all the other exhibitors, they will be perfect buyers of your products. You will be able to meet them before and after the show closes to the public, the build-up and close down. Talk to everyone, you have something in common with them all. 'How's the show going for you?' is a great opening line.
Plus there will probably be exhibitor parties afterwards, go along and mingle and mix, try keep it social though.

Do ' Show Offers', deals that are only valid for the duration of the event.

It's called 'working the show' and is bloody hard work. Do not expect to do business if you are just standing there waiting for people to come to you.

Follow up all your contacts as soon as the show finishes, with after show offers. You may get a visitor list from Bloom but you need to be careful about who owns the data.

Good luck to you!

Jurga78

gold worth post there, appreciate that and a big thanks!

Jurga78

We have pretty much everything ready - brochures, offers, samples. Great idea with the mailing list, will think of something.
Excited and anxious all at once!

Big thank's to everyone at boards.ie - getting loads of help and support here.

Billyblog

Get a part time sales job for a direct sales company. You will be forced to learn quickly, Great experience and extremely valuable.

lucky john

Gloomtastic has obviously done his time at these type of shows. I'd just like to add a couple of points.

Im sure you have though of this already but just incase not. If you intend to sell to the general public it's a nice walk from the trade area to the car parks so bear in mind the weight of the bag you are selling. The age profile of you potential customer there is fairly high so carrying a heavy bag of compost might be of putting for them. Also there will be plenty of landscapers and small garden centre owners checking out trends there. A 5kg sample bag for them might work.

At these type of events its normal for exhibitors to be on site an hour or two before gates open. Get set up as quickly as possible and then use the time to visit your fellow exhibitors (potential customers). Duering the show there's no time and at the end of the day everyone is wrecked and just want to go home. Make sure it the decision maker on the stand your talking to. Some stands will have staff on for the weekend and they're of no use to you.

To reiterated one point gloomtastis made. Beware of tyre kickers. They will detain you for ages and waste your time. You will develop a sixth sence for these eventually and see them coming a mile off. On a busy day you need to have a line to shake them off quickly but politely and move on to the better prospect.

Best of luck.

lucky john

Jurga78 wrote: »

We have pretty much everything ready - brochures, offers, samples. Great idea with the mailing list, will think of something.
Excited and anxious all at once!

Big thank's to everyone at boards.ie - getting loads of help and support here.

For a mailing list, run a free competition for some product delivered to the winner. Get name, address and email or mobile numbers to enter.

onedmc

Peterdalkey wrote: »

I would visit say half a dozen garden centres and ask the owners for their advice as how best to tackle the market. They are generally very earthy helpful types and I expect will be very generous to you. DO NOT TRY TO SELL THEM AT THIS POINT, if they love it, let them ask to buy. You must not be seen at this stage to be "cutey" selling, rather just looking for their very experienced advice.

I think Peter is spot on, do some face to face market research, ask the garden centre for feedback on quality, selling points, price packaging etc. You can build up a database but more importantly a relationship.

If they dont bite there and then Ask them can you return with the real thing in a few weeks you can discuss the product more and keep the process going with traditional marketing.

Peterdalkey

The notion of actually selling bags of organic fertiliser at a garden show is daft! Doing so at a national show is lunacy. Who in their right mind would want to buy and haul around a bags like this? These shows are about promotion of your products and if you have not got your product in the visitors local garden centres, you are wasting your time and money.

You should be spending scarce resources on getting the product into as many garden centres as possible at this point. It would be money and time better spent to run manned in-centre promotions at your bigger outlets.

if you want to get something out of Bloom (no doubt you have by now paid your money!), concentrate on selling to the trade and forget consumer bag sales. Work the trade stands but many garden supply operations will be there as visitors.

Get a BIG sign... Stockists Wanted!!

Jurga78

thank's John, yeah we thought about the weight of the bags. We'll have 10 L, 5L and even 0.5L sample buckets.
Do you think it would be good to have a price list/ commercial offer for the potential wholesale customers? (was thinking about the envelopes with a brochure and an offer in them)

Jurga78

Thanks Peter, the idea wasn't to earn money from sales in Bloom, the idea was to get known and to contact potential customers.
The bags are not those of the compost , it's not a compost anyway, the biggest one is 10L, then 5L and 0.5L.

