How to get a reseller to grow you exponentially!

Hello and welcome to today's episode of Conscious Design. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, and today I want to talk about how to get a reseller to grow you exponentially. So as part of our launch— launching a product series I've talked about a lot of different things about how to market and how to develop product, but one of the things that can be really powerful is getting resellers on your side and helping you to grow quicker than you can on your own. So I'm going to talk about types of resellers, customers and market, value add— value add is a very important part of this— partnerships and marketing, And lastly, what to offer them. Remember, it's not all about you. You want resellers to help you, you have to give them something. So first, types of resellers. So there are a lot of different kinds of resellers out there. There are what you think of as a reseller. They just simply take your product, they put it on a shelf, they sell it again, or they, you know, buy some, they put it in a warehouse, and they sell it on their e-commerce platform, uh, and whenever it sells, it sells. They don't do a whole bunch of marketing, things like that. There are resellers that are much more partnerships where they're really invested in the product. Sometimes they own part of the company or they have an invest— an investment of some kind, um, where it's very financially incentivized for them to sell the product. Some of them are— so you have your, your, your kind of like store, your storefront, uh, e-commerce type. You also have things like affiliate marketers. So affiliate marketing or influencer marketing, those are sort of resellers. They are kind of a hybrid between a sales rep and an actual— what you think of as a reseller because they do what a sales rep does. They go sell your product for you, but they aren't an employee. They're not your person. They have their own brand that they have, and so they're a little bit of a cross between, and that is still a valid reseller that you might, you might want to partner with. And so you have a bit of a range. There's many different other kinds of resellers. There's Also, one other category that you want to be aware of, and that is the role of the middleman, a B2B reseller, in terms of you sell the product to them and they then sell it to another business that then sells your product to the end customer. So the reason you, you want to at least think about that is because they often have a long list of customers. So they're a distributor. They may— their distribution list, they may be the distributor for, say, 50 companies where those companies typically only buy products through the distributor. If you want yourself on the shelf of Company X or in their online store, you have to go through this distributor. And so one of the resellers that you'll come across is this B2B reseller that that just then sells again to another business. That model, of course, more people involved in the chain between you and the end customer, the more people want their cut. However, when you're trying to grow exponentially and trying to get into big stores, you're trying to get a lot of volume, you're trying to really grow, sometimes that can be a really good angle to go after and a smart business partnership to go after working with somebody like that that can get you into not just one store, but a bunch of big stores all at once. So second thing I want to talk about is customers and market. So when you're getting a reseller to grow you exponentially, you got to think about their customers and their market. So retailers typically have a different set of criteria as far as who their customers are than you do. Yes, your customers may be a customer at their store, but they may not be the primary customer. They may not be the one that they market towards. So you want to be really aware of brand alignment and customer alignment between you and your reseller. Yeah, anybody can walk into a Kroger, into a Fred Meyer, into a Walmart, into any of these big stores, right? Anybody can walk in. Everybody kind of does. But does that mean that your product is going to jump out to the main customer there? Maybe, but only if it aligns with their primary customers. So when you're thinking about a reseller, you want to think about how to align as close as possible with them. And not that you need to like change yourself to align with someone, you need to find resellers that align with you, because when you put a product that aligns with the primary customer of that store, they're going to sell more. They're going to give you more shelf space. They're going to market your product more, and the people are going to actually buy it. So it's not going to take up a ton of effort. You're not going to have this huge expenditure of effort of both of you in order to get there and get it to a, get it to a customer, because the customer that walks in or looks at their website is already looking for that kind of product, already the right product. So being aware of what their customers and market is is really important. And don't waste your time approaching, you know, if you're an outdoor product, you're a camping product, probably don't go to a wine company, a wine retailer. You want to go to a place like REI or another outdoor-focused company that, that's their focus. You want to align really well. So Thinking about your customers, their customers, your market, and their market, make sure that that aligns as close as possible. If you have something that is a little bit in between markets, then look at both kinds of markets. Look at people on both sides, look at resellers on both sides, and be aware of that. But try to find the one that aligns as close as possible because they're gonna like you, they're gonna want to sell your product more likely than not. If your product actually aligns with what they're trying to do. Third thing is value-add. So everything we just talked about is