So far in this series about creating tools for your sales reps, we’ve covered brand story training, merchandise guidelines and sales presentations. This last installment of Help Reps Help You brings us to the ever-important issue of keeping your brand top-of-mind with your retailers.

Think about the gap that exists for retailers between ordering your product and receiving it… There’s a whole lotta missed opportunity for your brand to stay on their radar.

HELPFUL ITEM 4: The “Radar” Piece

These pieces are especially helpful for small- and medium-sized brands because they not only build anticipation for your shipment, but they let the customer know you’re alive, excited to serve them and available for questions and/or support.

Radar pieces are simple communications that can take the form of branded email or snail mail (think: postcard), and are an inexpensive way to stay in touch.

Content and visuals should always follow your seasonal or yearly marketing campaign so that messaging is consistent.

Create these items in advance of your selling season and provide the materials to your reps so they have them at the ready. Remember, the goal is to make it easier for your sales team to do their job. With prepared communications in the hopper, they’ll be able to make regular contact with customers by hitting send or stopping at the mailbox.

The bottom line? Closing the sale-to-shipment gap with simple, branded communications is an easy way to remain on retailers’ radar throughout the year.

By this third post of four on How To Help Reps Help You, I think we’ve all agreed that small- and medium-sized manufacturers can be challenged in the sales tools area. (If you’re not on board, read Part 1 about Brand Story Training and Part 2 covering Merchandise Presentation Guidelines.)

The overarching idea to ensure successful relationships with your reps and retailers alike, is to make it easy for them to sell your products.

HELPFUL ITEM 3: Electronic Sales Presentations

Rather than throwing a stack of catalogs and brochures at your reps and sending them on their way, provide them with an electronic presentation. If you want to be sure your brand message is clear to your retail partners, this is the way to go. This is especially important when your reps have limited touches with retailers throughout the year – you have to make an impact while you have retailers’ ears and eyes.

The presentation can take on a few forms, depending on your reps’ capabilities:

• Mobile (optimized for iPads/tablets) – Tablets, particularly the iPad, are hugely popular with reps. Optimize your presentation to be accessible on these devices, and reps will always be prepared.
• Web-based – Accessible anywhere there’s an internet connection, this format also allows for embedded video and interactivity.
• PDF – These files can be shared via email and are also easily updated at home base.

Each of these options are totally portable and very manageable (no stacks of printed material sliding around in trunks!). An added bonus is that they can be shared across the web after a sales call as a great follow-up tool.

The bottom line? When reps have an arsenal of tools available to sell your stuff, they can’t help but be successful!

In Part 1 of this series we talked about the importance of Brand Story Training for your rep force — a way to help reps learn about your brand so they can convey your story and get retailers excited to stock your products.

Once you’ve “prepped your reps” don’t leave them guessing when it comes to merchandising your products at retail.

HELPFUL ITEM 2: Merchandising Presentation Guidelines

Merchandise presentation guidelines are very simple documents (could be as small as one page, depending on the size of your line) that illustrate how to arrange your products for retail display. These guidelines are not full-on planograms, but they do contain diagrams highlighting which of your products should be folded or hung and suggestions for organizing by type, style and/or color. Merchandise presentation guidelines can also show placement of branded signage.

Depending on the territory they’re covering, many reps have limited time to spend visiting their accounts. Merchandising guidelines help them maximize their time by providing a display recipe to convey to retailers. Eliminating the need to reinvent the wheel for each store’s display leaves reps more time to talk about your brand and product line. An added bonus is that reps can leave the guidelines with their retailers so that staff can easily do floor sets and restock displays.

Merchandise presentation plays a huge part in how well your brand is represented at retail. The goal is to provide the consumer with a seamless brand experience, from seeing your ad and website to finding your product in the store. Remember, we’re trying to make reps’ jobs easier to ensure your success, so having clear guidelines for how your products are arranged and your signage is placed will do that. Your brand likely has one chance to convey its desired presentation to retailers — when the rep is making their visit. Seize that opportunity!

