Do you know who buys your products?  Not your customer – big box retailers, wholesalers, dealers or distributors – but the end-user of your products.

In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that your company talks a lot about the end-user.  Hopefully, you use a different term like home owner, home buyer, shopper or consumer to make them, well, a little more human.

But your sales team is focused on your customer base.  Sure, your channel partners are the critical filter to getting your product to market.  But at the other end of the chain is a consumer.

How well do you know your consumer?

Start with an understanding of what drives the consumer to purchase

By starting with an understanding of what drives the consumer to purchase, you are able to:

• More clearly define where the opportunities lie; which markets, and identify the true size of the prize
• Focus your communication strategy with relevant, actionable messaging
• Develop new products that align with needs of your consumer
• Create a marketing strategy that drives purchase behavior

Understanding your consumer will change how you sell – for the better

What are some of the ways you can define your consumer?  Among the most common are:

• Age
• Demographics
• Mindset
• Family size
• Gender
• Financial condition
• Home ownership
• Life-stage

Once you know more about your consumer, you can begin talking to them in their terms, understand how they think about your products and begin to see a path to innovation that will support their point of view.  Imagine how powerful the conversation becomes with your channel partners when you are able to share with them how your consumers will respond to their selling your products.

Think about how that changes your channel conversations.  Now your focus is on the consumer and what they want.  How it led you to insights in product design and marketing that clearly speaks to them.  You are not only differentiating yourself from the competition, you have the keys to helping your channel partners sell more of your products – without making “what’s your price?” the first question asked.

A consumer isn’t the same as a shopper

If you are selling your product through big box retailers, understanding your consumer is important, but knowing how your consumer aligns with the big box shopper is critical.  In fact, those retailers are more interested in how well you know their shoppers than they are yours.  Don’t make them guess if there’s an overlap – lead them to the conclusion that your consumer is indeed there shopper – factually.

Once you make that case, think about how easily your consumer knowledge can translate into retail strategies that are going to improve their category sales and build your business.

Your marketing approach to those big box retailers can now be built around how you will:

• Prompt purchase intent with emotional triggers
• Organize the set into distinctive sub-sets
• Leverage de-selection around your features / benefits
• Promote trade-up strategy (such as a good-better-best approach)
• Offer multiple product options to meet specific shopper needs

Knowing the consumer is the key to selling more

In summary, by keeping the consumer in mind at all times, you can:

• Fully meet the needs of your consumers and in turn raise confidence with your channel partners on the relevance of your product offering
• Help shoppers understand what’s on the shelf and find the product that meets their needs
• Create excitement and the urgency to buy
• Enable shoppers to purchase with confidence
• Grow category revenue and profit

Related articles

• 5 Tips to Succeed with Big Boxes (channelinstincts.com)