Betsy Gillette - The Real Mechanics of Getting On Shelf and Staying There

welcome to shelf help today we're speaking with betsy gillette co founder and ceo of synergy sales consulting group essentially the sales team for brands that don't have their own sales team betsy's definitely spent a lot of time in the space prior to starting synergy spent time in leadership roles at unfi white wave ignite sales management before we sold to acosta as well as jewel osco for for about ten years so a lot of great experience in the space so definitely excited to get into it betsy just just maybe first off just for the the listeners that maybe aren't that familiar with with synergy maybe just kind of give us a quick lay of the land just in terms of kind of origin story and and why behind the company when you originally started it kind of course services synergies offers and then maybe if you come to will maybe just throw out you know a few brands that you work with as just an example or two and then we'll go from there well first thanks for having me happy to happy to be here and talk about synergy and how we help brands to scale yeah we um there there was a group of us that were at ignite sales management and ignite ended up selling to acosta and we all stayed on for a while and it was fun but then then it wasn't as fun and we decided like let's let's do our own thing like we loved working with emerging brands we didn't want to work for the man again we had some brands that were willing to kind of help us get started and we a few of us had a little bit of money in our pocket because we had worked with talenti gelato for a while and they had an exit and we got a each of us got a little bit of money from that to you know kind of help us pave the way so as brands were coming into the portfolio we could pay um our team and not get paid ourselves for almost a year which was super nice and we did some side hustle consulting to keep and i keep keep the lights on at home and our spouses were were very helpful but yeah we we started almost eight years ago which um it's just hard to believe it's been that long and you know in terms of what we do and how we do it well at first a couple brands we work with um culture pop soda is one of our larger ones ali salumeria um a great salami brand heavenly hunks is one of our bigger ones and then we have some smaller ones like tarazi um falafel mix and tahini and green chili foods burritos so a wide swath from like one million to maybe a hundred hundred and fifty million so pretty big swath of um across our brands but in terms of what we do right now we have two main pillars the biggest by far is our sales management which we're you know that's what we're talking about today so we um uh as adam said we are the sales force for brands that don't have their own we work with grocery dairy frozen and deli brands and we sell into the conventional grocers the natural grocers and mass um channels and you know we are we are the sales team so most of our brands don't have their own team or they might have a vp of sales that handles like the costco and the food service and the other channels that we don't touch and we we help the brands identify the right strategy we help them spend their money wisely we help them stay out of a ditch and then we we put the strategy together and then we go execute our portion at at retail and that's from hiring the brokers managing brokers we do all the trade plans we do all the category review submissions we're talking to the distributors you wanna find k he typically talking to the retailers we're doing data and analytics making sure that all our sales presentations are up to speed we're monitoring our performance and repeat rinse repeat the cycle right so typical sales and we do work with ten to twelve brands at any one time to make sure that we can do a really good job the other smaller part of our business small but mighty growing quickly is what we call synergy services so we do that it's more project based work a big chunk there's two main chunks of that one is go to market strategies so we've had some brands that wanna come in to the united states from europe or companies people that have a really great product and they're like i just don't know where to start and so we work with them to put a go to market strategy together for them based on their finances what they want to accomplish where do we think they could make the best hay as quickly as possible and so we'll look at things like pricing models if if you can make it for a dollar what will it be sold for on shelf and how does that compare against all the competition and how do how would we need to promote to be to be successful where would we think you should start in terms of retailers will help you put a sales pitch together and kind of get ready to do the selling and then they can take that and do it on their own or what not and then the other piece of our synergy services is data and analytics we've got a couple companies that we're gonna hire an internal analyst and we're like why don't you just hire us we'll do it on a part time basis so it saves them a headcount we have access to data um so that we can use that so we do ongoing scorecarding and like internal reporting for these couple of companies but then also um we've had some brands say hey i think i want to go in the cookie category what does that look like and we'll do a deep dive into the cookie category and you know how does your brand how would it fit in what is the pricing what kind of promotions do you need to do and then what does the competition do so deep dive into data and analytics that's a