important no matter what. Then of course, the better you do those things, the better you select the right resale partner that has the right customers and market, the faster you're gonna grow, the faster you're gonna sell product, the more product they're gonna sell, which of course, that is the whole point. They have products in their inventory in order to sell so they can make money. If it takes up shelf space and it doesn't sell, they're going to get rid of it. They can't afford to have that shelf space not making them money. So thinking about the value add though is very important and probably one of the most important things to do if you're going to try to actually grow exponentially and have big sales. Now this comes from— I run a publishing company as well. It's been around, literally my parents started it when I was a kid. It's a little company. Kind of just does its thing. And there's a few— and in reselling it, it resells products, it resells educational books. And in doing so, I've, I've been able to see the difference between what is a reseller that's okay. Literally, there's resellers that buy maybe 10 books a year. They're not that many, not, not many at all. And then we have ones that sell hundreds, maybe even about over 1,000 a year. I said small, but that's a huge difference between 10 a year, 1,000 a year. That's a huge factor. One of the things that makes the difference between our low-level and our high-level resellers is the value add that the reseller provides to the product. So that company, the publishing company, we also sell direct-to-consumer. So there has to be incentive for people to purchase it from someone else. And one of the things that they— one of the resellers did a really smart thing, and our product was positioned properly to fit into it. They created a kit. They curated this kit of different educational materials for their primary customer, and they sell that a lot because it's optimized based on them. All the hundreds and hundreds of products that they've sold over the, over the years. They curated and found the best products that most people enjoy. It covers enough of the categories. It's in homeschooling, so it covers all your, all your main, main things you need to teach a kid, every, every subject. And our product fits in there, and they sell that. And that is why they buy— they're one of our top sellers of our product. As terms of reseller. So when you start that relationship with a reseller, you want to— and you can even help them be like, hey, I— we have this product, we think it would pair well with this product, or we think that we could help you fill out this package you offer. And maybe they do offer something that is a kit or is a collection of products, because when you collect and curate products into a kit And you offer that kit as a whole, even if you don't decrease the price. It doesn't have to be discounted. It can be all straight across, same price. But just the fact that you're putting the effort in to actually go, hey, our customers— I'm a reseller, I'm reselling to these customers, they need this, they typically buy these products together, I'm just going to bundle them together into one easy-to-purchase. I literally click once and I buy all the things that I know I'm going to need. For this event or for this type of thing, whatever that, whatever that thing is. If you can help the reseller in terms of making that kit better, they're going to sell more of it, which means they're going to sell more of your product too. But they're also selling more of other people's products, which means you're helping the reseller sell more overall, not just your own product. So think about what is the value add that reseller provides, because it has to Realistically, for them to actually be able to sell the product and do better at it than you would in a direct-to-consumer version, they have to be adding value to your product beyond what you just have. Just flat retail— and this is why people are able to do so well in marketing— oh, we have these watches, you can buy these watches, and they're, they're made in the same way, they're cheaper, we just cut out all the middlemen. That kind of marketing works because so many resellers don't always add value to a product, and so there's not really a value there. And if there isn't a value there, then people are gonna— more likely to go purchase somewhere else. This is why things like Amazon has been very smart at making sure they add value. 2-day shipping as a Prime member, that's a value add. Most companies that have their product on Amazon couldn't afford to do 2-day shipping with their product because they can't afford the infrastructure in order to make sure that 2-day shipping could happen. But Amazon can. And so Amazon is able to provide that added value. And that's one of the things that people look at when they're determining how do I resell. Amazon is one of the resellers that people look at as a startup in order to get your product out to market because They— Amazon offers 2-day free shipping on orders, like, for Prime members, right? So that is a value add. That is a huge value add that is very popular, especially the pandemic that happened, um, that became even more important. So think about what is the value add that your reseller is going to go, because if that reseller doesn't have a huge value add, it's not going to grow you exponentially. They're just going to be another place where you can get your product Not a value-add partnership. So that brings me to number 4, partnerships. Partnerships and marketing. Marketing is, of course, how you actually get customers. It's how you sell products. Without marketing, unlikely that you're going to get any sales. Maybe someone will walk up and see you, but you still have to have some kind of marketing in order to be found. And building partnerships is really important. So The value add sometimes is that they do the marketing, that they're going to push out the product, they're going to push out marketing, they're going to feature it on podcasts, they're going to feature it in ads, they're going to feature it in their newsletter. They're going to put— and it may be to them, it may not be a small amount of work, but maybe they have an email list of 10,000 people and they're going to put your product— as soon as your product gets into their system and they're going to be available to sell, they're going to put it in their, their email, their next email that goes out. And maybe it works out that they have like a 30% response. 