If you’re like most wholesale grocers, you work more with existing accounts than new customers. You built a client list early on, and now you focus on their orders and maintaining their accounts. Most of the time, they need the same products, depending on the season, and you essentially just take their orders.
You can do more.
And it doesn’t take much to see those sales increase. See, the same order keeps your sales the same. But if you can get your current clients to increase their orders, your sales jump too.
How do you do it? You keep your thumb on the pulse of the local market.
You’re already equipped. You’re already in the market. You just have to put your resources together.
How to Sell More to the Grocery Stores You Already Serve
Your current customers are your best prospects. So how can you get them to buy more? This isn’t about changing their marketing strategy in an effort to increase foot traffic. It’s about selling more food to the people who already come. You do that by keeping the top items in stock and adding items that sell in other places. If something is flying off the shelves at the store down the street, it’d fly off the shelves here too.
How do you know? Typically, you live near the stores you sell to. You’re in the same region, shopping for the same food as everyone else. So if, as a customer, you notice stores can’t keep Sunset Farm Foods Cracked Pepper Sausage stocked, let your stores know about it. They’ll order more, increasing their sales…and yours! It’s a win-win.
How Product Tracking Works With a CRM
If you’re a wholesale grocer living in your sales market as a consumer, you have this unique sales opportunity — but most don’t take advantage of it. If you want to be different and really maximize your position, you need a way to keep track of what’s selling in real time.
Maybe while you’re shopping you realize, “Whoa. That product sold out and people seem to like it!” You’re highly unlikely to drive back to the office and put that in the CRM so you can remember to tell the store rep next time you talk. Maybe you make a note on your phone or in a notebook, but that’s it.
What if you could make a note in your CRM as easily as you can in your phone’s notes app? That’s where a mobile CRM becomes a game changer. If you can log your product notes about what is selling, you’ll naturally start suggestively selling to your clients.
Related: The Value of Having ALL Sales CRM Data in One Place
You’ll move to a consultative approach in your sales rather than just taking repeat orders.
Principal-Led Sales
Only people with a vested interest in the success of the business — that’s either asset owners or people with the research at their fingertips — use the principal-led sales approach. You may not be the asset owner of your company, but with a mobile app like CallProof, you can have your resources with a couple of clicks.
If you make your notes about hot products as you shop in the various stores you sell to (or other stores nearby), you can pull up those notes geographically. The best CRM doesn’t just sort your clients alphabetically — it sorts them by location. Then, when you approach the grocery store rep for their next order, you’ll be able to quickly see notes about what they need to increase and what’s selling in stores close by. They’ll then have the knowledge they need to add products or increase quantities so they sell to their potential.
How to Keep Products on the Shelves
Once a product is on the shelf, you have to figure out how to keep it there. So follow these steps:
1. Suggest things based on what’s selling, not on what’s “predicted” to sell or what they always order.
If a product expires without selling, they won’t order it anymore. You have to keep your thumb on the pulse. Have conversations with people to know what’s moving. Then the products you suggest will be products that actually sell.
2. Take notes in your CRM.
As you have these conversations or notice certain items selling like hotcakes, make notes in your CRM so you can track it in real time. Take notes from each store you visit to see your aggregate experience. What sells best in your region?
3. Suggest products to department managers.
Based on your notes and conclusions, make your suggestions to the people who manage those departments. If you take the notes down right away in CallProof, you’ll be able to recall those notes instantly when you visit anywhere nearby.
4. Become the guru!
When you follow these steps, you become the all-knowing salesperson. Why? No one else does this! You’ve got the information — you see their competitor’s sales sheets and you have the conversations with managers from stores across the region. Use that knowledge to help everyone boost their sales!
So how do you sell more food products to grocery stores? Use a mechanism that tracks your notes geographically in real time from your mobile device combined with your insight and relationships. Grocery reps need someone on their side — someone to help them provide the products their customers are looking for. And you’re just the person to help them do it.
If you’re looking for a CRM that motivates your team to boost sales, book a demo!
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