great arby man you guys play such a crucial role for for the brand that you guys work with when does it make sense for a brand to engage in terms like maybe when it's too early or maybe they're too big it's too late or is it kind of very pretty broadly and and it you know there are several sales management companies out there we're obviously the best right but and we're all a little bit different and and have different specialties in terms of the type of brands we work with but for us what we commonly see like brands coming into our top of our funnel is either they've lost a person on their team and they're like i don't know what to do they just got some private equity money and now it's time to bring in some professionals or the brand is just not sure what to do next like they they have a product they may or may not have a salesperson usually it's the the ceo doing some sales and they're like where do i go what do i do and for us what makes a good brand for the synergy portfolio is one we have to really like the people we have to really like the product especially if it's um you know if it's an ice cream it has to taste really freaking good if it's a cookie or a candy it has to be really really good cause there's too much competition otherwise they have to want to go national to work with us they might not need to be national at the moment most of them aren't but they need to want to scale to be national like with us kind of at that moment in time and then they need to have the resources to be able to do it because they have to afford us which is no different than hiring an internal salesperson really and you you need to you know have the wherewithal to mostly know what you need to do just how to get from a you know you're at a you know you need to get to b you might not know how to get there necessarily but you know they have to understand the industry a little bit in terms of you know unfi and khe and the distribution model and they have they know where they're gonna make their product and that sort of things you know we've worked with brands that are pre revenue like tom first from culture pop he had been there done that it was a pre revenue brand but we knew he had everything in order and he had the finances to support it and then there's been other brands that you know they were several million dollars in sales online they knew how to make the stuff now it's time to go into retail and we could we could help them with that so but they they need it for us to make it work for our team and our model it has to be a brand that wants to go national pretty maybe not tomorrow but over a fairly short period of time yeah cool that makes sense why why do you feel like um kind of ten to twelve brands is kind of the sweet spot for you guys and does it feel like you know if you start going beyond that others like certain aspects that of the service that you feel like kind of degrade beyond this number or maybe trying to give as much as it does yeah we um we want to keep our people for a very long time and you can't you can't continually overburden your team because then all of a sudden they feel like they're not doing a great job for anyone right and so we want to do really good work for our brands we don't ever want to have a conversation with the brand where they're like yeah what have you done for me lately or you miss this or how about this like that that doesn't happen with us because we have the right i mean we're all working hard don't get me wrong but we don't overwork our team or overburden the company with too much and all of our team members work with all of our brands so it's not as easy as bringing on one more person and then bringing on one more brand cause all the workload would have to shift at that point and it it it it doesn't it doesn't reduce the workload as enough on the rest of the people to make that to make that work so yeah what we've seen so far and based on just how our model works and how you know to make our business thrive ten to twelve is the right right number but we also wanna grow a little bit we don't wanna be a big company we wanna be boutique family run company but that's why we're you know kind of delving into this synergy services because that we can scale a little bit more easily by just adding on another analyst or or what not if if we ever need it that totally makes sense for brands let's just say uh a brand that was fairly well off from a pretty good position from a finance financial standpoint um like when i guess when and why does it like make sense to hire a sales agency like synergy versus a brand just saying hey we're gonna you know take the time and effort to build out an internal sales team or maybe it sometimes it makes the most sense to have a mix of both sometimes it does depending on the size of the company and the answer kind of difference depending on the size of the company um you know we've seen you know brands that are ready to hire somebody like they whether it's a vp or a sales director or an external service like ours and one we're all about the same price right but for the same amount of money you get twelve people um that have been most of us have been vps of sales at other companies and we all live in the markets so we know almost all of the brokers we know almost all the buyers and all the retailers so there is a built in network there's built in expertise that you don't have to build yourself as well as we have the tools and the systems for trade spending and making sure everyone knows what's going on with the business we call it our synergy sales tracker and then we have the data and analytics that you