Jordan Buckner (01:20)
So here's one thing that I find really interesting, right? So as a new brand, it's really important to get in front of customers because if you launch a new store,

Let's say there's hundreds of people who shop there every day. Most of those people actually, almost all of them, don't know that you're on the shelf. And those that are in the store, they've never tried your product. And so I always love thinking about like how do you maximize the awareness at an individual store level. So at least a larger number of people know your product exists, not everyone's gonna buy it. And then they they can decide like is this product for me or not? But you might have customers who shop at the store who actually

Love your product, but they literally just don't know that it exists because there's 10,000 other items there in the store. And so as a founder, it's really important early on as you're building that awareness, as you're growing your business, that you show up, you're doing demos so that you are building that store-by-store awareness. And then also you're learning about your customers who and the product and what they think about it. I think it's one of the best experiences. And so I'm kind of curious from your perceived, like things that you've learned about products while doing demos that maybe people wouldn't have learned about otherwise.

Yes.

Matthew (02:28)
Yeah, it's a great, you know, kind of question or topic to discuss. I mean, so doing demos, yeah, that it's one of the best ways to figure out who vibes with your product. And so demos are a really effective way to see if your product is viable for a particular shelf or rather how do you like re

like change your product to fit a particular shelf, right? I was watching a video, there's a guy, Dom, his last name starts with an L. He owns Bum Nutrition. they got their energy drinks and that kind of stuff. You probably heard of their brands. And he was just talking about how they spend millions of dollars trying to figure out which skews match which shelves, right? And so like for example in in Walmart and in Vitamin Shop and GNC, they might have the same flavors of products, but they're in different serving sizes.

Right, or different containers, or maybe the branding is more female or male oriented, right? Or different color spectrum or something like that. Like GNC, for example, is very much a male shopper. I think they have like eighty-five percent male shoppers and then the rest is females, right? So a lot of the branding and stuff that goes into a GNC store and the serving sizes, they also do more research. You know, if you're going to buy in GNC, typically customers are gonna have done more research, right? Versus like a Walmart. Walmart you're typically going for savings.

So demos and just in general, like when you're trying to you know, learn how to best navigate your product and make it successful at retailers, demos are a great way to get feedback from customers and figure out like, hey, is this product viable for this particular store? Or maybe customers are telling you like, Hey, it's too expensive, right? So if that's the case then you gotta figure out how do I restructure this product to make it sounds more cost effective for the consumer at this particular store. Maybe you drop the serving size by ten, you know, or

y maybe you use different ingredients. you know, your attack plan for Costco is gonna be different than, you know, for Sprouts. And your attack plan for Sprouts is gonna be different than, you know, Gelson's or Mother's Markets or one of those kind of mid-size chains. So you know, there's a lot to your question and the topic you were just mentioning there, but yeah, you gotta be doing demos. If you're a founder, you know, I recommend you do the demos yourself at the beginning, you know, until you get some actual cash flow. And then also you'll learn how to pitch the brand.

Right? You'll learn it yourself. You'll become a master of pitching and selling your brand because you get more repetitions talking to customers and selling your product. demos are like the number one. It's the best way to learn how to sell something because you're just you're interacting with so many customers over and over and over again. So in one demo, you might interact with sixty to a hundred customers. Boom, you just got sixty or a hundred repetitions selling your product. and then if you do that over and over and over again, eventually you'll know exactly how to pitch your products. And that's also gonna help you, as I said, with your product placement. You know, how do I

package this to sell itself at, you know, Costco or Walmart or X, Y, and Z store.

Jordan Buckner (05:00)
No,

I love that. I mean one of the biggest things with any business is getting

Product market fit, which is making sure that you're aligning the problem that you're solving with the product and that it's actually delivering on that promise. And doing demos is a great way of understanding if you have product market fit because you can tell someone like a quick pitch about your product and then they can immediately buy, right? Like they're face-to-face. That's you're gonna be your best chance for someone to buy from you. And if they're still not buying, then either they're the wrong person or you're not articulating the problem that you're solving or how your product is actually.

the solution for that. And it's a really great way, as you mentioned, to like get those reps in. I remember with my brand TeaSquares, we were selling in the Whole Foods, and I was doing a demo. Someone came up to me and they said, hey, I actually saw this on the shelf the other day. I thought it was interesting, but I did not buy it.

