Jonathan Skaare - Brokers, Fractional Sales & the Real Mechanics of Retail Execution

On this episode, we're joined by Jonathan Skaare, Founder & CEO of Scout CPG - the fractional sales and channel support firm built specifically for better-for-you CPG brands. 

Jonathan spent over 20 years in sales leadership roles at Kellogg's, Annie's, Vital Farms, and Acme Provisions before channeling all of that experience into helping emerging brands scale smarter without breaking the bank.

We dig into the real mechanics of how emerging brands should think about sales infrastructure - when to use a broker, when to go fractional, and when to bring someone in-house. Jonathan breaks down why the broker model isn't actually broken, but that most brands don't understand what brokers can and can't do, and why that misalignment is where things fall apart.

We get into retail execution, distributor velocity thresholds, and why getting on the shelf is only step one - getting off the shelf is the real work. Jonathan walks through his preferred approach to the natural-to-conventional transition, why he likes retailer-specific and regional brokers at early stage, and how Scout builds a financial model for every account before a brand sells into it to make sure the numbers actually pencil out.

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Episode Highlights:

🏗️ Why Jonathan built Scout CPG after 20+ years in sales leadership
🤝 Why the broker model isn't broken - brands just misunderstand it
💰 Broker compensation structures (retainer, commission, and hybrids)
🚀 Fractional sales vs. broker vs. full-time hire - how to decide
🛒 Why retailer-specific and regional brokers shine at early stage
📦 Mile wide vs. mile deep - why distribution strategy matters more than door count
📊 Velocity is king - the first 90 days on shelf
🎯 How to transition from natural/specialty to conventional retail
📝 What a great buyer deck actually looks like (5-6 pages max)
💸 Scout's "customer planner" - modeling profitability before selling in
⚠️ Common mistakes brands make in buyer meetings
👀 Why you should visit the store before you pitch the buyer

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Table of Contents:

00:00 – Intro
00:44 – Origin story and the why behind Scout CPG
03:05 – How Scout differs from a traditional broker
05:55 – Why the broker model isn't broken
07:16 – Broker compensation structures
10:05 – How Scout's financial model works differently
12:28 – Fractional sales vs. broker vs. full-time hire
17:00 – Regional vs. national vs. retailer-specific brokers
20:58 – Choosing the right channel and region first
23:42 – Retail execution: good ideas, bad implementation
25:44 – Going a mile wide vs. a mile deep
28:19 – The first 90 days on shelf
32:20 – Natural to conventional transition
35:33 – Building a buyer presentation that works
39:07 – The customer planner: financial modeling before selling in
42:13 – Where to follow Jonathan and Scout CPG

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Links:

Scout CPG – https://www.scout-cpg.com/
Follow Jonathan on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-skaare-b9126922/
Follow me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/

For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams - check out https://www.kitprint.co/

Shout out to my friends over at Glimpse, the go-to partner for automating retail-related back-office operations and unlocking margin trapped in invalid fees and manual processes.

Are you in the market for a new flexible packaging partner? Check out HD Packaging. Third-generation, family-owned and built for the needs of category leaders like Newman’s Own and A Dozen Cousins. Faster launches, lower costs, and no artwork fees. 