don't have to higher outside so it's a more efficient in our opinion it's a more efficient spend to hire sales management someone like us than it is to hire a guy or a gal that's running all across the country that might know a lot about whole foods but doesn't know anything about raley's or albertsons so we have all that our expertise on our team and we've been there seen it all done it all and we think that's why it makes a lot of sense for totally makes sense you mentioned the team has a relationship with all the kind of key buyers that one thing that i heard is thing that thing one thing that's changed a little bit in the retail environment is um retailers are putting more kind of emphasis on rotating buyers on a more frequent basis you know they don't get i don't know get too ingrained with like the brands have good relationships with and and like they don't have built too close a relationship with brands and i guess if that is first question is that like an accurate thing and do you feel like that's actually case and if so what are kind of the the pros and cons of that change from your perspective yeah i mean it it does happen we see that happen at the largest retailers like target and walmart the most we've seen a bit of it happen at whole foods recently i'm not a hundred percent sure if that's by design i think with some of the larger retailers it is and some there's just been a lot of turnover and i don't know from the retailer's perspective is they don't want to have relationship like people to get too ingrained in relationships and kind of keep doing the same thing the same way you know or not a hundred percent sure why but we do see it happening and i i think we're also seeing a younger buyer you know back when i was at jewel like we were you know i was like the young person haha and everyone had so much more seniority and they had been there forever and they knew exactly what to do and they didn't move desks hardly um at all and now we see so much more of that and i think new set of eyes more data um and i also think with the um the social media being more in the forefront like like i'm out of date sometimes 'cause i'm not on tiktok all the time like some of the younger like the younger buyers are and and i think now that that makes more of a difference than than it ever has in the in the past that makes sense but you know we do our best to keep abreast of who's who's on first at each of the retailers whether we have a relationship with them or our brokers do sometimes we'll pick the broker based on the best relationship they have but we also have to know that's a moment in time because two years later it could switch we just don't know and we don't want to switch broker like we want to keep things as smooth sailing as possible yeah that totally makes sense from your perspective like what do you look for and kind of what do you recommend founders should look for in sales leaders and and does that criteria significantly differ between yeah that cro level vp level down to like director sales manager level i mean it does but at the same time like i've been doing the sales management gig for like fifteen almost fifteen years now and we rarely i don't even maybe never have seen all three layers in one organization like when i was at white wave and of course it was a much bigger organization and you needed to have all those levels but for the emerging brand space you have one level or maybe two and it's i mean like i'm not big into titles right just as long as you have the right people to do the right job i think that makes a lot of sense but in my opinion like a a chief revenue officer or vp sales needs to understand how to manage your brand across multiple channels whether it's food service alt channel grocery costco and really understand how those channels are intertwined or not and then the sales directors usually manage other people but like in our team we have sales directors because they've been in the business for twenty years and they don't they don't manage other people they manage a really big territory and then the sales managers are typically you know kind of the newer newer kids on the block that are working with more of the independence maybe have a couple of key customers but more on the lower level and then they move to director and sales manager but or vp but i don't like i said i don't typically see all three levels at one company and that's honestly why it's why a sales management company like synergy can be really good because we can do some of the lower level work the mid tier work and the higher level strategic where what we do find and i i think you you might have thought this for a question is you know what like what what do you look for in terms of brands and how i'm not saying this right the how their sales kind of progresses over time and what we see mistakes often happen is a brand will bring in a cousin an uncle and like oh you're my sales guy right a friend and they're trying to figure it out and they're grinding and they're doing a great job but then soon as they get five or six customers now that like they don't know how to manage them right they've gotten a little bit of luck they've you know just went to a show and they've you know got some customers but they don't really know how to manage them they don't know how to manage the distributor the retail they don't know how to submit a promotion and you know then they're like ok well i don't have any more money to hire an additional person so susie goes away and now they bring in the next level of person and then they do the same thing when it's time you know to kind of level