Peterdalkey

It will be important to have a list of outlets in place to be able to advise interested consumers where they can buy your product locally to them.

Do not give out trade price lists at the show, Use the opportunity to capture the trade contact's details and then send them on samples/brochures/price lists after the show, and then commence the real sales process.

It would probably be a good idea to have the retail selling prices on display on the stand. As your product is obviously a concentrate, it would be an idea to have some graphics on view that contrasts the amount of your product that needs to be transported/stored versus traditional bagged organic product.Something like ...... 10 litres of our WormWee = 1 pallet of organic FibreMush!!

Trojan

Peterdalkey wrote: »

visit say half a dozen garden centres and ask the owners for their advice as how best to tackle the market. They are generally very earthy helpful types and I expect will be very generous to you. DO NOT TRY TO SELL THEM AT THIS POINT, if they love it, let them ask to buy. You must not be seen at this stage to be "cutey" selling, rather just looking for their very experienced advice.

Strongly agree with this point. Plenty of the business owners will be happy to share and help - so long as you're being genuine in looking for that help.

One specific example is John Horkan - he is a great guy, hugely knowledgeable and I know that he likes to give back to the business community by sharing that knowledge. He'd be one of those I'd be asking for advice if I were in your shoes, and I'd be sure to act on it if he offers.

lucky john

Can't say I know a whole lot about garden centre businesses but I know someone who had a product he wanted to sell to them. He did a lot of travelling for very few sales. He was also at bloom a couple of years ago. He found that most centres buy from a distributors rather than direct. They did buy direct but not it the quantities thad made sence financially for him.

In the end he made contact with a coulpe of distributors and arranged to meet them at the garden show in NEC in Birmingham. He hasn't looked back since

Just be aware in your retail pricing at the show that you leave enough room to make a profit for yourself, a distributor, and the garden centre. If you're prices aren't public yet you could display a good price but offer a special show price for the weekend. It might leave you some wriggle room later. It's always easier to drop your price rather than rise it.

I also agree with peter. Don't give trade a price if you can avoid it over the weekend. Just promote yourself and your product.

lucky john

Can't say I know a whole lot about garden centre businesses but I know someone who had a product he wanted to sell to them. He did a lot of travelling for very few sales. He was also at bloom a couple of years ago. He found that most centres buy from a distributors rather than direct. They did buy direct but not it the quantities thad made sence financially for him.

In the end he made contact with a coulpe of distributors and arranged to meet them at the garden show in NEC in Birmingham. He hasn't looked back since

Just be aware in your retail pricing at the show that you leave enough room to make a profit for yourself, a distributor, and the garden centre. If you're prices aren't public yet you could display a good price but offer a special show price for the weekend. It might leave you some wriggle room later. It's always easier to drop your price rather than rise it.

I also agree with peter. Don't give trade a price if you can avoid it over the weekend. Just promote yourself and your product.

Jurga78

Thanks John

lucky john

I for one would be very interested to know how you got on at bloom. Nothing detailed or personal just your general impressions of the weekend for promoting a business.

jimmii

Would also like to know. We had a look through the market area and wasn't overly impressed seem to be lots of things there that were just straight off the boat from China. We were thinking of doing it next year but after going this year I don't think so.

Jurga78

Hi there. Well, since our product is new our main goal was just to go out there and tell about it. The sales where bad, though. The organisation of the stands at the retail pavilion was very poor. Our product is for gardening and we ended up somewhere between water filters and handbags... other side of the plant nursery... Heard the same of the other first timer. I'd say we won't do it next year - the expenses are too high. But we've got lots of contacts, made nice friendships and got lots of advice from the other exhibitors.
Heard lots of praise for a show in Mallow in a couple of weeks. Going there to find out. At least it's cheaper and we were assured to be put next to the plants.

jimmii

Interesting to hear I was coming on here in the hope that you had posted as our main distributor has just asked for my thoughts on doing it next year! From your experience doing it who do you think it is a good idea for?

Jurga78

For established known product, easy to carry, not bulky. The tiny night lights and ceramic pictures where flying off the stand in front of us... Lot's of people looking for a bargain / free stuff.

jimmii

It comes in 100ml and 1ltr sizes and is a relatively well known brand especially in Dublin and i'm sure we could do up some night lights etc to keep things ticking over! Thanks for getting back good to get more info!