The bottom line? Don’t leave room for guesswork. Prepare your reps (and retailers) with this simple tool that makes displaying your merchandise foolproof.

Small- and medium-sized manufacturers in the outdoor and snow industries are challenged when it comes to providing their reps effective tools. Additionally the sales force probably has limited yearly touches with retailers and clinics aren’t likely conducted with floor staff for smaller brands.

More than just having workbooks and catalogs to leave behind on retailer visits, reps should be able to speak about the brand’s story knowledgeably and (hopefully) passionately to get retailers on-board and excited to stock the products.

HELPFUL ITEM 1: Brand Story Training

Smaller manufacturers are working on limited resources to get the job done. Without annual live sales meetings, brands can turn to alternatives like sharing short videos showing the manufacturing process, home office culture, trade show shenanigans…anything that supports your brand story. You can pull them all together into one video to share during your presentation. Or keep them short, embed them on your site or send Vimeo or YouTube links out at regular intervals so that reps can learn in short bursts.

A picture is worth 1,000 words.

If reps don’t know what makes you YOU, they won’t be able to convince retailers to support you.

The bottom line? Make it easy on your reps. No one ever complained about having too many tools that make their job easier!

Wouldn’t it make your life easier if you could supply your retailers with solutions that saved space for them, and allowed your brand to maintain impact?

Thought so! Enter two very cool products I came across this past weekend that will help you do just that.

Pegboard Skinz

image courtesy panel.com

Panel has released Pegboard Skinz, which can be printed in full-color and applied to existing pegboard panels. They’re ordered as fully or partially “holed” sheets, and can be easily removed and replaced.

When I saw these, my mind ran away with ideas for their use. Imagine being able to cover a portion of a wall with your brand’s campaign theme, while taking up no extra space. Much better than sending free-hanging/-standing signage, hoping the retailer uses it.

Z-Cards

image courtesy zcardna.com

Z-Card North America prints pieces with a map-like fold that have a hard cover on each end. They’re durable enough to be mailed on their own and can withstand more abuse than the average printed matter. You can probably guess that these set me off, too.

What if, instead of creating heavy, sizable dealer workbooks and catalogs, Z-Cards were used? The unique way they unfold presents a perfect solution for dividing information into categories – there are 46 “panels” to use. I can picture a very portable (think trade shows) and manageable (think behind the retail counter) workbook solution coming in this format. Not to mention, this is a memorable way to present your brand that will save you a ton on mailing costs.

For our clients’ brands, I am all about space-saving, cost-cutting ways that are long on impact. Making life easier for your retailers in the process ain’t going to hurt you, either!

Do you think these are solutions your brand would implement? Tell me in the comments below!

1. Your booth is your brand in 3D. Visitors are surrounded by colors, textures, images and products that tell your story. And when it’s staffed with employees, it’s an ecosystem of company culture and mood. Capture staff interactions and booth events on camera – you might even consider “interviewing” employees using questions about the brand. Anything you capture can be used as fodder for your email marketing, company blog or for employee recruitment.
2. Many brands don’t have national sales meetings and rarely see all of their reps in one place, at one time. If that’s you, you can inspire them by creating a “how-to” video. Record some of the sales interactions taking place in the booth as examples. Your booth is the perfect backdrop to help reps learn how to sell the brand, not just the merchandise.
3. Chances are the product in your booth is merchandised exactly how you’d prefer it to be on the retail floor. Take this opportunity to document how products are displayed in accordance with your brand guidelines and/or seasonal theme, and share them with your retailers and outside sales reps when you return from the show. This is especially helpful if your company doesn’t produce planograms or merchandising guidelines.

Got any other ideas, or examples of how you’ve gotten a little extra out of your trade show presentation? Tell me in the comments below!

What we found really impressed me because it was executed so well. It also inspired me to imagine the strategic thinking that went into planning such a seamless consumer experience.