up to that vp level and so that's that's what we see a lot of turnover in a business because they it doesn't make sense for them to keep the salesperson they started with and keep them on for multiple years as they continue to scale and you always lose traction when you change brokers or salespeople that higher level the vp you know chief revenue officer type level um for the brands that you know the founders that are intent and they are going to hire that that higher level role like what's the especially for maybe first time founders what's kind of some of the most common mistake or mistakes you see them them make well the the most common mistake we see believe it or not is that the brand will hire a marketer before they hire a salesperson and we typically see this from like founders or ceos that had come from big food because they know marketing and marketing was kind of the engine and then they get to small food emerging brands they were like i think i need a marketer and they do that before they have any product on shelf and then they're spending a two hundred thousand dollar salary and then the person is twiddling their thumbs a little bit or that person is doing really low level marketing work and then they leave because they're not happy right and you need to have product on the shelf in our opinion before you hire a full time marketer because there's lots of good fractional part time people that can help you you know bridge the gap until you until you get there but i think my other point is that when a company is looking for that first sales hire they need to hire for a level that's higher than what they need today today they might need a grinder and that's all they need but a year from now they're gonna need someone that understands how to submit the promotions how to manage a broker how to find a broker how to do some data and analytics and you don't want to change your people i mean if you can add that's great but not many brands can just keep adding people year over year over year so that's one of the mistakes that we commonly see on a bit of a different track what do founders and do you see founders and brands often get wrong or misunderstand when it comes to how retail buyers actually make decisions i would say one of them is thinking that a retailer just gonna fall in love with your product and they're just gonna bring it in because you told them about it every founder thinks they have the best you know new loaf of bread and which as they should it's amazing but at the same time there has to be realistic expectation that just because you knock on their door doesn't mean they're gonna answer your call and the ability to get something in off cycle is like a a you know not not a good strategy i mean can it happen yes but it's very few and far between it is by far the exception and not the rule and we have seen some brands come in like oh just just call that retailer you don't you know they should bring it in no that's not how this works now can it like can it happen yes if if you have a if you have a competitor that's going out of business or had a major recall or had some gaffaw that you're aware of that they won't be able to supply you might be able to sneak in off cycle because the retailer doesn't you know want a big hole on their shelf or it's possible that you have had tremendous success online and it's the you know everyone is asking for it in the retailers world and we've seen that happen a couple of times where um direct to consumer brands are coming in off cycle into retailers you usually have to offer an exclusive to get that done and usually they call you and not the other way around and you know sometimes you can get lucky and sometimes you got a friend of a friend that knows the ceo of a retail you know you can play that whack a mole game and it it can happen but it is by far the exception and not the rule yeah yeah it's it's a great example that i had i'm not sure if you're familiar with the brand seek s e e q like a clear way protein brand i had one of the co founders on podcast a while back and they had were one of those unique cases where they got into like you know an off cycle category review and got on the shelf and in target yes pretty quickly after being in the market but that's exactly what you said they had you know crazy success on tiktok and grew really quickly and they had an inbound from target you know like if you don't get the inbound it's probably gonna be pretty hard to get something off cycle yeah unless like i said unless another brand is falling off a hill for whatever reason and you can slide in there but or if you have like like with some smaller retailers if you have a really good relationship with the buyer because you've been there and you've done that you've provided these other products and now it's you know time to bring in a new category like i've seen that happen for sure but sure again it's it's not a strategy that you should build you know your company around and velocity numbers which i assume is kind of one of the important things that retailers want to see in other retail cases say yeah you'll probably do well in our store too other than those velocity numbers what other metrics do retailers care most about that can be most useful from a sales story standpoint yeah i mean units per store per week is certainly um you know the bellwether in terms of metrics but it's not the end all be all you know we've worked with a brand a high end brand costa rina olive oil and you know it was like twenty dollars a bottle you know would a retailer sell rather sell two units of that or ten units of something that's a