And then they like I told them my story, told them the pitch, and they were like, these are great. And they bought like three bags. But if I did not do that demo, I will have lost that customer because I realized that our packaging was not a sales ready packaging and telling that story effectively on a shelf with everything else. And so that actually triggered us to do a redesign for our packaging and our branding so that we could more accurately communicate what were those pain points we were solving and how do we communicate on that packaging. And I never would have learned that from doing

without doing demos. So

Matthew (06:19)
Love that. That's awesome.

Jordan Buckner (06:20)
interesting. a lot of founders think about demos in terms of their like return on investment. I know you mentioned this a little bit earlier in terms of like are you going to see immediate profitability first versus like a longer term kind of ROI? What are some of the things that brands can do to ensure they are

having the best chance of their demos driving immediate sales and long-term repeat business too.

Matthew (06:44)
Yeah, so that's a great question. And if you do really good at your demo and you get good ROI at the demo itself, you will get better long term you know, sales as well. So you really want to set up your demo for success, hundred percent. So there's a lot of different things that make a successful demo. the first one is having, you know, an awesome brand ambassador that knows what they're doing, they're trained in the sales process.

You know, hopefully they're good looking too, that helps. You know, and then on top of it, they've got some different tools in their tool belt to sell your particular brand, right? it's one thing to be a master salesperson, it's another thing to be a model, it's another thing to know this particular product like the back side of your hand, right? And if you know this product like the back side of your hand, you can communicate to somebody very efficiently. You know, you know the guy Carl Sagan, he can explain very complex

topics very simply, right? We want to do that with our brand as well, right? So yeah, those are three things that make a brand ambassador perform at the highest level. Obviously it starts with you as the brand owner, like if you have your own brand, you want to master it first because then you like Carl Sagan can communicate your brand to a brand ambassador very concisely, straightforward, and you can leave all the fluff out, right? There's a lot of good selling points. You know, you can take any product on the planet and there's infinite selling points for it, right?

But not all those selling points are good and they don't resonate with the customer. And on top of that, they might not even resonate with the customer at Sprouts or Costco or whatever platform you're selling at, right? So you really need to distill it down to what are like maybe the top three selling points for your brand. At our company, local demo service, we've got a tried and trude script we essentially follow for all of our brand ambassadors. Obviously, there's some play with it, everybody's a little different. You know, I sell differently than somebody else.

Like I have people that I train to sell at demos and they're very comedic. So we play that comedic edge for them, right? And then for me, I'm like an auctioneer almost, you know what I mean? If you've to if you've seen like an auctioneer like rattling off sales stuff, talk really fast, right? You might notice the way I'm talking, I talk really fast. So for me, that's the way that I sell, right? So everybody can take their unique style of selling and then use a tried and true script to ensure that they're getting consistent sales every single time. So

For example, we have our demo table, you know, we're set up, it's looking good. We got a lot of product on the table, right? every single customer that's walking in that store, you want to talk to every single customer that walks by. If you don't talk to every single customer that walks by, you're automatically losing sales, right? Like let's say I'm at a demo and there's gonna be a total of 125 people total in the store from start to finish on my demo. I wanna talk to all 125 of those people. That is my first goal, right? And even if I sound stupid.

I stumple over stumble over my words. If I talk to all 125 people, I am going to have a higher close rate. You know, I'm gonna close more people at that demo than if I talk to 50. So that's the first step is you need to talk to everybody. Plus, the more you talk to people, the more you start kind of loosening up. You get a little bit more, you know, it's like putting some oil on the gears almost. Your gears start going and then things start flowing a bit more, you know, and every time you talk to somebody, you'll improve at that talking, right?

So not only are you gonna increase the amount of sales you get at a demo by talking to everybody, but you're gonna improve your skill set of talking to people. Huge. That's super important, right? So so now when you're talking to everybody, you gotta hook them with something, right? Hey, would you like to try a sample of X, Y, and Z? Right? It's the simplest hook. You don't need anything complicated. You c sure you could do a joke or something catchy, and that might work for you. I mentioned I trained somebody recently who had like a very comedic way of being. Their hook could be very comedic and that'll be great, right? For me.

I'm not that good at jokes, I'm not a comedian, right? So a simple

hook is is yeah,

Jordan Buckner (10:09)
Yeah, we're at land. Have you tried doing it?