I first saw the main piece of POP atop a rack of clothing, which serves to explain the many fabrics the manufacturer uses. Instead of relying on hang-tags on individual garments, this sign (with well-designed infographics, I might add) accomplishes three things:

1. Draws attention to the fixture from a distance.
2. Shows the diverse selection to the shopper at a glance.
3. Familiarizes the shopper with the unique icons assigned to each fabric (which also appear on hang-tags).

As I walked to the front of another fixture, a sign specific to a single fabric caught my eye. It wasn’t incredibly detailed – because it contained a QR code.

I scanned it with my smart phone, of course (because I’m curious like that), and was delighted to see that they had used the code perfectly. In my experience, brands fall short with QR code use 80% of the time. If a consumer scans your code, take them somewhere useful, unexpected, or rewarding – don’t send them to your home page.

Columbia’s code sent me to a mobile-optimized landing page containing a list of the icons for the fabrics, each linking to their own descriptive pages with video demos.

Some important end-user take aways:

• Columbia gave an exemplary brand experience, even though I was shopping in a box retailer.
• I was inspired to purchase their apparel because it’s obvious that they want to connect with their users.
• The brand took care to educate me on their products, instead of relying on the retailer’s sales staff.

So tell me in the comments below:

How can/does your brand uplevel the in-store experience for customers?

Consider taking this concept a step further with a brand short – part movie, part commercial. For example, we collaborated with Ryan Smith Photography on one for our client, Naukabout.

click the link below to view the short

Naukabout on Vimeo

Being an aprés sports apparel line, parts of their brand “essence” were combined to create a story their target audience can identify with. In 30 seconds viewers get a solid idea of what the Naukabout brand is.

The client can then use the video for sales presentations, as a tool for sales reps, as a promotional piece to end-users, or on screens in its tradeshow booth.

Lululemon and Horny Toad are two other brands that nail the brand short. Not only are they fun to watch, but the audience gets to hear what the brand sounds like. Music adds the extra dimension to draw consumers into the brand story. Check these out for more inspiration: Lululemon‘s 2011 Summer Sneak Peak and Horny Toad‘s Prelude to a Dinner Party.

Brand archetypes are the embedded stories your company is guided by and moved to live out. You can create a more engaging brand by employing your archetype.

You might think options for companies in the outdoor and snowsports industries are limited to the Everyperson or Explorer. Not so. Your brand could be the Sage, the Creator or the Jester.

Archetype, Individual, Organization
Innocent, Dolly Parton, Disney
Everyperson, Jimmy Carter, Gap
Hero, Lone Ranger, Nike
Caregiver, Mother Teresa, Campbell’s Soup
Explorer, Amelia Earhart, Starbucks
Lover, Rudolph Valentino, Victoria’s Secret
Revolutionary, Che Guevara, Apple
Creator, Martha Stewart, Crayola
Magician, Wolfgang Puck, Olay
Ruler, Alan Greenspan, Microsoft
Sage, Carl Jung, Discovery
Jester, Tina Fey, Ben & Jerry’s

Chart courtesy The Pearson Archetypal System

Take Nike, for (a very overused) example. Nike’s archetype is the Hero. Their branding includes images of sports stars, who are constantly pushing themselves to achieve, and text that speaks of overcoming challenges and having courage.

This works because customers want to identify with this archetype by using Nike’s products. They feel inspired and empowered by their “Just do it” messaging. It also works because this messaging is true to the company’s core.

Using your archetype to shape your communications strategy creates a compelling story with which your audience will want to identify. It separates your brand from competitors, and can be incredibly persuasive.

Whether someone is donating money or buying products (which is kind of like donating, if you think about it), they’re parting with their hard-earned cash because they’re identifying with a purpose.

Appealing to your audience’s emotions isn’t tricking them. It just reminds them why they should buy from you instead of your competition.

Does your product allow them to escape their life among the cubicle maze for the weekend? Can they make fond memories with friends while using your stuff? Do they remember that trip every time they wear your garment?

Creating that bridge between brand and customer is key. Pick one idea (like the examples above) and expand on it to build a campaign that really speaks to your users.