dollar right so it you know not all units per store per week are created equal and you have to make sure to point that out to the retailers because as they're doing their category review sometimes they forget that right and so showing the what you know your dollar sales makes a big thing difference but also how does your product how does it stand up in the category and what does the category look like and you know i've been in some situations where i'm like we're not going into category review our turns are terrible and then we go in and they're like yeah they're terrible but you're the best of the worst hahaha you know understanding where you are relative to your competition is really important and also like we sell a falafel mix it sells at best one unit per store per week at best and there's only one right and you know everyone would like for it to be more but the retailer needs to carry one and it's it's ours and then also other retailers like kroger in particular you know they're looking at household penetration like how how important is this particular product to their consumer base and is that consumer gonna leave that store if that particular product isn't on shelf so kind of looking at household penetration dollars per household and and what does that consumer look like in the eyes of that retail it's hard to get to that data but sometimes you can sometimes panel data helps and just really understanding your category really well really well can make a difference yeah yeah i think you kind of the answer answer this question but in case there's anything you want to kind of build upon like assuming your brand is working within the kind of the standard category review process for brands that are like newer to retail what can they do like planning wise ahead of that meeting to set themselves up for a really great category review meeting that results in whatever ideal outcome they have in mind yeah and and first getting the meeting is super hard and that's we rely on our brokers to help us with that um because they have you know they're in the market in the relationship so i think that's important but you know we try to i'll say stack the deck but um if there's a show coming up right like try to get them to come over to our booth or give them a recap from the show um you know you want to ping your buyer periodically without annoying them and you want to make it short and sweet like two or three bullet points they can read in twenty seconds and go move on to the next but you know if if we you know it depends if you're brand new to the market or if you have a little bit of traction or what not but you know if you have a little bit of a data story to share like if you have access to spins or buys or data you can say oh we're the number two fastest growing cookie in the better for you segment click here's a picture of our new product just a couple snippets without being annoying like you can't do it every week like maybe once a month at the most and then you know that then when it's time for the review to come around like hopefully the buyer remembers you hopefully it's the same buyer but hopefully they remember you from one of those interactions and you can build on that yeah that makes sense that's super helpful what's the best way to communicate a price increase to retailers so um a lot of your questions are kind of just loaded or they have some nuances cause every situation is a little bit different right but um generally in the emerging emerging brand space we're shipping through one of the distributors typically unify and k h and they require 90 day notice so they will in their own way send the communications out to all of the retail partners so everyone knows that this price changes gonna be happening but then some retailers also require you to tell them directly even if they're buying your product through a distributor so whole foods albertsons as example there's special forms you have to fill out and then we send a note to the buyer saying i hate to do this but here's what's happening here's what's gonna be executed here's why it's happening let's have a discussion about it if there's a promotion in place like timing is everything you have to think about promotions and other things in the future like do you have to increase a scan because you agreed to a two for three do you need to negotiate you can't do the two for three anymore or whatever that case may be you need to tell the important customers and the ones obviously that require it i think i've heard you talk about just kind of the importance of just transparent and kind of upfront and honest communication with retailers and just you know keeping them in the loop and not surprising them like what's i guess can you give an example of kind of what this looks like when when issues arise yeah it it these typically stem around production and um supply chain issues is what we typically see them around yeah there's been you know with covid it was terrible right like let's let's not go i'm having ptsd about that but yeah you know you wanna be transparent to a point the retailers don't wanna know every little hiccup that you've encountered with your co man and the trucking company and the three pl and all of that but also like understand like we've had some brands go you you gotta tell sprouts that we're not gonna be able to ship like well hold the phone maybe how much product does the distributor have like sometimes we see they have six weeks of inventory for whatever reason and you're gonna short you know twenty cases okay like let's like have realistic we need to tell you know kay he that you're gonna short