Matthew (10:11)
Yeah, exactly. A simple hook is all you need. Hey, have you ever tried X, Y, and Z? Or hey, do you know what this is? Right? like for example, I had a brand we were sampling that was a Jun Kombucha. So Jun versus kombucha. Kombucha they consume sugar, Jun consumes honey, right? So it's basically kombucha but with honey, right? So I'm like, hey, are you familiar with what jun is? And people are like, What the heck is jun? Did you say gin?

You know, like gin and tonic and and then you can go into your conversation explaining what gin is, right? No, it's you it's a honey

Jordan Buckner (10:35)
really gets you into the conversation

because then they're asking you something back.

Matthew (10:38)
Exactly. Hey, no, it's a honey fed kombucha. You wanna try a sample? It's super delicious, right? Boom, they try it. as I'm handing them the sample, I'm starting to go into three selling points, right? I always do three selling points, it's the sweet spot. sometimes two is good, sometimes four is good, but three is the sweet spot. You typically don't want more than three or less than three. Less than three, it's like it's not unique, it doesn't what's so good about it, right? And then more than three is like, okay, it's too much. Like I don't know what you're saying. I forgot everything you just said, right?

So three selling points. So it could be it's organic, it's made with honey, and it's in a glass bottle. Right? Those could be the three selling points. Or it could be it's locally grown and it tastes delicious and it's low in sugar, right? Pick three solid selling points. You can always sell more later as the customer asks questions, but when you're selling, you don't want to oversell. Give them three solid points, right? And then after you get the three solid points, you want the customer to talk. So then

You know, I hook them, I give them three selling points, and then I ask them a question. What do you think of the flavor of that? How does it taste? Do you like it? Some sort of question like that. Get them to talk, right? And then as they talk, now they're selling themselves. Okay? So you give them the chance to sell themselves. Now they're selling themselves on the product because they're talking about it. You let them talk. Or they tell you something that they don't like. I don't like this flavor, it's too sour, right?

Or they might tell you something else like, I don't know if I can't tell, maybe it's too bubbly, or I'm not sold yet, or you know, it's too expensive, right? That gives you the opportunity to solve that problem next, right? it's too sour. you know what, I got this other flavor. Try this one. Boom. Right? it's too expensive. Well, actually it's on sale today. Buy two, get one free. You know? As they a you know, when they respond back to you. But ultimately you don't want to stomp over them with all of your talking and selling.

You want it to be a conversation. This is like, hey, I'm building a relationship with you. You know, I'm a human, you're a human, I'm tuning into you. And then that's gonna make them open up and give you the tools you need to close that deal. And then after you solve any problems that they have after their question, you go in for the close every time. If you don't go for the close, you don't get the close, right? You if I know most brand ambassadors, this is probably their number one problem. And the reason why they don't sell enough is because they don't close every single time, right?

I talk to a hundred customers, I close a hundred customers. That's what I'm going into demo for, right? So I'm gonna close and be like, awesome. Well, if you want to buy one, boom, I've got two for you right here. Do you wanna take it with you and go purchase it at the cash registers? Right? That's how you can close the deal. So you gotta ask them for the sale. Hey, do you wanna buy this? Awesome. You like that one? Do you wanna grab two off the table? awesome. which ones do you want? Do you want me to grab one off the table for you? That's how you close the deal. You give them a closing statement. So you hook everybody, right? You give them three selling points.

You ask a question and then you close the deal. If you do those four things, I don't care if you've got zero experience, I don't care if you stutter, you don't speak very good English, you will sell more than most brand ambassadors out there in the field, I promise you. So I hope those four points helped.

Jordan Buckner (13:27)
I love that

framework. Yeah, I I think that was really awesome. Thanks for walking through there. Actually just reminded me my favorite way of closing is while I'm going in the conversation of handing them the package to look at it, to read it, to see it up close, and then to tell them like, hey, we'd love for you to have it. You can take that one in your hand. Right? They literally already have it in their hand and they either have to give it back or put it in their cart. Right. And so like then they physically have to make that decision.