Transcript

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welcome to shelf help today we're speaking with founder and CEO at Scout CPG fractional sales and channel support firm really specifically built for better for you CPG brands before launching Scout Jonathan spent over 20 years in sales leadership roles at some of the most well known brands in in the space Kellogg's Annie's Acme Provisions Vital Farms just to name a few and now he's just really channeling all of that experience to help other emerging brands really scale smarter with without really breaking the bank so yeah really excited to get into it Jonathan maybe just kind of first off for the listeners that aren't that familiar with Scout CPG love to just kind of get a quick lay of the land in terms of origin story and the why behind Scout CPG course services and and what makes Scout different than I just I don't know let's just say a traditional broker as an example or maybe sales agency and then um if you just want to throw out you know a a um the kind of the types of brands you typically work with and and where they are in their journey and then we'll go from there yeah great and thanks for having me I appreciate the opportunity to talk about Scout CBG and the people that work with me are outstanding and we couldn't be happier with the brands that we work with today Scout CBG you know oftentimes businesses are built before there's true intention and understanding of what's happening in the market and we sort of took a different approach after 20 ish 25 years ish experience now in CPG from everything from bagging groceries in a grocery store to being part of some great acquisitions and some well seemingly everything in between working for giant billion dollar companies a year and and pre revenue businesses and one of the things that we found that we we felt is the biggest pain point for brands as they grow is the financial investment and the managing of expectations to bring a product to market and what I've found through my own experience as well as the people that work with me here at Scout is that brands as they come to market may or may not have the right expectations of what their business can and cannot do whether that's driven by operations whether that's financials whether that's the support structure whether that's the organization of the brand itself and so there's lots of amazing there's out there that come up with these amazing ideas and they've got great branding and they've hired great designers but they might not have the price architecture correct they may not know the route to market they may not know how to work with distributors and I think often people get advice that you've got to have a broker and I think that in some cases that's true and in others it's not and so what I what I found is the biggest gap is actually understanding the overall business acumen that is needed to actually bring a brand to CPG and we build Scout CPG to help with just that and so the stages at which we tend to work best with we have some pre revenue we have some that have been in market for a year or two and sometimes five with brands that may have some distribution may have ADC may have a new leadership team may have a different need to bring a market to bring the product to market in a way that is sensible and not just fully scalable and so often times brokers the difference between us and brokers is a handful of things brokers are good at the right stage there's lots of great people out there there's lots of great companies there's lots of regionals there's lots of nationals there's all kinds of great brokers that do great work but you have to understand what their role is their role is not to build your strategy it's not to help you understand pricing in some instances they don't understand the cash flow of the business and they don't understand the true true work that takes behind building a real ground up forecast and actually helping you build a production model as such and so that typically comes with a sales leader that you have in your organization but unfortunately to get that level of experience that tends to come with a pretty high price tag and so and often times they hire someone who maybe doesn't understand part of it as someone who came from big CPG I made a switch from big CPG to to a very small business and I will tell you firsthand that struggle is hard and the things that you don't know you really don't know and so we build Scout CBG with the brand in mind first essentially saying what does the brand need and so what we traditionally do is run an assessment in partnership with the brand to understand the job functions and where some of the real hurdles are whether that's in experience whether that's understanding how they bring something to be it could be as simple as what do I do when I get a Po how do I fill out this unifi paperwork do I check the free fill box like what are the elements of it can I negotiate terms what are the dcs to get into what are the next dcs to get into and there's different people out there doing different things to help brands there are some master brokers out there that may be quasi defractional that help a lot of brands get into anchor accounts there are traditional brokers that are helping you at ground level regionally there are national brands that want to scale you maybe faster than you can for a number of reasons whether it's product availability operational understanding the cash flow that's actually needed to finance that sort of a for scaling moment and we try to help our brands understand where is the point in which you can run and so we traditionally start with understanding operations understanding their finances understanding their cards build understanding their price ladder to bring it to market and then actually building a strategy that they can afford to do at a pace that they can afford to do it at and so we built it with them in mind first without Scout in mind so when you call us and say well what can scout do for us I often say I I don't know what you need yet and so there's an array of services that we can provide with you but it really starts with you and understanding what your brand needs and every brand is different so the Assumption that I can just hand over a capabilities deck we say this is a great rate and we get going I don't ever want to do that we really want to have a discussion about what you need as a brand to help bring it to market at the right pace for your category for your bandwidth for your opportunity that's great with the traditional broker model for emerging CB yeah I do say the broker model isn't broken if you're the broker and and what I mean by that is the expectations when when you are the broker they feel that they're articulating their services and