Our Seller Asks: My customer says he doesn’t think his customers will want to buy our products (which are a premium gourmet product). I’ve checked his competitors and they sell a rival brand to ours - results seem to be good. How do I get this customer to buy from me?

Answer:

Firstly we need to make sure we have fully understood the customers situation. Do we really understand his view of his local market area? Does he know what his customers want? Has he made this sort of decision before with other products and been proved correct (or not)?

Have we asked him: Is your decision not to stock more expensive products part of a strategy to stock low cost products (sort of like an everyday low prices policy?)

If we get to the point where he refuses to cooperate with our approaches and discussion, or where he flatly refuses to stock our product we can do three things.

(1) Let him know that we are sure the market will buy our products. We can cite competitior activity and maybe similar cases in other locations as proof.

(2) We ask him directly if that is his final decision, and let him know that we will be looking for other retailers (or distributors) in his area. So he may miss out on being the exclusive stockist.

(3) We stay in touch on a regular, but maybe not frequent, basis. We need to stay in touch in case something changes his mind. After all it is up to us to sell to him.