Matthew (13:50)
That's money. We call that the Jedi Mind trick. So we actually have by the way, if any of your cust your people that follow your podcast wanna check it out, we've got a YouTube channel. We only have three public videos, so it's kinda small. But that trick you said right there, that's called the Jedi Mind trick. So we'll when we're explaining selling points, we'll hold the product out like this and I'll be pointing at the selling points and naturally the customer wants to grab it out of your hand. And then as soon as they grab it, exactly what you said. They either have to give it back to you, which makes them feel uncomfortable, or they have to buy it. So

That's money right there. I love that.

Jordan Buckner (14:19)
Yeah,

so it's so much fun. You mentioned earlier about the Sprouts Forager program and Costco Road Shows. I'd love for you to hit on both of those because they're kind of unique sampling opportunities. And so maybe you'll start with the Sprouts Forager kind of program innovation set and what's different about that and how you approach it differently.

Matthew (14:36)
Awesome. Yeah, so Sprouts, in my opinion, is the number one natural retailer out there right now. They're growing faster than any other natural retailer. you have Whole Foods. Whole Foods used to be like the number one and then the whole Amazon purchase thing happened and they've just been they've gone a whole totally different direction. So I don't even really consider them in that category anymore, especially if you look at like what's on in their ingredients and food. Like I used to love Whole Foods, but anyway, Sprouts, they're the fastest growing

Jordan Buckner (15:02)
Yeah.

Matthew (15:03)
natural retailer out there.

They're investing a lot of money in growth. They're adding like just under a hundred stores this year. we're gonna be demoing all those new stores, by the way, for Tractor Beverage Co. So if you know the brand, they're awesome. Organic soda with apple cider vinegar. But yeah, Sprouts they have the best innovation program in the United States of America. And now all these other retailers are following them, right? So Sprouts has their innovation program, Forager Finds, Fresh Fines.

Those are the kind of three programs right there. They also have one other program that they just launched. I have a client that just got set up for that. It's a 60-day program. the other three are a 90-day program. So basically you have 90 days, right? They bring you into shelves nationwide, or they can do regional. I know some people that have done just California or just Florida. but they bring you into Sprout Shelves and you've got 90 days to hit a certain amount of sales per SKU per week on average in order to go in line, right? So

they do this for new and innovative products. So if you got a product that's innovative, it's different, it's unique, Sprouts wants it first. So I recommend anybody who's listening to this, if you've got a new and innovative product, go after Sprouts. It's the best program. there's a lot of kind of financial benefits to going in the program too. I'm not gonna go over all of them because they may be changing. I know they're constantly changing things, but you get a lot of like

really beneficial price reductions in like distribution costs and things like that when you do these programs. So definitely look into it. the foraging team at Sprouts is awesome. Brody Burke, Jorge Espinoza, Lori Brogie, all those people, Mason Webb. it's the best set. And so we've been really focusing on that set predominantly because it's the ultimate launch prep pad for new and innovative brands. It's a great way to automatically roll into, you know, up to four hundred plus stores just like that.

They're bringing in brands like every 90 days. So they're constantly changing that shelf. And then when you get on that shelf too, a lot of the stores, that innovation shelf, is like right dead center in the store. The other shelves are kind of further away from there. So if you walk in the store, you will see this set. It's like dead center. It's like it's got a really it they pop up that shelf. So you have you get a lot of exposure. so yeah, we're focusing on that. We're doing more demos for that set than anybody else,

out four

Jordan Buckner (17:09)
How does

Matthew (17:09)
demo

Jordan Buckner (17:09)
the

Matthew (17:10)
team.

Jordan Buckner (17:10)
demo

strategy for that do you think differs from other programs? Because I know there's like limited time. They essentially want to see how well your brand sells through in that limited time period. And so how do you then approach like sampling in those locations differently? Is it like everything all at once? Do you take their top stores and drive velocity that way? Like how do you recommend getting in there? Cause it's a limited timeframe.

Matthew (17:30)
Yeah, good call. So exactly that. You want to front load as many demos and other marketing events as possible. So obviously I'm gonna pitch you demos, but there's lots of other things you can do to move your product. Ultimately, you want to get that product moved ASAP, right? Because you got 90 days and the stores can reorder too. So if you can do all of your marketing sales efforts in like the first two weeks, that's the sweet spot because then you're gonna get as many stores selling through product. And then also when the store replenishes

Those people who already bought from you, they can come back the next week and buy again. The next week and buy again. So definitely the funds you put in for investing. I typically recommend you front load those. One more thing I'll mention too. You'd be surprised, even though you're supposed to automatically go into all the shelves, you're supposed to be on the schematic, right? If you get a innovation forager deal, you're supposed to be on the schematic for those 90 days. I had a brand call a month in to hire us, and we showed up at a few stores.