the cost for that service in a meaningful and impactful way right and so they don't feel that it's broken brands often come in to the conversation not truly understanding how to manage a broker how to utilize them how to understand what they can do and what they can't do and so a lot of brands come to us and like oh we've hired this broker it didn't work out and we tend to ask them questions like so what do your assets look like what were the direction was there a scorecard how did you communicate with them how often did you communicate with them and so there's a different way to manage that conversation and I think that a lot of brands come into CPG with this grand expectation that brokers are gonna solve all of your problems and unfortunately that's not really their role and so managing expectations for you as a brand as well as having a clear communication with the brokers to what their role is is really the key and that's often the driver for when people say the broker model is broken not really I think that people just don't come to the table understanding exactly what each other is supposed to do hand in hand totally standard broker compensation structure whether it's some mix of retainer commission and maybe just at least from your perspective or or and or just what you hear from other brands that you speak with where you feel like maybe there's some misalignment between the incentives that the broker has and and what the brand actually needs yeah first I think the conversation starts with you're both trying to run a business and I think it needs to be grounded in that and understanding that that's what it is you can get emotional about the connectivity but the reality is you're both running a business and so both sides need to understand that at hello and so if you can get past that point understanding what the compensation model for brokers is is a wide array of options yeah and it you know it could be in some instances you're great a great regional broker in Northern California and it's a relatively small retainer and maybe it's and or commission not that everybody understands how that gets funded cause yeah that it's retainer and or commission every month some people believe you come off commission you get on the commission you stay on commission that isn't always the case to help you have someone in the market bring your product in some cases in the front door there are other brokers who give you a national agreement and and sort of tend to do the same thing that retainer is built to help cover their sort of operating expenses people their SGA on their own people and understanding how many people they've got on salary they need to cover those pieces and then the commission may or may not benefit different people this everybody has a different bonus structure every broker's different and how they incentivize their people which is fine that's their business not mine but what it tends to do is put you in a sort of Rolodexes of brands for category views and brands often don't understand what that means and I can see and understand why you're paying a broker a amount of money a month and you are expecting them to work on your business at or better than the rate in which you are paying them that isn't always true because there are busier times of the year based on your category and your calendar than there are others and so there's ebbs and flows of workflow in connectivity in communication and what you're trying to accomplish when you hire a broker is to actually get into their book so that you can utilize their relationship to go talk to a retailer that may or may not be today that may or may not be in two or three months yeah be in six or nine months and I think what often happens to brands is they they don't ask the broker the question of does my calendar what is reviewed when is the right time to start with you and so often times people will sign up too early with brokers to help them get into a market that isn't readily available or reviewing the category and so there's a lot of wasted time and energy and money which isn't the group's fault and often times it's the brand's fault and I think that's sort of where like someone like Scout CBG comes in we we sort of build and scale with you and we we financially take incentives to sort of go with that we we literally build a plan with you based on where you're going based on the timing based on the urgency of the business rather than hey we're just gonna kind of put you in a book and we're gonna bring you to a category review and we're gonna get you a meeting and they're very good at that um and so it's just a different approach in terms of how brands actually view the urgency now I'll say this every brand and every early stage founder I've ever met every day is urgent and every day is is important and every day we want to feel like we're making progress and as as someone who's been part of many of those early starts I feel and empathize with people who who look at it that way you have to find a way to make progress every day in fractional sales and and as a broker that isn't always the case now in some instances people can have you know 50 100 sometimes 200 brands on their desk across multiple categories and multiple attempts and their primary function is focused on the thing that's being reviewed today and you can't knock them cause that's the way to do it right that's important for the brand and it's important for their efficiency our our model of compensation works slightly different than that in terms of how our team is paid and incentivized and how we actually build our financial relationship with each brand where it isn't always a retainer it isn't always a commission sometimes it's a smaller retainer and a commission sometimes it's a commission at a different rate sometimes it's just a straight retainer really varies by brand and I like to tell folks like I don't know that any two contracts here at Scout CPG are the same yeah and that's intentional because no two brands are the same and no two brands have the same bank account in the same category and the same velocity there are things here that sell it one unit a store a week there are some things here that sell it 10 units a store a week there's a great divide between those we have some brands that sell amazing in the southwest region over 100 units a store a week and then they're in the pack northwest and they sell five right and so there's a huge disconnect and an Assumption made that the business is gonna perform the same way everywhere and I think you have to be aware of that as you go into a relationship with a brand to help them understand exactly what's needed to make the pack northwest maybe move quicker but then to even tell the story of a brand that's in the southwest that's actually