30% of people buy something every time they send an email. I've worked on emails that do that. They work really great. It's fantastic. Um, it's high. It's a high number, definitely. But if you create your email list, maybe that's possible. But if you think about that, like, what is that value to you? They're going to be able to sell that many of your product. That's great. That's gonna be huge. And the value adds to you, the marketing side, is that they're gonna market it for you. So think about your reseller more in a partnership aspect. Think about how they're going to help you and how you're gonna help them in order to sell more product. Because at the end of the day, if you're gonna have a reseller, the whole point is they need to be able to sell the product to make money off of all the time and effort that they spend into getting the product, shelving it, storing it, having it in their warehouse. And you need to be selling as much as possible as well because you're in a wholesale model and your profit is lower now. So you need to sell more in order to cover your overhead and things like that. So partnership marketing definitely needs to be thought about. And if you approach your resellers in a partnership mentality and you're also willing to do some marketing as part of it, you're going to be able to grow faster with your reseller than not. Lastly, what to offer them. So as I said this in the very beginning, it's not all about you. You have to be providing something that is actually valuable to them. And just another product— sometimes it is. Sometimes you have a product that just fits in a mark, you know, in a hole on their shelf, and they say, well, this fits because it's between these 2 products and we've been looking for something like this because our customers have been asking. That's really rare. That's not going to be your typical answer from a reseller. So you want to think about what are you offering them. Now, some big resellers, they do things like require you to pay for a certain advertising spend budget in order to promote that your product is at their store. Now, um, you think about like car manufacturers, a lot of the ads that you see are actually paid for by the individual dealerships, so the resellers. There's also ads paid for by the manufacturers themselves as part of showing that the brand is out there and the product is out there. So some resellers will require that you are actually making your brand more present, making it so that people know more— more people know about your brand and its existence so that they can sell more product. So when you're working with smaller companies and resellers that don't require it, that's still something you can offer. You can say, hey, well, we're, we're going to promote you as a new reseller. We're going to put you up on our website. We're going to put you in an email blast that we send out to all of our customers saying, hey, we have this retailer. If you shop there, you can buy our products there now. Um, things like that. Or maybe you have been doing brand awareness campaigns, or you're on social media, and maybe you don't sell direct-to-consumer, that's fine. But maybe you have an outreach program, or maybe your founder's on, on podcasts, or you have a blog, or some way of connecting with people. You're able to share and help the reseller sell more products and make people aware of them, things like that. And depending on the size, they may be fine with a little bit, they may may need a little bit more. But you wanna think about how you can help other than just saying, hey, here's a widget, do you wanna resell it? That's great, but you should be looking at how to offer more because everybody, resellers, they get approached by lots of people every single day because they're a reseller, they sell products. And if you get your product into a reseller and it goes really well, then it's great. But they also have a huge filter system because If they said yes to everyone, there would be no room in their store for anybody to walk around. Their website would be cluttered with too many things to sell. I mean, that's fine if you're Amazon. Literally, I have no idea. There's so many products on there. I have no idea what the actual number is, but it's an insane amount. But with most other places, most other resellers that especially you as a small business, if you're trying to build relationships with, you gotta have something that's more than just Hey, you want to buy something? It's not, not really captivating. And you, if you were running a retail company, wouldn't want to say yes to all that either. And you pay attention to the ones that have some value that is being brought to them in addition to just a product to sell. Hopefully this gives you an idea about how to work with resellers and a few tips on what you should be bringing to resellers in order to help you grow exponentially in, in a reseller partnership and do better than just having a few widgets sell a year. Hey, thanks for watching. We really appreciate our viewers, and if you haven't subscribed yet, please do subscribe to our channel so you can get more great videos like this in your feed and like the video. If you wanna learn more about the Peterman Design Firm, please check us out on our website, petermanfirm.com. You'll find link and information in the description. And of course, we're on all social media as well, so check us out there. All right, thank you. Thank you.