these cases but you don't need to you know set the world on fire with sprouts because because of that now it and now that both unfi and cahie you have access to their portals you can see exactly how much inventory they have on hand and how much how long it is expected to last so not only can you prioritize your pos if you're like ok i'm getting twenty pallets of product you can prioritize where they should go based upon the needs that you can identify in those portals which is super helpful and then if you're gonna have a long term out of stock by all means you need to tell your biggest retail partners especially if you're having promotions or there's it was a new item launch or not like whatever the situation is and particularly with a new item launch if you're gonna be late you need to tell them as quickly as possible so that you can put a plan in place to to get it on shelf as quickly as soon as you have the product available or or you're gonna you know hire airplanes and your own trucks to get it from a to b and sometimes that does happen so yeah but you need to be transparent to a point and you know not every case that's missed is the sky is falling you know it's not good you need to ship on time and in full but you need to look at it relative to the bigger picture yeah that makes total sense shifting gears a little bit this is definitely a broad question so i'll let you answer it however you want what is a a well rounded go to market strategy look like that is a high level one like you you need to understand your product and where it fits in right and some of it is gonna be just inherent it's gonna be a no brainer they're cookies or do you make a bulk thing of tahini well then the bulk thing of tahini isn't gonna go into retail it's gonna go into foodservice so some of it is pretty well defined but cookies as an example could go anywhere really and then you have to think about what kind of packaging do you want does it need to be pegable is it like two cookies in a package or is it ten cookies and so understanding where you wanna spend your resources is is you know you need to spend some time on that we've had some brands that like heavenly hunks they started in costco and were several million dollars there before we went into retail and we went into retail with a slightly different product because we knew like couldn't be the same exact you know same exact product and value proposition and then we could kind of go like our whole strategy was don't screw up costco don't screw up like we're gonna go low and slow and we have and and that's worked um but like understanding where you wanna start your product and how it fits in and then what does it take to be successful on each one of these channels can you do it yourself do you need a broker what kind of broker how much do they cost what where do you think you can have where's the lowest hanging fruit generally grocery isn't the lowest hanging fruit it's can be in in microcosms but it takes a very long time to get things done in the grocery channel because the category reviews only come around once every six months once a year once every two years so it's you just have to understand all these things and do your homework before you can figure out which area you wanna go in what does a good sales deck look like or include and kind of a similar even maybe more simpler question kind of a cell sheet should look like and include yeah so we work on this a lot with our brands and it it is so much more important now than it was even pre covid to have a great selling presentation because it's really hard to get a meeting so you have to submit and cross your fingers and hope that you get a meeting generally and we make sure that our brands have as hard of a hitting as a deck as possible in the fewest amount of pages so but what they look like is we need a page about the founder or the like the story of the beginning story or what the you know you've been you started at the farmers market and then you perfected your recipe and then you did this and then now you're in reach you started in you know a whole food store and you know the northeast part of the country and whatever so you need a story cause some people you know it's very familiar they wanna know that and like the sustainability you need um a page about the products what are the reasons to be why should a retailer look at this product relative to the twenty other salsas that are being presented to them what makes you stand out and then we also include a comparison page which typically is here are the brands here are the attributes or vice versa here are the brands here are the attributes non gmo certified organic how much protein how much sugar the sustainability so whatever makes you stand out relative to the major competition just in a very visual you know click click click they get it right type of thing and we always include that if we have access to data depending on how much it could be one it could be four pages of data how are we doing in a particular retailer or region how are we doing in that retailer or in the total us whatever makes us look the best and then we also have what we call a one pager a cell sheet you mentioned that is something we define as something a cell sheet is it's just very generic information about the product that usually use at retail kind of like a spec sheet right yeah spec sheet yep but we call it a one pager and the one pager must have at least for us it has to have really good pictures front facing pictures of the product a scannable upc it needs to have a few bullet points for the reason to be what this is the and then it