doing amazing yeah that makes total sense that are actively trying to just figure out at the stage that they're at whether they need a fractional sales leader fractional head sales I think it's kind of what Scout CPG really is versus bringing an in house full time GPO sales um versus a traditional broker or maybe it's a combination of all or some of these how should they be kind of thinking about that decision and what's gonna be right for them yeah it's that is a that is an intersection that a lot of brands stumble upon and don't have a clear understanding of what it is we have brands here at Scout that have brokers and we manage the brand as a fractional head of sales and we manage all the brokers we have brands that want to have brokers and so we will act on the brand's behalf and and actually go out and interview and negotiate and try to find the best connection for them understanding whether you should have a broker whether you should have a fractional sales team is sort of part of the assessment we do for you there's no obligation to work with us long time um long term I should say we want to understand what's the right fit for you maybe that's us maybe that's not there are some categories we don't have a lot of experience in our business is built different that we don't we don't actually hire people until we have brands so you it it is not often that you just come into the business and we just say hey we can get you on board in two weeks or 30 days sometimes we want to find the right mix sometimes we have someone who has experience in that category and sometimes we don't and so helping brands understand what is the need of their business today and actually give them an honest well tends to be my honest opinion on like where you are in the stage of growth and what you should use sometimes that's not us and and you've heard me say this in the past like we are not amazing at brokering businesses and we are true fractional salespeople we have some brokering relationships they tend to be friends of friends or or sometimes even personal friends of ours that we're trying to help at a pace that makes sense for them but we're not great at it we're not great at it cause we don't have 200 brands and we don't have five or six brands in a category and a category manager at pick any retailer in the US wants to talk to us about five brands in one meeting and that's where brokers tend to shine best they get your brand in a small environment a one pager and a quick two or three page deck in front of a buyer they spend 10 minutes on it they flip the page and they go to the next brand we don't have that many brands in the same category in fact we we tend to have a non compete so meaning if if you're our salsa company we don't have another salsa company we have a frozen entree business and we aren't gonna sell any frozen entrees beyond that business and so we stay very loyal and dedicated to the brands that we have partnerships with and so that's just a unique understanding of what brokers can do and I think one of the things that brands tend to miss and I think it's a struggle for a lot of brands is a lot of the big brokerage houses have competitive brands on their desk we have a handful of them that we actually manage and they have a competitive brand that's much much bigger than us also on the same broker's desk and understanding like what are the challenges there and how to communicate that becomes a real a rope key it's also really challenging for maybe a founder LED business that might not understand the intricacies of making both things work and so understanding all of those dynamics to help a brand say hey maybe you wanna do this may maybe you take this structure and we do fractional sales and then over time you wanna bring your own salesperson in and maybe we help you staff that too um it's not about protecting our business it doesn't start with us it starts with the brand we always have to remind ourselves of that we're here to help the brand succeed and in their success should so should ours but we don't put ourselves first in any of those conversations running an assessment we're running one tomorrow on a brand with a few people on our team to actually help a brand understand what do they need one of the things that I found and the reason that we do that I didn't always do it and I owned a consulting business before that was just me and it was easier to understand what brands needed when it was just me cause it was either I could do it or I could not and now there's a whole team of people that's not the same case right and so we didn't always run an assessment we do today to help brands understand where is the challenge in their business and what's the right scope and agreement that you should financially sign yourself up to to bring your product to market signing a national broker deal if you only want to be in the state of Florida is a bad idea right signing a national deal when you can't actually scale because your product can't scale you don't have the packaging you don't have the financing you're going through a redesign all the different things that are happening today and you expect to happen the next three to five years actually play into whether you can scale with a broker or even with a fractional sales team now we've taken a frozen entree business blues on kitchen from zero cases and built with Scott and Abby in the team a very consistent flow of information in a scaling Salesforce it started with me and then it added we added Jen to our team and then we added Luke to our team and then we added Kathleen into our team and we continue to add resources onto that business as it scales to help it actually come to market at the pace that it can go and at the financial financial investment that it can afford to do based on how it's scaling that's a very different model than anything I've ever seen and it's exactly what we intend to do yeah um you mentioned you just mentioned how it's probably not a good idea if you know it's small brand going with a national broker if they're just focused on you know one specific area and of a similar question do you think it makes more sense or it might be just situational but does it make more sense to use multiple brokers and that each one has their own specific um specific thing greater than a specific retail group as an example like I know there's based out here in Minneapolis I know at least of one broker that's obviously a lot of them are former target employees and they're really focused just on working with target specifically like does that also seem like it makes more sense um than going with one general one that focuses on everything yeah I um I say this a lot and I've said it for a long time no fractional sales no broker is good everywhere yeah doesn't exist we have