Where the product was sitting and receiving for thirty days. So you wanna touch on those stores whether it's phone call or a live visit or a merchandising event or something, right? In the first few weeks so that you ensure that product gets on shelf and it's moving.

Jordan Buckner (18:36)
Yeah, and then it's so important. And then let's talk through Costco Road Shows real quick. Costco Road Shows it's like a different environment. It's kind of a high selling activity. How do those differ from your experience in terms of like strategy or execution?

Matthew (18:49)
Yeah, so the roadshow is it's kind of similar in that like it's a very explosive event. You've got a four or five day period to ensure your product is moving, right? we've done this year we've done like a hundred roadshows. And I've seen we've learned a lot this year about the roadshow. So Costco's also making a big effort to bring in new and innovative brands. This year I've noticed they brought in more roadshow rotations than I've ever seen in the history of Costco.

So they're catching up to all these new and trendy things coming in. They realize customers want these new and innovative products, they want healthier products, right? So you have four or five days to get a certain amount of sales. And usually, depending on the category, there's there's different categories. A lot of the beverage brands we've done, they want to see like 10,000 plus sold in a single day in a roadshow. So by the end of your four or five day roadshow, they want 40, 50 grand of product minimum moved. On that note, I know of brands who are selling six figures.

in a road show and they do it every single road show. So so you're competing against those brands. And if you don't match up to those brands and hit those sales they're probably not going to give you a rotation and then you're just burning through

that capital. Right. you're not going to make money on the road show. You're just not, you know, it costs money for the LTL. It costs money to do the demo. you know, there's a lot of the pot product costs money. It's a lot of costs. So it's expensive to get your product there.

The benefit is if you move a lot of it and then you get a rotation, right? So in those four or five days, you really want to be set up to sell a lot of product. one thing I've noticed right off the bat with roadshows is you really need more people. So a regular demo, you can send one person in, they go do their demo, whatever they sell product, right? And then you can do that for four or five hundred stores or whatever you want to do. a Costco roadshow at one location, the more people you have, the merrier. And you want trained salespeople. So

Typically what we'll do is we'll have CDS sample the product and then we'll send in sales reps to sell the product, right? Cause you don't need a high level salesperson sampling. You just don't, right? And there are times in Costco, there's like a good six hour window each day where it's just like boom, boom, boom. There's like tons of customers walking by. So you really need somebody just handing out samples, and then you need somebody else that's like going and grabbing somebody, bringing them in. Going grabbing somebody, bringing them in. And ideally you have one CDS and multiple salespeople. That's the

most ideal scenario. C D S is Costco's sampling people.

Jordan Buckner (20:58)
Who's the C E S? The Costco? What's C S stand for?

Matthew (21:03)
Yeah, C D S

I don't know what it stands for, yeah, but it's Costco's Exactly. Exactly.

Jordan Buckner (21:03)
Okay. Probably like cost of employee sampling or something, I don't know.

I love that. So

Matthew (21:09)
And they're like half

Jordan Buckner (21:10)
No, I was gonna say, like, I love that strategy just like having someone doing the sampling and then having someone actually doing selling and thinking about those like as sales events, right? And so that you can just move volume because people in Costco, some people linger, other people are like in and out. I kinda race around the store myself and I was like, tell me the key points whether I'm gonna get it or not, and like keep going. so absolutely love that. Matthew, thanks for being on today and like talking demos and everything. I though there's a strategy of how you approach it to all the different accounts, where your product is, what type of product you have, and so I appreciate you breaking that down.

especially giving that s sales process, like demo that selling process that you train your brand ambassadors on 'cause I think it's so important.

Matthew (21:46)
Awesome man. Yeah, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for the conversation. It was fun.

Jordan Buckner (21:49)
Yeah, and if anyone needs help around doing demos, hiring brand ambassadors, I'll put Matthew's info in the show notes so you can check them out and see if they can help you to launch in your demo program in all stores in Sprout Sport and Costco for Roadshows. But appreciate you being on.

Matthew (22:04)
Guys, God bless. Talk soon. Peace.