has to have all of the like logo attributes the non gmo project verification the kosher the certs all of that and then it needs to have the ranking of each of the items if if there is one and then we typically include like a a written out upc what are the unfi and kh code numbers and then we also include the case pack and size so that and then sometimes the length width and height just so that everyone like if you could only send one page to a retailer it's kind of like your elevator pitch you could only send one page in that's it and so all of ours for every single brand has those same attributes on them and it works quite well cool that's a great overview how can a brand truly partner with their distributor to maximize success hahaha depends on the distributor it depends on the size of your company but i'm assuming most in this audience are on the smaller side and emerging i recommend that you get to know both your buyer buyers and your category managers a little bit you don't need to be best friends but i want them to know what my product is i want them to know that i care enough that they know what my product is so i send them samples we have a couple of calls i don't need six calls a year we need two or three a year so that they know what's going on with our business and we keep them informed and we participate in some of their programs not all kind of an aside the distributors don't make a ton of money by by selling products like it's very very low margin they need they keep the lights on also by you know utilizing different marketing programs and often voices and what not so you know we find it important to participate in a few of those and we want to be on the good list and not on the naughty list right and kay he has good better best program and you you know you don't want to be you don't want to be on whatever the lowest the lowest right but so you you wanna do your your annual planning sessions with them and you wanna keep them up to date on what's going on with the you know pos like if if no news is good news in their mind i'm sure they have lots of retailers to service and lots of brands that they cover so yeah they write a po you ship a po or they pick it up so but if if there is a problem like notifying them as soon as you know that there's gonna be a problem is the best because then they might be able to move product like they had a po for moreno valley but they're like oh boy we need this over here and so they could cancel that po and if there's only so many cases they could put it where it's needed the most to make sure that their customers stay in stock and in full as as possible so and then some of the other things are very contractually obligated like price increases are ninety days and you know those sorts of things but keeping just keeping a your finger on the pulse with the buyers and the category managers a few times a year i think is best but then also for emerging brands they have it's not it's not automatic you get into them but they have new brand programs for both kh and unfi and we've had several brands go through the program and it's been super helpful because they there's there's cheaper it's cheaper programming and they hold your hand a little bit more cause their systems are big and complicated and they'll walk you through the system a little bit more if you're part of those programs and i highly recommend them what do you feel like brands like what do brands still not understand about how distributors actually think or what are things you feel like are common that brands kind of miss when it comes to distributors yeah the the biggest one by far like ten to one is a lot of new brands i'm in the distributor their sales team will take care of it right it does not work that way right like it's hard to get into a distribution center but if you you know get enough customers on board or you get the right retailer it'll open up a dc but um it it they have a sales team yes but honestly they don't really care if they're selling your peanut butter or the next guy's peanut butter they just want a peanut butter right yeah and you know sometimes you can get to be friendly with some of the sales reps and they can help you that's on a very microcosm level like you can't scale that forever with every single i mean they get hundreds of reps right so um certainly you can send them information and do spiffs and that sort of thing with some of the reps but um they're generally not going to sell on your behalf you need to have your own plan with your own strategy with your own people to sell your products that's probably the number one thing and then the other thing i mentioned is you know a lot of brands just think that these distributors they just make money by selling stuff well that's not the case if you think about the different markups you know some of the larger markups like a whole foods it's an eight percent markup from the distributor it's probably on in actuality a little bit less than that well you can't ship the product like for eight percent to get it from a warehouse to the each retailer across the country every single almost every single day like they're they're not making money on that so they need to augment with other programs and you just need to figure out which ones of those make the best sense for your brand and participate in the right ones yep cool that makes total sense too really helpful on the broker side of things when does it make sense to for a brand to engage a broker brokers and then assuming it is is the right time what's the best way to kind of diligence and decide who's the best one to actually work with yeah so what