aspirations to be that the reality is we're just not and sure in in my experience there is a weaker link in the chain everywhere and everybody's business and I think we're constantly trying to address that and make it stronger that's part of running your own business right identify your weakness and try to you know eliminate and maximize and improve that understood that um I personally like big retailer specific brokers who are specialties on those businesses especially at early stage but that my personal experience I've seen it go a lot of different ways but I tend to like that more your example of target um we have a group that we tend to work with a little bit here more than other brands x target buyer office across the street you know looks out the window and is looking at like there's a a lot to say about the connectivity to target in that manner and I've worked with other ones that have the same sort of piece I feel the same way about Kroger I feel the same way about Publix where it gets a little bit more interesting and the reason that I think that exists is there is a there is a language there is a portal there is a review calendar there are there are hardships for a brand if you didn't actually know how to do that big brokers tend to have that but people who work there tend to understand how the building actually works and so I I do like that in those big pieces first and foremost if you have the scalability but I think before you get to how do I call in target and how do I call in Walmart you have to ask yourself what store what channel do you want to be in first yeah and if you're thinking about hey I wanna be in Northern California in all of the independents and maybe some midsize strong regional players maybe your best bet there is a Norcal broker who actually knows all those buyers by first name and can essentially walk in the front door at any moment in time and maybe that's maybe that's not the case for big broker or maybe it is and there's variability across every one of them right yeah um if you wanna be in the northeast in you wanna start there well you have to understand there's a there's a lot of big chains you know it's heavily heavily saturated by Aldi banners and stop and shop then there's Wakefern with all the buying groups there's a number of more conventional retailers in that market and there's some Whole Foods but there's really no sprouts and there's moms and that's a whole different game and so you know how do you communicate with this well it starts with which which retailers which channel do you wanna be on and who's gonna service that now over time and this has happened to many many brands regional brokers start and grow a business and then as the business grows it becomes I would say focused on growth but also a little bit risk averse they tend to make a change to a national broker cause it's less points of contact there's less variability like there's efficiencies in communication and being able to drive strategy across one company instead of 10 but I I really like if you have the ability and you've got someone who can do it you know a patchwork of brokers early stage is a great idea and there's some really really really amazing regional brokers and some really really really great retailer specific brokers who can help you do the right thing and have your intentions in mind Costco is the same way there's a lot of great Costco like Costco specific brokers out there I met another one at Expo I never even met and there's a whole family dad has three kids and I couldn't believe it I was like this is this is actually a great group of people they were wonderful they knew exactly what they were talking about and I never heard of them so like I want to take that card cause I there are brands that ask us for things all the time totally so I want to know that that's an option for people and and where do they go and how do they do it I have someone that calls on like our business today he's wonderful he reps a few other Scout brands as well in Costco he's amazing we're very fortunate to know him but sometimes there will be a conflict on his desk with something else and so it's good to just know and be able to have those conversations with the regional and the retailer specific brokers to know what it is you need and not just have them provide a service that you may not understand how to work with or even find value in yeah there's a lot of reporting people out talk about data and how much of it do you need and who has it and I think big brokers tend to have some level of data we at Scotchy we don't buy any right if you are if you're buying data we'll tell you how to do it we'll work it navigate it we'll help you understand what it is we'll read it for you we'll use it to our advantage we'll sell against it and utilize it yeah but we don't buy any and big brokers tend to and so are you a brand that needs that I don't know are you a brand that wants a target specific broker I don't know we just don't know until we actually get in the leads with you and understand what your business needs let's talk about retail execution a bit and you you a month or two ago when we chatted you said something to me that that stuck with me and you said a lot of lots of brands have really good ideas but have really bad implementation from your you know 20+ years selling into retail now working with emerging brands what does retail execution actually actually look like I know that can be a bit of a broad question so I'll let you take it however you feel like is the most helpful sure um every every brand's example of that is different and I don't mean that to sound my original name is not to sound negative that brands don't know how to execute but if you've if you've come from tech and you come to CPG it's a different world if you were a lawyer and you come to CPG it's a different world you have a great idea but how you execute in CPG is specific to CPG and there's lots of ways to do it right and so building a strategy that makes sense and that you can execute with the people you have the resources you have the finances you have is where execution tends to go wrong I have found a handful of brands in my life where they found themselves in a retailer in every DC across the country so they've got one person that's opened UNFI Rockland and they've got another person that opened Khe Portland and they've got someone who opened Khe Dallas and someone who opened UNFI like Hudson Valley and there are these anchor accounts they get it but but they can't market across the whole country right because they don't have the infrastructure to do that so you did the first step which is to get on shelf but how do you get off shelf and that's part of the execution right and so knowing when you can go far and wide versus going a