Marketing Aquaculture Products — 1

the owner, both may be important in your sales
call.
A major challenge for any seller today is identifying
the decision-maker in another organization.
In many cases, you may need to make
your fi rst pitch to a designated buyer who is
only really authorized to say no. Sometimes
this can be an overly self-important secretary
or receptionist. Th e person who says yes is
another level up in the organization. Th is is
the person you are trying to locate and with
whom you want to get on a fi rst-name basis.
You need to do this by not aggravating the
person initially screening your product. Get
this person on your team, while think about
legitimate reasons why you need to introduce
yourself to the decision maker. Remember, you
are there to introduce them to a great product
that will make them a happy customer or their
customers happy. Never belly-crawl or simper;
communicate from a position of honesty and
equality. Always make it clear to your initial
contact that you really appreciate their time and
attention, and that you would really appreciate
their taking time to introduced you to others in
that organization.
If this fails, it is time to fi nd a way to get the
number of the person higher up. With food
distributors, it may work to call and say, “Hi
there… I was at a meeting a couple of weeks
back and met your main buyer for your institutional
food service line. I’m sorry, but I lost
his card. Could you give me his name?” Th en
ask for his phone number and E-mail address.
Th en wait a day or so, call the person. Introduce
yourself and in a peer-to-peer tone, politely
ask for twenty minutes or so to informally
introduce your product. If you are asked how
you got the number, simply state that you called
a while back and got it from the person with
whom you talked on the phone. Continuing
in a peer-to-peer tone, reiterate that you would
only like a couple of minutes, know that your
contact is busy, if it works out a little better, do
it over lunch, you’ll be happy to pick up the bill.
Now that you have a quality contact it is extremely
important that you go into the meeting
knowing everything that you possibly can
about your prospective customer (their business)
and the person who is the contact. Hopefully,
when you had them on the phone you got
a few kernels of information about why they are
at least slightly interested in your product. If it
is a retailer or distributor, you need to visit their
store or the stores to which they distribute.
Are they a big distributor who handles grocery
stores, local ethnic food stores and restaurants,
or just a small grocery chain with three local
stores? Each represents diff erent customer
demographics and that is knowledge that you
need for positioning your product. If possible,
study the company’s advertising and product
literature. Distributor or retailer, they probably
have a corporate web site. If so, what is their
mission statement? If you have questions, call
them again and talk to a receptionist. Most are
under-challenged in their jobs, but know a lot
about the company and who’s who. You may be
able to get some information on when to time
your sales pitch. If Mondays through Wednesday
are really hectic days at the company, get in
there Th ursday or Friday so they have time to
listen to you and your message does not get lost
in the shuffl e.
Visit a retail outlet (competing outlets can be
valuable too) and ask questions of the counter
staff , see how much they know about the products
they currently sell, ask them if customers
ever complain about or return them for any
reason. Take a good hard look at the way the
product is presented in the display case. Th en
get an idea of the complete product range. If
you are interested in moving fresh tilapia fi llets
into this venue, where do they fi t within the entire
product line and price range? Th is includes
the imported bulk product in the freezer case.
If you need to compete with imported bulk fi llets
from China or Chile, then you need to have
a strategy for convincing the buyer that your
product is superior and will sell. In marketing
terms, you are now looking at your position
in relation to industry stakeholders, including
Marketing Aquaculture Products — 13