what we always say is especially for like new brands emerging brands you just do it until you don't sleep anymore like you grind you go out you mean you're doing everything and you know when we started synergy that's what we did i mean we're not a brand but like you grind you just do it and when you can't sleep anymore that's when you bring on some help and you know it could either be another internal person or a broker depending on kind of what what your skill set is and we often say that you should bring on a broker before you bring on like a higher level salesperson or even a team like us because we need brokers to help us do what we do cause we're only twelve people across the country and you don't need to hire a national broker often times you don't you start with a regional broker and that can work out great but like you could have a whole other podcast on how to select brokers and and manage them but generally speaking it's finding out like is a brand you'll know like what type like what area of the country you wanna focus on and then use your resources use linkedin call me like whoever in the industry you know who what brokers do you know which ones are good da da da and you know there's you can use chat gpt too to find out like the you know the best questions to ask but some of them talk to as many as you can you know understand their payment terms what it's gonna cost to do business with them ask them like what their team looks like you know is it is it more important for you as a brand to have more key account managers or people at on the street level right depends on your brand and what is most important for you do they have access to data and can you do ride alongs can you do spiffs and all these sorts of things so ask a ton of questions and i think usually the the best will rise to the top and also ask if they have conflict not all conflict is bad so if you if you're selling a cookie what other cookies do they work with again not all conflict is bad because if you wanted to find a broker that didn't work with a cookie you'd never have a broker because they all do right but you might not want your biggest competitor you know to work with one that's with your biggest competitor and sometimes when you're small you don't sometimes you kind of get what you can get right but you know the the thing about managing them is you know having regular calls with their leadership usually you'll be assigned a business manager and you'll have at least a monthly call with that person and you'll have a finger on the pulse and and you'll set goals together and they'll they'll you know keep you informed of which um uh which retailer submissions are due when but also no just because you hire a broker that doesn't mean you give everything up you need someone to manage them and that's you know one of the things that synergy does really well as we engage with our partner our broker partners we work together and you know it's you can have one broker as an example in the southeast but there might be five category reviews that are all due within you know a two week period and you need to provide them with the strategy and the information that they need in order to put all the submission paperwork together because every retailer is different so you need to be engaged and manage them and if you don't have the time to do that that's when it's time to hire somebody else to help you do that that's a really helpful checklist last question for you betsy you're in this world so much you work with a bunch of different brands you see a lot of stuff any um maybe outside of the brand brands you work with cause you may be partial to those but any uh any brand specific brands or just broader trends in the cpg space that's have gotten you kind of particularly excited lately or things that you're kind of following closely at all well i mean from a macro perspective i don't think anything i'm gonna say is earth shattering here but protein is it everybody's talking about protein right you know that i think fiber is coming up in the scale a little bit like in my social feeds i'm hearing a lot about more about fiber fiber fiber i'll be very interested to see you know over time with the new guidance on um the food pyramid if that will do anything i don't i don't know and then the other one like cause i've been on glp ones myself i'm looking at that and like how how are brands responding to the fact that everybody is on a glp one and how is that changing the the amount of food that's given in a particular portion or what those macros are gonna be or even how are they gonna market them so i'm interested in that i don't like i have to believe it's gonna be a thing but i i don't know i'm not the best at picking trends no these are all great i mean they're they're obvious but i think they're you know they're that's my point for sure mm hmm i love it but yeah betsy this has been awesome yeah super helpful i think people are getting a lot of value out of this you clearly have a lot of expertise in this space so what what's the best place for people to follow along with you and all the knowledge you've got and then what's the best place for people to follow along with with synergy and everything you guys are working on yeah i think we have my own linkedin page you just find me at betsy gillette and then synergy synergy sales consulting group we have a linkedin page and then a website so it's synergy scg dot com perfect awesome you can find me it's been great appreciate the time betsy's been awesome alright have a great day yeah i think that's the pod

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