mile deep is is actually really critical to the true execution of the business and there are struggles with distributors you have a velocity by DC by sq that you have to stay on or the distributor will will sort of happily exit you out because they're also running a business and they need to be efficient and so when you find yourself with a bit of a shotgun approach all across the country which for some brands works let's be honest it works if you're funded to do so and you have the resources you can do that um if you don't that's a big struggle and what often happens is brands will come to us and say I'm in all these places and I'm losing my shirt on freight and we're doing this and we're doing that and we're delivering but we're not on time and we have all these lump fees and we have all these things in the sales team like got us in the broker got us in or maybe even sometimes the the old fractional salesperson got us in here but now we don't know the category manager we're not selling as well as we'd like and we don't know which levers to pull and so understanding that element of there's a distributor who needs to make money I think most people in the industry know that the distributors don't make a whole lot of money selling product to retailers true and so there's an idea that you need to support that there's I think some some fun and interesting ways to have real honest conversations about that but executing doesn't just start with putting it on shelf it's about having a real strategy that starts here and extends through with multiple checkpoints and and a real need to monitor that business unfortunately for some brands they get on shelf and they forget about it they move on to the next step and that's that's terrifying because you can easily find yourself off the shelf and if you don't talk to the category manager every once in a while I'm not saying email them every week in fact I'd strongly advise brands not to email your buyers once a week but to to find the right cadence of information and be a value add that helps in your execution I think that's a big struggle that people find themselves in today cause they get a little over their skis and there's ways to manage it back but understanding how to do that can be tricky and if you've been part of early stage brands there's price increases there's case back change there's design changes there's flow through there's markdown in certain retailers there's all these things that sort of surprise you if you're not understanding what it takes to actually do a price change and a pack range what are the what's the timing on that how does it flow does it create a new item code does it not where does that fit in your overall strategy and sometimes you know you may feel pressured to to take that you might not be able to yeah for a variety of reasons and the distributor might have promotions in place and you can't change it till that's over and this you may have to cover the price difference and all these different things execution starts with strategy and not the other way around and I feel like we we often don't have a good strategy for what the brand wants to do in the order in which it can do it right yeah into retailer actually having a clear plan in place and not getting kicked off the shelf after a while like what what should the the first 90 days ish look like from an execution standpoint if the brand is doing things right and kind of what should they be measuring I mean velocity is king I think everyone's always said the same thing understanding what that is and what the guard reels it around your category specifically by retailer is is significantly important you need to know what you're supposed to be selling are you expected to be a unique product and therefore your velocity expectations are not the highest of like a private label skew are you competing against a big brand understanding velocity and what that expectation is early stage yeah and is it growing is is step one I think everyone will tell you the same thing but but how do you do that right and so coming from big CPG there let's there's always been like the hey let's put it on shelf for 30 days let's not touch price there's there's a strategy let's get it on for 30 days let's make sure it's on shelf let's make sure the resets actually done retailers they have people and people call in sick and so sometimes those things don't happen according to plan and I worked in a grocery store for a long time so that that happens that's real um so maybe you don't you want to get on the shelf on Tuesday and maybe it doesn't get on the shelf till Thursday you don't want to be on sale if the product's not on the shelf and there's lots of different retailers that are using some sort of computerized assistant ordering right and so there's no baseline for your business so if you go on sale it doesn't know how to order for you and so then you're sort of reliant on people in store and there are regional retailers who are excellent at that and then there's larger retailers who are not and so there's it just depends on the infrastructure what they do generally we say get on shelf for 30 days promotion or demo depending on what the strategy of the business is by making a dip that's sort of like other dips but maybe has a different variant as a start you may want to focus on getting it into people's mouths right because they may know that they're buying the same old dip they've always bought but you need to get them to buy yours and price may not be enough right because it's a high taste category and then there's things like even in commodity sometimes price can be a factor so is that what drives the consumption in that category and so you know is it a dollar off is it $2 off is it buy one get one free is it buy one get one free it depends on the category and the brand so to say like what is that but there should be some 96 months 9 months 12 month check in for like how you're actually doing by retailer so look at it now if you buy data you're gonna probably buy it every month you can buy it every week I don't know why you would do that but you can you can buy it every month and you can check on those things for the people that report for the people that don't sometimes it's easier just to ask the category manager at the retailer it's in their interest to sell more stuff and so they want to do that and so by having a clear understanding of their time and their needs and maybe just simply shooting an email hey see we're using our distributor he says we haven't really shipped a lot of cases like what can we do better how can we partner they're gonna have some ideas like they want to sell more product now there are giant retailers who may not answer you right cause they've got thousands of brands and thousands of people and they're a big ship and they got 2,000 stores and they may not have the time to talk to you about your individual needs and in those instances you might seen some like a fractional sales and maybe even a broker but knowing like where you're going what you're starting I mean if you're starting at Jimbo's in SoCal amazing people love the stores if you haven't had a sandwich in Jimbo's go to the go to the deli order a sandwich amazing and I love everything about it but it's a handful of stores and you can get into them right you can get in and see how it's going and the people who work there are very communicative Central Market here in Texas same thing get into the store see how it's selling talk to the people educate them you know do some demos get some coupons in people's hands like drive some trial organically and into a little bit of a grassroots movement if you're in target that's not gonna happen if you're in Wegmans you're not doing a demo there either right so the the way you do it is really contingent on where you went on shelf and how to actually understand what the guardrails are for 90 day success yeah on the topic of retailers or how should they think about when and how to make that jump from natural specialty to conventional and you know what signals tell you that that a brand is ready to make that jump yeah what a great question and probably a hundred ways to answer it um I'll tell you what my preferred path is to do that um if you are a highly indexing natural channel product you're in sprouts you're in Whole Foods you know you're in mom's you've probably figured out Natural Grocers and maybe you're still working on NCG cause it takes a little longer and in front you've got a really high indexing product there will you survive in a albertsons maybe maybe not yeah I think you have to look at the price architecture for what's there and understand the brands and the pricing are you gonna be two and three dollars more on shelf that that may not work it might that may not work is there like mind your brands in that chain so do you have four or five brands that you idolize are they in there what I prefer to do is find a smaller regional more conventional indexing retailer and test it out okay don't go big and sign with someone gigantic find a good like regional conventional facing retailer who you can have real clear communication with and hopefully has a buyer that wants to like understand that you you may need to over invest here because you don't know what you're doing this may not be the greatest financial reward for you short term but it's gonna teach you a lot of life lessons about what your brand needs to do when it isn't in you know in a high a retail with a higher basket ring and people who are less conscious about the price of things when you get to those places you know start small test with a retailer that has that person walking in the door and don't put yourself in a predicament where you're paying two three sometimes four cases of store and slotting to to figure out if it's gonna work that's a long return on slotting if any at all if you're selling one or two units a store week it's probably not paying out for the year yeah maybe not in two years depending on the category that that's our preferred method find the right retailer test the waters understand if you need to change pricing understand if you're ready to run digital coupons are you ready to do in store theater there's a lot of retail media now that is happening more in conventional retailer than I've ever seen I think there's people on the actual channel doing it pretty well too but the conventional retailers certainly has a well traditionally a bigger footprint of store and so they have an opportunity to leverage that a little bit faster than other folks and are you ready to do that and can you invest there and those marketing programs are very expensive and can you afford to do that and do you want to do it I always say you know if you're a natural indexing product do you want to be in the fuel program where people buy this this and this and save 10 cents on gas those programs work incredibly well for a lot of brands yeah incredibly but they can be very expensive and and do you want to be associated with that that's what it takes to work there and you're not willing to participate in it is that the right place for you right yeah oh that's really helpful what a that's a really dialed in kind of a buyer presentation and meeting look like and then on the flip side what are some of the most common ways you see brands really shooting themselves in the foot during a buyer meeting okay two there's two really two questions there one a 30 page deck is never needed if you have one and you want to send it to somebody save yourself a lot of time and effort you've got a 30 minute meeting you can talk to about one page in one minute and ever ask a question five to six pages is generally enough what I often find and there's a lot of there's a number of people out there talking about this in LinkedIn and all over social media about what does it really take understanding what the retailer is looking for and how you fit into the category should really be the start of what you're doing now I say that but if you're a brand no one's ever heard of you need to you need to put a stick in the ground and say this is what my brand is this is why it exists and this is what we want to become and hopefully you've understood that that's what the retailer also wants to do or is willing to take a risk on that because every facing matters every brand matters and they have to believe that you can do it yeah but making sure that like there's a page on the story and you sort of get through that well often times early stage entrepreneurs and founders will will spend too much time on the backstory and not enough time on the product fit and why it makes sense and you need to demonstrate that you first of all if you've never presented to a retailer you've never been in their store that's a really bad starting place so someone needs to like actually have gone in the store and walk to set and maybe talk to the store manager and like do a little bit of groundwork before you're just like hey I'm pitching to moms and and I've never been in a moms like that's a bad idea don't do that right right um you've never been to Central Market you don't know how busy it is you don't know what it looks like you don't know that they have an in house design team in every store and they're doing so if you've never seen that and you don't know how they come to market it's gonna be very hard for you to articulate how to be successful and so understanding that and then building your deck around how do I fit in why is it incremental what am I gonna bring to the table that's different and making sure that's that's at the forefront of it now there's two ways to build decks you can do what some big CBG's do and the first page is the ask it works people are trained to do that um the more traditional way is to tell a little bit of a story one page on your brand one page on like maybe two about like where the data is and what the white space is some page on activation and a thank you like four five six pages is enough with a ask at the back end and if you're a new and emerging brand and you don't have significant funding to put in the first page I'm gonna do $1 million I'm gonna pay you $400,000 and here's how I'm gonna do it some brands can do that most brands can't and so just understanding what you can actually do and what they want to do and then I'll give you like a sneaky little hint there's MCB's there's Oi and there's scans some retailers can take all three some retailers don't some retailers have minimum levels of investment in one of those three buckets and sometimes a combination of that if you don't know that don't put it on the side the worst thing you can do is make an Assumption about how they're gonna take your investment and then a buyer and I've seen this happen is like we we don't do MCPS like we only do scans this Oi we're actually not gonna get it so understanding those elements to like how the retailer wants to engage with you is I think is critical and something we strongly advise to all of our clients yeah totally very helpful last question for you and we're coming up on time but I want to cover this one in in terms of I think that between your trade spend margins brokerage fees slotting yeah brands just fine growing retail distribution profitably or even just break even in the early days is is really difficult and I think at Scout one of the things you do is you kind of run up a pretty detailed financial model for each account before brand sells into it what does this look like to helps kind of ensure that the the numbers make sense yeah um built out a necessity back when it was just me and I had a handful of new brands and I asked the question are we gonna make any money here and I I don't I I think I was the only one in the room asking that question I thought when I asked it lots of people like yeah are we gonna make any money we build a customer we call it a customer planner it probably could have a different name and it could sound really cool but that's what it's called um we do that in advance of actually building a deck and so what we want to do is capture your cogs rate of velocity number of stores any and all add fee TPR fees we cover your cash discounts we understand what the distributor fees are any and all the things that are coming in we capture whether or not we're shipping it if it's picked up we understand landed costs we understand retail margins to the retailer depth of discount on the retailer we actually get a bit of like promo non promo percent of sales to help guide whether or not we're actually gonna be a sustainable business long term we do that on A1 essentially a year to look to help you understand as I would say we can make bad decisions and by bad I mean financially unsound if it's a gateway to something else but we have to know yeah we shouldn't make a decision if we don't know what we're doing and so if we're going to overinvest because someone is like three cases of soldering instead of one or two cases instead of one and there's a velocity measure which is the biggest variable in a customer planner I mean I always tell folks like if you put in 1.1 and and 1.2 10% difference like you just called your business up pretty fast without doing anything besides changing a decimal point right and that's incredibly impactful so understanding what you're gonna do when you go in is I think is the big key can we make money in year one what is our trade rate what is our gross what is our net what is our actual penny profit on this business and we can build it with or without your operating expense and your s G a we can do a bunch of different things for you to actually tell you where does this go and we actually have a pretty good pulse on the top line so we've got a pretty good forecast we've got a pretty good bottom line and we know the things that we're expected to do and then if we can afford to do those things that sort of transcends and transitions into a promotional plan to support that retailer what can happen and I would say for many brands it's probably one out of five maybe maybe sometimes two two out of five times it's actually not sustainable and so we don't submit because we won't sell that well and we although love that store we can't do it it's just not a sustainable business in year one we're not making money in year two and none of us want to be out of business in year three so when you start with the brand in mind and you help them understand their investment level it makes for a better relationship I think long term and short term for everybody yeah totally what's the best place to follow along with you you got so much so much great uh insight into this world and then what's the best place for people to follow along with anything that that's going on with Scout as well yeah I mean LinkedIn obviously is there and you can find me at Jonathan Scar and then I'm I'm not a very I don't I don't boast myself well on social media I don't post a lot on Instagram or Facebook or any of those things you can go to scoutdashcpg.com check out our website that'll link you right to us you can kind of get a feel for how we're trying to modernize the CPG fractional sales business and be a true partner first that's probably the best way I met almost every trade show we as scout we do that for our clients so we're not just at the show we're behind the booth you've seen that yourself yep to help people like to be to be in we're in the trenches with our brands you can always email me at Jonathan at scout dash cpd dot com happily take calls we give we give a lot of advice for free right and so part of what we do is give people an idea of is this a good thing for you or not and it's not about whether it's building our Scout CBG business we really just want the business to move forward together and I honestly want other founders to really be successful and that's why we built it not happily give people my time we're pretty busy but I like to talk to new people about new things and new challenges and maybe we never work together but I hope that you're successful all the same totally that's great that's a great way to close it well appreciate John isn't it great I think that's the pod today we're speaking with Jonathan Scar can you kind of walk through that kind of for those founders who are listening when a brand gets on shelf in this is an awesome really appreciate the time